Mary
limply groped for her phone, her eyes barely averting from Tricks of
the Restaurant Trade and learning about her new obsession – the
guiltily-glamorous gourmet burger – was actually costing her a whole daily salt
intake as a normal woman (at just pushing 5 foot, maybe she wasn’t considered
normal, but her inner model could dream) and half of her calorie intake. Her
vision travelled back to the slinky dress hung lifelessly in her wardrobe,
among the lumpy jumpers and jeans, where the buttons were beginning to pinch
under her belly button. Maybe… she should lay off those burgers. How many had
she had this month? This week?
Yeah, that dress is not
going to fit in time for Christmas.
In fact, she had been
feeling as bedraggled as her trusty winter turtleneck - with bobbly forearms, a
questionable colour scheme and hole under the armpit – for quite a while. It
can’t be the weather; she loves the big ho ho ho (since when did she turn into
a nursery teacher?) and snow and Costa hot chocolates she has
convinced herself is sustainable and necessary as one of her five-a-day. (Ok,
so, beans are a vegetable right, and what is chocolate made from?) Maybe
it’s her sudden dizziness in the middle of the night.
Joseph just doesn’t understand.
And, as if on cue, here he
was, clacking at the front door. Mary prayed he had bought her a puppy, or at
least a piece of carrot cake. These cravings were becoming unquenchable.
“Joseph, please say
you’ve bought-“
Mary stopped. Who the
heck was that at the door?
“Mary
do not be afraid. I have come to bring you good tidings at this special time –
you’re pregnant.”
Mary stopped. She recoiled
on the sofa. Her phone fell onto the carpet, causing the cat – who had not
woken up for at least twenty hours – to scatter out of the room.
“Mary?”
She opened her mouth,
resembling her childhood guppy, Morris.
“Mary?”
“Well, how
the bloody hell am I going to fit into my Christmas dress now?”
***
“Why
didn’t you bring the bloody car?”
Mary was whaling, sobbing
like a distressed donkey, braying through her sodden hair and puffed cheeks.
Her waters had broken – flowing down her favourite Primark penguin
pjs, of all the garments the baby could have chosen – and the car had
conveniently stalled and the ambulance was probably being held up by a sodding
drunk burning their house down from their connoisseur chicken drumsticks as
their Christmas hangover cure (everyone knows it’s a fry-up from the
non-descript café twenty meters from your front door).
“Mary,
you shouldn’t swear, you’re carrying the sun of God’
Mary halted and took an
exaggerated intake of breath.
“Joseph,
are you carrying a baby that was thrust upon
your body, forcing you to be deprived of toasted tomatoes
which now make you want to vomit at the mere smell of them,
and need a wee every few minutes because an eight pound lump you were not planning
on having suction-cupped itself to your body and is pressing on
your bladder – which is small as it is! – and making you eat so much that the
dress you had been looking forward to wearing for eleven months won’t even slip
over one bleeding thigh?”
Silence slammed between the
couple, until Mary resumed her shrieking again.
***
“Mary,
there are some visitors for you.”
The thoroughly-attractive
doctor peeked through the curtain and made Mary blush with flirtation, until
she remembered her whole face was still flushed from the birth. A little boy,
wrapped in swathes of hospital blankets, gurgled sleepily in her arms.
Suddenly, as if in a comedy
sketch – like this wasn’t one already – three heads in succession protruded
around the blue curtain, one on top of the other: faces covered in beards of
wild descriptions, some hairs lacquered back, a glint of bewilderment in their
eyes. Who the bleeding heck were these?
“It’s
the boy! The son!”
The one at the top of the
people-mountain gasped, sliding his head down the curtain to enter the humble
abode of a cornered-off hospital bed, as if he had been standing on the
shoulders of the two other men. He darted for the baby, then stopped, and
finally noticed Mary.
“And
who are you? Don’t tell me, the blinking kings or something?”
A pause.
“But
how did you guess, madam?”
This must be a dream now.
I’m in a food coma or I’ve died or something.
“My
name is Kaleb the Noble, this is Alfonso the Third and that is Kevin”
Mary peeked passed the
rotund ‘King’, desperately trying to scratch off a stain on his exaggerated
robe. That would be Kevin.
“So,
I suppose you’re here to see this little bump I’ve just pushed out?”
***
Soon, the ‘few’ visitors
had literally turned into a flock, with Kaleb, Alfonso and simple Kevin hurling
gifts onto the duvet-cloth, modestly wrinkled around Mary’s bottom half;
farmers, who at first she thought were tramps, until they announced themselves
as shepherds - at least, that’s what she thought they said, through a
tidal-wave of half-undigested crumbs from crisps that had been ransacked from
the vending machines - and their bleating livestock; as well as the angel who
brought her the joyous news in the first place (also known as
Gabe, on friendly terms). Joseph was sent to buy some Waitrose éclairs
or flapjack nibbles or something sugary to keep this harem content.
And all they wanted to do
was coo over the little baby Mary didn’t even know she was having until a month
ago. She was surprised the handsome doctor hadn’t come back to tell her that it
was policy to have no more than two visitors at a time – let alone cows in the
car park – but Mary suspected he was probably refraining because he found
her so, unbelievably attractive, and simply felt too
embarrassed to approach her again. Yes, definitely that reason.
***
Joseph did eventually come
back, dishevelled that he couldn’t purchase Celebrations, due to
the shelves of every shop turning bare from the scurry of last-minute shoppers.
“How’s
the li’le guy doing, honey?”
He could act tired all he
wanted; it wasn’t him who had to squeeze a watermelon out
of his body a few hours ago.
“What
be his name, foretell?” (Simple Kevin was not simple at all, and actually a
wordsmith from all the way over the seas.)
Mary sighed. She gazed upon
Gabe, not taking his eyes off the child, while rooting his hand into a
selection tray of Cadbury chocolate fingers.
“Well, I guess it’s got to be Jesus,
hasn’t it?”
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