The Girl Who Couldn't Smile

by Shane Dunphy

  I blinked. ‘A crèche? You mean an early-years service?’

  ‘One and the same.’

  ‘Have you – um – have you any experience of running a crèche, Tristan?’

  He shook his head. ‘My entire career has involved working with adults.’

  ‘So what are your plans?’

  He smiled. ‘You’ve done some work with younger children, haven’t you?’

  My mouth dropped open. ‘That was years ago—’

  ‘It’ll come back to you,’ Tristan cut me off. ‘The crèche is in crisis, and needs immediate support. Right up your alley, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘What about Beth?’ I asked – she was Tristan’s second-in-command. ‘She’d probably love the opportunity.’

  ‘I need her here. As it is, sending you off for a few months will cause enough of a kerfuffle. If I asked her to go, we’d have a total mutiny on our hands.’

  I was being manipulated, I decided. ‘What’s the crisis about?’

  ‘The crèche specializes in children with a variety of disabilities and behavioural problems. Many are referred by the health services due to ongoing problems at home. A couple of very tough cases arrived together and have proved very challenging indeed. The woman who’d been running the place couldn’t cope and left, and the two remaining staff, both quite experienced, are struggling. They need someone to take a step back from the situation and work out how to deal with the problems positively.’

  ‘These are all pre-school kids? Two to five, say?’

  Tristan wobbled his hand, comme ci, comme ça. ‘Some are a little older. Children with special needs often start school a year or so later than the norm.’

  ‘Of course.’

  My boss looked at me inquisitively. ‘What do you think?’

  I shrugged. ‘Might be interesting.’

  ‘So you’ll do it?’

  ‘I’ll go over and have a look.’

  ‘Tremendous.’

  ‘But only because I see it as an opportunity to broaden my knowledge of special needs,’ I said firmly. ‘I haven’t worked in a childcare setting in a while and, as I told you when I started here, I don’t do trouble-shooting any more.’

  ‘All I ask is that you give the place the once-over and see if you can’t help the staff.’ Tristan was unable to hide his delight.

  ‘I dare say the staff will be giving me direction, not the other way around.’ I sighed.

  That was the last occasion on which I was right about anything for a very long time.

  3

  Brony was around fifteen miles from Drumlin. Tristan had given me directions to the building (a community centre) from which the crèche, Little Scamps – I shuddered at the name – operated and, since I had played music in the village pubs a couple of times, I knew my way around.

  I rang the bell.

  After a minute or two, a tinny voice said, through a small speaker, ‘Yes? Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m Shane Dunphy. From Drumlin Therapeutic Unit?’

  The speaker hissed into silence and a buzz told me the door had unlocked. I pushed it and went inside.

  The first thing that hit me was the noise. I had forgotten just how overwhelming it could be in a busy crèche, a crescendo of screeches and whoops, scraping furniture and crashing toys. I stood for a moment just inside the door to acclimatize, then went into the main room. It was brightly painted and well resourced, with all the usual play areas – craft, dress-up, the home corner, storytelling, sand-and-water, music. I tried to count the children but soon gave up: they were moving too fast and were often physically entangled with one another. In terms of special needs, I could see two children with Down’s syndrome, and one with his legs in braces – he used crutches to propel himself at lightning speed about the room.

  A harassed-looking woman approached me from amid the chaos. ‘You’re the Dunphy fella?’

  ‘Shane Dunphy, yes – pleased to meet you.’

  I extended my hand, but she ignored it, calling into the maelstrom: ‘Tush, I’m takin’ the new lad into the office for a minute or two. Can ye manage?’

  I spotted a blond girl, possibly twenty-five or -six, down on her hunkers near the far wall. She waved a hand at her colleague and we moved towards a doorway, which opened on to an office with a large window overlooking the crèche.

  The workspace was nowhere near as organized as Tristan’s: papers, accounts, files, sandwich wrappers and coffee cups were spread here, there and everywhere.

  ‘Sit if you can find room,’ the woman grunted.

