The Girl From Yesterday (12 page)

‘Everything that passes between us here is off the record,’ I said. ‘What I want to talk to you about came to my attention through a story I was researching, but will not be included as part of it.’

‘And should it become pertinent to any legal proceedings?’ Nathalie asked tentatively.

‘Your name will never be mentioned,’ I assured her. ‘This meeting never happened.’

‘All right,’ she said, ‘proceed. I do not promise that I will give you any information, but if I think it appropriate for me to do so, I will help you.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That’s as much as I would have expected. I want to ask you about Jim Blaney.’

Nathalie nodded and added some hot coffee to my mug, then hers.

‘It has been three years – maybe a little more – since he left the school, and I have been waiting for someone to come asking about him,’ she said. ‘I never thought it would be a journalist.’

‘I’m not here in that capacity. Did you have any concerns about him?’

Nathalie shrugged. ‘What do you mean by the term “concerns”?’

‘Well, as a primary school teacher, what would be the kinds of things that would normally make you worry about a student’s welfare?’

‘Behavioural difficulties; sexualized behaviour; clear signs of neglect like repeated failure to bring in lunch, the lack of appropriate clothing for the weather; the continuous appearance of injuries that cannot be explained – are these the things you mean?’

‘Well they’re a good start,’ I said. ‘I’m aware that every child is different and will elicit different concerns – but did any of those issues arise with Jim Blaney?’

‘Almost all of them. He was a concern from the very first day he arrived here. He had difficulty mixing with the other children and was constantly in fights; he reeked of ammonia and body odour; he never had a lunch with him and stole food from the other children. Of course he was automatically singled out because the family had no television. You’d be amazed at how many conversations are made up of discussions of TV shows and computer games. The poor boy would try and pretend he had seen the shows or played the games, but of course he had absolutely no idea what they were talking about and was found out rapidly. He responded to these moments of embarrassment with violence.’

‘Did you try to talk to his parents?’

‘I sent notes home. They were ignored. I couldn’t ring them, obviously, as they have no telephone. I waited with bated breath for the parent teacher meeting, but predictably they did not turn up for it.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘We had our own meeting here at the school and decided the best thing to do was to make sure he had food when he was here, that he had clean clothes (sitting next to him could be very uncomfortable for the other child), and we tried to teach him as best we could.’

‘How’d that go?’

‘I flatter myself into thinking it went very well. The lady who taught him in junior infants took him aside and told him that there would be a packed lunch waiting for him in the storage area every day, with a snack for the eleven o’clock break. Jim said not a word, but the following day he went to look, and it was there, and do you know, when he had some food inside him he was a different child. I’m not saying he didn’t still get into fights, but it was less frequent and less vicious when it did happen.’

‘So food made a huge difference.’

‘Such a small thing.’

‘How long was he at the school?’

‘Right up until sixth class. He left just before Christmas.’

‘What happened?’

‘The children were doing Physical Education. Most of the kids brought in sports gear to change into – of course Jim never had any, and so participated in whatever clothes he had on. The PE teacher felt this was wrong, and found some he thought would fit. We did the usual foostering about to make it look like these were actually Jim’s and not from goodwill. The kid was over the moon, couldn’t wait for the PE class to roll around. Finally it did, and out the kids went to the gym. There’s a locker room they change in, and generally we just leave them to it. But this particular day the teacher heard something of a ruckus – nothing extreme, but just a change in the general tone of the usual chatter.’

‘They got louder?’

‘No, he said they actually got quieter. When he went down he saw that Jim had taken off his T-shirt, to change into the sports top. He was, God love him, carefully folding his own ragged shirt. But what was causing the consternation among the rest of the group was his torso. It was covered in a patchwork pattern of bruises, scratches and cuts. That boy had been thrashed within an inch of his life.’

‘And you went straight out to the Blaney homestead.’

‘I drove Jim home. I never saw his father, but his mother sat and listened as I voiced the litany of issues we had, ending with the bruising. During the whole thing she looked as if I was battering her about the head. When I was finished she said she would discuss it with her husband, and showed me the door. I informed her that I would be passing my concerns on to the police, and she closed the door in my face.’

