The Elf Service, Episode 10

In which Maddie Sharp attends a charity auction but does not bid

All over the city children post letters to Santa Claus and they go undelivered and unanswered. Until Irving Jefferson founds the Elf Service, that is. The Elf Service is the story of charity, journalism and mayhem, the extraordinary story of an extraordinary young man, his extraordinary plan to make Christmas happen for the children of his city and all the extraordinary ways in which that plan goes extraordinarily wrong.

The charity auction for the benefit of the Benevolent Fund for the Home for Weathered Seamen was not Maddie Sharp’s usual choice of entertainment for a Saturday night. Not that she had anything against sailors, old or young, in fact she had fond memories of many heavy nights in heaving bars down by the docks. Well, not fond, exactly. Fuzzy.

And she supposed they had to have homes to go to, whether they pitched or yawed because they were on the brine or because the sailors were on the booze. She couldn’t deny them that.

Indeed, it was largely because she suspected that all of the sailors would be at the home and not attending the charity auction that she didn’t want to go. This was not going to be an evening in the company of creaking old jacks tar, whose tattoos had long ago become unreadable relief maps across the seamed lines of their skin, being regaled with unlikely stories of distant islands and tall tales of large fish. No, this was going to be an evening with ladies in hats.

However, Walter Burns, her editor at the Argus, had threatened her with being auctioned off herself for charity so she had had to compromise at attending, in a professional capacity, as long as she didn’t have to take part.

Entering the ballroom of the Metropolitan hotel, she discovered that she was not wrong about the ladies, or the hats.

It wasn’t just the ladies in hats in attendance, however, there was also Mr Irving Jefferson. Indeed, you might say that the ladies were largely in attendance on him.

He stood between the tables that had been set out over the dancefloor and around him whirled every lady who had read the paper the previous day, and, pretty soon, every one who thought she had. The hats were so thick about him that they formed a canopy, like a forest, above which the taller Jefferson’s head bobbed like an egret among water lilies as he bent to hear the ladies around him.

Being above the canopy meant that he spotted Maddie as she passed by and wormed his way out from among the hats to accost her.

“Come to luxuriate in your success, Miss Sharp?” he said.

“My success?” said Maddie, “I am pleased to say this auction nonsense is nothing to do with me.”

“No, but that is,” said Jefferson, waving at the circulating ladies, “All this hullaballoo, that’s your piece on the Service has stirred that up. I wouldn’t be being mobbed like this if it wasn’t for you.”

“Don’t start pretending to me that you’re not enjoying it,” said Maddie, “Otherwise I shall begin to lose whatever grudging respect I’ve been developing for you.”

“Ah, but it’s all in the service of the Service, isn’t it?” said Jefferson, “And that is my success.”

“Ah good,” said Maddie, “I was worried for a moment there that you were going to let someone else have some of the credit.”

“Let’s share it, shall we?” said Jefferson, “You shan’t pretend that you didn’t pen a very influential piece that has made me the hero of the city overnight and I shan’t pretend that I didn’t deserve it.”

“I’m not sure I deserve this,” said Maddie, “What are you doing here anyway?”

“Auctioning off a letter, of course,” said Jefferson, “Doing everyone a bit a good by helping everyone to do a bit of good, getting a letter answered and raising some funds for this charity.”

“For the Home for Weathered Seamen?” said Maddie, “I wouldn’t have thought it was your kind of thing? Have much use for Santa Claus down there, have they?”

“I wouldn’t have thought it was your kind of thing,” said Jefferson, “Do you have much use for weathered seamen?”

“I’m the one what does the weathering,” said Maddie, “I suppose this is all your crowd, though, well fed, well paid and well intentioned.”

“As you so splendidly put it, Miss Sharp,” said Jefferson, “‘The poor, we most certainly have, and so charity we must have too, and fortunately our city is much blessed with those willing to do as we all should for their fellow man.’”

“You’ve committed it to memory, how sickening,” said Maddie, “I always try and forget everything I write as soon as possible. And I don’t like having it quoted back at me, it’s too like being in court.”

“But you were correct,” said Jefferson, “And you are correct. The city is full of charities like these and with people like these, and thank goodness for it, for without them, what chance would I have to bring Christmas to those who wouldn’t otherwise have it?”

“And without them what chance would you have to be such a darling of the town?” said Maddie.

“I wonder, Miss Sharp, whether your cynicism comes from not daring to feel, or from feeling a little too much,” said Jefferson, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see Mr Donner over there and I think if I can be enough of a darling to him I can secure at least another two Christmasses.”

“Touché,” said Maddie to his disappearing back and then she realised that she recognised one of the ladies in hats.

“Miss Saltadora,” she said, “I didn’t know you were interested in sailors.”

“In sailors? Whatever do you mean?” said Miss Saltadora, “My uncle is a rear vice admiral, perhaps that is what you’re driving at? Although he works out of an office these days. I do believe he has a… skiff, I think he called it, but he has never taken me on it. Indeed the last few times I saw him, he bemoaned how rarely he gets to go out in it. I have been on the ferry, of course, many times, but I wouldn’t have thought that made me a sailor.”

