The kids stopped their cat-calling and whooping and went silent.

'You what's your name?' He pointed at Rufus.

'None a your business,' Rufus snapped, looking just as hurt and angry as Lonnie.

'His name is Rufus,' I said.

'Rufus, do you know your colours?'

'Yeah.'

'Well, do I have orange skin?' Lonnie asked. There was no anger in his voice: he was teaching the children a lesson, and I was interested to see how well they took it, and how much they understood of what he would say to them.

Rufus squinted at my friend, then shook his head. No, Lonnie certainly did not have orange skin.

'What's your name?' He nodded at Mitzi.

'I am Mitzi. Mitzi, that's me.' The child smirked.

'Do I have blue hair, Mitzi?'

'Oh, no. You have lovely hair, little man. So soft and silky.'

'You,' at Gus.

'What?' Gus shot back.

'Do I work in a chocolate factory?'

'I don't know! Do you?'

'I work right here, at Little Scamps. With you.'

'So?' Gus spat.

'So I am obviously not an Oompa Loompa, am I? I also want to make sure you all know that I am not a Munchkin, one of Snow White's dwarfs my name is not Sleepy or Dopey and even though I can be grumpy, you can't call me that and I do not hang out with Orlando Bloom. Shane has long hair. Susan has green eyes. Tush is left handed. Everybody is different I just happen to be smaller than most people.'

He looked at Milandra. 'Do you know that there are names for people with skin like yours that are very bad to say?'

'You mean "n.i.g.g.e.r",' she said. 'I know those names.'

'Well, calling me a midget is like calling you that. You shouldn't say it.'

She looked at him with huge eyes. I wondered if anyone had ever spoken to her like that before. 'Okay, little man.'

'Not that, either,' he said. 'I would never call you "black girl".'

'I am a black girl,' she said.

Lonnie grinned. 'And a very pretty one.'

I decided to intercede. 'I think what Lonnie is saying is very worthwhile for us all to listen to. It would be a good thing if we tried to be a little nicer to one another. But come on you still haven't thought of the reason why today is such a special day. Will I tell you?'

Nods and yeses.

'Well, today is the first day we're all together in this group, and it's also the day we start painting our murals. So it's the beginning of two very exciting things.'

Arga jabbered something in Polish, but from her elaborate mime I guessed she wanted to talk about the painting.

I had come prepared. 'Okay,' I said, reaching under my chair. 'As you know, I want everyone to paint their own pictures, so you all have your special places on the walls around the room. But I have two ideas I'd like the whole group to get involved in. Here's the first one.'

From under my chair I pulled out a very large hardback book. I opened it at a centre page and held it up for all to see. 'This little guy,' I said, pointing to a beautiful painting of a rabbit in a bright blue jacket, 'is Peter. He lives in a part of England not unlike here it's out in the country and there are lots of lakes and hills and woods. He has a mammy and a daddy, just like you, and sometimes he's a bit of a naughty rabbit, and gets into trouble.'

'I knows that rabbit,' Rufus said solemnly.

'Do you?' I asked. 'Maybe he and his family are in Ireland now.'

'They might be,' Ross said. 'I do see a lot of rabbits in the woods near my house.'

'He is a rabbit who enjoys a nice little coat,' Mitzi said.

'Mmm,' I agreed. 'I don't think I've ever seen a rabbit wearing clothes.'

'Me no see,' Jeffrey said.

'You've never seen that either?' I asked.

Jeffrey shook his head and worked his tongue. People often think that people with Down's syndrome have oversized tongues, but that is not the case their mouth cavities are smaller than normal, which gives the impression that the tongue is too large.

'Are you saying that maybe the rabbits wear clothes when we can't see them?' I asked Jeffrey.

He nodded, beaming.

'Well, that's possible,' I said. 'What do the rest of you think?'

This conversation continued to and fro. The idea of a colony of intelligent rabbits living nearby was just too delicious for any of them to pa.s.s up. I was just about to introduce the group to Beatrix Potter and her world of animals when I noticed that Tammy had gone her chair was empty. I waited until Tush was discussing the myth about rabbits favouring carrots (they generally prefer lettuces and bra.s.sicas and will leave carrot crops largely untouched), then handed the book to her and made my way into the kitchen. Sure enough, through the still partly open door I could see the child sitting on the table munching a scone. She had her back to me, and was so involved in cramming the food into her mouth that she didn't hear me enter the room.

