A Year of Doing Good

by Judith O'Reilly

  I have told her I want her to go away and finish writing a story. I have no idea how much she is absorbing. She nods a lot, but I can’t tell from her writing whether she’s getting what I’m saying. When I began teaching her she told me she wanted to write stories about dogs and cats. I asked her again today what she wanted to write and she said, ‘Stories about dogs and cats.’ I tried coaxing: ‘You’ve had a go at an adventure story and a ghost story and you’ve read all these other books now, is there anything else you might be thinking of writing about?’ She looked at me for a long moment and said, ‘Giraffes.’

  Good deed no. 258.

  Friday, 16 September

  Good deed no. 259: returned woman’s suitcase to her after she had left it at the café counter in Durham railway station – I knew she would. I was right behind her and in a steaming hurry and she couldn’t have been slower if she tried. The pull-along bag had its handle fully extended and kept falling over, so she plonked it against the sandwich display before she bought her coffee and a whole selection of food, paying for it with a card which for some reason took the attentions of both assistants behind the counter. Then she walked away. Piously, I wheeled it over to her as she stood with her coffee and her food and her handbag and her other bags, and instead of saying thank you she just said, ‘Oh. My. God’ in a horrified way. ‘You’re welcome,’ I said.

  Saturday, 17 September

  On the way down to the mini and junior Great North Run, I asked the children how their good deeds had gone this week. The eldest claimed he had no memory of any such conversation over breakfast or the challenge ever being set, although my eight-year-old boy and my little girl said they had both been kind to the younger children. Then my eldest said, without lifting his head from his iPod, ‘But we are doing the Great North Run, so give us a break,’ which was true.

  Watching them run inspires me. Not just my kids – all of them: those grinning, tiny, pink-winged fairies running alongside a huffing, puffing daddy; cowgirls in glittering Stetsons; three-legged teenage racers, their arms wrapped around one another, a paper explanation of her fund-raising pinned to one girl’s T-shirt: ‘I’m doing this for my aunty’. Can that aunty see her do this? Is she proud? If she can’t, I’ll be proud on her behalf. Proud too of those kids in wheelchairs pushed up steep banks by gritty mums and dads – faces ablaze with sweat and loyalty; a teenage boy with muscular dystrophy surrounded by his family urging him on, willing him on, as he leaned into his walking frame, frail legs twisted under him, moving on and on to the finish line. The generosity, the energy, the purity of the young. Their willingness to own up to their love; their readiness to struggle, to climb the hills and make it to the end for us. This week my children – all those children – they did enough.

  Good deed no. 260: facilitated £250 in sponsorship for the hospice through the Great North Run.

  Sunday, 18 September

  Good deed no. 261: brought along an apple pie to the village priest’s retirement do.

  Monday, 19 September

  Good deed no. 262: mentored the media student on behaviour and approach during her work experience. Best advice: get everyone coffee, get everyone lunch, get there early, leave late, take out the nose stud and don’t sleep with anyone unless you have to.

  Tuesday, 20 September

  Karl, my radio wannabe, has finally been back in touch asking me to help with his revised CV (which I asked for in February) and an application letter, having stumbled across something on the Internet about a radio work-experience programme for students. (We’re ignoring that bit on the grounds he does a programme for community radio, which is far more important than being a student.) Where has he been all this time?

  Good deed no. 263: worked on radio wannabe’s CV.

  Wednesday, 21 September

  I got quite low this morning trying to add the final details to Karl’s CV. He had tried his very hardest to lay it out properly and make the most of what he has, but with the best will in the world there is only so much you can do with three Cs, three Ds and an E at GCSE, along with three jobs in kitchens, all of which appeared to involve a great deal of washing-up – the most recent in a fish and chip shop. Al’s suggested I say he has experience in the oil industry and not mention that it’s vegetable oil.

