The Girl Who Couldn't Smile

by Shane Dunphy

  ‘I’m sorry it didn’t go better,’ I said.

  ‘They might become accustomed to it,’ Lonnie said.

  ‘They might.’

  ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘I expect they think I’m some kind of phase she’s going through, and that she’ll grow out of me.’

  ‘Tush is a fairly down-to-earth sort,’ I said. ‘The fact that she’s even considering moving in with you is testament to the fact you are not a phase.’

  ‘I thought that,’ he said. ‘But I was a little bit afraid to say it.’

  We wandered towards the band of trees on the other side of a fire break.

  ‘I don’t know if we’ll make it or not,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll have fun trying, though,’ I said. ‘And if you get your heart broken, well, that’s no worse than anyone else has to put up with when a relationship falls asunder.’

  ‘But if I don’t …’ he said.

  ‘If you don’t,’ I said, ‘you get the best thing in the world.’

  We followed the treeline until it joined a narrow path that would bring us back to Lonnie’s small house.

  ‘I found out what happened to Angelica,’ Lonnie said.

  ‘Really? How’d you do that?’

  ‘Sister Helen, the nun who works with Tristan sometimes, she helped me. It actually wasn’t difficult. Don’t know why I didn’t do it before.’

  ‘Maybe you’re feeling a little bit more confident in matters of the … er … heart,’ I suggested.

  ‘She went back to Poland soon after I left the school,’ Lonnie said. ‘She died about five years later. They think it might have been linked to the malaria. She did have it and never fully recovered from it, you see. Poor thing.’

  ‘How do you feel, knowing that?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I talked to Tush about it.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  There didn’t seem to be much more to say than that.

  And two men and their dog followed the woodland path back to an unimaginative, though actually quite tasty, dinner of Cumberland sausage and roasted Brussels sprouts.

  40

  Tony came to see me shortly before I left Little Scamps to return to work at Drumlin. He was waiting outside the building as I locked up, looking remarkably unkempt for a man who was usually so dapper.

  ‘Tony, if you’re here to have another shouting match, I’m not interested,’ I said.

  ‘I would just like to talk,’ he said. ‘I do not want to fight with you.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go get a cup of coffee.’

  Kate’s café was a short walk away, and we sat by the window.

  ‘What can I do for you, Tony?’ I asked.

  ‘Felicity has left me,’ he said. ‘Or, more accurately, she threw me out.’

  I sipped my coffee – Kate, as well as giving nice hugs, made a mean cup. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘I did not. Felicity doesn’t exactly volunteer information, and Milandra has made no reference to it. She seems as happy and relaxed as she has been of late.’

  Kate bustled over to see if we were okay. ‘Can I get you anything else, gentlemen?’

  ‘I’d love a slice of carrot cake,’ I said.

  ‘And you, sir?’

  Tony shook his head and Kate went to get my cake.

  ‘What is it with you people and vegetables in cakes?’

  I just smiled. I’d had the reaction I was after. ‘You still haven’t told me what you want,’ I said.

  ‘I want you to make sure Milandra starts school in September.’

  ‘You know I’m leaving Little Scamps,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. But you can see to it before you go.’

  I nodded. ‘I can do that. Why the change of heart?’

  Tony looked utterly dejected. It was hard for me to feel sorry for him. I could see no reason why he had behaved so badly towards me. As far as I was concerned, he was in a situation of his own making.

  When he didn’t answer, I said, ‘I looked up the meaning of ôkùnrin ábökùnrinlò.’

  Tony gazed at me dolefully.

  ‘It means “homosexual”,’ I continued. ‘Tony, for such a smart man, you aren’t very original. I’ve had idiots calling me that since I started working with kids. It’s a lousy word to use as an insult, anyway – first of all, if I were gay it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest, and if I weren’t, you must know that someone in my line of work will have encountered people of all persuasions and had no problem with them. You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to get to me.’

  He didn’t say anything for what seemed like an age. Then: ‘Milandra seems happy.’

  Kate brought my cake. Despite Milandra and Arga’s reviews, it was very good.

  ‘Your daughter is happy,’ I said. ‘She’s clever, sensitive, warm and content. She is a valued member of the crèche, and of this village. You should be very proud of her.’

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  I had some more cake. It had cinnamon in it. I like cinnamon. ‘It took me and my friends quite a long time to get her to a place where she could function alongside other people,’ I said. ‘I think some good work was done at home with her, too. I don’t know how much of that success is down to you. I suspect not too much. I think your lovely wife was instrumental, though.’

  ‘I want to explain something to you,’ Tony said, leaning in close.

  He had bags under his eyes, the look of a man who had lost a lot of weight quickly, weight he could not afford to lose.

  ‘I’m listening,’ I said.

  ‘You do not understand what it is like to grow up in poverty.’

  I thought I might be able to mount a pretty good argument to that statement, but decided to keep my mouth shut for a bit.

  ‘Where I come from a child has to fight,’ Tony said, ‘fight for every single morsel of food, every article of clothing. Every accomplishment is hard won. When I was six years old, I saw a friend of mine, a boy who was only ten, killed for his shoes. His murderer was barely twelve.’

  There was other chatter going on in the café, but I couldn’t hear it any more. It was just me and Tony.

  ‘I am here, talking to you, because my parents taught me to be fierce. To never give in, to trust nobody but myself. Those skills have stood me in good stead my whole life. If I did not have them, I would be dead.’

  I nodded. Felicity had explained as much that evening back at the crèche.

  ‘I swore to myself long ago that, if I ever had a child, I would teach him or her those skills too, so that if they ever found themselves in such dire need, they would be able to fight, as I did.’