  I moved a bundle of catalogues advertising play equipment and did as I was instructed.

  ‘Now,’ the woman said, finally seeming to relax a bit, ‘they’ve sent you to replace Beatrice.’

  ‘Drumlin Therapeutic Unit has been asked by the Sisters of Mercy to take over Little Scamps,’ I said. ‘Tristan Fowler, who runs Drumlin, asked me to come and see if I can help. I’m not planning on replacing anyone. I’m here to learn and, hopefully, offer an extra pair of hands. Which it looks like you can use.’

  ‘Oh, we can use twenty pairs of hands,’ the woman said, watching the mayhem dispassionately.

  ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ I said.

  ‘Oh – I’m Susan.’

  She was small, but looked strong, and had short dark hair. I guessed her age at late thirties, but she could have been more or less by five years on either side. ‘How can I be of assistance?’

  She turned her gaze on me, and I saw that she was as close to burn-out as I had ever seen anyone. ‘You really want to come and work here?’ she asked, clearly incredulous.

  ‘I’d like to try.’

  She stood up, beckoning me to join her at the window that looked out over the children.

  ‘Right there is where we need as much help as you can bring,’ she said, pointing to the small library corner. ‘That little girl … that child is where things really started to go wrong.’

  At first all I could see was a tousled blond head. Then suddenly the child jumped up and bolted across the room, a heavy picture book held firmly in both hands. She came up at speed behind the little boy on crutches and walloped him hard with it on the back of the head. He went down like a ton of bricks, and suddenly every kid in the place was piling in. I watched the blond waif, who now stood back from the chaos she had caused. It was then that I realized I knew her. It was the little girl from the lake.

  ‘We’d better get out there,’ Susan said.

  ‘I think you might be right.’

  4

  It was six o’clock. The day had passed in a blur. Little Scamps, I thought, was going to be more about containment than anything else. In my six hours in the place I had not learned a single child’s name, I had not had one proper conversation with any of the group, and no one had told the kids who I was.

  I had broken up fights, put plasters on cuts and grazes, dodged flying projectiles, cleaned up green vomit – a child had consumed a bottle of poster paint – and tried to keep the main passageways free of obstacles. The child with the crutches was nimble but was constantly tumbling over toys.

  I sat with Susan and Tush in the now silent crèche and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Ladies, you have my admiration,’ I said, raising my mug of tea in a toast. ‘This is … a very challenging job.’

  ‘Are you coming back tomorrow?’ Tush asked, clearly expecting my answer to be in the negative.

  ‘If you’ll have me.’

  Susan laughed. ‘Right now, we’d take Ted Bundy so long as he promised to eat Tammy first.’

  ‘Tammy is the little blond girl,’ I said. ‘The one who hit the boy on crutches with the encyclopedia.’

  ‘He’s called Ross. You acted as if you knew Tammy. You seemed surprised.’

  ‘I ran into her and her family a fortnight ago. Never thought I’d see her again.’ I told them about my experience with Tammy and her parents’ apparent lack of interest.

  ‘So you’ve met Kylie and Dale to
o, then,’ Susan said.

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure what to say about them.’

  ‘That’s a common response. They’re quite the pair.’

  ‘So what’s the problem with Tammy, then?’ I asked. ‘Has she been diagnosed with any specific disorders? Asperger’s? ADHD? Dyspraxia?’

  ‘There are days when she seems to have everything and nothing,’ Tush said. ‘But then she contradicts what you’re convinced is her problem and confounds all expectations. Here’s what we do know. She doesn’t speak … doesn’t make any sound at all, in fact. She has some kind of social disability – she seems incapable of forming relationships of any sort – and is excessively violent. She responds to anything that upsets her with aggression. She will not engage in any group activities and prefers to sit on her own. She is a serious flight risk – if we didn’t have that security door, she’d be out of here and we’d never catch her.’

  ‘She seems to have good gross motor function,’ I said, referring to the major movements people make – walking, jumping, climbing. ‘I’ve seen her run, and she had a very focused swing when she hit Ross with the book.’

