A Year of Doing Good
Page 8
What did Batman say to Robin before they got in the Batmobile?
‘Get in the Batmobile, Robin.’
Diane is very organized, highly mathematical, pathologically sociable and a United Reform Church Elder. She is also a card-carrying Conservative, recently telling me, ‘Obviously I don’t believe in anything you believe in, but I do believe you have a right to your beliefs’ – pause – ‘however ridiculous they are.’ In her spare moments she judges dressage and is my polar opposite, because I don’t believe anyone has the right to be a Tory.
I officially launched the Jam Jar Army at her farmhouse tonight, sitting in her immaculate kitchen at a ridiculously long table in front of her immaculate Aga. How does she manage to cook for a dinner party and not have a pan dirty on the side when the remains of yesterday’s breakfast are still sitting on mine? Over pheasant stew and green peas, I pitched my idea to the guy sitting next to me and Diane.
‘I take it this is one of your good deeds?’ Diane asked, and I could see her mentally filing the Jam Jar Army under ‘Fresh evidence of quirk’. They may think me bonkers, but they are my friends and I have my first recruits. Huzzah. Neither of them would even take the jam jar I had brought along, which had seventy pence in it, to start them off. Perhaps recycling is the way to go. That way I wouldn’t have to collect thousands of jam jars, plus it is environmentally friendly. I could get some graphics worked out and then recruits could print out a label for their own jam jar. Diane was looking at me expectantly. I shook my head, and inside it, thousands of glass jars rolled about clinking and empty. A china bowl of Eton mess sat in front of me that I hadn’t noticed arrive, the cracked meringue white and glacial, the whipped cream a luscious yellow, berries syrupy-black in the candlelight.
‘I was asking how you’re deciding which good deed to do. I love helping people, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to do a good deed a day just because I felt I should.’
‘Why would you do it then?’ I asked, spooning up a dizzying pile of meringue shards and fresh cream.
‘It would always be because I was interested in the person and in their situation,’ Diane answered me, as if such reasoning were self-evident, and I made a mental note written in ink the colour of hope that Diane would find me ‘interesting’ enough to help me out in the event of acute and urgent need. Perhaps I could still be dull (though quirky) but my problem a particularly interesting one. Would that qualify?
‘Some people,’ she went on, ‘like my friend who lost her husband, and my friend who was badly hurt when she fell from her horse, get first call on my time because I feel there’s a need. I know there are others where there’s need but it is less need, so I don’t bother, not least because they have their own support network around them.’
Somehow it does not surprise me that Diane is as systematic about the good she does as she is about every other element of her life, that she assesses need, and factors in relationship and duty. She probably has an equation for it somewhere.
Do we all prioritize the good we do? We will do good for strangers, give to feed a hungry child we will never see, or a homeless man in need of a hot meal. But if those closer to our own back door need help, will we still do good for strangers regardless? Or is it indeed more sensible to do good to those in our own circles, our own communities, first? We have only so much time, only so much patience, after all; then again, there are those who stand outside any circle, outside any community. Idly, I envisage a points system the next time someone comes knocking at my door:
Bereaved: 10 points
Life-threatening illness: 10 points
Poorly: 8 points
Bit of a sniffle: nul points
Disadvantaged by circumstance: 6 points
Lonely: 4 points
Lonely because of unsavoury personal habits: nul points
Nothing wrong at all but would benefit from a kind word: 1 point
I am not convinced I am capable of such fine discrimination. I consider how close I have come in the last couple of months to giving up, how inadequate I feel offering consolation to the grieving, how little difference I am making in the scheme of things, how hard I am finding it. The last thing I need is a decision-making process to tell me who would best benefit from my good deeds – not least because the answer might be no one.
Good deed no. 64.
