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‘Come along, come along! Out, we’re already late!’ The normally military Mrs Mapleton only flaps and shoos, this morning, perhaps as a gift to the girls, perhaps as a testament to her seasonally christian spirit.
‘I need my gloves!’
‘Melanie, where’s my hat? Did you-‘
‘I’m wearing it, your ears don’t get cold like mine.’
‘Girls, come along! Gerry, the door- the keys-’
‘But my gloves! Martin, have you seen my gloves?’
‘No, Rosie. Here, take mine.’
And then they are out in the icy, wet, slushy, frosty, almost snowy London streets, following the crowds to the church. It is not entirely picturesque, but Martin delights in it nonetheless. He is a fantastically festive person, really, despite assumptions one might make about his profession, and he likes to see the beauty in all weathers. On their way, they shuffle arm in arm past the preachers who so often occupy the square.
Melanie groans, ‘seriously? They’re not taking a day off?’
‘This is their busiest day, I guess.’ Martin shrugs. He’s determined not to let them spoil the cheer of the day.
Helen leans over their shoulder. ‘It’d be like us taking the night off after the derby!’
Their laughter, round and full bodied with the chorus of the group, all unashamed of big laughs in public, catches the preacher’s attention. He turns and points.
‘Where’s your shame? Today of all days.’
Mapleton sticks her feet in the ground and her hands on her hips. ‘I’ll have you know we are on our way to celebrate in faith.’
‘God shuns you.’
Rolling his eyes, Martin joins Gerry and Melanie in their attempts to shuttle the others along. ‘Hasn’t he got bigger problems?’
‘You ought to be praying!’ The preacher shouts.
‘Oh we are,’ Georgie mutters darkly.
Melanie returns over their retreating backs. ‘Just with our knees up!’
The service is rather nice, all things considered. Martin doesn’t admit it, but he likes to sing sometimes, and the Christmas hymns are nice. He hums them all the way to Wandsworth, and not even a visit to his mother can dampen his spirits.
At home, he changes. Nothing with stiff boning, or that ties around the waist is suitable for a day relaxing at home. Merely a shirt, knitted woollen tunic with a hood to keep his shorn head warm, and a dressing gown over trousers. The utmost in comfort. As they all gather around for their Christmas breakfast, Martin throws on a blanket too for good measure, and shares one end with Georgie.
The table is laden, and the parlour looks sweet as anything too, decked out in crafted paper snowflakes and stars and chains.
‘Here,’ Melanie says with a mouthful of bread and marmalade. She hands her gift to Helen. ‘Here’s mine. Funded by the toffs who like to be taunted and accept only the cruellest.’
Everyone laughs. Their group tradition is a longstanding one, taught and passed on to any new recruits. Each person gets one present, for the person they are assigned based on a rule Gerry defines each year. Last year, it was the person nearest to whom you slept. The year before, it was the person whose birthday follows yours. The other rule doesn’t change: with each gift exchanged, the giver will, with varying degrees of truthfulness, tell the tale of the cull the funded it.
Gerry provides Rosie with new candles. ‘Provided with the generosity of Jurgen Lietner, once he was beaten into the ground for repeatedly trying to creep in here.’
A cheer goes up for that.
Georgie somehow gets Melanie in the exchange, again, to everyone’s half hearted grumbles. She sits up with playful pomp as she passes over sweet pears. ‘This, my darling, was paid for by the best cocksucking I ever gave.’
Then it is Martin’s turn to pull their gift from under the table. They hand the soap and lavender to Georgie. ‘Here, I hope you like it. I know you like when it isn’t drying. And it was funded by-‘
She arches her brow at him before he can finish. ‘Let me guess.’
The table choruses for her: ‘Jon.’ Raucous laughter sweeps them all. They rock back and forth in their seats, smacking the table.
It is, unfortunately for the glare Martin is trying to level, infections. ‘Stop...’ He tries feebly, chuckling behind his hand. ‘Stop it.’
Melanie pats him on the arm. ‘Come on. You know we can hear you through the walls, right?’ She laughs even louder when Martin buries his red face in his hands. ‘Hey, money is money. At least this is ethical consumption.’
By the time Jon arrives in the evening, not only is the snow beginning to fall in ethereal earnest, but the girls are quite, quite drunk on wassail punch. They trail Martin into the hall, barely stifling giggles, and someone, it might even have been Gerry, shouts for a kiss as soon as he opens the door.
‘Kiss him!’
‘Go onnnn.’
Blinking owlishly, thrown by the welcome, Jon says. ‘Uh, hello everyone. Merry Christmas.’
‘Sorry,’ Martin cringes. He can’t not smile immediately after though. Snow-flecked and rosy, piled with scarf and clutching at his bag with thread-bare gloves, Jon makes a perfect picture.
Georgie points above their heads as the crowd continues to demand their kiss. ‘Look look!’