  ‘She has fine motor skills, too,’ Susan said. ‘She uses a knife and fork perfectly, and would you believe that she can tie her own shoelaces?’

  I scratched my head. ‘So what have we got here? Attachment problems? Neglect? Developmental delays? Genius?’

  Susan smiled. ‘Any and all of the above.’

  ‘Have you got a plan for her?’

  ‘We’ve tried plan after plan. They’re useless if the child won’t engage with anyone. We’ve tried to get people she knows to help her – even her good-for-nothing mother – and we’ve tested her with strangers. No dice.’

  ‘So she just does her own thing,’ I said.

  ‘Have you got any better ideas?’ Tush asked.

  ‘Maybe we could come up with something together,’ I said.

  The two women looked at each other. ‘We’ve been working with that kid for more than a year now,’ Tush said, ‘and there hasn’t been any change in her.’

  ‘I can see you’re both nearly exhausted,’ I said. ‘It can be unbelievably frustrating to work day-in-day-out with a child who just won’t give anything back. I’ve been there. But one thing I have learned is that there are very few situations where things can’t change.’

  My two new colleagues stared at me as if I had three heads.

  ‘How?’ Tush asked.

  ‘How what?’

  ‘How can we change things here?’

  ‘What do you think needs changing?’

  The girl laughed, a sort of splutter. ‘Everything!’

  ‘Well, let’s change that, then!’

  5

  The children arrived by bus at Little Scamps each day at nine o’clock. On my second day they came in to find the room empty of toys and furniture. Susan, Tush and I were waiting for them amid a collection of paint pots, brushes and rollers.

  We were going to spend the rest of the week redecorating, fitting in the usual activities around the work. It was a gamble, and one that had the potential to go badly wrong, but I hoped that by taking some time to make the playroom look better, the children might start to feel proud of it, and thereby respect it. None of them thought anything of taking a chunk out of the plasterwork with a chair leg, or writing on the furniture with felt-tip pens, or even disembowelling a soft toy. Secretly I also hoped that when they saw the transformation progressing before their eyes, they might develop a sense of camaraderie – Little Scamps was sorely lacking in any vestige of community spirit.

  When I’d broached the idea, Susan and Tush had been less than enthusiastic. There was, they pointed out, nothing inherently wrong with the murals and overall décor: why create a lot of unnecessary problems by replacing them? In theory, I agreed, but if we were to have a fresh start, we needed to wipe the slate clean, figuratively and literally.

  Susan was doubtful. ‘Most of the children depend on stability and routine,’ she’d said. ‘If they walk in here and all the toys and furniture are gone, and we’re planning to paint over the pictures on the walls, and the usual games and activities are cancelled for the foreseeable future, well, I’m guessing we’ll have the Little Scamps version of a nuclear holocaust on our hands!’

  ‘I thought about that when I was hatching my plan,’ I said. ‘There is indeed a set routine at Little Scamps. And I’m sure the children find it comforting and a stabilizing influence. However, they also go out of their way to transform every session into utter chaos. Would you agree with that, Susan?’

  ‘That’s fair,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’m not suggesting we dump the timetable. I am saying we need a shake-up. Along with freshening up the paintwork, I think we should start sticking rigidly to the rules. As to the usual activities, well, we can stop for storytime, take a break for music, and maybe we could even divide the group into teams and get some to do standard work while others do painting – the possibilities are pretty much endless … We can play it by ear, maybe. But the group has to understand that we’re going to see an activity through from beginning to end, regardless of what they throw at us. The day-to-day running of Little Scamps continues, but around it we paint the room.’

  The women had looked dubious, but they’d agreed to give it a go.

  I had no intention of using the children as some kind of cheap labour force, and I was well aware that pre-schoolers have a concentration span that extends, at most, to forty-five minutes, but on average that will get you through twenty minutes of any game before you need to do something completely different. That time could be cut in half for children with intellectual disabilities. I was also acutely conscious of the health and safety issues involved in getting a group of small children to work with paint.

