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“Yes, you have.” Auntie Jack points at his plate with her fork. “You can see it right there. It’s just the potatoes absorbed a lot of it.”
—but we got there in the end. And we can laugh about it now. Just like we laugh about the time Jonathan threatened to fire me and my whole team a few weeks before Christmas. I think it helps that we’re both quite awful people.
Across the table, Ralph is reading a joke from a cracker. “What’s Santa’s wife’s name?”
“M—” Barbara Jane begins, but Nana Pauline points a warning finger at her.
“No guessing. Barb, tell her she’s not to be guessing.”
“You’re not to be guessing,” Nanny Barb agrees. “I don’t know what it is with young people today.”
“Think they know everything.” Nana Pauline turns to Ralph. “They do, don’t they, they think they know everything.”
“They do,” echoes Ralph and, for that matter, everybody in the room over the age of sixty.
Barbara Jane rolls her eyes. “I don’t think I knoweverything. I just think I know the punch line to a very old Christmas cracker joke.”
Since I’ve been with Jonathan, I’ve got very used to this dynamic. I’m still not quite as part of it as everybody else, but then some of them have had a fifty-year head start, and I’m definitely getting there.
“Just let him read it out,” Auntie Jack tells us. “It’ll be quicker in the long run.”
I’ve got a sinking feeling it won’t be.
“Mary,” says Ralph.
“Is that it?” I ask.
He looks down at the scrap of paper he’s holding pinched between thumb and forefinger. “Yes.”
“Are youabsolutelysure?” I’m doing my best to nudge him without sounding too much like a back-seat joke-teller.
Nanny Barb is shaking her head. “Jokes have got very strange these days.”
“Is it”—Anthea raises a hand from the other end of the table—“is it possiblyMary Christmas?” I’ve only known her a year but I’m amazed how much she’s changed between sixteen and seventeen. She’s not much taller but she’s cut her hair short and got really into nail art and '70s psychedelia.
Ralph looks down again. “Oh hang on, I had my thumb over half of it.” He moves the obscuring digit. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well, I still don’t get it,” grumbles Nanny Barb.
“What’s not to get?” I ask. “It’sMary Christmas.”
“Is it because of the Bible?” Les wonders aloud. “Y’know, because she was Jesus’s mum.”
“No,” I try, “it’s because it sounds likeMerry Christmas.”
Les looks contemplative, which to be fair is very much his resting look. “It don’t, though, does it?”
“I will admit,” I admit, “it doesn’t work perfectly in my accent. Like I think you have to really imagine stretching out the e inMerry. Like, y’know,Meeeery Christmas.”
“You see when Quincey told this joke,” Barbara Jane cuts in—Quincey was her ex, the Texan oil feller—“it worked perfectly.What’s Santa’s wife’s name?” she asks in what I assume is an okay Texas accent. “Mary Christmas.”
“Bloody liberty that is,” Nana Pauline tells the whole room, “charging us good money for jokes as only work in a foreign accent.”
Jonathan gets up from the table. “And on that note, I’m going to get Granddad some more gravy. Does anybody else want anything from the kitchen?”
“Tell you what, I’ll come help you carry.” I don’t think he’ll need it, but it’ll be nice to get a moment to ourselves a whole six feet away from the family. As we’re slipping back into the kitchen, Jonathan’s hand still on the small of my back like it lives there, my work phone goes. “Fuck,” I say, “sorry, I’ll tell 'em to piss off.”
“It’s fine.” Jonathan grins at me. “I can take the weight of a jug of Bisto.”