  Head in hands, a black coffee in front of me, I was sitting at my desk groaning when I idly clicked on the Internet radio to hear his weekly programme. Sometimes the Portland grey clouds scud away and leave the canvas sky to a glorious cadmium-yellow sun. It turns out I was worrying about him dropping out of a construction course when he is downright great on the radio. It takes this shy, lummocky kid who is the size of a haystack all his time to meet your eye when he is talking to you, and he has a voice to melt butter. Broad Geordie, bass, mellow – what’s more, he makes jokes. Revelation. Inspiration. I did a complete rewrite of yesterday’s CV and I said in his application letter: ‘I want to stop being the guy listening to a voice on the radio while he washes up stacks of greasy plates in a stainless-steel sink – because I want to be the voice he’s listening to.’

  Good deed no. 264.

  Thursday, 22 September

  Had Cryssie for her writing lesson, and if she didn’t write the best thing she has done for me so far. Must be the weather. It was quite surreal. I had given her an exercise to write a story starting with the words ‘Everything was fine till I opened the box …’ We talked about Pandora and what might be in the box, and then I read what she had written:

  The box sat on the windowsill beside my dad’s cup of cold tea. It was painted all the colours of the rainbow and on its lid, a swan swam in a glittering lake in front of a palace. It was the prettiest thing Uncle Jake had ever given me.

  The box drew me towards it. As I crossed the room, my legs began to tremble. I knelt on the window seat and slid the screwdriver into the lock – it didn’t take more than a minute before I heard a click. Biting my lip, I used my finger to ease up the lid and out jumped King Henry the Eighth.

  Henry VIII? I didn’t see that coming.

  I’m not counting the writing lesson as my good deed for today, though. Daniel came up for lunch and a walk on the beach. Lunch was garlicky and the beach was sunny and empty and sad. A year has passed since his wife died, and his contemporaries have begun to sicken and to die. A couple of weeks ago he went to three funerals in five days, which seems to be pushing it. First you’re invited to weddings; then to dinner parties, where talk is of schools and houses; then second weddings or silver weddings graciously announcing ‘no presents necessary’; then gold weddings, when you hold each other like precious china cups full of hot china tea and waltz precariously around a church hall; then a domino spiral of funerals, one after the other after the other, all the way onwards to your own oblivion. How do we all stay sane when confronted with the inevitability of our ending, when we are destined to lose those we love the best?

  Daniel, who is Jewish, said he was going home to light a Yahrzeit candle, which you light at sunset on the anniversary of the death of your loved one and keep alight for twenty-four hours to mark their passing. I told him I’d do the same in my house at the same moment in memory and friendship – that way he knows he’s not alone. He won’t remember as the blue-tipped match flares, as he touches it to the wick, as the candle takes the flame. Perhaps, though, he might remember hours after, as he walks to the kitchen to pour a solitary glass of red wine and gazes into the flame. Perhaps he’ll think, ‘Outside this glass window, across the darkness and the miles, there is family, love and friendship, and other candles burn.’

  Good deed no. 265.

  Friday, 23 September

  Not being Jewish, I hadn’t entirely got round the implications of keeping a candle alight for twenty-four hours. I had the perfect candle, thick and gold and chunky, in a hurricane lantern. All well and good through the evening right up to bedtime, at which point I’ve turned all the lights off downstairs, I’ve locked the doors, I’ve double-checked that I�
��ve locked the doors (I get neurotic when it is just me and the kids) and I’m standing in my kitchen holding the hurricane lamp with its golden candle burning steadfastly at its glass-walled heart, my three sleeping cherubs safe in their beds upstairs, and I think, ‘I am about to keep a naked flame alight all night, only for the house to burn down, and for me, and more importantly my three children, to be burnt to charcoal toast.’ I ended up carrying the hurricane lamp upstairs and putting it in the ceramic bathtub for the night, while removing all bubble bath, bath scrubs and flannels from the vicinity in case a shampoo decided to commit suttee, throw itself at the flame and ignite the entire upstairs in a smooth-as-silk, diamond-bright, not-a-split-end-in-sight multicultural inferno. I didn’t sleep much.