Sunday, 6 March
We have had a weekend dominated by religion as my eight-year-old studied for his first confession, or reconciliation as they call it now. (It is of course vital to be forgiven for all those terrible childhood sins before the First Communion.) I wonder why there is this emphasis on which rules you have broken. So, from the very start, you admit your humility, acknowledge the rightful order of things and are forgiven? Shouldn’t there be just that one rule ‘Love thy neighbour …’? The church is vast and Victorian and there was a lot of parental bottom shuffling along the hard wooden pews and yawning behind our irreverent hands as we all waited for the children to go up to the altar in turn to sit with the priest. A few of the parents went up as well – including me. I haven’t confessed a sin for years, so I took the opportunity while it was there. Thank God you don’t have to run through them out loud these days.
At a certain point, the priest addressed us from the steps of the altar, advising the parents that we shouldn’t ever lose patience with our children. Never to do it. The priest is telling us this. The very nice, very childless, no-clue-what-it-is-like-at-all priest. Occasionally, he mentions nieces and nephews over in Ireland, but fundamentally – no idea at all. And I thought, ‘Right you are, Father. Never again. As you say. Good man.’
Good deed no. 65: let a granny in ahead of me for confession.
Monday, 7 March
Good deed no. 66: looked after another child so his mum and dad could work.
Tuesday, 8 March
Good deed no. 67: emailed an old friend who works on local TV to see if she can help get Karl in.
Wednesday, 9 March
They must have been talking about Lent at school, because the children announced over plates of steaming pancakes covered in syrup and lemon juice that they are giving up chocolate and crisps. Al promptly came over all freakishly pious and said he would give up crisps and chips. Suddenly the whole family was looking at me as I stood at the stove with my spatula in one hand and a frying pan in the other, my own pancake shrivelling and blackening in horror, when my eldest pronounced that ‘Mummy had better give up coffee.’ Taken aback, I couldn’t immediately think of a reason not to – particularly as I’m supposed to be giving it up anyway to help with the migraine – so I’ve given up coffee for Lent. Reluctantly.
Good deed no. 68: washed my neighbour’s bath mat, which she had left out on the line when she last came up.
Thursday, 10 March
Had my first coffee of Lent – I never did like giving up a good thing. Surely the good deeds should be enough to take me through Lent. Why should Lent be about the negative and not the positive? Though frankly, being good all the time is proving bloody irritating, or perhaps that’s the caffeine speaking.
Al went back to London and the expat asked for a lift from the garage because he had taken his car in to be looked at. I had planned on going straight from school to Berwick to get food for tea and hopefully to see a girlfriend for a coffee, which I had to cancel. While we were in the car, he asked if he could borrow the car for the day because he needed to do some shopping and pick up his wife from her job, and of course he would pick up the kids from school and could I do without it? I agreed through gritted teeth, because it was a perfectly reasonable request and it was ridiculous to say I wanted the option of climbing in my car and going down to the village Co-op to buy tea and I’d needed to go to the bank, and I’d already changed my plans for the morning. Grrrr. He would without hesitation do the same for us, indeed he took the boys to football last night, but I am surfeiting on the requirement to be good rather than my normal mean selfish self. Enough already.
Friday, 11 March
Good deed no. 70: took the expat man back to the garage to pick up the car.
Saturday, 12 March
This afternoon was Lily’s daughter’s fifth birthday party in the local soft-play area. Lily had invited the entire school because she hates the idea of anyone feeling left out, so despite the fact I hate with a vengeance all children’s birthday parties, even my own children’s (perhaps especially my own children’s), as my good deed I helped to stuff party bags with all sorts of Disney pencils and blue whale rubbers and fun-sized sweeties and keyring torches that work once and never again. I also mopped down some child who’d banged her head on the slide. She was all hot and sweaty in a gingham flannel blouse with big glassy tears running down her flushed cheeks, so she sat on my knee and I poured blackcurrant juice into a pink plastic cup and wiped away the tears, and together we decided if she took off her vest she could perhaps manage one more go on the slide. What solitary thing in this entire world is more useful than comforting a child?
Good deed no. 71.
