My footsteps sounded solitary on the cobbles and the years rolled back to childhood, every detail clear-etched on the retina of memory—the house barges moored by the bridge, the flowers set out in pots on the pavement, the newsvendor on the corner. And then the house itself, shabbier than when I had seen it last. That had been two years ago when my ship had put into Rotterdam and some strange urge—a desire for reconciliation—had brought me here. The front door and all the windows had been freshly painted then, green like the linden trees. It had been summer; now it was March and the trees were bare. My footsteps slowed as I neared the door, a reluctance, a sense of dread almost. Last time I had had a shipboard world behind me, a job and the companionship of men I knew. Now it was different. I could feel myself beginning to tremble as I felt once again the pull of the old man’s personality. There had been no reconciliation, no renewal of our strange relationship. He had been away on one of his periodic bouts of travelling, rootling for old bones.