‘And you never saw Jim again.’

‘No. I knew he had siblings, and they never came to us – I’m told they were all home schooled – but for some reason Jim had been permitted to attend class. Not from then on. I did tell the police as I had promised, but I didn’t hear any more about it.’

‘Is it possible Jim received those bruises through rough play with his brothers and sisters?’

‘No. There is no doubt in my mind the marks I saw were the result of a deliberate attempt by an adult to harm the child.’

‘Did Jim ever give any indication as to who had marked him?’

‘All he would say was that he had been a bad boy and needed to be punished. “I gotta put things right,” he kept saying. I don’t know how beating him to a pulp could achieve that.’

‘Probably doesn’t help to try and make sense of it,’ I said.

‘So what are you going to do now I’ve told you this grubby little story?’ Nathalie asked.

‘Damned if I know,’ I said. ‘It looks very much like those children are at risk out on the Blaney farm. What you’ve told me matches up with some stuff I’ve seen myself. What the authorities will do with it, I can’t tell.’

‘Didn’t you used to be one of those authorities?’

‘I’m not sure I was much of an authority on anything,’ I said.

And I meant it.

I needed something to lighten my mood, so that evening I packed up my guitar, my ukulele and my autoharp, along with my djembe drum and some other percussion instruments, and brought them with me to class. I figured it was time to put the students through their paces.

That evening we spent the first hour looking at some of the guidelines around space, staffing ratios, sleeping arrangements, changing stations and other essential, though fairly dry and droll, matters in early years services. By the time tea break came around I knew they were all badly in need of a caffeine boost. I rapidly moved the chairs into a circle and got my instruments from the car. When everyone returned, I was sitting, facing the door, with my guitar slung across my lap, the autoharp on a stand beside me, the uke hanging from a table and the percussion equipment spread about the floor at my feet.

‘Sit down for a moment,’ I said ominously. ‘I hope you all brought your voices.’

I could sense the worry emanating from some of them. This wasn’t what they signed up for; they expected to spend their evenings discussing theories of child development, learning about the proper way to lay out a play area or supervise groups on outings. Now here I was moving the goalposts. I may have mentioned in passing that I sometimes brought in instruments, but not a person among them thought I would actually
do
it.

‘The first thing I want is for everyone to relax,’ I said, although most of the students still looked deeply unhappy. ‘No one is going to have to sing on their own tonight unless they want to, and I’m going to ease you in to this type of activity very gently. I want you to think about this: you are all here to explore the idea of working with kids – whether or not you plan to do it full time, as occasional babysitters or childminders, or even as parents yourselves, a major part of that experience is using what we call ‘creative play’ – music, role play, art – and that involves making yourself a little bit vulnerable: giving something of yourselves. If you are going to ask the kids to do it, you have to be prepared to do it yourselves, too.’

‘I don’t mind making an idiot of myself in front of a bunch of two-year-olds,’ Breda, a woman in her early fifties, piped up. ‘It’s different in a situation like this, though.’

‘Why?’ I asked mildly. ‘Everyone will be in the same boat. I’m not asking you to do anything any childcare worker wouldn’t be expected to do in an average day’s work.’

The expressions that met mine were still distrustful and strained.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘The best way to get into this is to just . . .
get into it
. You see before you on the floor a djembe drum – basically a traditional African bongo. You can also probably identify a tambourine, a triangle, some toy cymbals and a maraca – a shaker. Who would like to have a go on any of those?’

No one moved.

‘Come on,’ I urged. ‘I know someone out there is just dying to get at the djembe drum.’

Jessie, a beautiful, dark-haired, brown-eyed girl of about twenty-five shyly raised her hand. She had a sort of gypsy look about her, so I wasn’t one bit surprised.

‘Well done Jess,’ I said, laughing. ‘Take the drum.’

She did, tiptoeing over and scooping it up. Djembe drums come in all sizes, some tiny, others as large as your average dustbin. Mine is big enough to hold between your knees. I knew Jessie would enjoy it.

As soon as the drum had been claimed, the other percussion instruments were picked off quickly. It was as if the flood gates had been opened.

