Page 55 of The Girl You Left Behind
Once a month the David Halston Foundation, part of Solberg Halston Architects, organizes a trip for underprivileged kids to visit a building of special architectural interest. David had believed that young people should not be taught just about their built environment but let loose in it. He had wanted them to enjoy it. She still remembers the first time she had watched him talking it through with a group of Bengali kids from Whitechapel. “What does this doorway say when you walk in?” he had asked, pointing up at the huge frame.
“Money,” says one, and they had all laughed.
“That,” David had said, smiling, “is exactly what it’s supposed to say. This is a stockbroking firm. This doorway, with its huge marble pillars and its gold lettering, is saying to you, ‘Give us your money. And we will make you more money.’ It says, in the most blatant way possible, ‘We Know About Money.’”
“That’s why, Nikhil, your doorway is three foot tall, man.” One of the boys had shoved another, and both had fallen about laughing.
But it worked. She had seen even then that it worked. “They’ve got to see that there is an alternative to the little boxes they live in,” David had said. “They’ve got to understand that their environment affects how they feel.”
Since he had died, with Sven’s blessing, she had taken over David’s role, meeting company directors, persuading them of the social benefits of the scheme. It had helped get her through the early months, when she had felt that there was little point in her existence. Now it was the one thing she did each month that she actively looked forward to.
“Miss? Can we touch the fish?”
“No. No touching, I’m afraid. Have we got everyone?” She waited as Abiola did a quick head count.
“Okay. We’ll start here. I just want you all to stand still for ten seconds and tell me how this space makes you feel.”
“Peaceful,” said one, after the laughter stopped.
“Why?”
“Dunno. It’s the water. And the sound of that waterfall thing. It’s peaceful.”
“What else makes you feel peaceful?”
“The sky. It’s got no roof, innit?”
“That’s right. Why do you think this bit has no roof?”
“They run out of money.” More laughter.
“And when you get outside, what’s the first thing you do? No, Dean, not that.”
“Take a deep breath. Breathe.”
“Except our air is full of shit. This air they probably pump through a filter and stuff.”
“It’s open. They can’t filter this.”
“I do breathe, though. Like a big breath. I hate being shut in small places. My room’s got no windows, and I have to sleep with the door open or I feel like I’m in a coffin.”
“My brother’s room’s got no windows, so my mum got him this poster with a window on it.”
They begin comparing bedrooms. She likes them, these kids, and she fears for them, the casual deprivations they divulge, the way they reveal that 99 percent of their lives are spent within a square mile or two, locked in by physical constraints or the genuine fear of rival gangs and illegal trespass.
It’s a small thing, this charity. A chance to make her feel as if David’s life was not wasted, that his ideas continue. Sometimes a really bright kid emerges—one who immediately locks onto David’s ideas—and she tries to help them in some way, to talk to their teachers or organize scholarships. A couple of times she has even met their parents. One of David’s early protégésis now doing an architecture degree, his fees paid by the foundation.
But for most of them it’s just a brief window onto a different world, an hour or two in which to practice their parkourskills on someone else’s stairs and rails and marble foyers, a chance to see inside mammon, albeit under the bemused eye of the rich people she has persuaded to let them in.
“There was a study done a few years back, which showed that if you reduce the amount of space per child from twenty-five to fifteen square feet, they become more aggressive and less inclined to interact with each other. What do you think of that?”
Cam is swinging around an end rail. “I have to share a bedroom with my brother, and I want to batter him half the time. He’s always putting his stuff over on my side.”
“So what places make you feel good? Does this place make you feel good?”
“It makes me feel like I got no worries.”
“I like the plants. Them with the big leaves.”