'You know, those are much better hot, with b.u.t.ter and jam,' I said, pulling out a chair and sitting down near her. I didn't want to get too close her eyes were those of a cornered animal. 'Would you like me to pop one into the microwave and put some on it for you?'

She just eyed me and did not respond, which I decided to interpret as 'Yes please, Shane,' so I took one, put it on a plate and stuck it in to heat.

'I bet you'd also like some milk to drink,' I said. I poured some into a plastic cup and put it on the table next to her. She swiped it up and gulped half of it down without pausing. As she drank the rest I took the scone from the oven and spread it with b.u.t.ter and jam. When I had cut it up into bite-sized chunks I sat down and watched her eat. I didn't have to watch for long the entire plate was empty within thirty seconds. 'You're pretty hungry, Tam,' I said.

She nodded. I had to fight the urge to punch the air and whoop she was, in her way, talking to me.

'Like some more?'

The nod again. Pleased beyond words that I had opened even this basic line of communication, I got up and prepared another scone for her.

'Did you have any breakfast this morning?' I asked, as she scarfed it down.

She looked at me with eyes that almost held offence. Then, tentatively, she shook her head.

'Do you ever get breakfast?' My heart went out to her she was so small, such a tiny little soul, but so self-sufficient, so tough. She paused, considering the question. Her head lolled from one side to the other as she thought about how to answer. I helped her: 'Sometimes?'

She shrugged in an exaggerated manner.

'But hardly ever,' I said, and she nodded firmly. I almost laughed. Tammy, although she chose not to speak, was a gifted communicator. 'Would you like it if I sorted it out for you to have some breakfast when you got into Little Scamps every day?'

An expression of fear came over her face, and she shook her head.

'Suppose I fixed it so n.o.body knew things were tough at home.'

She stopped eating and thought for a moment, studying the piece of scone in her hand as if it held the secrets to the universe. Then she gave me an expression that was certainly not a smile I was beginning to think she didn't know how to smile but involved a slight turning up of the corners of her mouth, a twitching of her eyes. Later I learned that this was her expression for pleasure and satisfaction.

'So we have a deal,' I said, reaching out and patting her shoulder. She froze momentarily when I touched her, and I made a mental note to keep such displays of affection to a minimum. She got over the paroxysm quickly though, and I felt a rush of fondness for the sad, silent child. It was an affection I would have to remind myself of often in the coming months.

11.

As I had begun to explain to the group, the first project I had planned was based around Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit stories. I had been a huge fan of her tales as a child. I realize now that this seemingly quaint Victorian lady, with her amazingly detailed paintings and succinct text, was actually ploughing a deceptively dark and complex furrow through the consciousness of her youthful readers.

While her stories deal with funny animals that generally walk on their hind legs, wear clothes and engage in very human activities, there is still a sense that they live in a world where death and injury are just around the corner. The children at Little Scamps reminded me of Potter characters. They seemed small, cute and helpless, yet there was a well of resourcefulness and guile in each of them, and although they were very much at the mercy of the adults about them, each had a finely tuned survival instinct.

After a break for play outdoors, I read The Tale of Peter Rabbit aloud to the kids. I'd had full colour enlargements of the pictures made so they could all see them, and Susan held them up one by one. The story is simple: Peter Rabbit, his sisters, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, and his mother live in a rabbit hole under a fir-tree. Mother Rabbit has forbidden her children to enter the garden of Mr McGregor, a local small-holder, because their father had met his untimely end there and become the main ingredient of a pie. However, while Mrs Rabbit is shopping and the girls are collecting blackberries, Peter, rebellious soul that he is, sneaks into the garden. There, he gorges on vegetables until he gets sick, and is chased by Mr McGregor. When Peter loses his jacket and shoes, Mr McGregor uses them to dress a scarecrow. Eventually Peter escapes and returns to his mother, exhausted and feeling ill. She puts him to bed with a dose of camomile tea while his sisters (who have been good little bunnies) enjoy bread and milk and blackberries for supper.

