'Then there's Mitzi,' Lonnie said. 'Although her difficulties with food are of a slightly different nature.'

I nodded.

'There's something to be said for teaching her a little bit about sharing,' Tush said.

'This could turn into an all-out ma.s.sacre,' Lonnie said, looking at the laden table. 'Mitzi seems to feel it's her duty to cram as much into herself as she possibly can in as short a time as is humanly possible. And G.o.d help anyone who gets in the way.'

'I know,' I said. 'But Tammy and Rufus have a right not to be hungry. I don't think it's fair to single them out, and the only way to prevent that is to extend breakfast to everyone, regardless. I have no doubt in my mind that Mitzi eats a hearty meal before she gets on the bus in the morning, and in a way we're only compounding her obesity by presenting her with more food. But I don't know how to get around that, just now. Maybe we could think about it, and see if we can't come up with some ideas.'

We shepherded the children to the table and sat them down.

'From now on, we're going to start the day with breakfast,' Susan said. 'And while we eat, we'll have a chat about any news we have, about what we're going to do during the day, and anything else anyone would like to talk about.'

'Mealtime is all about coming together, talking and sharing,' Lonnie said. 'So who would like cereal?'

To my delight the children took to the idea enthusiastically. Soon we were all happily eating, there was an easy hum of conversation, n.o.body was punching or puking on anyone else and I waited for somebody to notice the second part of my plan. It didn't take long. Gus, his mouth full of cornflakes, suddenly pointed with his spoon at the gaudily decorated cardboard box with its accompanying cards.

'What's dat ting dere?'

'Ah, that's something very special,' I said, winking at him. 'I think you're going to like it.'

'Wha.s.sit for?' Ross asked, standing up and jabbing at the item with a crutch, thumping Tammy's head accidentally as he did so.

'Let Shane explain,' Susan said, carefully manoeuvring Ross's appendage back down and shushing Tammy, who was looking at her unwitting attacker with balled fists.

'All right, then,' I said. 'Everyone needs to listen to this because it affects all of you. That box is what I call a "Kindness Box".'

'A what?' Milandra said. 'That sure sounds like a G.o.ddam stupid p.u.s.s.y box to me!'

'What does it do?' Gilbert asked. 'Is it a magic box?'

'Maybe there is kindness inside it,' Mitzi said, as Tush wrestled a jar of jam from her hand she had been scooping the contents out with her fingers and noisily sucking them clean.

'Mitzi's sort of right,' I said. 'There will be kindness inside it, and we are going to put it there.'

That caused some bewilderment, which was expressed in the children's chatter: what could Shane possibly mean? Could something like kindness be put in a cardboard box? I decided that the subject was worth exploring, so I raised my hand.

'All right, all right,' I called, trying to be heard above the din. 'One person at a time, please. I want to hear what everybody has to say.'

Despite my best efforts, this caused an even greater clamour, as every child in the group (even those who were technically non-verbal) strove to be the first person to speak. I was at a complete loss as to how to get any kind of control without resorting to all-out shouting. Once again, Lonnie rescued me. He had come prepared, and as the group descended into its by now familiar chaos, he produced an old metal tray from beneath the table and struck it with a spoon. It made a fine old noise. Every mouth in the room closed, and every head in the room turned to look at him.

Lonnie stopped. 'When everyone talks together, that's sort of what it sounds like to me,' he said, giving another couple of raps on the tray. Arga put her hands over her ears. 'It's not a nice sound, is it, Arga?' Lonnie asked, rolling her r perfectly. 'I bet you don't like it either, Jeff, do you?' Jeffrey shook his head. 'I think it would be much kinder to everyone if I didn't make this sound again. Wouldn't you all say?' Nods came from almost all quarters. Milandra and Mitzi were the two withholders of agreement. I wondered if they actually enjoyed discord so much that they had liked Lonnie's clanging. Lonnie, however, chose to ignore them and talk to the rest of the gang. 'If you think about it, isn't it so much better if we take it in turns to talk? Then everyone gets heard and understood.'

There were murmurs of agreement.

'Thank you, Lonnie,' I said. 'Now, I think Mitzi was speaking.'

'Yes, you should all listen to me, children,' Mitzi gushed.

'What did you want to say about the Kindness Box?' Tush said.

'I think it's a good idea,' she said. 'I could go and take kindness any time I wanted. All for me.'

'But can you put kindness in a box like that?' Susan asked.

Rufus put his hand up timidly.

'Go ahead, Ru.' She nodded at him.

'Kindness is doing something nice for somebody else,' he said. 'Like having a nice breakfast for us when we come in. That's kind.'

I'm not ashamed to admit that I felt a warm glow. It's one of the things I love about child- and social-care work: just when you think you've messed up badly, something small happens to lift you off the ground again. That morning, I needed all the back-patting I could get.

