The Elf Service, Episode 8

In which everyone else meets the Elf Service, courtesy of Maddie Sharp

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.

At six a.m. and six minutes precisely, Hollis, the head doorman for the Metropolitan hotel, stepped through the main double doors onto the pavement. The sun had not yet risen but Hollis came on duty at six in the morning rain or shine, dark or dawn. Always at the same time, always the same ritual.

He dug into his shiny-buttoned waistcoat and pulled out a polished coin, given to him by the desk clerk for precisely this purpose, and stepped across the pavement to the curb. There, waiting, stood Wilson the news boy and freshly minted Elf, with a bundle of papers under his arm.

“An Argus,” said Hollis, holding the coin up so it caught the street light.

“Argus,” said Wilson, who had just run here at full pelt from the Argus offices with fresh copies of the six o’clock edition, but who betrayed no fluster or shortness of breath, “Sir.”

With practised ceremony the two of them exchanged paper and coin, Hollis taking the paper without creasing it, Wilson holding the coin in his outstretched hand, waiting for the command.

“Keep the change,” said Hollis, and, “Don’t spend it on drink.”

Wilson pocketed the coin and Hollis turned, marching back into the hotel with the paper brandished before him like a banner.

The Metropolitan hotel had a full set of first edition papers delivered every morning. All the papers, and all the editions too, right through the day, great piles of them scattered about the lobby and the library, laid in the corridors against room doors and brought to the restaurant table with coffee for breakfast.

But this newspaper wasn’t for the guests in the dining room or the passers by in the shopping arcade. This paper was going directly into the hands of a bell boy, directly into an elevator, directly up the building, directly through the door and directly onto the desk of Mr Felix Savoir, owner of the hotel.

Every morning at four, Mr Savoir would rise, descend to the swimming pool, swim ten laps, dress and begin to climb back up through his hotel, nodding to janitors and maintenance men, peering at cooks and waiters, questioning desk staff and bellhops, greeting the housemaids and the messenger boys, up and up, floor after floor, back to his eyrie on the roof, where finally, wedged behind his massive desk, he could dunk croissant in his coffee and read the six o’clock edition of the Argus.

“Santa Claus’ Mailman” read a headline on the bottom right hand corner of the front page and, underneath, “The ‘Elf Service’ is a seasonal success. By Madeleine Sharp.”

“High up above the city sits the owner of one of our great hotels, looking down on all of us,” read Savoir, pausing briefly to look out of the window, as if compelled to realise Maddie’s metaphor, “Looking back up at him from the gutters of the Market, a small girl ferrets for scraps to scrape a living. Between them both lies a gulf, a gulf that divides our city, a gulf between those who have and those who have not. Those who have money, and those who do not. Those who have luck, and those who do not. Those who will have a Christmas, and those who will not.

“I met many remarkable people yesterday. Feliz Savoir, owner of the Metropolitan. Midge, who works in the Market. But most remarkable of all was Mr Irving Jefferson, founder, inspirer, of the Elf Service.”

Savoir folded the paper and replaced it on his breakfast tray and brushed flakes of pastry from his lapel. He had both money and luck but also work, which was required, in his experience, to earn both. He picked up his mail and was so absorbed that he did not notice the maid take the tray.

The tray went back to the kitchen, the paper to a table in the lobby, where Hollis absent-mindedly smoothed it out as he passed. It did not stay there long, however.

Mrs Mountjoy was a lady of leisure and consequently had a very full calendar. Breakfast in the Metropolitan dining room had been dedicated to the planning of a charity dinner and now coffee in the Alhambra Cafe accompanied by a discussion of possible entertainments for a fundraising gala.

The other members of the committee were always late, so she picked up a newspaper as she passed through the hotel lobby on her way to the cafe.

“Mr Jefferson has seen this gulf and has decided to do something about it,” she read as she waited, “Some might feel that it is to our shame that we must rely on the charity of the few disposed to show it to try and bridge this gulf between us. Some might feel that it is the duty of a city to care for its children, that we should, as citizens, come together to help each other. We only need charity, after all, where there is poverty, and, like poverty, we should not have it at all.”

Mrs Mountjoy pursed her lips at this.

“But 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.”

Mrs Mountjoy was more pleased with this last sentence, but then the vicar arrived and she put the paper down on the empty table beside them and quite forgot about it.

This was where it was found, ten minutes later, by Lawrence Talbot, killing time on his way to a sales pitch. He was a strong believer in being sufficiently caffeinated for meetings. He was also a believer in being able to engage your client in gossip and local news. It never hurt to have a little small talk, to show yourself to be an informed and interested individual.