  I had a full-on day for good deeds. The three-day food festival, which has kindly agreed to adopt the hospice and the Jam Jar Army as its charity, began in the local market town. (The organizer is married to the editor of the Gazette, who himself happens to be on the organizing committee – thank you, God.) Consequently, I was standing in the marketplace with a yellow bucket as shoppers ambled around stalls of game, and pistachio ice cream, and rye bread, and bags of spices, and jars of cookie mixture, standing there for an hour – repeat, an hour – without so much as a penny piece going into my bucket.

  Momentarily hopeful, I shook my bucket in a bid to draw attention while a well-dressed, middle-aged man in a sage-green wool coat with a sage-green velvet collar and his attractive wife in a well-cut white wool coat walked by … and utterly ignored me. I was seriously considering tearing off the seal and placing the bucket over my head to hide my embarrassment when a nice woman dug around in her purse and then her husband dug around in his pocket for some change and I had my very first customers. Time passed very slowly. I smiled, trying to look cheerful, but I did not feel cheerful. During the next half an hour, eight people gave me money. Unless people are going to give, they do not meet your eye; instead their gaze slides over you as if you were slippery with baby oil. A young girl approached me with her purse already in her hand. She was probably around nineteen or twenty. ‘I haven’t got any money,’ she said as she rooted around for whatever coins there were in her plastic purse, and slid them one after the other into the small slot in the bucket lid. Now this young girl without money, who was giving me what she didn’t have, this girl met my eye.

  Good deed no. 266.

  Saturday, 24 September

  My back is killing me. After I finished yesterday’s stint with a bucket, I bumped into the incredibly stressed-looking organizer of the food festival and asked if she needed any help. I spent the best part of three hours hefting tables around the hall where they were to host a plush ‘Dine with Novelli’ dining experience with Michelin-starred celebrity chef Jean-Christophe Novelli. (Tickets £50 a head.) Once I finished hefting tables, I moved seamlessly on to arranging chairs, getting rid of surplus chairs, setting out champagne flutes, polishing wine glasses, distributing menus and titivating velvet curtains. Naturally enough, the thought never crossed my mind that I wasn’t even going to the dinner. Not once.

  Good deed no. 267: hospitality to friends after they had dropped off their daughter at university.

  Sunday, 25 September

  I received a panicky email from Karl about the website for his work-experience application: ‘It says my computer has committed a security violation and that means I can’t get the email address.’ I sent a calming response carefully advising he print out the letter and the CV, ring the HQ to confirm the name and company address it’s to go to, then send it by recorded delivery to said address (not forgetting to enclose his show-reel). If I die before they get to this stage in their lives, I sincerely hope someone goes to this much trouble for my kids.

  Good deed no. 268.

  Monday, 26 September

  Today I went to the local middle school to help an English teacher run a lunchtime club for young journalists. He went round the table asking them to talk about their ideas for articles, and one pupil suggested a piece on the Northumberland bird club whose members bring along dead birds they’ve found to the monthly meetings. The dead bird society – love it.

  Good deed no. 269.

  Tuesday, 27 September

  A couple of weeks ago, I popped into the Salvation Army shop to volunteer my services and the manager agreed to have me in for a couple of weeks. Then she rang me and said I’d have to delay it a fortnight because she was going on holiday and I needed training. So this morning I went along to the shop all excited and smiley (having had to completely floor the car after dropping the kids at school), and she said I was actually due in yesterday. I explained that I’d thought the arrangement was for today and tomorrow and Friday, and she said no, it had definitely been yesterday, and she couldn’t fit me in the rest of the week (bearing in mind this is free labour I’m offering her for three whole days), but I could come back next week. Fair enough, I completely cocked up the day I was due in, but she was having this conversation with me as she was hanging jumpers, and you don’t like to say, ‘Look, pet, it’s not that difficult to hang a jumper, is it? Exactly how much training do I need here?’