They do. ‘That’s holly,’ Martin says exasperatedly. ‘No dice.’
He takes the cold arm of Jon’s coat, and is going to pull him past the others upstairs, when Melanie appears with what looks like ribbon. She marches up to Jon and he freezes whilst she pins the rosette to his chest.
‘A gift,’ she says, ‘from all of us.’
‘I, uh-‘
‘For being the nicest cully of the year.’
‘Oh,’ Jon says, ‘right.’ He looks extremely confused on whether or not to be offended, glancing around them all to catch the joke, then looking to Martin with non-verbal pleas for assistance. ‘Thank you?’
‘You’re welcome. Don’t ruin it.’
‘I’ll do my best..?’
‘We’ll be going now!’
Upstairs, Martin stokes his tiny fireplace and repositions the hot pan of coals under his sheets. While he’s distracted, Jon quickly shrugs out of his snowy overcoat, and digs in his bag for the rectangular package he’d carefully stowed there before he left this morning.
(‘And what’s that?’ Sasha had crowed with victorious magpie eyes, pointing to the volume on his desk.
‘Holiday reading.’
‘Poetry though?’ She had lifted it and smugly shown Jon the cover as if he hadn’t chosen it with much thought. ‘I didn’t think you liked poetry.’
‘I’m warming to it.’
Tim had groaned behind them, no doubt anticipating bickering. ‘Aw, leave it be, Sasha, it’s obviously for the mystery sweetheart.’
Jon had, of course, coloured like a holly bush at the endearment. Of course, it was eons better than ‘girl’, but their both dropping that was both pleasing and worrying. At least, Jon thought, they didn’t seem much perturbed. Only ever amused.
He snatched the book back from Sasha’s hands. ‘It is none of your business, thank you. And, if you’d paid any attention, there’s a library stamp.’
‘Very well,’ she shrugged, ‘that’s me told.’
After she had said her goodbyes and merry christmases, Tim approached to lean over Jon’s desk with a conspiratorial eye.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he’d said.
Then he laid a ribbon across the desk, a deep red velvet. It was fairly short, too short to make a nice cross around the book. Too short, Jon’s mind traitorously decided, to tie for a garter around Martin’s thigh. But pretty, and a generous addition to the brown paper he had been planning on concealing the gift in.
Tim smiled and put a finger to his lips. ‘Not a word, I swear. My gift to you.’)
When Martin turns, their smiling eyes immediately catch hold of the parcel, and the bow Jon has attempted to tie around it. Their face falls, then turns indignant. ‘Jon, I told you not to get me anything!’
‘Technically I haven’t,’ Jon argues. He pushes the present into Martin’s hands and can’t keep from bouncing a little on his toes as they tear the paper off. ‘It’s borrowed. From the library at work. I just wanted to... wrap it up nicely. Somewhat.’
It might be a little messy, but it had honestly brought him great joy to do so. It has been many years, since his grandmother's death, in fact, that he has had anyone to properly give a gift to. To properly spend Christmas with, bundled up warm and cheerful.
Martin stares at the book, his eyes gathering pearly sheen like just melting snow. When he looks back at Jon he juts out his lip miserably. He’s a good actor, somehow managing to look sad over just the volume of verse he’d talked about the previous week.
‘But I didn’t get you anything.’
Jon sighs out his smile. ‘You’re more than enough,’ he says. He wishes it could be convincing. That Martin didn’t always jump to fretting about reciprocity.
It must be a Christmas miracle, because Martin doesn’t fret. He just gives Jon one of his adorable mollying eyerolls and a pat on the cheek. ‘Sap.’
’Well, it’s Christmas.’
Martin puts the book aside, and leans over, blocking Jon’s view with his shoulders as he rummages around. In the drawer, Jon presumes. What’s kept in there that could make for an impromptu gift?
When Martin sits back up, he hikes up his dressing gown and swings a leg over Jon’s lap, keeping his hands concealed behind his back. There is an impish smile on his face now, his lips pulled under his teeth.
Jon’s hands settle on their thighs without any command from his brain. He strokes up and down, grinning too despite his usual hatred of surprises. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks
‘Giving you a gift,’ Martin says.
He reveals a sprig of mistletoe and holds it over them for a second. The solitary centrepiece of a very modest kissing bough. They both look up at it, taking in the green and white, the soft curving shapes and the smell. Then they look back at each other, quiet, and lean in.
Martin smushes their noses together and rubs side to side, bending the tip of Jon’s nose this way and that, and making an adorably childlike sound of determination as he does so.
This close, their eyes can meet privately, under the drape of lashes, and Jon can make out the freckles under Martin’s winter-faded skin. He drinks in the flush that begins to bloom from the warmth of his breath like a sumptuous mulled wine. Their lips are chapped from cold. It is still soft when they kiss him. Warm when they whisper over his tongue.
‘Merry Christmas, Jon.’
And it is.