“If charity is a necessity in our city,” he read,  “Then it necessarily be done well. This, at least, is the intention of Irving Jefferson, founder of the Elf Service. Seasonal and sentimental though his mission be, this is a man who believes that the hard headed and perennial approaches of business can be brought to bear on the problem.”

Talbot liked this. He could make something of this, he thought, the applicability of sound business sense to everyday life, he could work that into his pitch. He started jotting in the margin next to the article, and then realised the time. The surest way of making a good impression was to be on time and the surest way of being on time was to be early.

He took the paper with him, though, so that he still had it later, when he treated himself to lunch in the station restaurant before catching the train home (for he was convinced his small talk had been persuasive), he could read more about this Jefferson chap.

“He is all too aware,” Talbot read, “That too much charity is little more than a hobby for the self-congratulatory, or, when it is trying to take itself seriously, painfully wrapped about in bureaucracy like a fly cocooned by a spider, and as about effective. And he is determined that the Elf Service shall not fall victim to these fates.”

Talbot liked the sound of this Jefferson fellow, but then an announcement caught his ear. The surest way to a comfortable journey was getting a forward facing seat and the surest way to a forward facing seat was getting on the train before anyone else.

This time he left the paper on the table, because the surest path to success was knowledge and the surest path to knowledge was, apparently, working your way through a part-work encyclopaedia on train journeys.

The station restaurant, it had to be admitted, was not the most high tone of venues. It specialised in rushed and bland meals for rushed and bland people. No one ever went there that did not have to and the restaurant saw no need to encourage them. It did not spend on decor, or on entertainment or, indeed, on staff.

Perhaps it was his training, but Paul Massie preferred to think of himself as a sculptor rather than a waiter. Or rather a sculptor who might, by work and talent, be released from the unforgiving medium of the waiter that entombed it. That he might, eventually, chisel away everything that was menial drudge to reveal the Paul Massie, artist, within.

In the meantime, though, he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity of a free newspaper.

When he went off duty after the lunch rush, he rolled it up and shoved it into his jacket pocket, where it stuck out and wagged behind him, a papery tail, as he slogged up the hill into the Old Town.

He wasn’t going anywhere in particular, not just yet. He was wandering, waiting for the city to offer something up to him. The Stockpot, for instance, a greasy little cafe on the corner of an alley. It was already growing dark and the faded red gingham curtains in the window looked friendly and the steam rising from the tea urn on the counter looked warm. Perhaps one of his fellow students might be in there.

No, no one was, but he sat down anyway, and spent the money he’d saved on a newspaper (which he wouldn’t have bought anyway) on cake. He moved the encrusted condiments out of the way and spread the newspaper out in front of him.

“The Elf Service is all jolly efficiency,” he read, “The letters to Santa Claus are all sorted by volunteers, just as are the letters to the Service itself, offering to help in their spreading of seasonal joy. But the real genius of the operation is the research department, for Jefferson has tapped into one of the great resources of the city: the news boys and girls who sell this very paper.”

Child labour, eh? Paul shook his head. Efficiency and resources. It didn’t sound much like Christmas to him.

“By streamlining his system Jefferson knows full well he is opening himself up to being exploited. This is where the newsies come in, using their knowledge of the city, their ability to go anywhere, find anyone, to track down the senders and ensure they are genuine and worthy recipients of our charity.”

Worthy recipients of charity. What a ghastly idea. Who got to decide whether one person was more worthy than another? Wasn’t the point of charity that it gave without asking?

Paul started doodling on the paper: a picture of Santa Claus chasing after Jefferson with a child’s pop gun. Still, though, at least someone was doing something, he supposed. Fair play to the man, this was more than anyone had managed in previous years. He was in the act of transforming the drawing of Jefferson into a stereotypical fat banker as a kind of apology when one of his friends did arrive and he folded the newspaper back into his pocket to make room on the table for them.

He didn’t notice at all later when, on the way to the pub, it fell out of his pocket onto the pavement, which was where Midge found it, on the way back to her wardrobe from the Market.

Later that night she sat and picked over it laboriously at first, but finding her own name spurred her on.

“Because what matters most, as Irving Jefferson knows,” read Midge, “Is that Christmas must come to those that deserve it most. That it is the letters that most need him that must get to Santa Claus and the presents most needed that must get delivered. But then who doesn’t need him, who doesn’t deserve Christmas? This is the truth of the Elf Service, that they are there to help all of us bring Christmas to all of us, to bring the whole city together, rich and poor, comfortable and struggling, from up on high, all the way down to the little girl up in the attic at the bottom of a wardrobe.”

And Midge very carefully folded and folded the newspaper, all scribbled on and creased, tucked it in under her pillow, and lay down to sleep.