Anyway, that cup of tea definitely rates as a good deed because I really didn’t want to give it up. Plus it was in church so it should be double points. I only hope God was watching and it absolved me from the sin of sliding the iced biscuits the kids brought over for us into my handbag. It’s bad enough having to eat your own children’s iced biscuits, but my heart sinks when we’re expected to eat biscuits iced, and I suspect licked, by other people’s children.
Good deed no. 91.
Saturday, 2 April
My mother has managed to wreck her back again. She is eighty-two. Last July, she had a major back operation and had two shunts put in her spine to separate the vertebrae and help her with the pain. What does she do a few days ago? Move a television with my dad. A television. At eighty-two, this lady with macular degeneration who can’t hear and has chronic rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and osteoporosis is shifting TVs around the garage. The sheer stupidity of it infuriates me. But you can’t say that when they are eighty-two and come on the phone weeping, having done themselves a severe mischief; you have to say, ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ when what you want to say is, ‘Are you completely mental?’ As a consequence of the removals escapade, she had to have an X-ray yesterday and we’ve all had to drive down to Yorkshire to see what state she’s in and cheer her up.
Good deed no. 92.
Sunday, 3 April
Rang Karl to find out how his work experience went with LBC, having sent him an email trying to find out but to no avail. He was out, but his mam described him as blank with fear that morning as they walked through London to the radio station. When he came out for lunch, though, his face was lit up, and by the end Karl was buzzing with the day, told her it had been ‘fantastic’ and was full of the fact the guys there had toured him round, and talked to him, and put him in the newsroom for all the Global Radio stations that operate out of the building. Iain Dale had been on holiday but they had looked after him brilliantly even so. Karl’s mam also said – and bearing in mind this is a lad who the week before had lost his nerve about going down at all – that later, walking down a busy Oxford Street, suddenly he was way ahead of her, unconcerned by the crowds, by the strange city, he had grown in confidence and was walking tall. This is what the old can do for the young: extend a hand in invitation, make a few minutes for a conversation, give them courage.
Good deed no. 93: wrote a press release for a local nursery after a brilliant Ofsted inspection report, despite getting home at 10.30 p.m. from a weekend visiting my sick mother and having to put three shattered, grumpy children to bed first.
Monday, 4 April
I was mulling over whether I have changed at all since starting my good-deedery, whether I’m generally more courteous, let people in front of me in queues, give more to charity; indeed, whether I am more thoughtful and an all-round better human bean. Then I had one of those days where I decided what I really needed was a sign to hang on the door that reads, ‘Fuck Off – I’m busy’.
So far, today:
The expat man rang three times – the first time at eight o’clock in the morning wanting to print something out because he hasn’t got a printer installed yet. I said no.
Then:
He turned up unexpectedly with the South African money he wants changing into sterling.
Then:
He turned up again with his wife for a cup of coffee.
A mate of mine turned up.
The chap who used to cut our grass turned up at the back of the house.
Then he turned up at the front of the house. (Occasionally he likes to come and potter round the place with a dog, but he informed me the dog he has been walking died. Usually I would have made him a cup of tea, but I couldn’t this time because I was up to my neck with the expats.)
Also today:
The son of a former elderly neighbour we used to live next to in London rang to tell us his mother had died. She had cancer and, it turned out, asbestos poisoning. Her husband worked in demolition and there’s a chance she breathed in the dust when she washed his work clothes. She was a tiny little thing and so kind, I’d bring the children in to her and she’d always give them chocolate biscuits, which meant every time we passed her door the boys would drag me over to knock on it for their Kit Kat fix.
Later:
I rang my mother to check on her.
She rang me back to complain that some oik had pinched her big plant pot from the front of the house and left an empty tinnie in its place. While she was talking to me, she suddenly realized it would have fingerprints on it so she starts calling to my dad to go out to the bin and bring the tinnie back in and bag it up so they can give it to the police. She watches far too much CSI. She also wanted me to chase up her X-ray results, so:
I rang the doctor for her.
Then I rang the hospital, trying and failing to get her results.
As I’m walking out to get the kids from school:
My Irish aunt whose husband has just died rang wanting a phone number from me, I had a brief talk to her but it wasn’t long enough, so:
I rang her back in the evening.
Finally:
A friend rang whose pregnant daughter is sick in hospital with a suspected pulmonary embolism (which of course stirs up all the dead baby stuff for me).
Technically, I failed to let someone print something out, failed to give someone a cup of tea and failed to put my mother’s mind at rest. Then again I did my share of listening. Is listening enough? Sometimes, it’s all you’ve got.
Good deed no. 94.
Tuesday, 5 April
Is it still a good deed if you have no choice in the doing of it?