  When I got back home in an extremely bad mood, I rang the hospice to check on the amount of money the Jam Jar Army had made during the food festival: £2,000 – how amazing is that? (On the upside we now stand at around £5,500, which is halfway to the target. On the downside we have one week to go till our deadline. Bollocks to the deadline.) My bucket, of course, made all the difference – all £7.03 of difference. It turns out that more than a grand of the total came courtesy of celebrity chef Novelli, who has a cookery school and suggested auctioning three places on courses – how extraordinarily kind of him.

  Good deed no. 270: wrote an email to a jam manufacturer asking for matched funding for the Jam Jar Army. No reply.

  Wednesday, 28 September

  Good deed no. 271: picked up Lily’s little one and took her to the beach.

  Thursday, 29 September

  Summer was lousy. Grey and miserable and windy and wet. Suddenly, though, we have balmy sunshine and blue skies and barbecues on the beach. Bliss. It was so sunny that I contemplated teaching Cryssie outside today, but it was slightly too damp first thing this morning. She has been reading The Hobbit and I set her the task of writing a story with the first line ‘I had never met such a grumpy dwarf – thinking about it, I had never met a dwarf at all …’ I figured she would do me an adventure story or a fairy story, but instead she wrote a piece all about how the dwarf was grumpy because he didn’t have a job and he had a small family to feed, so he went to a job centre and talked about getting a job in a supermarket and then he went to a pet shop and got the job in a pet shop and cuddled the puppies and the kittens. I asked her why she had written about the dwarf getting a job, and she said she had a job working in a school library one morning a week and she had been thinking about it. The story plodded along and I was pondering on the fact she wasn’t getting what I keep saying about ‘showing, not telling’ and the need to have paragraphs, and wondering how come she didn’t write about dragons and swords. It came to me that it wasn’t the story that was the problem – I was the problem. I was reading it all wrong. It wasn’t a fairy story; this was a real-life story about not having enough money, about being different. It was a story about respect, the story of a massively disabled kid, someone who may look different to everyone else but who wants the same things – things like a job, a job where she can cuddle puppies and kittens and bring money home to her family.

  Good deed no. 272.

  Friday, 30 September

  Desperate to get out of harvest festival service this evening but stymied by the fact my daughter is playing a bunch of grapes, which is apparently a ‘very big part, Mummy’. My youngest son had drawn a picture of a crane driver transporting the grapes. He drew him with red hair and red eyes. ‘It’s Ron Weasley possessed by a demon,’ he told me with some pride.

  Good deed no. 273: mad
e tea for other people’s builders.

  Saturday, 1 October

  Bought a thriller for Merry. I only hope she isn’t using them to prop up a wobbly table. I have noticed she doesn’t always read them – maybe they are not to her taste at all? Perhaps I am only sending tokens of esteem, full of words – one-after-the-other-after-the-other, caught up between glossy covers. There are worse things to do.

  Good deed no. 274.

  Sunday, 2 October

  Some days you know why you married someone. Al came out of his office looking quietly stunned, and when I asked why, he said he had got incredibly uptight with some poor chap from BT about trying and failing to log into our account. He had forgotten his password, so the system had thrown up a security question: ‘What is your favourite name?’ He had tried his, he had tried mine, he had tried the kids – nothing. He had tried the guinea pigs – still nothing. He had run through Manchester United and his favourite cricketers of all time – still nothing. Fuming, he had rung BT. Somewhere in Mumbai, the phone was answered by a patient, pleasant man. My irascible husband explained the problem, and there was a tapping as the chap got into the account. ‘Does the word “bollocks” mean anything to you?’ the patient, pleasant chap asked my husband. ‘I beg your pardon?’ my husband said. The nice chap from Mumbai repeated himself: ‘Does the word “bollocks” mean anything to you?’ ‘I’m sorry?’ my husband said, and as he said it a distant bell began to ring. Bollocks? My husband, it turns out, when asked ridiculous security questions on the Internet, answers them like Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. He had informed BT his favourite name was ‘Bollocks’. I’m just glad that I took charge of naming the kids.