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“It isso nice”—Barbara Jane doesn’t yell, exactly, but she’s got her mam’s ability to make herself heard when she has to—“to have the family back together. When did we last go tree shopping together, Johnny?”
“More than a decade.” Jonathan also seems to be wantingto drown out any other bickering. “You were just finishing your A-levels.”
“No, I skipped that year because I was”—she casts a sideways glance at her dad—“revisingextremely hard.”
Jonathan gives that twitch of the lips that passes for a smile. “I thought you were at one of Abigail’s drug-fuelled sex parties.”
“That isslander. Abigail did not throw drug-fuelled sex parties. She threw parties at which some peoplehappenedto take drugs and some peoplehappenedto have sex.”
“Do you think,” says Les, “that you could maybe talk a bit less about drug-fuelled sex parties in front of your old man and granddad?”
“Iwasn’t talking about drug-fuelled sex parties,” Barbara Jane insists, “Johnnywas talking about drug-fuelled sex parties.Iwas talking about how nice it is to have us all back together doing something as a family.”
It feels a bit off to be included in theas a familywhat with me being a complete stranger and everything. But as Jonathan and Barbara Jane settle into a comfortable pattern of bickering while we make our way through London I find myself almost relaxing into it, like it’s as familiar to me as it is to them. Like I belong here, even if I don’t.
The place that’s apparently going to sell us our Christmas tree is way out on the edge of town—a proper farm with acres and acres of the things all growing wild and proper JCBs around to haul them. And, looking around, that seems to be the range. The trees here go fromvery bigthroughreally bigand intoabsolutely fucking massive. And as we pull to a stop at the end of a long drive, I don’t think I’ve seen a single one that’d fit in a living room.
Del gets out and runs over to greet yet another man in a flatcap, this one with a white goatee and his hair tied back in a short ponytail. “Got a good one for us?” he asks.
“Got a great one,” him with the ponytail replies. And he leads us in the direction of an already-felled, already-trussed-up-in-netting tree that’s got to be twenty foot if it’s an inch.
“Beautiful,” Del’s saying. “Perfect. Come on Jonathan, Sam, give us a hand.”
The rest of us just stare. “Is that not,” I try, “a little high for the ceilings?”
Barbara Jane adjusts her sunglasses, which are increasingly impractical now the light’s fading. “It’s a little high for theroof.”
“Just getting us our money’s worth.” Either from pride or genuine inability to see the downside, Del isn’t letting up on his enthusiasm for the twenty-foot Christmas tree plan.
“Nothing but the best for a mate,” him with the ponytail adds.
Les, however, isn’t having it. “It’ll not fit in the van.”
“It’ll fit on the top.” Del clearly has no time for Christmas tree dissent. “We’ll just strap it on.”
“Ah yes.” Barbara Jane smirks. “An enormous strap-on, just what Christmas needs.”
Jonathan heads forward. I’ll say this for him, he’s a hands on sort of lad. “I think it’ll take all of us. Probably three at the front two at the back?”
To my complete lack of surprise, Del goes for it like he’s not five foot six and seventy years old. I’m a bit reluctant to try and lift a tree with no training or supervision, but I figure if I don’t he’ll do himself an injury. Unfortunately all the three of us succeed in doing is rolling the thing sideways. You don’t expect a Christmas tree to be this heavy, except then you realise it’s an actual fucking tree.
“Les,” cries Del, “Barbara J. What are you doing just standing there?”
Barbara Jane pushes her sunglasses all the way onto the top of her head. “I can’t speak for Dad, but what I’m doing is watching three idiots trying to lift an entire Douglas fir onto a Ford transit van.”
“Well, if you two muck in, it’ll be five idiots,” replies Del.
And he has, I suppose, got a point, although I think I personally would have wanted him to address the idiot question over the headcount.
“Del.” Les is doing his calm thing again. And it’s about now that I realise it’s a calm that overlays a well of something that’s not exactly scary but is deep. “Just think about this. For once.”
Del lets go of the tree to argue, which means Jonathan and I have to put it down very, very fast. “I have thought about it. And what I’ve thought is, I might not be here next Christmas—”
“Granddad,” says Jonathan matter-of-factly, “you’re going to outlive all of us and you know it.”
“Either way,”—Del’s still not letting up—“it’s the first time we’ve been together as a whole family in years what with Barbara J being in America and Jonathan always being too busy and Theo and Kayla spending every other Christmas with his parents, and I wanted to do something special. And you, lad…” He’s wagging his finger now. It’s never good when people start wagging their fingers. “You are ruining it.”
Les doesn’t blink. “It won’t. Fit. In. The house.”