I had my good deed all set for today because the expat man wanted to borrow the car again while his is in for a service. Then I was at the Co-op and the lady was ringing my things through – a grand total of £83.64 – and she asked whether I had my ‘divi card’ and I didn’t. Usually we run through a rigmarole of pretending I will put the points on my card at a future date. Really I just use the card as a passport in the local Co-op shops – ‘I may not talk like you, but look, I have a dividend card.’ Instead of getting to pretend this time, though, the assistant cut to the chase and called out to the queue of fellow shoppers, ‘Anyone got their Co-op card?’ and a grey-haired lady smacked hers up in the air and zip-zip-ta-ever-so she got my points and I never even got a say in it. Maybe I encountered the assistant at a particularly seize-the-day moment, because she told me she is sixty on Sunday. ‘You wonder what you’ve done with your life,’ she said mournfully. ‘In your case, given away my divi points,’ I felt like saying.
Good deed no. 95.
Wednesday, 6 April
Went round to Diane’s for coffee, and I had hardly sat down when she started up about her little one refusing to use her bed at night, sleeping on the floor rather than using the bed. Diane is like me: she expects her children to do as they are told, and it is coming as a shock to her that autism doesn’t play by the house rules. She looked tired and she never looks tired, never allows herself to look tired. The little one had gone into a blue funk last night and ended up curled up by the childproof gate they have at her bedroom door. An official diagnosis is a slow process, but Diane said the good news was that an educational psychologist is coming into school alongside a speech therapist – still, she was pale with violet shadows under those brown eyes.
The doctor rang about my mother’s results. Courtesy of the osteoporosis, she has fractured a vertebra. At least that’s their explanation for the pain. It was incredibly kind of her to ring. She explained that with osteoporosis, my mother might have fractured it sneezing – let alone moving a television. But she said it should mend within three months, and if not, they can inject bone cement in there. That has to hurt.
Good deed no. 96: swept out mouse traps for neighbours.
Thursday, 7 April
Originally I was going to count having a little boy over to tea while his mother was in hospital as my
good deed; instead, I am counting the fact that I sent my own flowers to the school for another mother whose birthday I knew it was. Earlier this morning, I bumped into her and her friend at the supermarket. It was excellent timing. In one of those dinky trolleys, I had a bottle of what looked like champagne in it with the gold foil-wrapped cork (which made me look like I had fun), a couple of broadsheets (which made me look intelligent), rocket and steak (which made me look like I had money), a bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling water (which made me look like I had too much money) and some lush, fat and scented, mauve and shell-pink stocks (because I’m worth it). It was one of those shops you have never, ever done when you meet someone you know. Usually, when you meet someone and they glance into your impossibly full trolley, what they see is the basic range (because you’re broke), toilet roll (you’re human, for God’s sake), sanitary towels and tampons (likewise), white bread, cheese and onion crisps and HP sauce (because that’s your sandwich of the moment), lady razors (because you’re hairy) and too much alcohol (because you need it).
Having finished admiring my trolley, she mentioned she was in town for her birthday. If I’d thought of it I would have given her the flowers then and there, but the idea didn’t come to me till I got home. I am worried that the flowers won’t last: her youngest son was going to bring them home on the school bus (which probably means she will end up with a fistful of warm and grubby blossom and a bunch of green fishbones. It still counts).
Good deed no. 97.
Friday, 8 April
I was about to sit down and write a job reference for someone as my good deed when the chap who used to cut the grass for us appeared, having lost his dog. Technically, it’s his sister-in-law’s rather than his dog, and she has only had it two weeks. They got it from a dog shelter, and he was taking it for a walk when it slipped its leash and vamoosed. I strapped my youngest son into the car and we went out looking.
Every two minutes, my youngest son pointed at a tree and shouted ‘Dog!’ very loudly in my ear. We kept stopping and climbing out and peering over five-barred gates into the fields and along the hawthorn hedges, yelling ‘Lola!’ very loudly, thereby infuriating all the sheep, who bleated furiously at us. I got as excited as my son when some animal appeared out of a ditch and started loping along the road ahead of us, but it turned out to be a hare. We were looking for a Great Dane crossed with a Rhodesian Ridgeback, so admittedly thinking the hare was the dog was a bit of a stretch, but I’m not very good with animals. We had no luck whatsoever, but as we arrived back home, Lola’s owner drew up at our house to thank us for our efforts, an enormous, smug, panting dog sitting upright on the back seat of her car.
‘You were gone ages,’ my husband said, putting his arm around me as Lola’s car pulled away.
Tired suddenly, I leaned into him. ‘Shaggy dog stories take time.’
‘Shame you weren’t the ones to find her, though,’ he said, and squeezed my shoulder in consolation that my good deed wasn’t as good as it might have been.
Lola gazed at us through the rear window of the retreating car.
‘That dog is only slightly smaller than me,’ I said. ‘She might have eaten me.’ I waved, but Lola didn’t wave back.
Good deed no. 98.
Saturday, 9 April
Went across to Diane’s farmhouse for dinner. It is without question my turn to return the favour, and I am so not doing it. I am doing good deeds, which is my get-out-of-jail-free card for dinner parties for the rest of the year.
