Writing for Fun
December 2018
The Alibi - (A Heartening Christmas Tale)- Anne Wilson
She never grew weary of gazing at him. The tousled hair, those adorable, melting brown eyes and that innocent face comprising those handsome, open features. They all combined to make a perfect specimen. How fortunate this child – the only one they would be likely ever to have – should have already achieved such perfection. He was nearly nine and she could scarcely bear to dwell on him growing away from them, as he must inevitably do.
They sat together in the kitchen in the late afternoon, the sun streaming through the window on a brisk, yet cheerful day in early December. She was a throwback to days gone by and was proud of it. A woman who had never worked, even though money was sometimes tight. A woman who could truly say she had never farmed him out to her parents or her in-laws. A devoted mother and housewife. She wanted nothing more out of life.
Something was troubling her that day, though, as they sat in their companionable silence. An on-looker would have observed the twisting of her wedding ring over and over again lending credence to that impression. Eventually she plucked up courage to speak.
‘Darling,’ she said, addressing him with an expression a Freudian might deem more suitable to a lover, rather than an offspring. ‘Do you know what an alibi is?’
The adorable little face looked up from his earnest writing quizzically.
‘A habili?’ he asked in his piping, choirboy voice. His innocence broke her heart.
‘No, not a habili. An alibi,’ she said, trying to make her voice reassuring and soothing.
He looked blank. ‘No Mummy. I don’t know.’
She moved over to the table and sat opposite him, speaking very slowly and deliberately so he would understand.
‘Well . . .’ she explained. ‘Sometimes a grown up is accused of doing something bad and they have to prove they were somewhere else when that thing happened.’
She felt she had worded it as simply as she could. Would he have understood the word ‘innocent’, for example? She thought not. It was best not to complicate things.
‘I see,’ he said, digesting this information slowly and putting down the letter he was writing. He smiled and her heart lurched. He really was quite adorable and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Have you done something bad, Mummy?’ he asked with eyes as wide as saucers.
She fidgeted uncomfortably on her chair.
‘Not me, darling. But some people might think Daddy has.’
She had never seen her husband in the state he was in the night before: stumbling through the front door at around 9 p.m, eyes wild with fear and body shaking. He had rushed over to her.
‘I’ve run somebody over,’ he said in a shaking voice. ‘A man, I think. I’m pretty sure it was a man. I swear he stepped out of nowhere. I had no chance.’
Her heart had gone out to him. The lanes back from his office, (where he occasionally stayed late working out of financial necessity) were bleak and dark in the winter months and a man who worked as hard as he invariably did, would not have necessarily been alert enough to take avoiding action. It was one of the great perils of running one’s own business. Then she smelt his breath. He had been drinking.
‘I was seen,’ he said, with voice breaking. ‘I’m sure I was seen. When I drove off, I saw someone walking along the lane with their dog. They would have come across the body almost immediately. I should have stopped, but I knew I was over the limit.’ He buried his head in his hands.
Her nice, orderly world came crashing down before her eyes: blown to smithereens by a moment’s carelessness. The peaceful family existence she had created would come to an end and her child would be the principal sufferer. Before she knew it, she had slapped his face in frustration and he had reeled back in horror. If she had been truly honest with herself she would have realised that her outburst was not in the least altruistic and was more because he had been seen rather than had been drinking and therefore more prone to a slower reaction. She could scarcely bring herself to say the words: ‘Do you think you killed him?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ he moaned, sinking into a chair.
An innate self-preservation arose within her and her practical side – developed from running the house all these years – took over. ‘Do you think this so-called witness could identify the car?’
He saw a straw and clutched at it tenaciously – both to placate her and allay his own doubt. ‘It was dark out there. It might have been possible to identify the make but I doubt whether anyone would have been able to make out the full registration number.’ However, he forbore from mentioning that the rough terrain of the lane had made his getaway comparatively slow and therefore possible for the sighting of at least part of the registration number. That, together with the relative proximity of the incident to where they lived might make it possible to trace him as owner of the car, or at least to prompt the police to question him. They resolved, in any event, to give the car a thorough clean once dawn broke.
Order partially restored, they sat in silence for some time. If there was no visit from the police within the next few days, they knew they could relax.
As if reading his mind, she spoke first: ‘I think we need to be on the safe side,’ she said in a measured fashion, exhibiting a cunning he hadn’t realised existed within her. ‘We need to provide you with an alibi, just in case we need it. I shall say you were at home here all evening watching the television with us.’
He exhaled loudly – mainly with relief that she had seemingly found a solution. He disliked involving his son in what was tantamount to an outright lie, but he could think of no better option. They wended their way up the stairs heavy-footedly – neither sleeping the sleep of the just.
She explained all this to the angelic child seated before her that afternoon, embellishing the incident to such an extent that his father became the victim rather than the perpetrator of the crime. The man had stepped out in front of Daddy without looking which way he was going and may even have had too much Christmas drink when he did so. Daddy, sober as a judge (equivalent words she adapted to cater for his youth) swerved his car to avoid him, risking life and limb in the process and, after he had checked that the man was not hurt, had driven back home, fully satisfied he could do no more. He was as surprised as anyone that the man had, in fact, been more seriously injured than he had originally thought and concluded he must have collapsed later on – maybe from an illness he already had.
The saucer eyes gazed at her innocently. ‘But why can’t Daddy say that if he’s asked?’
She had anticipated the question. ‘Because sometimes the truth seems so silly, and there are nasty grown-ups who won’t believe it, my darling. You don’t want that to happen, do you and get Daddy into more trouble? All you have to say is that Daddy was here with us all evening until the time you went to bed.’
He looked at her uncertainly. ‘But it’s not true, Mummy, is it?’ he reasoned. ‘We watched television on our own. I didn’t see Daddy yesterday evening at all because he arrived home after I went to bed.’
Her eyes misted over. He was such a little innocent. How sad he had to grow up. She did not see the barely perceptible hardening of his large brown eyes as he stared intently at the letter he had written to Santa Claus – a figure he knew full well existed only in the imagination of children far younger than he was. How gullible his parents were to include him in the deception.
‘Mummy,’ he said, gazing up at her. ‘Do you think Santa is going to give me that bicycle I want for Christmas?’
They had a hard job scraping together the cash each year to furnish his demands; her husband’s business usually being far from flourishing but she knew they could just about manage the bike.
‘I’m sure he will,’ she cooed.
There was a pause.
‘Does Santa think that little boys should always tell the truth?’
She was not quite certain where the conversation was heading.
‘Yes, she replied very carefully, an uneasy feeling growing in the back of her mind. ‘Except if the truth sounds silly, which is what people may think when Daddy tells them the man ran in front of his car because he had been drinking. Then Santa probably won’t mind so much – because he knows you’ve told a little fib to protect Daddy.’
He screwed up his cute face. ‘I’m not sure. If I say Daddy was at home all evening with us yesterday and Santa is looking down on me and knows I’m fibbing when I tell people, he may not bring me the other things I want.’
There was no pacifying him and she found herself promising countless other Christmas presents, including a fleece, trainers and a ticket to a West End pantomime for himself and three other friends. They would be in debt the rest of the year paying it all off.
He smiled contentedly as he sealed the envelope. His mother and father were such fools. It was going to be a profitable Christmas this year.
He smiled up at her. What an adorable child he is, she thought again. How lucky she was.