The Girl Who Couldn't Smile Part 26

'I don' wanna leave L'il Scamps,' Tammy sobbed. 'Don' make me go, Shane.'

'Honey, you're too little to go anywhere,' I said, laughing and crying all at the same time. 'You have a lot of time ahead of you in Little Scamps, and you'll be more than ready before you have to leave us. You got all confused.'

'I don't have to go?' she asked.

'No,' I said. 'You don't.'

'I can stay in the creche, Daddy?'

'You sure can,' Dale said. 'When you're big enough, we'll talk about a school for you. Shane here says you're real smart, and we gotta get the right place for you.'

''Kay,' Tammy said.

Dale carried her home. He was exhausted, but I knew better than to offer to take a turn with her. He needed to shoulder the burden of his daughter. I wasn't going to deprive him of that privilege.

39.

Lonnie and I were walking Millie on the mountain near his house. It was a beautiful crisp, cold afternoon. I had allowed him to talk me into having dinner at his place, which meant enduring the horrors of his cooking. But I was feeling magnanimous, and figured I could always get take-out on the way home if things were really dire.

We followed the slope of a hill up to one of our favourite places, a peak upon which a small stone circle had been erected some time in prehistory and from where the surrounding countryside could be seen in all directions.

'Who would have thought Tammy would be such a chatterbox?' Lonnie said. 'It's been kind of hard to get a word in around Little Scamps the past few weeks.'

'She's making up for lost time, I suppose.' I laughed.

'That's for sure.' Lonnie leaned his back on a stone pillar. 'Do you think her dad's going to step up to the mark, now?' he asked. 'Be the kind of father she needs?'

I put my hands into my pockets against the cold. 'I hope so. They both had a terrible fright when they realized how close they'd come to losing one another. It brought each of them out of their sh.e.l.ls. Tammy started talking, Dale started caring. It won't be easy for either of them they've learned not to trust, not to value, one another. They have a h.e.l.l of a lot of unlearning to do. But I think they might make it.'

I looked east, towards the sea and the location of Tammy's rebirth. It was a peculiar memory, that night beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

'There's something I want to talk to you about, mate,' I said.

'Out with it,' he said.

'How would you like to take over managing Little Scamps?'

He chuckled drily. 'And where are you going?'

'It was only ever supposed to be temporary,' I said. 'I've loved my time with the kids, but I don't see myself working in early years for the rest of my life. And there's no use saying I'll wait until this group moves on they're too wide a spread of ages. There will always be other kids coming on stream. I think the time is right. Things are running really nicely.'

In fact, I didn't want to leave. I loved the children, I had come to cherish the staff as friends, and I thought I was learning to become a good creche worker. But I knew my departure would give Lonnie the chance he needed to flourish. He would never truly spread his wings while he was in my shadow I was the last of the people who had stuck him on a slide to examine him like some sort of bug. If he was ever to shrug off his past, I had to go. Little Scamps was wonderful, but it was an opportunity he needed much more than I did.

'Why ask me?' Lonnie wondered. 'Why not Su or Tush?'

'They didn't want it when I arrived. They don't want it now. Anyway, you have a natural flair for the work. This is your area, Lonnie. You're really, really good at it. Little Scamps is where you're meant to be, I think.'

He watched Millie stalking a pheasant that had just come out of the brush. The bird watched her crawling along the ground, biding its time until she was nearly upon it, then exploded into the air in a flurry of copper-coloured feathers.

'Tush and I are thinking of moving in together,' Lonnie said.

'Wow. Big step.'

'I met her parents the other day.'

'How'd that go?'

'They were ... polite.'

'Oh. Not good, then?'

'They didn't run screaming,' he said. 'It was sort of funny hearing them trying to find other ways of saying "little" or "small". You'd be amazed how often those words crop up in an average evening.'

'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 c.u.mberland 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 cafe 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 okunrin abokunrinl.'

Tony gazed at me dolefully.

'It means "h.o.m.os.e.xual",' 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 creche, 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 cafe, 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 n.o.body 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 creche.

'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.'