  ‘But did you not also swear that your children would never be in those circumstances?’ I asked. ‘You worked hard to rise above the awful place you grew up. You educated yourself, got a job and clawed your way to the top. You were lucky enough to marry an Irish girl whose family is well off, and you are now a man of means. Even if you lost your job in the morning, if by some ill fortune you had to sell your house and get a smaller one, if you ended up on social welfare – if all of that happened, Tony, and it would be terrible, you will never be destitute again. Milandra will never have to live rough or fight for scraps with other street children.’

  His eyes were huge. ‘I love my daughter,’ he said.

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘I have wronged her.’

  ‘You made a mistake,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late to fix it.’

  He looked out of the window at the village street. Spring was coming in. It was still bright. ‘You should not leave Little Scamps,’ he said.

  ‘I have another job,’ I said. ‘I was on loan.’

  He stood. ‘I am going to try and persuade my wife to have me back,’ he said.

  I held out my hand, and he shook it this time. ‘Good luck,’ I said.

  ‘What will you do?’ he asked.

  ‘I think I mig
ht have another cup of coffee,’ I said.

  I watched him walk across the road to where his car was parked, then pull out into the narrow road and drive away. I knew I should go home, but it was warm and friendly in Kate’s. The cook laughed behind the long counter, and a waitress smiled and winked at me as she went past. I suddenly felt very alone. Lonnie and Tush would be sitting around the little table in his kitchen, by then, probably having an early-evening drink. I didn’t feel like going home to sit in an empty house.

  I finished my second cup of coffee and went to my old Austin, got in and drove until the dull reverberations of the road numbed me, and I went home to my dog.

  Afterword

  I came to early-years work – with pre-school-aged children in crèches and playschools – with a lot of prejudice. Like many people, I was guilty of associating the hugely important work carried out in our childcare facilities with babysitting, and failed to recognize the wealth of knowledge and research done by committed and courageous staff in such settings. Much of this knowledge forms the basis of the academic texts I had studied while training to be a child-protection worker. I now understand just how vital a part of the social-care pantheon early-years work is, and am proud to have been a part of it.

  The Girl Who Couldn’t Smile does not feature any sexual or physical abuse. None of the parents I describe in its pages are really bad people – they are often doing their best with the hand Fate has dealt them, trying to cope with the legacy of their own childhoods. They are not wilfully neglectful of their children – they usually don’t know any better.

  The types of stories I recount here are, in reality, the sort most crèche workers deal with on a daily basis. The things the children say, the games they play, the activities they engage in are characteristic of those carried out in crèches and pre-schools all over Ireland, the UK and further afield. For instance, we really did make that giant map of the village, and the children really did use it to explain their activities over the weekend to one another. Interestingly, I recently ran into Rufus, who is now a happy, healthy young man in his late teens. He no longer lives anywhere near Brony, and told me that, when he thinks of the village and the time he spent there growing up, it is that map he sees in his mind’s eye. It came to symbolize his time at Little Scamps.

  Many of the children I worked with in those days I never saw again. I would love to know what happened to Julie and Ross. I often think of Gus and his magic crayon, and hope the pair of them are doing well.

  I did come across Mitzi several years later, although I scarcely recognized her. She was singing with a folk group at a concert to raise money for a local Irish language school, and was remarkably slim and lithe. She seemed to be well liked by her peers, and performed a solo that was heart-meltingly lovely.

  Jeffrey left a year after I did to go on to a mainstream primary school where, with a classroom assistant to help him, he still struggled academically. His mother told me he was happy, though. I lost track of him after that.

  Gilbert remained in special-care settings for the rest of his childhood, and is still in one, as far as I know. His particular difficulties made it impossible for him to adjust to life in ‘normal’ society. His parents employed an army of psychologists and therapists to try to ‘cure’ him, but to no avail.

  Arga continued to have behavioural problems for several years, and remained at Little Scamps until she was eight, but eventually managed to make the transition to mainstream school. By then she was speaking English fluently and could read and write very well. She will be doing her Leaving Certificate this year.

  Milandra left Little Scamps that September as planned, and excelled in her new school. Felicity and Tony were reunited and are still together. A teacher who had worked with Milandra informed me that she had rarely worked with a child who demonstrated such empathy with and compassion for others.

  Dale and Kylie really did try to build a relationship with Tammy, and while the path was a rocky one, they made some progress. While Tammy never did go to a school for children with exceptional ability, she did go to one of the better local primaries, where a special subsidy helped pay for her books and other educational equipment. Sadly, Tammy was always attracted to trouble, and was excluded, then taken back but excluded again (this time for good) before she was twelve. I believe her educational career was patchy after that.

  I heard from a social worker two years ago that she had come across Tammy in a unit for young offenders. She was involved in an educational programme there and was amazing her teachers. Unfortunately, she ran away consistently before they had a chance to get her through her exams. Some behaviours are very hard to change.

  As I wrote of my friend Lonnie in Little Boy Lost, he died of a heart attack a year after the events of this book.

  Tush was with him to the end.

  About the Author

  Shane Dunphy lives in Wexford, Ireland, and is a writer, musician, sociologist and lecturer. He is the author of several books about his experiences as a child protection worker. He is a freelance journalist, writing mostly for the Irish Independent. Shane is a regular contributor to television and radio, and has produced several documentaries. He teaches Child Development and Social Studies at Waterford College of Further Education.

  Copyright

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

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  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2012

  Copyright © Shane Dunphy 2012

  The right of Shane Dunphy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN : 978–1–78033–510–0