The Elf Service, Episode 1
Introducing Irving Jefferson
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 Central Post Office had been built in the days when the mail was magical. Before the electric telegraph, when the penny post still seemed a wonder.
Your writing in another’s hand before the end of the day, in another city, gazing out at another sea, two minds in communion across a whole nation, the world in an envelope. These were the powers of the gods themselves. And so they had built a temple to the mails.
Vast columns, wider than a man; a lofty portico, higher than a house. A great, echoing hall, tiled with the names of boroughs, cities, countries, continents, in an ever-receding order of importance, ringed with clocks showing the time in every corner of the globe, sectioned off by banks of bureaus: air mail, sea freight, domestic and foreign, express and second post, and third and fourth.
Above it all a dome that glimmered with golden mosaics of fleet-footed Hermes, a stern Commerce with her overflowing cornucopia, an eagle with thunderbolts in its claws. The domain of the priests of technology, the great heroes of the modern age.
Unfortunately those heroes were also simply men. They did not disperse the mails on magical winds, they did not bestride the nation in seven league boots nor could they still the Earth on its diurnal round, the better to accomplish their feats. No, they needed sorting machines and pneumatic telegraphs, they needed blotting paper, filing cabinets, wastepaper baskets; date stamps and ink pads and pieces of rag on which to wipe their hands when the ink got on their fingers and smudged the date.
So into this vast and gleaming temple were poked offices and work rooms and lavatories. That great, echoing hall did not leave much room round the sides to fit things in. A warren of pigeon holes sectioning up the basement below, a night-warden’s shack jammed in between two columns by the front door and in between the dome and the outer wall, so that one wall curved away steeply into a cobwebby shadow: a meeting room.
It was November, but unseasonably warm. Most of the windows had been long ago painted shut and the steam heating of the building, so ineffective in warming the hall below, was here collecting, stifling, under the eaves.
Of the three men sat behind the long table at the head of the room, swathed about in three piece suits, at least one was sweating profusely.
He was Hector Dowdy, the Postmaster General for the city, a middle-aged man who wore his years of public service heavily, and who believed that it would not be fitting to his station to take off his jacket and who now bitterly regrets the jacket, the position and the decorum.
No such qualms afflicted the man to his right, who had not only taken off his jacket, but also unbuttoned his waistcoat and loosened his tie. Jolyon Tinker, press officer to the Mayor, had an air of insouciance that frustrated Dowdy, mostly because he envied it deeply and wished he could pull it off.
Tinker lounged in his shirtsleeves, his eyes half closed, his chair tipped back on its rear legs and rocked gently back and forth as if he might, by this action, generate some small breeze with which to alleviate the heat.
On the other side of Dowdy, however, sat a man who would never do anything so demeaning as sweat, not in public, at least. Councillor Marion Krimble, on the board of charity supervision, a man whose name, one suspected, carried a great deal of the blame for his character.
Krimble was a small, chubby man but bore a terrible sense of light poise. He was like an egg, the roundness of which contains both its delicacy and its integrity. Perhaps, once or twice, on a cursory introduction, someone might have mistaken him for a jolly little chap, but no one ever made that mistake twice. When he moved it was with an elegance that made it almost like floating, so that he passed through crowds like a balloon. Unlike a balloon, however, the crowds parted before him and he was rarely ever diverted from his course.
His round face was pink and smooth with the unblemished bloom of the healthy and wealthy and not a single drop of sweat dared appear on his stern brow.
He was not in the least bit jolly, either.
In the centre of the room, was another table, smaller this time, with chairs facing the three men. Behind this table were ranks of chairs and benches set out for spectators, for this was a public meeting, although no one seemed to have told the public and the few of them who had turned up seemed to be regretting their choice as much as the postmaster was.
Sat at the small table, facing Dowdy, Tinker and Krimble, was a sallow, unwell looking man, whose clothes hung loosely on his narrow frame. He wasn’t looking at them, but instead kept his gaze fixed on the stack of notes he had piled before him on the table, from which he read.
“If I may move on to discuss,” he was reading, “These individuals who correspond with the aforementioned Santa Claus. Children, undoubtedly, although perhaps also the more mentally enfeebled of the adult population.
“Almost certainly the poor. The children of the poor, the indebted, the unemployed, the spendthrift. Children who want, children who lack. And what do they lack, Postmaster? They lack guidance.”
Here the unwell man paused, wanting to make a dramatic moment out of his insight but not quite daring to. He made do with darting a swift glance up from his notes at Dowdy to see if he was listening.
“I believe, Postmaster, that it is the duty of the mails of this great city, as the safeguard of our publishing, to provide that guidance. I propose that each letter sent to Santa Claus should be replied with a pamphlet I have already started composing, containing useful advice and guidance on household economy, moral conduct and the importance of a fibre-rich diet.”