The children listened, transfixed. I love telling stories, and find myself getting lost in them just as much as the children. Storytelling should be a performance, and I make a point of giving each character a different voice and the occasional gesture children have a remarkable memory for such features, pointing out to me on repeat tellings if I get a voice wrong.

I chose Peter Rabbit as our first 'big' story because I know that children can identify with him. He is inherently a good soul, just a bit excitable and naughty, but not in a malicious way. He steals the contents of Mr McGregor's garden, but he is a rabbit, and is only doing what he is programmed to do.

Despite walking upright and wearing his blue jacket, the images of him in the book are all anatomically correct he is clearly a wild rabbit, just like the ones my audience saw almost every day, and that eased things, too. This was not a story about trolls or goblins or even lions and tigers: it dealt with things that the kids had only to look outside their kitchen windows to see.

When I was finished, I put the book down, but Susan and I laid the pictures out in sequence on the floor, so the children could follow them as a kind of photo-essay while we talked.

'Do you think Peter is a good rabbit?' I asked.

'No, not good,' Jeffrey said flatly. 'Bold boy.'

'Why do you think he's bad?' I asked.

'Mammy say,' Jeffrey was puffing and panting with the effort of expressing what he wanted to articulate, 'no steal.'

'If I was a rabbit,' Lonnie said, 'and I pa.s.sed a garden full of lovely fresh veg, I think I'd find it very hard not to go in and take some.'

'Berries,' Jeffrey said.

'That's right,' I agreed. 'His sisters went out and picked blackberries, didn't they? So there was food that could be taken without having to steal.'

'And his mammy worried about him goin' in that garden,' Gus said.

'Why did she worry, Gus?' Tush asked.

'Because Peter's dad had an accident in there,' Gus said.

'What kind of accident, do you think?' Susan asked.

The group sat quietly, thinking about that.

'Well, in the story, it says his daddy ended up in a great big pie,' Mitzi said. 'How could that have happened?'

'Mr M'Gregor,' Ross said. 'He kilt 'im, I'd say.'

'Why would he want to do that?' I asked.

'Peter robbin' the veg'ables,' Rufus said.

'So do you think Mr McGregor is right to try and kill Peter, and to kill and eat his father?' I asked.

I was met with a resounding silence. This was far too complex a moral dilemma for the group. The problem was clear: it was naughty of Peter to steal the vegetables because stealing is wrong and therefore should be punished. Yet Peter was a nice rabbit, and the children felt a strong sense of solidarity with him. How then was it all right for anyone to kill either Peter or members of his family, even to eat them for dinner?

Arga was looking at the picture of a Peter who, having lost his clothes and believing himself to be trapped in the garden, is crying bitterly. The image seemed to have stirred something in the child, who had begun to speak loudly in Polish. She was pointing at the picture, and Gilbert, who was, as usual, beside her, placed a hand on her arm.

'Arga, honey, I don't know what you're trying to say,' I said.

'Arrrrgaaaa!' she said angrily, rolling those rs for me (our constant misp.r.o.nunciation of her name irritated her greatly), then continued to talk rapidly.

Lonnie hopped off his chair and went over to her. In quiet tones he spoke to her: 'Co si stao, kochanie?' I later learned this was Polish for 'What's wrong, sweetheart?'

At what sounded like a hundred miles per hour Arga rattled something back.

'Powoli,' Lonnie said, patting the air rhythmically with his hand: slowly.

'Zosta pozostawiony sam sobie,' Arga said, tears streaming down her face now.

I waited with bated breath this was wholly unexpected. It was as if Lonnie had just produced a rabbit from a hat.

'She says that he has been left all alone,' Lonnie translated.

'Do you speak Polish?' I asked disbelievingly.

He turned to look at me with a halfway grin on his face. 'And the prize for asking the most obvious question imaginable goes to the long-haired gentleman. Yes, I speak a bit of Polish.'

'Umm ... when were you going to tell me that fascinating little nugget of information?'