The Girl Who Couldn't Smile (17 page)

I stood in Mulligan’s, a small supermarket and the main grocery store in the village, with Julie, Arga and Gilbert. The manager, a fat, moustachioed man in a suit that almost hid his outrageous paunch, was telling the children how long there had been a sales outlet at this location. Julie stood quietly, holding my hand, her tiny frame wrapped in a dark brown duffel coat. Gilbert, his blond curls encased in a red woolly hat with a white tassel, held my other hand. Arga was on Gilbert’s other side.

‘So, you see, there have been Mulligans in this village, on this very spot, selling reasonably priced groceries and select hardware products to the good people of Brony for nearly one hundred years.’

Arga started to clap uncertainly so we all joined in. Mr Mulligan beamed from ear to ear, which made him look like a happy panda.

‘Do you know, I had no idea there was a school for handi— – for special – for children like that in the village?’ Mulligan said, as he walked us out.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘It’s very hard for parents to find a
childcare
place for kids with unusual requirements. What usually
happens, like in the case of Little Scamps, is that the health services set up places specifically to deal with that need.’

‘Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ the large man said, beaming. ‘Aren’t they lovely little kids? And so well
mannered.’

‘Mmm. They’re on their best behaviour, right now, but yes, they’re great,’ I said, grinning down at the trio of angelic faces.

‘You know, I had a cousin with – what d’you call it? He was like that little girl there.’

‘Down’s syndrome,’ I said.

‘That’s it. Sure it was a long time ago – I’m nearly sixty, would you believe?’

I would have believed it, but I feigned surprise.

‘Well, he was around the same age as me. I used to play with him when my aunt came to visit. We were great friends. Then one day he was gone. I didn’t find out till years later that they’d put him in a home. I never saw him again.’ The big man looked at Julie with a soft expression. I could tell he was a long way away, recalling a childhood friendship cut brutally short. ‘You call in any time,’ he said, slapping me on the back so hard he nearly winded me. ‘And bring your friends there. If I can help you in any way, don’t hesitate to ask. Mulligan’s Groceries and Hardware Supplies has always been to the fore in helping out the local community.’

I thanked him and led the children across the street. I held up my phone, which had a fairly basic camera, and clicked a photo of the shop’s façade. Then I squatted so I was at the kids’ level.

‘I want you all to get a really good picture of the shop in your heads,’ I said. ‘Where is it on the street, first of all?’

‘
Blisko pub, obok apteki
,’ Arga said. ‘Near pub, next to …’ She stopped, trying to find the word. ‘… chemist.’

‘That’s right. And what colour is the outside?’

Julie pointed to her trainers, which were bright yellow. The colours weren’t an exact match, but they were close.

‘Absolutely,’ I said, high-fiving her. ‘It’s yellow. And where is Little Scamps from here? How do we get back to it?’

Gilbert turned to look back down the street. ‘That way,’ he said, pointing.

‘How far is it?’ I asked. ‘How long would it take me to find my way there?’

‘Short,’ he said. ‘Short time to get there.’

‘Would it be as long as, say, an episode of
Zach and Cody
?’ I asked, referring to a kids’ show of thirty minutes duration that they all watched. When children have only a cursory sense of time, it’s good to have something they can easily grasp to compare it to.

‘No. Not that long,’ Gilbert said.

‘All right, then, would it be as long as the ad break in the middle of
Zach and Cody
?’

This was around three minutes, by my reckoning, and would tally with about how long we would have to walk if we went fairly slowly, and the kids rarely walked fast unless it was to get to the bathroom or to eat something.

‘Yeah, that long,’ Gilbert said, a vague smile breaking across his strange, beautiful face.

‘Well done, you lot,’ I said, getting the three of them in a group hug. ‘I’d like you all to remember everything we’ve learned, because I want you to put it all into the amazing map we’re going to make. Your part is going to be Mulligan’s Store, and I want it to be just the best, most amazing work you can do. You gonna do that for me?’

‘Yeah!’

We held hands again and began the short walk back to Little Scamps.