“The charity,” said Maddie when Miss Saltadora paused for a breath, “The Home for Weathered Seamen.”

“Weathered what?” said Miss Saltadora, “I suppose the home must be by the sea, being for seamen, which is why it is so weathered, although I can’t say I know anything about it.”

“It’s the seamen who are weathered, I think,” said Maddie, “I suppose you’re here with Jefferson, then, on Elf Service business.”

“Oh no,” said Miss Saltadora, “I’m here for the auction, with my mother. Have you seen her? She has a pheasant. On her hat, I mean. We do have pheasants in the country, but they’re for shooting, you know, not for pets. I feel they would be too excitable as pets, don’t you? Always clacking off somewhere and knocking things over.”

“So you’ve come to the auction but you have no idea what it's an auction for?” said Maddie.

“It’s for charity, isn’t it?” said Miss Saltadora but then, before she could continue, a man walked onto the stage at the head of the room and stood before the table and chairs set up there.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, could you please take your seats. Before the auction begins, we’re just going to have a few words from our founder, Captain Jeavons Irker.”

“Oh, my table,” said Miss Saltadora, “Ah, there’s my mother, I see her shaking her tail feather. So nice to talk to you again, Miss Sharp.”

“Talk at me,” corrected Maddie, who was more interested in what sort of person might be called Jeavons Irker than in finding her seat.

The MC had already gone to stand behind the table as an ancient, bent figure with a long white beard and tall black hat came shuffling across the stage towards him. The old man had on a captain’s coat so shiny with use and cleaning that it gleamed in the stage lights almost as much as its buttons did.

No wonder the man was so concerned with weathered seamen, thought Maddie. Blatant self-interest.

The old Captain finally reached the table and paused for a moment, apparently catching his breath. The chattering of people negotiating their seating stilled for a moment, waiting to hear what he had to say.

“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow shipmates,” began the ancient sailor in a voice that creaked like timbers in a high sea, “When I first became conscious of the cruel injustices that were the fates of superannuated mariners, forty years ago,”

Forty years! Any speech that started so far in the past was liable to take a long time to catch itself up to the present. This was evidently going to take a while. The murmur of the audience began to swell again, like a gentle sea hushing against the droning cliffs of the speech.

“Cast up upon the inhospitable shores of old age,” continued the Captain, “Marooned ashore on unfriendly land, without so much as a cabin, nay not a barrel to call shelter…”

Maddie went to find her seat. She discovered that she had been seated across from another of Jefferson’s elves.

“Miss Donner, isn’t it?” she said, “Maddie Sharp, from the Argus, I wrote the piece on Jefferson.”

“Oh that was a lovely piece,” said Miss Donner, “I do think you caught his character very well.”

“Splendid,” agreed a portly man next to her, “Quite right about how necessary these charitable institutions are these days.”

“Really excellent,” said a nervous young man on Maddie’s right, “Especially about how unnecessary charity really is.”

“And what about this charity,” said Maddie, doggedly, “The benevolent fund?”

“Oh yes, the benevolent fund,” said the portly gentlemen, “A splendid initiative.”

“Is it?” said Maddie, “For what?”

“For what?”

“For what is it a splendid initiative?”

“Well, raising money, of course,” said the man with an air of finality and turned to his partner.

“Raising money?” said Maddie to the nervous young man.

“Oh yes,” said the man, fiddling with his cutlery, “Filthy lucre washed in the tears of the poor.”

“The poor?” said Maddie.

“The homeless?” said the man, hazarding a guess.

“It’s sailors, isn’t it?” said Miss Donner, gazing over Maddie’s shoulder at the Captain who was now expounding on the qualities of dockside hostelries in major world ports, “I think it’s something to do with sailors. And housing,” she added with a little nod to the nervous youth, who immediately dropped a spoon and disappeared beneath the napery to find it.

It was the same story at every table. Maddie wandered about the room, soon discovering that mention of the article about Jefferson would quickly make her the centre of any conversation, but none of those conversations appeared to be about weathered seamen and the domiciling thereof.

In fact pretty much no one there appeared to know what the charity was for and Maddie strongly suspected that the few who did were, like Miss Donner, guessing.

At first she was inclined to judge them, turning out to this dim and enervating event, giving of their time and money in a cause they didn’t even know. But then she began to wonder. Might it not be, in fact, not perversely more virtuous to give without knowing the cause?

And then she began to wonder more. The Elf Service, the Home for Weathered Seamen, how many other charity events might be going on right now, how many other inedible dinners, how many other interminable speeches? How many more people might there be, willing to give of themselves and, more particularly, their wealth, without asking why?

All this generosity just ambling around, waiting to be steered in a profitable direction. It could be a good business for a bad person.

She turned and looked up at the stage where Captain Jeavons was tottering back into the wings, followed by a gentle applause like pebbles rolling on a stony beach.

Somewhere, Maddie Sharp began to suspect, somewhere in all this, there was a story.