'Yes, it is,' Susan said, smiling at me. 'So, how do you think we might put something like that in the box?'

'Maybe ideas of how we could be kind to one another,' Ross said.

'Mmm,' Lonnie agreed. 'But see, if I told you how to be kind to me, gave you ideas for things I liked well, is that as good as when you think things up yourself?'

Arga whispered something to Lonnie, who listened carefully and nodded.

'Arga says that being kind is when you do something for someone else without being asked to do it,' he shared with the group.

'Will I tell you how the Kindness Box works?' I asked everyone.

I'd stolen the idea wholesale from another childcare worker and writer, the brilliant Torey Hayden. I have adapted it a little bit to suit Irish children (Torey was working in America when she invented the concept), but the principle is exactly the same.

'Here's the deal,' I said. 'I'm going to be watching very carefully from now on to see how kind you all are to each other. Every time I see somebody doing something kind for another person, I'm going to write down what I see and put it in this box. But I know that you're all very kind people, and there will be lots and lots of kind things going on, so I'm going to need your help. If you see one of the group being kind, I want you to come and tell me or Lonnie or Sue or Tush. I know some of you can write a little, and if you want to write down what you see, well, you do that and put it in the box, or if you need help, any of us will give you a hand to write down your little bit of kindness.'

'We're going to fill this old box right up with kindness,' Tush added.

'Every day we'll open the box before we go home and see what's in there,' I said. 'Every person who has some kindness in the box gets a prize.'

'Yeah!'

'Cool!'

'I'm gonna put loads of things in that box!'

Expressions of excitement and approval abounded. I held up my hand again. The chatter continued. Lonnie picked up the tray. Silence. He didn't even have to hit it.

'Very good,' I said. 'Now, I'm really pleased you like the idea of the Kindness Box, but there's just one rule and it's an important one.'

All faces were rapt and attentive. I couldn't help smiling. The box was working its magic already, and not one single message had been put in there yet.

'The rule is this,' I said. 'No one can put in an act of kindness they did themselves.'

'What?' Gus asked, puzzled.

'You can only put in kind things other people did,' Lonnie clarified.

There were moans and groans from one end of the table to the other.

'That's the rule,' I said. 'The thing is, everyone is going to have to be really kind to their friends to make sure they get into the box.'

'Yeah,' Ross grumbled. 'Now I'm gonna have to be really nice to everyone.'

After the previous day's disastrous events, I was fascinated to see how this new development would work. I hoped we had hit on something that would harness the spirit I knew these youngsters had buried deep inside and that maybe some of that kindness might infect me, too.

20.

At three o'clock that afternoon I was in the office sifting through a mountain of notes the staff, and indeed some of the children, had written and placed in the Kindness Box Tush had started referring to it midway through the morning as 'the KB' and it had stuck. I was utterly amazed at what had happened in Little Scamps that day. The box had proved powerful when I'd used it previously, but I'd held out no great hope for these children. I figured it might keep them going for perhaps a morning before they got bored and returned to all-out aggression. I had suspected some of them might behave themselves when one of the adults was close by, but continue their reign of terror when they thought no one was looking.

To my absolute shock, none of these things occurred. Instead, almost all of the kids went out of their way to outdo one another in acts of generosity, thoughtfulness and decency. I picked up a page at random. Written in Lonnie's precise hand I read: Rufus, when he put his fire engine away so Ross didn't trip on it Gus. I picked up another. I saw Tammy give the football to Julie so she could have a turn Arga. Another: Jeffrey could have catched Milandra when we was playing chase, but he letted her go so she could still play. It went on and on. There were at least forty messages. Things had gone off without a hitch. Almost.

For it to work, every child had to be represented in the KB, but this had been a far more challenging proposal than any of us had suspected. While kind acts were coming at Tush, Susan, Lonnie and me thick and fast, there were two individuals who doggedly refused to partic.i.p.ate in all this unexpected goodwill: Milandra and Mitzi.

Milandra wasted no time in declaring to all and sundry that she was not going to be kind to no girly-a.r.s.ed kids, and no one had better try being nice to her either so they could get some s.h.i.tty prize. This did not dissuade her compatriots, as the notes had shown (although I did wonder if Jeffrey had decided not to catch her out of fear rather than any desire to do her a good turn), and I'd had to be extremely observant to spot any actions that might be suitable for entry in the KB. In the end, I settled on: Milandra went a whole ten minutes without saying a rude word. In fact, it was closer to eight, but I didn't think rounding the figure up would do any harm.

