Birthdays

‘OI, JESUS. DO us a miracle, hur hur hur!’ David sighed and smiled, humourlessly, as the local youths in assorted tracksuits giggled to each other and moved on.

Just leaving the house at Christmas was a nightmare for David. For the rest of the year, ‘hippy’ was the insult of choice, but Christmas afforded some of the more eloquent scallies creative freedom. He doubted Jesus was white, British, 6’3 and from Newcastle, but that didn’t stop anyone.

The ‘Jesus’ jibes only ever came at Christmas, as if the time of year was haunting people’s imaginations. David often mused to himself that maybe the aggressive reaction to seeing the son of God in David’s unkempt, long-haired, scruffy appearance was just a reflection of their own atheist guilt in celebrating the birth of Christ.

But, by and large, it was just harmless ribbing, so he never let it bother him too much. See, if they ever found out that his actual birthday was in fact 25th December, that he was one of the poor unfortunates whose birthday was forgotten among the annual maelstrom of forced Christmas merriment, then the piss-taking would grow to a cacophony.

He had always hated Christmas, anyway. It wasn’t the bustling hypocrisy of the season. Or the annual mass delusions and insincere solemn oaths. Or it wasn’t even that every year Christmas turned his birthday into an insignificance. Well, it was all those things, a bit.

No, it was lost chances that made him ache so much. Every year, Christmas arrives, to every one of us, with such majesty, such searing potential for something better, an opportunity to harness an ocean of goodwill and create something magnificent, something human. We have a moment, every year, a blink in time, to do something extraordinary. But just as we have it in our grasp, just as something incredible arrives to every one of us, something wonderful to be nurtured, grown and cherished, we throw it away, every year, with a shrug, discarded into a dustbin of empty wishes.  And, you know, it’s not as if Christmas just arrives suddenly, unannounced, like an apple falling on us from a tree, catching us all unaware - we don’t have that excuse. We know it’s coming. Something magical is squandered, every single year. And then we all just carry on as if nothing happened, for the rest of the year, doing everything but thinking about our collective failure, like an embarrassing secret that nobody mentions.

But then, maybe, after all, we just don’t know what to do with that moment.

He belched, loudly, grinning at the echo as it bounced between the close buildings on the quiet, deserted village road, and thought warmly ahead to the annual late-night birthday/Christmas eve pub lock-in with his dear old Dad and friends that he was heading to. He checked his watch. 11.52pm. Just in time.  Eight minutes to Christmas Day. More importantly, though, eight minutes to his birthday!

A loud, sudden roar yanked him out of his meandering thoughts. A car skidded out of the sideroad ahead and, without slowing, swerved dangerously towards him, clearly out of control. At just the same time a figure staggered out of the silent shadows across the road from David and lurched towards the kerb, clutching a bottle and shouting something lost to the engine roar. The car careered to the right just as the stranger with the bottle, a woman, a homeless woman, stepped into the road, still shouting but now gesticulating wildly at the sky. David screamed at her to watch out, trying to get her attention, trying to push her back out of the way, pointing at the speeding car as it rushed straight at her…

Thump!

The old woman pirouetted into the air, dead arms flailing at gravity. Her bottle landed before she did, smashing into pieces on the road seconds before she landed a few feet away with a heavy thud and sickening crack. The car roared on, disappearing into the night.

It was over in seconds.

David stood stock still, shock, with unbelieving eyes, staring at the dot on the dark horizon where the car had disappeared. There was no sound from the figure on the road.

Nothing moved. No curtain twitched. No car returned. No passerby rushed to help; nobody passed by. It was a still, soundless night again. If it wasn’t for the dark, lifeless shape on the road ahead of him, he might not have believed the whole episode had happened at all.

David moved over to the body. The old lady was lying on her back, wide-eyed, breathless, ashen-faced, her left leg at a terrible, crooked angle. It was too dark to see whether there was any blood. He was grateful for that much.

He knelt up on his haunches and looked carefully up and down the road, scanning for signs of people or movement. Nothing. So he glanced up at the sky and, with an almost imperceptible nod, placed his hands on the corpse’s chest, over her still heart. A warm smile played on his lips, and then spread across his face and into his glittering eyes. He exhaled a deep, long sigh, drawn from the dawn of collective humanity.

The old woman suddenly snatched at a breath and blinked, brilliant life cascading again through her cold veins. David glanced left and glanced right, checking the road.

There was nobody to see, and nobody saw.

He pulled out his wallet, slipped £60 into the pocket of the old woman’s ragged coat, stood up and headed towards the pub where his friends were waiting. He had a bloody birthday to celebrate. The village clock struck midnight.