Sunday, 13 March
Good deed no. 72: rang my friend Kirsty, who had a knee replaced this week, to check on her recovery.
Monday, 14 March
Have bought up the domain names for the Jam Jar Army because if you do not have a domain name, you do not exist. They cost over £100 – trying to get this charity initiative off the ground is actually costing me money. I’d have been better writing a cheque for £100 and giving it to charity – it would certainly be less bother.
Good deed no. 73: email exchange with an old friend as I continue trying to get Karl work experience with the local Beeb (she’s warning it doesn’t look good).
Tuesday, 15 March
More than twenty years ago, Kirsty and I were journalists together on the North-East morning paper the Journal. Briefly she and Al were flatmates, and she is godmother to my eldest boy. She has to be one of the bravest people I know. Although she is only in her mid-forties, she has lupus, which in her case means she needs to walk with a stick and has already had one hip replacement, she is due another, and last week she had her knee replaced. We drove up to see her in Edinburgh, though I resisted looking at the scar and the staples up and down her leg on the grounds of acute squeamishness. I have never heard her complain about anything, about any operation or medication or crimp to life. Indeed, she smiles more than most and laughs easily. If that was me, if I had suffered like she suffers, if they stood close enough, I’d hit people with my stick.
Good deed no. 74.
Wednesday, 16 March
I checked my emails only late last night because of the trip to visit Kirsty in Edinburgh, and when I did, I found one from Karl telling me he didn’t think he could go down to London for next week’s work experience with LBC after all because of ‘his work’. (At least he didn’t say ‘career’, because this is a part-time gig in the fish and chippie, which hasn’t opened for the season yet.) I had that urge I keep getting, to beat my own head against my desk repeatedly. Instead, I drew a few deep breaths and rang him to explain that no, he couldn’t put it off for a month till it was more convenient, it was now or never, and that the lads who owned the chip shop would understand, and had he changed his mind about wanting a job in radio? (No, he hadn’t.) Then I talked to his mam, and she said they would come up this afternoon.
When they arrived, his mam said Karl had got very nervous about the work experience and was shy. There was a man at my kitchen table – tall and blond and powerfully built – who could push down a tree, wrestle a bear, join the Army. But his mother sees a boy who isn’t ready to eat up the world with a wooden spoon just yet. I speak softly. I say, ‘It’ll be fine’ – because it will be fine. Together, we draw up another list for him of how to behave at the radio station and we practise shaking hands – my hand tiny in his – and I tell him to smile and buy kippers and bring them down to London as gifts. We also talk about whether he could go to college, and the need to write letters to the local stations, and to take advice from all and sundry in the business and work for free. I have no idea how to get him a start in radio.
Good deed no. 75.
Thursday, 17 March
Around seven o’clock in the evening, my eldest announced he had a cake sale on for Comic Relief and needed cakes or biscuits and they ‘had to be made and not bought’. Where is that commandment written down? How are they even smart enough to realize that particular short cut is available, moreover that the likelihood is we are taking it? I resisted telling the kitchen dictator from the 1950s that more notice might have been good; instead, I started rooting around the fridge for ingredients. The eggs were only three days out of date and didn’t smell, and there was just about enough butter to do the job if I wasn’t too bothered by accurate measurements, so as my good deed I managed thirteen completely flat lemon-flavoured buns and a packet of chocolate chip cookies; and despite the fact my eldest isn’t keen on lemon cake and the cookies broke the rules, he had the good grace to tell me the thirteenth taster bun was yummy, so I didn’t mind too much.
Good deed no. 76.
Friday, 18 March
Comic Relief makes it remarkably easy to do a good deed. All I had to do was go along to school for the children’s talent show and keep sticking my hand in my pocket. It was worth it: my little girl was ridiculously cute dressed as a ladybird in a frothy red and black-spotted tulle skirt and red and black silk wings, clutching a microphone and telling jokes in a hushed and tiny voice, all of which she started with ‘I say, I say, I say …’ My favourite was:
I say, I say, I say, how do you make a sausage roll?