Before we sat down at the table, we tripped out to the lambing sheds to feed the lambs who had been orphaned or who are triplets and do not get enough to eat. Hay bales wall the barn, and deep hay carpets the floor of the pens as the lambs bounce and bleat and mooch about together, the lucky ones with their mothers, the unlucky with their posse. A black-faced boy lamb called Titty kept knocking the feed bottle away from the less assertive lamb I was feeding, desperate to suckle at the rubberized tit in his slurping, burping eagerness for more warm milk. I have eaten a lot of lamb since I moved to Northumberland. Every now and then, I stop eating it. Usually after I have been over to Diane’s lambing sheds and watched my daughter bottle-feed woolly, warm-nosed, skinny-ribbed orphans.
Thank God tonight we were having venison and beef casserole (the beef butchered from Diane’s cows) with prunes. I have never felt guilty about eating a prune. Perhaps I would if I worked more with the elderly. I am, however, aware of the fact I am becoming obsessed by this good deeding. Shoot me, it is eating up my life. The doctors who had been there at New Year when I announced my resolution were round again, and conversation turned to people’s motivations for the deeds they do.
‘I singularly failed to give up coffee over Lent …’ I admitted as Diane offered coffees round once we had finished our hot chocolate puddings with their dark and liquid hearts, and I took my mug.
‘One day she managed,’ my husband chimed in from the end of the table. I ignored him.
‘… but I am slogging on with the good deeds and the kids actually seem interested, and they were one of the reasons I started doing it.’
Diane set the cheese plate off on its travels round the table and the pungent smell of Stilton slapped me across one side of the face and then the other, yelling ‘Eat me!’ I don’t eat cheese at dinner. It gives me bad dreams – dreams that I’m eating cheese at dinner.
‘I’ve worked out what it is to have a moral life,’ she said, ‘because I’ve got children. Because of them, I am much more genuinely good in my thoughts and in my actions than I would otherwise be. I know I need to be an exemplar because having the right values will help them in their adult life.’
Leaving aside whatever constraints evolution puts on our behaviour for a moment, is anyone motivated purely by the desire to help others or is there always something else involved: an example to the children, money, the desire for salvation, the feel-good buzz that comes with giving? In the scheme of things, my own good deeds may not add up to a peck of virtue, but I want to believe in the right choices, in self-sacrifice and goodness. In martyred virgin saints kissed and made better, in angels who enfold you in arms and radiance and snowy feathers, and in Santa Claus, a lightning bolt in one scarlet-mittened hand, a refreshing Coca-Cola in the other.
Amid a certain amount of eye-rolling, Diane has said I can buy a lamb from her to save from the broth-pot. Perhaps she’ll let me have Titty? With a name like that, he is due a bit of luck.
Good deed no. 99: wrote a job reference for someone.
Sunday, 10 April
My 100th good deed. Glorious sunny day. Still no sign of karma. Car smells of chicken poop, having been driven through a slurry slick on the narrow country roads. I can’t decide which I hate most – chickens or farmers.
Good deed no. 100: picked up litter on beach.
THE BELIEVER
Perhaps I could take a short cut to being a better person if I just believed harder in the whole God thing – like Cryssie’s mother, Andrea. Cryssie is sixteen and has congenital myotonic dystrophy, a disease whereby her muscles waste, leaving her with difficulties walking and moving, problems in speaking or indeed moving any of her facial muscles as well as moderate learning difficulties.
So here I am with all my weaknesses and myriad moral failings. Here I am, this flawed person living a comfortable life in a nice house with a nice husband and nice kids, having it easy enough to indulge in the luxury of a spot of self-improvement but who doesn’t fancy Pilates. A good deed a day. What is the best that can happen? Three hundred and sixty-five good deeds, and maybe, if I am lucky, I am a slightly better person at the end of it. Unlikely, but possible. So I collect my good deeds and, like any collector, I am acquiring the odd favourite, ones I take out and buff with a lint-free cloth, bringing them to a high coppery burnish and myself to a righteous climax. But over the Sea of Moral Reality are those who don’t number their good deeds, because they are too busy living a ‘good’ life. The life of a carer. That of a mother
. That of Cryssie’s mother.
Andrea has the same haircut as Cryssie, cropped. Mothers quite often have the same haircut as their teenage daughters – sometimes I wonder if they are trying to make their daughter more like them, or if they are wanting to be more like their daughter. Andrea, however, takes devotion to a whole new level – devotion to her disabled kids and devotion to God. Her ‘Praise the Lord’ honesty about her Christian convictions always leaves me dazed; there is more certain faith in her sneeze than there is in the whole of me. She and her artist husband have three kids – each with their own needs, two of them with massive physical disabilities. Then again, reason dictates that if faith is what drives you, you cannot sit back and do nothing with your life.
I asked her whether she and her husband regarded what they do for Cryssie and her equally disabled brother (whom they adopted as babies) as ‘good’, whether it was part of their own striving to be good people. She shook her head: ‘It is part of our attempt to live out our belief that we were created to love one another, created to be channels of love. How can you be that if you keep your love in and if you don’t share that with those people around you?’ There is a note of puzzlement in her voice that anyone would make a choice against love, against sharing what they have. I picture her garden, the richness of the soil into which her husband digs, planting fragile seedlings, growing row upon row upon row of green stuff, enough to feed a world, and I think how narrow and few some love, how little they grow in their own backyard.
A Year of Doing Good Page 10