‘Before we go any farther,’ I said, ‘does anyone in the group actually play something? For instance, if there are any guitarists among you, I can just switch over to the uke or the autoharp. I don’t mind loaning you my strings one little bit.’

‘I play the tin whistle – or at least I used to, in school,’ said Maggie, a blonde woman in her thirties.

‘The whistle is a beautiful instrument,’ I agreed. ‘I regret never having kept it up myself when I left school. Do you own one, Mag?’

She shook her head.

‘Y’know, if you feel you’d like to take it up again, you’ll buy a decent whistle for a few euro. Think about it.’

She nodded. Biddy, a girl with her hair dyed a bright red, had her hand up.

‘I have an accordion at home.’

‘Oh, I do love the accordion,’ I said. ‘Is it button or piano?’

She shook her head, confused.

‘Does it have buttons, like the autoharp over there, or keys, like a piano?’

‘Both,’ she said.

‘Then it’s a piano accordion,’ I said. ‘Do you play it often?’

‘I haven’t played it in about five years. But I used to, though, a lot.’

‘Well, I know I – and I’m sure the rest of the group will concur – would love you to bring it in here one evening to play for us. Will you think about that?’

Blushing deeply, Biddy nodded.

‘Music is one of my favourite ways of getting a group to bond,’ I said. ‘Humans sang before they could speak. I’ve brought in percussion instruments for you all because drums were the very first instruments people made, back when they lived in caves and had to hunt to survive. Rhythm, the drum beat, speaks to us in a primal voice that we can hear right down deep in our souls. You know when you hear a song or a tune and you just can’t help moving?’

Almost everyone nodded.

‘That’s the voice I’m talking about. Children can hear the truth in a song or a piece of music way, way better than they can hear most other things. I want to do a little experiment with you all this evening. We’re going to get a rhythm going, with the instruments and with our hands and maybe even using some of the furniture, and we’re going to build a song around it.’

I could see them beginning to settle in to the idea. I wasn’t looking for them to get up and dance solo in front of everyone. No one was being made to perform,
X Factor
like, to be judged or ridiculed. In a way, this was just as much a discussion or academic exercise as anything else we’d done.

‘The song we’re going to use is one you all know, but probably don’t know you know,’ I said. ‘It is what we call an
archetype
, which means it is the frame upon which hundreds of other songs are hung. It’s called ‘Train Coming Round the Bend’, not a very exciting title, or even a very musical one, but when you hear it, you’ll see that people like Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison and loads of others have used it to build their own songs on. ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ is probably the most famous, but as we sing, you’ll find that lots of others will come to you, even some Irish ones. Now, here’s the rhythm I want you to strike up and keep going. Just those with the rhythm instruments first, then we’ll get the rest of you sorted.’

I beat a pattern on the body of my guitar.

‘Jessie, try and copy that on the drum.’

She managed a pretty good facsimile.

‘Now, Rachel, you fall in on the tambourine. Jess, keep going – we’re trying to get a groove going here.’

I had to borrow the tambourine from Rachel to show her, but once she’d picked it up her beat was solid and steady. Within about ten minutes we had everyone in the room doing something, and I was amazed at how tight the tempo was.

‘So now we lay down the vocal track,’ I said.

Going over to my laptop I hit a key, and on the board the lyrics for the song appeared:

The train’s coming around the bend

Goodbye my love, goodbye
.

The train’s coming around the bend

As the sun takes to the sky
.

Farewell my dear today, I wish that I could stay

Please do not cry, goodbye my lover goodbye
.

I fell into a driving rhythm on the guitar, and as soon as I did I sensed everyone in the room feeling the power of it. The identity of the author of the song has long been lost: it probably dates back to the workers on the first railroads in the US, and tells of the transient lives of these men, forced to leave home and family behind as they followed the iron horses across the continent. The melody is as simple as the lyric, a blues holler easily learned and incredibly satisfying to sing. I bellowed it out, waited a few beats and then repeated it. All about were smiling now. Some were clapping, others slapping tables, one or two were lifting chairs and then banging them to the ground on the beat, I even had a group using whiteboard markers as drum sticks against the wall.