On the trunks of the pines
© Tony Holkham 1986

A light shone on the trunks of the pines. They could have been on fire, and the aptness of it made the young man smile. But the smile was only inside - the kind of smile that warms a young man in love. He turned to the woman who walked beside him; the words he spoke made no sound, but her senses received them.

The evening light deepened as they strolled, and the sun seemed reluctant to set. The fire of the trunks of the pines lit up their faces and closed their minds to all but each other.

In the corner of the cemetery where the sun had never shone, the youths waited, knowing nothing of the power of the young couple. The youths saw in the approaching pair only happiness, and mistook it for a different kind of wealth. And the wealth they thought they saw blinded them as surely as the light on the trunks of the pines. But when they found happiness and little else, their anger struck out at what they could not kill, and they killed what they could.

The policeman who found the bodies a week later, prodded by the woodland animals, explored by insects and the other forest cleaners, shook his head and held his nose. Through his mind flashed his own children - they would soon be old enough to walk hand in hand in the pines - and then the forms and the interviews and the reports. A fierce light in his eyes could have been anger. Or it could have been the reflection of the setting sun on the tree trunks.

Mourners, bathed in the relentless glare of the July sun, filed slowly across the churchyard, shielding their eyes from the flashing marble of the monuments. But none could feel sadness. In fact, when the warm earth was being pitched back into the holes, they felt smiles playing on their lips, and each looked about them to make sure no one had seen. No one had. The light was too bright.

Two men replaced the earth in the graves. By the time they had finished, the sun was beginning to set, and yet darkness did not seem to want to fall. The men finished their work in silence, glancing up from time to time at the face of the other, wondering whether to mention the colour of his face, wondering where the light was coming from.

It was five years before that light - that burning, all-seeing light - was explained. Conjunctions and perihelions, dust in the upper atmosphere, the men of science said. Things like that. Scientific things. Two young lovers, struck down on the longest day, had nothing to do with it. How could they? Some doubt lingered, fostered by a policeman, a couple of grave diggers and some family members. It the light they had seen - and felt, almost - was just a phenomenon, why was it persisting into August? But the men of science held sway.

Almost. The young couple fell out of the news. At length, so too did the youths. Almost. The policeman's colleagues still looked, still asked, still waited for the clue which would unearth the youths just as surely as it would unearth the memories. But the clue did not come. The perpetrators were gone.

The police did not - could not - stop looking. But they were looking for killers, not bank clerks; for murderers, not hospital porters.

In another city, there is a bank where the evening sun lights up the foyer with such a blaze, inattentive customers can believe for a moment a fire has started. The first cashier worked very hard to earn the position from which he has the best view of the light. There is a postcard taped to the till showing a group of pine trees at sunset. A part of a churchyard is visible in one corner. On the back, he has written one word - REMEMBER - in red ink. When no one is looking, the bank clerk dips his hand in his pocket and adds a note to a bundle that is short.

The hospital porter has the same postcard. He keeps it in his wallet. He looks at it several times a day. He is already bent after just a few months' work, but nothing is too disgusting, no job too hard for him to do. Just so long as he can stand in the pool of light which emblazons the door of the ward each day. Just for a few moments.

There is a taxi driver in another city who will never make much money. Some customers, bent with shopping or children, are suspicious when he waves away the tip, and sometimes even the fare. Others are grateful. He nods, his eyes acknowledging they would do the same for him. If he'd let them. Then he glances at the faded postcard stuck to the dash, and drives away.

The light has not yet reached the fourth youth. He runs a racket down in Marbella. You can't win them all. Can one young couple's desperate love reach Andalusia, where the sun beats on your back like the devil? But the pines love the sandy soil of the Costa del Sol, and they drop huge cones a man can trip over as he crosses the road. And one day, when the sun flashes on a pine trunk in the corner of his eye, and the same sun momentarily blinds a truck driver as he manoeuvres thirty tons round the bend in the carretera, all that will change. And a young racketeer will be brought home and buried in the same graveyard as a witch before recorded history, and she will keep him awake for eternity with her screams.

All those who have seen the light remember it. And it remembers them. If you don't believe me, go and look when the sun nears the horizon. Go and look on the trunks of the pines.

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