The Elf Service, Episode 3

Irving Jefferson and the Newsies set about publicising The Elf Service

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 last thing Irving Jefferson had been expecting from his day was having to talk Tin Lizzie down from a bout of screaming stage fright.

This was a girl who thought nothing of pouncing on both the great and gruesome of the city in the street and yelling in their faces. Then demanding money for it. He had not expected her, in the plush and gilded backstage of the Oddfellow’s Hall, to have a fit of the ab dabs.

“They’ll throw things,” she wailed, “I know they will. I throw things when I go to the theatre.”

“I give you my solemn vow and guarantee,” said Jefferson, peeking out through the curtains at the waiting audience in the hall, “That none of this audience are going to throw things. Also, are you aware that there are shows that aren’t so awful you are forced to throw things at the stage.”

“I like throwing things,” said Lizzie, “That’s why I go. And the fights. The fights in the audience are always better than the ones in the plays.”

The audience Jefferson was considering was a seamless field of hats. A great host of the matrons of the city, every one of them summited by something fanciful. Feathers and flowers, ribbons and rouches. Great platters of felt that cast the seats about them into shade, tiny little side saucers of velvet, starred about with diamante. Pheasant tails waved and shook, lace puffed and bobbed. Silk roses lifted and fell with the conversation below them, glass grapes glimmered with the lighting above.

Inevitably the richer ladies had sat at the front, and they had the largest and most ostentatious hats, behind them, slightly smaller hats, and so on, the diameter and decoration diminishing into the depths of the hall. All that the ladies at the back could see was the hats before them, but that was alright, because that was largely all most of them had come to see.

“I assure you,” said Jefferson, appraising the radii of some of the more stupendous hats in the front row, “That all these ladies are likely to throw is money.”

“But I’m not dressed for it,” said Lizzie, plucking at her coat, “I haven’t got a hat.”

“Not to be intrusive,” said Jefferson, “But what’s that on your head then?”

“It’s a bonnet,” said Lizzie, putting a hand to it. ‘Bonnet’ was going it some. It was something more of a placemat that had been roughly sewn into a tam o’shanter, and if her hands weren’t already filthy they would have come away dirtier for fondling it.

“Everything’s got holes in it,” she said, plucking at her coat, anxiously.

“Which is entirely why you are, in fact, dressed for it,” said Jefferson, “Your perforated state is perfect. At least for my purposes.”

“I shan’t know what to say,” said Lizzie.

“That seems entirely unlikely to me,” said Jefferson, “And anyway, I shall be handling the oration. You are to stand there and look sorry for yourself - at which you are currently excelling. Ready?”

Jefferson had been wrong about the newsies all day.

He had fully expected, for example, that a thoroughly urban urchin like Captain Blood would be quite perfectly acquainted with all the nooks and crannies and rat runs around and through the Krampus department store.

The main building of the Krampus took up a whole block, and the entrance was a whirling wall of revolving doors, all spinning and flashing out the afternoon sun. Over the doors was the famous four-faced Krampus clock, showing the time, the weather, the phase of the moon and the days left until Christmas, held out over the pavement on the back of a grinning devil, the symbol of the store, bent double under its weight.

And under the devil stood a commissionaire, in a military overcoat of Krampus red, so decked about with braid and frogging that he looked like he was wearing theatre curtains.

The commissionaire stood under the clock and glared at Captain Blood and Captain Blood stood in the gutter and glared at the commissionaire.

“Appreciating the view?” said Jefferson as he came up.

“He won’t let us in, will he?” said Captain Blood, “He never does. I’ve never been in, have I?”

“So there are places in the city you don’t know,” said Jefferson, “Everyone should visit the Krampus.”

“Not for me, is it?” said Captain Blood, not taking his eyes off the commissionaire, “What am I going to buy?”

“Don’t let Otto Krampus hear you saying that,” said Jefferson, “It's his store, you know, and he likes to say it has everything anyone can want. And if they don’t have it, you didn’t want it.

“Besides, you could learn a lot from Krampus. He’s in the same line as you, Captain: a salesman. There’s an education an entrepreneur like you could earn from the Krampus if he gave it time.

“You could learn, for example, that there’s a side door round the back that is almost never watched.”

Rumour said many things about Otto Krampus, the founder of the Krampus department store. There was the one about how he wandered the store in disguise, not to test the staff, but to test the customers, to see if they deserved to shop with him. Or the one about the penniless Venetian noble who had tried to sell a dubious statue to Krampus, who had instead bought the man’s crumbling palazzo from around him, leaving him with only the suspect sculpture to his name. The interior of the palace was now home accessories. 

There was the Istanbul rug merchant he was supposed to have kidnapped and the business partner he was supposed to have murdered. There were the secret passages and the secret wives and the secret deals. There were rumours about outrageous things he had done and rumours about how those things weren’t even the most outrageous things.

