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“That seems very melodramatic.”
Barbara Jane raises her eyebrows, and this is a much more Jonathany gesture than the laughter. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re quite a melodramatic family, and I’m one of the more melodramatic members. I’ve been telling Johnny he’s going to die in his office and be found in the morning by the janitor since he was eleven.”
“That seems a bit rough.” Again, I don’t quite know what I’m saying because a week and a half ago I’d have agreed. “And from what I’ve heard, your love life isn’t exactly so rosy either.”
“My love life isfine,I assure you.”
“Haven’t you just got divorced?”
Now she’s laughing again. “Which has beenextremelygood for my love life.”
In the garden, Jonathan’s taken his jacket off and started sawing. I was right, it does look good on him.
“Are you absolutely sure,” asks Barbara Jane with what you might call an insinuating tone, “that you’re not dating him?”
So I bung the sandwiches at her and go do the washing up.
Cutting through the tree takes a while, and getting it inside and upright takes a while more. Barbara Jane’s gone to encourage-slash-annoy them, but I mainly stay in the kitchen, because I’m feeling a bit self-conscious. Eventually, though, I’m called through to the middle reception room to give my opinion.
My opinion, if I’m being totally candid, is that it looks a bit shit. And I don’t really want to say that but, from the expressions on everybody else’s faces, they’re all thinking the same thing.
“With a bit of tinsel,” Del’s saying, “it’ll be fine.”
“I think the problem”—Barbara Jane casts a critical eye over the scene—“is that the bottom half of a Christmas tree is the least interesting half of a Christmas tree. So what we’ve got here is ten feet of sad pine tetrahedron and nowhere to put the star.”
“You can put stars anywhere,” Del claims, on the basis of no evidence.
Jonathan’s standing there, full arms folded pose, looking sweaty and irate, which shouldn’t be as appealing as it is. But it is. “I’m not having this in my living room. It looks ugly and ludicrous.”
“Alright, alright,” Del begins. “We’ll—”
But Jonathan cuts him off. “No. First thing tomorrow, I’m getting someone to come round and remove this, and bring us an ordinary tree.”
It’s the right answer, and it’s the most sensible thing to do—at least if you’ve got Jonathan’s money—but I don’t think he realises how harsh he sounds. And for a belligerent man, Del looks amazingly crushed. And I sort of get where he’s coming from because, yes, this is rubbish. It’s just, after going all the way out there, and bringing it all the way back, and chopping it in half with a saw, and getting it into the front room, and standing it up, and moving the furniture because the branches go out too far, it feels like our rubbish. Well, I suppose their rubbish.
No, our rubbish. I mean, I was right there with them. And, between an overpriced pizza and an oversized Christmas tree, I’m starting to think I’ve had a really good day. Maybe the best day I’ve had in a long time. And I don’t want it to end with a sad old man and a team of interior decorators.
“What if,” I suggest, “we take a gander at it from the outside. It might look better through the window, especially if we imagine it all lit up.”
Jonathan does not seem like he’s up for this—I’m worried that any minute now he’s going to kick us all out of his house again—but the rest are surprisingly game. Or maybe not so surprisingly because they’re pretty game people.
We troop into the mess of the garden and stand by the top of the Christmas tree, looking at the bottom of the Christmas tree through the French windows. Honestly, it doesn’t look much better. It’s sort of a droopy wall of green with a confused cat giving it the stink eye from across the room.
Del heaves this defeated sigh. “Okay,” he says. “I see it. This might not have been the best idea.”
My eyes sort of sweep up the side of the house. The bedroomI’m staying in is right above the middle reception room, and it’s got the same sort of windows.
“What if,” I say, “we take the next bit and stick it in the room above and then we take the very top and stick it on the roof so it looks like the tree’s going all the way up through three storeys.”
Jonathan’s giving me a look that’s quite hard to describe. It’s about 20 percent betrayal, 10 percent resignation, 30 percent resentment, and 40 percent straight up what are you talking about? “Is your solution to my house being far too full of Christmas tree to make it even more full of Christmas tree?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s sort of the festive equivalent of when a movie’s so bad it gets good.”
“This is the Wagyu Beef pizza all over again, isn’t it?”
“Come on, what do you have to lose?”
“Time”—Jonathan’s ticking things off on his fingers—“dignity and, in the likely event one of us falls off the roof, our lives.”