  At the centre of all this lay an important issue: the children had been calling the shots. The adults were there, as far as the children were concerned, to get them food, clean up their mess and provide a space for their uproar. They treated Tush and Susan with the contempt that they reserved for one another and seemed to hold no one in high esteem. A major part of this lesson was about mutual respect. I was going to sell it to the kids as selfishness: won’t it be nice for you to have a room you helped paint? By doing nice things for ourselves, we learn to be nice to others.

  At any rate, that was the idea.

  The children stood just inside the doorway, apparently puzzled by the scene before them. No one moved. As I had suspected, with their familiar environment taken away, the group seemed ill at ease and uncertain how to behave. Past experience with children had taught me that every collective will have one or two leaders to whom the others look for pointers as to what they should do. I wasn’t sure if that would apply here – children with intellectual disabilities have varying levels of social skills – but it became obvious very quickly who the alpha dogs in the pack were.

  I glanced at Tammy automatically: she was the only child I felt I knew, and the one I wanted to know more about. Yesterday had left me with no real sense of any of the others. I had seen them as a cluster of miniature, faceless troublemakers, so my main impression was still of that odd, silent child. That was about to change – dramatically.

  Now that things were quiet for a moment and I had, for a short time, the upper hand, I could look at the children who were temporarily in my care. There were ten, including Tammy and Ross. I knew from the higgledy-piggledy files Susan kept that the two children with Down’s syndrome were Jeffrey, a four year old with jet black hair and a barrel-like body, and Julie, aged three, so small and pixie-like that she looked as if a gust of wind might blow her away. There are varying levels of the disorder, but many people with Down’s go on to hold down jobs and lead perfectly normal, happy lives. The main problem they face is that employers often refuse to accept them as the capable, articulate souls they are. Down’s children develop at a different rate from others, speaking and walking later than their peers. Jeffrey could mak
e fundamental, two-word sentences but Julie was still getting by with grunts, and pointing when she wanted something.

  Rufus was five and lived on the local travellers’ site. His family had been forced to settle in a small local-authority housing estate due to Ireland’s policies on nomadic living, which had made the traditional traveller lifestyle virtually impossible. It was difficult to say if Rufus had intellectual problems, but he was severely neglected and backward in development.

  Gilbert was three and came with a bundle of nervous tics and rigidly established routines that suggested he was either autistic or suffered from a severe anxiety disorder. He was a beautiful child – he had a mass of blond curls and huge blue eyes – but was angry and aggressive. Everything frightened him, but while fear sent most children scampering for a safe haven, Gilbert always resorted to fighting, tears streaming down his face, clutching any available implement as a weapon.

  Mitzi was six, the oldest in the group. She was sociable enough when the mood took her – but morbidly, frighteningly obese: walking was beginning to pose a problem for her, and her parents, pseudo-intellectuals who, bizarrely, ran a local organic farm-shop, just refused to limit her intake of sweets and fried food. Mitzi would settle herself in one spot in the room and remain there for the rest of the day. She seemed happy to use whatever toys were within easy reach, but was not beyond grabbing another child and forcibly taking from them whichever toy they happened to have about them. Mitzi appeared indolent, but she could move with remarkable speed when she wanted to.

  Gus, at five, was the joker. He had been born with mild cerebral palsy and walked with an exaggerated roll of the hip. His balance was poor, and although his arms and hands were unaffected, he found it hard to grasp anything for more than a second or two. Every time I looked at Gus he was tumbling head over heels, dropping a bag of blocks, spilling his juice (usually over one of his friends), breaking a toy or looking for something he had lost. It had been suggested that he also had dyspraxia, often referred to as ‘clumsy syndrome’, but with the cerebral palsy, it was almost impossible to diagnose accurately. Despite all this, Gus was a good-natured child, and the only one at Little Scamps who seemed happy to be there and to like the other children. He was always smiling, even when he had hurt himself. It was impossible not to warm to him – he had a great spirit.