All of the children made similar journeys about the village that day, and every single shop, the butcher’s, the barber’s, the post office, and the two pubs were visited by
representatives
from our crèche. The reactions were universally the same: the business owners had had no idea of our existence, and seemed genuinely touched that we had bothered to call on them as part of our latest project. Quite a few had stories similar to Mr Mulligan’s, and everyone invited us back and offered help and support should we need it. The children were viewed as wonderful additions to the village (even though more than half of them came from a good distance away), and I detected a real sense of pride that Brony was home to such a specialist establishment: other villages or towns might cast out such needy children, but Brony took them to her bosom.

That might or might not have been true, but I thought it a trifling concern. The reality was that our kids had been welcomed with open arms, and they had seen it with their own eyes. More importantly,
Milandra
had seen it. I wanted her not only to feel a sense of belonging and solidarity with everyone else at Little Scamps, but to experience real pride in the crèche. If she was her daddy’s African warrior
princess
, it might appeal to her to be part of such an exclusive group.

The project we were mounting was one I had done and enjoyed while working with Tristan at Drumlin. It was all about getting to know not just your community but your place in it. We would make a huge, colourful map of the
village
, depicting every shop, house and feature, including Little Scamps, and make them as lifelike as possible. Each child would take responsibility for one building in particular, but we would all help – the point of the task was for us to work as a team, learn about our local environment, and one another.

In Drumlin, where the client group were adults, the project had lasted almost a month, and the end result was almost photo-realistic. Susan, Tush, Lonnie and I were under no
illusions
that that would
not
be the case at Little Scamps. We endeavoured to make the process as easy as we could, so we produced coloured card and recommended using as much collage material as possible. In that way we could move the task along without boring anyone.

The children, however, proved to be perfectionists.

‘That ain’t right,’ Ross said, looking at the image of the local pharmacy.

I had the relevant photo on the computer monitor so the kids could refer to it, and Ross was leaning on his crutches, looking from the screen to the paper creation we had spread out on the floor. I had suggested the green walls of the
building
might be re-created using spinach
farfalle
pasta, stuck on with paste. The children seemed open to this suggestion, and the stiff paper had been smeared with glue and the dried pasta liberally tossed on. But Ross, who was co-ordinating this piece of the map, was unhappy.

‘What’s the problem, Ross?’ I asked.

‘Look at dat pitcher,’ Ross said, pointing at the screen with his crutch.

‘Yeah?’ I said.

‘The walls are … like … smooth. These’re bumpy ’n’ lumpy.’

I looked at our work, then at the digital image. He was right. ‘What d’you want to do, Rossie?’

‘All that stuff is gonna have to come off,’ he said.

Milandra wandered over. ‘Whatcha doin’?’ she asked.

‘Oh, no,’ Ross moaned. ‘Have you come to wreck
everything
now, M’landra?’

I winced. We didn’t need one of her legendary rages.

‘I’m only askin’,’ she said.

‘All righ’,’ Ross said. ‘The walls is all wrong. We done ’em wit dat passghetti stuff, but it’s too wobbly.’

Milandra considered the problem. ‘Maybe you could smash it all down. Then it’d look hard, but it wouldn’t be stickin’ up.’

‘I don’ know,’ Ross said, obviously uncertain. ‘You always like smashin’ stuff. I don’ wanna wreck my buildin’.’

I left them to it – this was a problem that was within their grasp to resolve, and it was fascinating to watch them sort through the options.

‘You won’t wreck it,’ Milandra said. ‘You want to take ’em all off anyways. If you don’ like it, you c’n still take ’em off. We just has to be careful not to rip de paper, ’s all.’

Ross looked at me for confirmation. I shrugged. ‘Can’t hurt, Ross. I’ll help you get all the pasta off if you still don’t like it.’

Ross chewed his lower lip, moving around the piece of paper, which was almost as big as him.

‘How should I smash ’em?’ he asked Milandra.

‘Jus’ walk over ’em’d be the quickest way.’

Ross raised a crutch to move on to the piece of art, then stopped. ‘I’ll rip it if I go on there. My sticks’ll do it, I know they will.’

