His short fiction has been collected in such volumes as
“‘Holding the Light’ came out of an experience in Rhodes two years ago, at Epta Piges (‘Seven Springs’),” recalls the author. “During the occupation, Italians constructed an irrigation tunnel there, 180 metres long and very much like the one that figures in my tale. It’s a favourite stop on guided tours and turned up on two that we took. You won’t be surprised that I was delighted to go through it both times, though others in the party stayed out.
“Pete Crowther had mentioned a Hallowe’en chapbook he wanted to publish, including several new tales. Sadly, the event he wanted to build it around didn’t work out, but by that time I’d written my contribution, and he published it as a singleton.
“As soon as I went through the Epta Piges tunnel the first time I knew I had a tale for him.”
AS HIS COUSIN followed him into the Frugoplex lobby Tom saw two girls from school. Out of uniform and in startlingly short skirts they looked several years older. He hoped his leather jacket performed that trick for him, in contrast to the duffle coat Lucas was wearing. Since the girls were giggling at the cinema staff dressed as Hallowe’en characters, he let them see him laugh too. “Hey, Lezly,” he said in his deepest voice. “Hey, Dianne.”
“Don’t come near us if you’ve got a cold,” Lezly protested, waving a hand that was bony with rings in front of her face.
“It’s just how boys his age talk,” Dianne said far too much like a sympathetic adult and blinked her sparkly purple eyelids. “Who’s your friend, Tom?”
“It’s my cousin Lucas.”
“Hey, Luke.”
Lezly said it too and held out her skull-ringed hand, at which Lucas stared as if it were an inappropriate present. “He’s like that,” Tom mumbled but refrained from pointing at his own head. “Don’t mind him.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to give you his germs, Lezly.” To the boys Dianne said “What are you going to see?”
“
“That’s for kids,” Lezly objected. “We’re not seeing any films with them.”
“We don’t have to either, do we, Lucas?” Tom said in a bid to stop his face from growing hotter. “What are you two seeing?”
“
“We can’t,” Lucas informed everyone. “Nobody under fifteen’s allowed.”
Tom glared at him as the girls did. At least none of the staff dealing with the noisy queues appeared to have heard the remark. Until that moment Tom had been able to prefer visiting the cinema to any of the other activities their parents had arranged for the boys over the years — begging for sweets at neighbours’ houses, ducking for apples and a noseful of water, carving pumpkins when Lucas’s received most of the praise despite being so grotesque only out of clumsiness. Now that the parents had reluctantly let them outgrow all this Tom seemed to be expected to take even more care of his cousin. Perhaps Lucas sensed his resentment for once, because he said “We don’t have to go to a film.”
“Who doesn’t?” said Dianne.
Tom wanted to say her and Lezly too, but first he had to learn “Where, then?”
“The haunted place.” When nobody admitted to recognising it Lucas said “Grinfields.”
“Where the boy and girl killed themselves together, you mean,” Lezly said.
“No, he did first,” Dianne said, “and she couldn’t live without him.”
It was clear that Lucas wasn’t interested in these details, and he barely let her finish. “My mum and dad say they did it because they watched films you aren’t supposed to watch.”
“My parents heard they were always shopping,” Tom made haste to contribute. “Them and their families spent lots of money they didn’t have and all it did was leave them thinking nothing was worth anything.”
That was his father’s version. Perhaps it sounded more like a gibe at the girls than he was afraid Lucas’s comment had. “Why do you want us to go there, Luke?” Dianne said.
“Who’s Luke?”
“I told you,” Tom said in some desperation, “he’s like that.”
“No I’m not, I’m like Lucas.”
At such times Tom understood all too well why his cousin was bullied at school. There was also the way Lucas stared at anybody unfamiliar as if they had to wait for him to make up his mind about them, and just now his pasty face — far spottier than Tom’s and topped with unruly red hair — was a further drawback. Nevertheless Dianne said “Are you sure you don’t want to see our film?”
She was speaking to Tom, but Lucas responded. “We can’t. We’ve been told.”
“I haven’t,” Tom muttered. He watched the girls join the queue for the ticket desk manned by a tastefully drooling vampire in a cloak, and then he turned on Lucas. “We need to switch our phones off. We’re in the cinema.”
Accuracy mattered most to Lucas. Once he’d done as he was told Tom said “Let’s go, and not to the kids’ film either.”
A frown creased Lucas’s pudgy forehead. “Which one, then?”
“None of them. We’ll go where you wanted,” Tom said, leading the way out into the Frugall retail park.
More vehicles than he thought he could count in a weekend were lined up beneath towering lamps as white as the moon. In that light people’s faces looked as pallid as Lucas’s, but took on colour once they reached the shops, half a mile of which surrounded the perimeter. As Tom came abreast of a Frugelectric store he said “We’ll need a light.”
Lucas peered at the lanky lamps, and yet again Tom wondered what went on inside his cousin’s head. “A torch,” he resented having to elucidate.
“There’s one at home.”
“That’s too far.” Before Lucas could suspect he didn’t want their parents learning where the boys would be Tom said “You’ll have to buy one.”
He was determined his cousin would pay, not least for putting the girls off. He watched Lucas select the cheapest flashlight and load it with batteries, then drop a ten-pound note beside the till so as to avoid touching the checkout girl’s hand. He made her place his change there for him to scoop up while Tom took the flashlight wrapped in a flimsy plastic bag. “That’s mine. I bought it,” Lucas said at once.
“You hold it then, baby.” Tom stopped just short of uttering the last word, though his face was hot again. “Look after it,” he said and stalked out of the shop.
They were on the far side of Frugall from their houses and the school. An alley between a Frugranary baker’s and a Frugole tapas bar led to a path around the perimeter. A twelve-foot wall behind the shops and restaurants cut off most of the light and the blurred vague clamour of the retail park. The path was deserted apart from a few misshapen skeletal loiterers nuzzling the wall or propped against the chain-link fence alongside Grinfields Woods. They were abandoned shopping trolleys, and the only sound apart from the boys’ padded footsteps was the rustle of the plastic bag.
Tom thought they might have to follow the path all the way to the housing estate between Grinfields and the retail park, but soon they came to a gap in the fence. Lucas dodged through it so fast that he might have forgotten he wasn’t alone. As Tom followed he saw his own shadow emerge from a block of darkness fringed with outlines of wire mesh. The elongated shadows of trees were reaching for the larger dark. By the time the boys found the