Mitzi proved even more difficult. She had no argument with kindness in general, but believed all such activity should be directed in her favour she had no intention of doing anything that benefited anyone else. This meant that her food s.n.a.t.c.hing, sneak bullying and all-round nastiness continued unabated, accompanied, as usual, with a cloying smile. Sporadic monitoring throughout the day produced not one eye-witness account of her doing anything that came within an a.s.s's roar of basic human courtesy, let alone kindness. Hers was the only name not in the box. I picked up a blank card and a pen. I had to put something in that identified (and, hopefully, encouraged) some kindness in Mitzi. I chewed the end of the Biro, watching her through the gla.s.s window. She was sitting at the very far end of the room, an old teddy bear lying face down across her knees. Everyone else was at the table, drawing pictures of Peter Rabbit, to be copied on to the wall in mural form. Mitzi had refused to join them, looking for someone to carry her over a demand that was ignored. As I watched, she picked up the bear, looked at it with a dour expression, then gripped it firmly around the neck, clearly intending to rip its head off.

I knew from watching the children play that this worthy old bear was a particular favourite. Other toys had been torn, smashed or mangled but it had somehow been spared the worst viciousness. My heart dropped as Mitzi considered her act of butchery. A toy that managed to be so loved in a place like Little Scamps deserved better.

We sat there, Mitzi and I, she at one end of the room, me at the other, each locked in our private deliberations. Finally, as if she simply decided it wasn't worth it, Mitzi tossed the bear aside, a look of disgust on her face, and began to pick her nose. Laughing to myself, I took up my pen again: Mitzi: for deciding not to tear Old Man Bear's head off.

I didn't know if this was a true act of kindness or an expression of laziness. And for once I didn't care.

It wasn't all sweetness and light that day. Mitzi's desire to continue with her ill will seemed, at some points, almost like a vendetta, and even the children tired of it. I came into the entrance hall, a short pa.s.sageway between the front door and the main activity room, at around eleven thirty to find Tammy sitting on the floor, Gilbert wrapped in her arms, sobbing loudly.

'Hey, what happened?' I asked, kneeling down beside them.

Tammy, of course, was silent. Gilbert finally blurted out: 'Mitzi hurted me.'

I could see livid marks on his arm, the imprint of someone's teeth. Mitzi, I knew, was an inveterate biter. 'Okay, champ,' I said, rubbing his back. 'I think you'll survive. It was a very mean thing to do, though, wasn't it?'

Tammy continued to cuddle him, and when they finally returned to the group, she watched Mitzi very closely.

After lunch we had planned to go for a walk up the village to a little stream to fish for frog-sp.a.w.n. There was a pond in a field behind the creche, and Ross thought it would be cool if we had some tadpoles in it. The village slanted upwards in a sort of shallow hill, and Mitzi refused to walk.

'You can take me in the wheelchair, possum,' she whimpered at me. 'I would love to come, but I cannot walk.'

I went to get the chair, only to find Tammy sitting in it, swinging her legs extravagantly. She wasn't smiling in all my time with her, I never saw her smile but there was a look of something on her face. Triumph, perhaps?

'Out you get, Tamster,' I said. 'I need the wheelchair for Mitzi.'

Tammy slowly slid out of the chair and followed me as I wheeled it across the room to where Mitzi was sitting on the floor, near the Messy Area. I stopped halfway.

'We have a problem,' I said. 'The tyres are flat.'

'Then blow them up, precious,' Mitzi said.

'I can't,' I said. 'The petrol station across the road doesn't have a tube that fits these tyres.'

Tammy watched us both expectantly.

'Look, it's not far, Mitzi,' I said. 'You're going to have to walk. You can take breaks if you need them.'

I will not describe the temper tantrum that followed. Suffice it to say that Mitzi did walk. Eventually.

When she finally waddled out of the door, swearing under her breath, I knelt down in front of Tammy. 'How'd you do it?' I asked her.

She surveyed me with huge eyes.

'I know you let the air out of the tyres,' I said. 'I'm not mad. How'd you do it?'

Tammy opened her hand. There was a rusty nail in it she must have used it to depress the nozzle on the air fitting.

'You'd better let me have that,' I said. 'If you cut yourself on it, you'll get blood poisoning.'

She handed it over, and we went to look for frog-sp.a.w.n. Tammy had paid Mitzi back she was not, it seemed, someone to cross.

21.

The kids were making their way out to the bus, all sucking red-and-white-striped sugar-free dentist-approved environmentally friendly lollipops, their prizes for so many unsolicited acts of goodwill. Susan, Tush, Lonnie and I were seated about the table, idiotic grins on our faces.

'It's only one day,' I said. 'Don't forget that. Yesterday was awful.'

'I don't care,' Susan said. 'Those kids behaved like human beings today, for the first time. It wasn't just that n.o.body ended up in hospital they were actually nice to be around.'

'I gave Gus a tissue to wipe his nose this afternoon, and he said, "Thank you".' Tush burst into what might have been laughter or tears it was impossible to tell.

'All because of a f.u.c.king cardboard box,' Susan said.

'Don't diss the box,' Lonnie said, only half joking. 'It'll hear you.'

I was about to start tidying up the last few bits of art material when the door opened and a woman I recognized as Rufus's mother came in.