‘We can fix it,’ I said. ‘We can just tape down any tears. Don’t worry. You go ahead.’

‘No.’ Ross shook his head firmly. ‘I put a lotta work into this. We all did. I’m not gonna rip it. You do it, M’landra.’

She shot him a look of utter surprise. The children never trusted her to do anything: she was never offered a toy that she had not snatched or stolen, never invited to join a game without having barged in. This was new territory for her. ‘You
really
want me to do this for you?’

Ross seemed to be reconsidering his suggestion. I prayed he would hold firm, but I knew I had to keep my mouth shut. There was delicate work going on here – far too fragile for me to interfere with.

‘Yeah. Yeah, okay. You do it – but go carefully, right? Will you do that, M’landra?’

She seemed to swell with pride and delight. ‘I surely will, Rossie boy. Watch me smash those pastas for ya. You keep an eye on me, now – this is your bit of de project, isn’t it?’

You may have heard the phrase ‘walking on eggshells’. That was exactly what came to mind as I watched Milandra tiptoe about Ross’s picture, gently crushing the pasta so that it looked like a thin membrane of green concrete, a spider web of filigreed cracks running throughout. It took her a good five minutes to do the whole thing, and I could see the strain in her as she maintained her concentration – she had promised Ross she would do this for him, and she was not going to let him down.

When she had finished, I lifted her off the page and we all looked down. Ross was grinning like a Cheshire Cat. ‘It’s just right!’ he said, to Milandra, with genuine warmth. ‘Look what you done, M’landra – it’s
perfect
! It looks like real stone, that wall does.’

‘It really does,’ I said, lifting the paper and shaking off the loose bits of pasta so that we were left with the clean, completed piece. ‘Good job, guys.’

‘Yeah, well, I did that for you, Ross,’ Milandra said gruffly. ‘You needed some help, and I done it.’

‘Thanks,’ Ross said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

‘Tha’s what friends do for one ’nother,’ Milandra said.

‘Well, if you need help with your bit, just ask me,’ Ross said eagerly.

Milandra looked at him. I could see her mind working.
A week ago, she would have cut off her right arm before allowing anyone to help her with anything. I waited for her response with bated breath.

‘I think I do need a little bit of help,’ she said, ‘if you’d like to help me.’

And off the pair went.

The trip about the village in the cold – and often wet – weather meant the children needed plenty of outdoor wear, and a change of clothes in case they were caught in a
downpour
. I – and the other staff agreed with me – was of the opinion that the elements should never be an excuse not to take the children outside. When we engaged in projects like the map, we sent notes home to the parents, asking them to make sure their child arrived in with the gear and equipment they needed, and all responded by doing just that. All except Tammy’s parents, Kylie and Dale.

The main work of going around to visit each store was done over one day, but the process of building the village in two dimensions took longer, and required the children be able to pop outside to have another look at the subject of their creativity. Tammy arrived in on the first day with her usual weathered T-shirt and jeans combo. There was no way we could allow her out into the elements dressed so
flimsily
, so I dug a battered anorak out of our emergency clothes bank and put it on her. By day three when, despite one more note being sent home, she still arrived improperly attired, I decided it was time to create a storage unit especially for Tammy – ‘The Tammy Cupboard’. In it we kept clothes, a lunchbox and whatever other bits and pieces she needed. It meant we always had something to hand.

I was surprised to discover that Tammy knew exactly where the source of her emergency items was. One day we
were going on a nature walk and the other children were putting on their wellingtons. When I arrived at the Tammy Cupboard, she was already there waiting for me, her grey sneakers off and an expectant expression on her face.

Something unexpected happened in relation to Tammy around this time, something I took to be a huge leap
forward
. It involved little Julie.

Julie was the smallest child in the group, and was generally sweet natured and slow to anger. While some of the kids treated her with a degree of deference because of her apparent meekness, she was often the butt of practical jokes, bullying and general ill treatment. Lonnie, Tush, Susan and I kept an eye on her to make sure she was okay, while at the same time encouraging her to stand up for herself. Little Scamps was not a place for the shy or retiring: it was very much governed by survival of the fittest.