The most persistent rumour was that he started all these rumours himself.

One rumour was that Krampus had his own, tailor made Santa costume and took shifts in the toy department grotto during December giving out presents to the children.

He certainly liked toys. Wherever he went around the world, he picked up toys. Strange toys, admittedly, unexpected toys. Ticking things of Japanese clockwork, clacking things of German woodwork. Mute poppets of woven leaves and lumpen puppets of felt and buttons. Toys from every other corner of the world and almost all of them impossible to sell in this one. 

Which was fine with Otto Krampus because, as it turned out, he had no intention of letting anyone else have them. Instead, one end of the toy department had become a sort of museum of toys, a penitentiary for the unplayable and unlovable, a little gauntlet of discomfort that every child must run on the way to the wonder that was the rest of the floor.

It was, however, hard to tell whether this tall glass case of oddities mystified Captain Blood any more than the toys that were actually for sale. He made an odd sight with his many layers of thin clothes, padded up against the cold, and his army cap tipped back on his head, turning a plastic flamingo over and over in his hands trying to understand what it might be for.

A small whispering crowd of mothers began to collect at the end of the aisle, just as agog at the sight of the Captain as their own progeny were at Pretty Patty who drank from a real bottle and wet herself.

“A picture to make you ponder,” said Jefferson, appearing among them, “The moment I read his letter I knew I had to bring him here.

“Perhaps you’re read about it, in the Argus. Irving Jefferson, founder of the Elf Service,” he pulled out a card case and started handing them out, “The post office has appointed me in charge of the letters children mail to Santa Claus. All their wishes and dreams, all into my pigeon-hole.

“This little scrap had never had a toy for Christmas, can you believe it?” They could not. “Never. Not a single stocking filler or package under the tree. Not one. I was shocked, as you might imagine.” They could imagine it. They were imagining it.

“Of course, I shouldn’t be here at all,” said Jefferson, “This very much isn’t my job, I dare say I might be reprimanded for it, even censured.” They were all appalled to hear this.

“No, no,” said Jefferson, “It is my solemn duty to harden my heart against the entreaties of these children. Harden my heart that I may soften the hearts of others. I shouldn’t be here at all, I should be recruiting, finding the kind people I know are out there, who are willing to take this greater responsibility, this responsibility of reassuring these children about the city they live in, that it is as full of the kindness, generosity and spirit of the season that I believe it to be. People who will happily buy this poor child a toy boat for Christmas.”

There were such people, as it turned out, so many, in fact, that there was almost an unseemly little scuffle at the cash desk over who precisely was going to have the honour of buying the first present for the Elf Service. It was not until Jefferson had promised them all that he would each and everyone of them a child’s letter to answer personally that the matter was settled.

Outside on the pavement Captain Blood poked the Krampus bag Jefferson was carrying for him.

“What am I going to do with a boat?” he said.

“I thought you were some kind of pirate,” said Jefferson, “A buccaneer of the boulevards, an urban corsair?”

“I don’t want a boat, do I?” said the Captain.

“And neither does Wilson,” said Jefferson, “But he’s getting one anyway.”

Jefferson was wrong about Wilson. He took to the toy boat instantly, his large blunt fingers turning out to be surprisingly capable at tying tiny knots in thread sized ropes, and sending the little yacht curving out into the busy waters of the boat pond.

“Never had one before,” said Jefferson to the assembled fathers, “Isn’t it extraordinary. If only he had had such a gift as a small boy, what a naval career he might have had.”

And he explained to them all about the Elf Service and the big differences that such small generosities might make in a life.

And now here he was, being wrong about Tin Lizzie.

This was supposed to be a meeting for the Society for the Support of Distressed Gentlewomen. The society didn’t seem to be terribly concerned with whatever it might be that was distressing about the gentlewomen. It was probably some kind of money worries, but perhaps it was some deeply personal hurt. Or just an overwhelming weltschmerz.

It seemed unlikely that any of the attendant gentlewomen - none of whom seemed particularly distressed themselves - knew. The city was full of these kinds of meetings and associations and charities, all full of talk and resolutions and commitments and there largely to fill the time between afternoon tea and the theatre. All the attendees really wanted was a morally uplifting talk, the sense of having done something good with themselves and a good look at everyone else’s hats.

Well, here was Jefferson now, accompanied by the not at all gentle but appropriately distressed Tin Lizzie, here to tug at their morals and appeal to their do-goodery.

He planted a hand in Lizzie’s reluctant back and gave her a shove, stagewards.

“Remember,” he said, “It’s for the Elf Service. It’ll sell.”

And for once that day, Jefferson was right: no one threw anything.