“Interesting,” said Krimble, suddenly, and the unwell man stopped reading apparently in surprise that anyone might think him interesting.
“Don’t you think, Postmaster?” said Krimble, half turning, but keeping the unwell man under his gaze as a particularly unusual specimen, “Hm? To take this most hallowed of seasons as a moment for moral instruction? Hm? Interesting?”
“Well,” said Dowdy, “It perhaps has some interest…”
“Do you know who that is?” Tinker had lowered his chair forward a little to bring his lips closer to Dowdy’s ear. He was indicating, with a lazy eyebrow, a young woman in a stylish light grey suit, sat at the back on the public seats, regarding the meeting with wry amusement.
“That is Madeleine Sharp of the Argus. Do you know her? Perhaps you read her piece on the garbage collector overspend, or the one about the Mayor’s brother-in-law, or perhaps her article six months ago on the abuse of postal money orders by your own staff?”
Dowdy’s face turned a colour that suggested he was acquainted with her byline.
“What do you think,” whispered Tinker, “That the Argus would make of the Post Office, this administration, the city, lecturing the people on how to behave? Hm?”
“But perhaps not the right kind,” said Dowdy through gritted teeth, “Of interest, I mean. Thank you.”
“I have some preliminary drafts of the pamphlet,” said the unwell man, shuffling his papers, “Some recipes for making nourishing dishes from cheap vegetables.”
“Thank you,” said Dowdy, with finality, and Krimble glared across at Tinker with pursed lips.
The unwell man stumbled away from the table, loose pages of notes drifting behind him like dead leaves. In his place appeared a young man. There is no other word for it, he appeared. One moment he was not evident anywhere in the room, the next he was there behind the table.
Surely they would have noticed him if he had been there all the time. He was tall and thin, like an exclamation mark of a man, his height emphasised by a great shock of curly black hair, piled high on his head. His suit was threadbare but fitted him elegantly and he had in his breast pocket an almost regrettably exuberant handkerchief. He appeared to be trying to grow a moustache, a project he evidently had great faith in, despite the distinct lack of effort being shown by his upper lip.
He did not sit, he did not pull out a bundle of disordered jottings, he did not fuss and clear his throat. He leant forward with the tips of his splayed fingers on the table top and fixed Hector Dowdy with a cheerful, conspiratorial grin.
“Gentleman, you are busy men, men of importance and responsibility,” the young man nodded at Krimble, who frowned at him in return, “Let me not prevaricate, let me not hesitate, let me not waste your time. I have your answer.”
He straightened up, and despite his promises of not wasting time, adopted a lecturing pose.
“Let us contemplate, gentlemen, why we are here. Every year children all over the city sit down and write a letter to Santa Claus. A letter into which they pour all their hopes and dreams, all their fears and sorrows, their very souls. Then they pop those letters into the mail, they are collected by the diligent workers of the postal service,” a little bow to Dowdy here, “They are brought to this magnificent central post office,” a wave about him, “They are sorted and then…
“Nothing. What to do? They cannot be delivered. Let's assume, for we don’t know who is in the audience today,” a little wink over his shoulder, “That this Santa Claus exists. Where does he live? The North Pole? Is the city to foot the bill for the international post?” a nod to Tinker, “They cannot be returned. Can the post office identify every Sally and Tim who writes to Santa and could it bear to crush their dreams if it found them?
“Which brings me, gentleman, to my point. Let us contemplate, I say, why we are here. We are here because downstairs, in the basement of this building is a room full of undelivered letters to Santa Claus. Are we here because the post office wants to get rid of them? No, it could do that itself. Are we here because the post office wants to stop the letters being written? No, no city would want to do that. We are here, gentlemen, because you feel guilty.”
He ticks off the members of the board and in a sweeping gesture includes the whole room.
“The post office feels guilty, the city feels guilty, we all feel guilty. These children write to Santa in tremulous and trusting hope and their letters sit in a damp basement undelivered, food for mice. Of course we feel guilty. We ought to. We should do. We want those letters answered. It is proof of our common and warm humanity.
“And this, gentlemen, is my point. You are looking for someone to help you deal with this annual problem. I say, look around you gentlemen, look at yourselves. We have a city full of children writing to Santa and a city full of people willing to respond. All we need is someone to bring them together.
“Someone to find those children, find what gifts they need, someone to find those generous citizens, find what gifts they can give, someone to bring one to other, to say: Here is a child in want of Christmas, and here is you, full of the season, so let us share it all and let Christmas be happy.
“This is my point, gentlemen, and this is your answer, because that someone, gentlemen, is Irving Jefferson, and Irving Jefferson, gentlemen, is me.”
If the room had been full, the applause would have been thunderous, as it was, it was scattered and brief, but none the less enthusiastic for all that, and no one paid the least bit of attention to the scowl on the otherwise unblemished brow of Mr Marion Krimble.
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