I don’t know, how do you make a sausage roll?
Push it.
Although I’m counting going along to the talent show as my good deed, in reality my good deed was probably listening to the ladybird practise the joke thirty-seven times last night as she stood on the kitchen table. My daughter is frighteningly quick. The other day I lay with her before she went to sleep and she started sing-songing, ‘You-love-me-the-best. You-love-me-the-best.’ I am scrupulously fair in my dealings with the kids, and because they are so different that is easier than it might otherwise be, so I said, ‘That’s not how motherhood is, darling,’ and she said, ‘Well, that’s how it is in childhood.’ I am already dreading her adolescence.
Good deed no. 77.
Saturday, 19 March
My best friend from school, Sophie, invited me to go with her to a spa near where she lives in the Midlands. Sophie, who has cropped blonde hair, green cat’s eyes and is generally horribly fit and trim, is still recovering from the Lyme disease she got paintballing in Sweden. As part of her recovery, she has been coming here to use the gym. Lyme disease is horrible. No one could figure out what was wrong with her at first – not even the consultant who scanned her brain. I diagnosed it from googling her symptoms and comparing the bull’s-eye rash on her arm (which came from a tick bite) with particularly gory images from the Net. I should have been a doctor.
My mother cherished her sisters in the way that I cherish my friends. At night when I can’t sleep, sometimes I turn them over in my head, admiring their lustre, kindnesses, comforts, thinking on their confidences. The older I get, the more I believe true friendship is an orchid of rare beauty that grows in the darkest and most unlikely of places. We have no right to it, no claims on it; it does not bloom because we tell it to. Friendship is a flower we cannot own and scarcely deserve, but which we search for, lonely through the swamps, and when we discover it, pluck it and pin it to our grateful heart. Sophie and I have been friends for more than thirty years and I don’t think we look any different from how we were at school, aside from the fact she played squash at university, chose not to ruin her body in childbirth, has a hard-muscled personal trainer, runs half-marathons and goes on walking holidays. Admittedly body-wise, that’s all beginning to tell and it’s not a story I like hearing.
Hoar Cross Hal
l is based in some red-brick Gothic pile, splattered with photographs of soap actresses. Coronation Street’s Janice Battersby has stayed here, and a pretty black girl who used to work in the street’s knicker factory. There is a picture of Julie Goodyear, who was Bet the barmaid, and a particular favourite is Deirdre Barlow pictured with her husband, both in white towelling robes. I have felt an affinity with Deirdre Barlow ever since I was crossing the road and a white van man leaned out of his window and yelled ‘Oy, Deirdre!’, possibly because I was wearing glasses, but it might have been because he sensed I trailed a wake of grief, marital shenanigans and domestic chaos wherever I went.
Tragically, no one famous is here this weekend, although Sophie tugged at my sleeve at one point when Stephen Joynes, the owner of the spa, walked through the restaurant. He wrote a book, which he leaves in the bedrooms, about his journey from chip van to the owner of a stately-home-cum-spa. In it he advises, ‘Justify the faith others have in you,’ which should be a fridge magnet – I’d buy one. When we were here before, Sophie kept dragging me outside on yomps through the woodland, which entirely defeats the object of a spa in my opinion. Since she is not yet at full capacity, she reluctantly mooches into a lounge full of women in white towelling robes and shiny faces for peppermint tea.
‘I’ll help you with this Jam Jar Army thing,’ she says, wrinkling her nose at the peppermint tea, and I almost inhale carrot cake and lemon frosting into my lungs in excitement.
I do not think I have ever done anything without Sophie supporting me. Supporting my Jam Jar Army effort is particularly good because she is a very successful businesswoman with her own car-cleaning products company (with sales of around £20m), while I cannot add up. I might very well need her if we have to persuade a bank to help us with the collecting and counting the jam jar money.