Highways to a War by Christopher J. Koch Page B

coming from that century. I don’t think it was an idea he’d thought out very clearly; but it seemed to be real to him.
    The hermit had suddenly stopped, one day, and had quickly looked at Mike over his shoulder. His white face was spiteful, threatening and suggestive. It could be seen to know about things that were old and filthy; there was old spittle in the corners of the mouth, and Mike had turned and run up the slope of the gully. But the old man had shouted after him, and this time the words had been clear.
    You! You’re nothing but a bloody farmer’s boy! Do you know who I am? A prince! I’m a prince!
    When Goddard wasn’t looking, Michael had photographed him. And when the photographs were developed, the figure that appeared was much more remarkable than the one that he’d focused his camera on. Luke Goddard in these pictures seemed not to be human, but instead to be a black spirit in the landscape, passing with bent head.
    In this form, in his dark jacket, he came into Mike’s dreams. He came through the window of the sleepout and tugged at the counterpane, trying to draw Mike out into the night of a hundred years ago. And now his stern face had changed: it was young, noble and refined: a dark prince of the air.
    Over the years, on their evening walks in the bush and along the creek, Mike and Maureen would catch glimpses of Goddard following them, at a distance. Or he would be standing under a tree as though by accident. For some time, Langford told me, they took little notice.
    But one evening he’d appeared to them from behind a tree, holding what appeared to be a white, upright candle in front of his black coat. Then Mike had turned on him.
    Piss off! You hear me, you filthy old bastard? Piss off!
    But Goddard had shouted after them, his words suddenly clear.
    I’ll go to your father! I’ll tell him what you’re doing! I’ll tell him!
    Mike had advanced on him, fist raised, and the old man had begun to scuttle away into the trees. But as Goddard went, he shouted again. I know! I know what you’re doing! Getting into her pants! Hidden, going down a gully, the hermit had shouted obscenities: just single words, without logic or reason, echoing in the bush like dismal eruptions from the earth itself. After that, Mike said, he and Maureen had met in the hop kiln at night.
    I could see them, lying on the sacking floor of the drying room, clinging together with an intensity like fear, the hop smell all around them. Sometimes they’d hear a creaking or shuffling down below, Mike said: even a creaking on the steps. It’s him, Maureen would say. He’s down there. Go and look, Mike. I’m scared of him.
    But Mike had never found Goddard there, and had ceased to take him seriously. Nothing was serious but their love. He didn’t even take it seriously when she told him Goddard had exposed himself to her again, meeting her alone by the huts. Langford saw the hermit as a foul clown; nothing more.
    Just a pathetic old bastard swinging his mutton, he said. That’s how I saw him. I was that bloody stupid. Now I still have dreams about it, he said: always the same. Maureen and I are standing at the end of the drying room, holding each other the way we used to do. There’s the stink of last year’s hops, in the dream, and the smell’s part of the fear. The place is like a jail: you remember it, Ray. The old brick walls; small windows; half dark. Maureen used to say it was scary there, and it was, in a way. It always felt as though there was someone else in there somewhere: someone you couldn’t see. And I always know in the dream that there really is someone—someone else is in the kiln besides us, even though I can’t see anyone.
    In the dream, I’m always asking Maureen to come out of the kiln; but she’s hanging on to me and begging me to stay. Stay, she says. Don’t make me go back. I only want to be with you.
    The stronger the smell gets, the more I want to get out, he said. But she won’t come;