Antwerp, a few weeks ago...

"Through the flats that bound the North Sea and shelve into it imperceptibly, merging at last with the shallow flood, and re-emerging in distant sandbanks and less conspicuous shoals, run facing each other two waterways far inland, which are funnels and entries, as it were, scoured by the tide. The one Antwerp, the other London. 

– Hilaire Belloc, The River of London, 1912

"OH, it’s you.”

    Van Meighem put his head out of the wheelhouse, wiping his hands on an oily rag. His palour was winter grey, his eyes like fog. A diet of raw herring and onion had kept him pale. Added to that was the thin white hair and beard that made him look more like the ghost of Christmas past than I had remembered. Otherwise he hadn’t changed in 25 years. Nor, evidently, had I. Not outwardly, anyway.

   "Hello, Kapitein," I said.

    He nodded, turned his back, and resumed whatever task he had been involved in. It wasn't exactly the welcome I had expected. But at least he hadn't sworn at me. I didn't go after him. Instead, I put my rucksack on the quay, took out some gum and leaned on a bollard. Across the dock the sun was on its way west, and I aimed to follow it. The docks had changed, of course, since I was last there. Willelmdock had been turned into a yacht marina, and I had expected to find the Zeemeeuw among the smartened up barges for hire by the clubhouse. But she was parked by herself, a lone vessel on a disused quay.

   Bit by bit the whole dock area was being regenerated. Opposite was the latest attraction, a museum of emigration, devoted to the three million or so who had boarded Red Star  liners heading west, looking for a new life. It seemed an appropriate place to start the last part of my own journey. For so long I had been dealing in the future, it was only recently that I had begun to realise how much I missed the past.

   “What do you want?" Van Meighem came out again.

   “A lift.”

   “Where to?”

   “London. The Pool.”

   “You owe me 500 gilders.” Neither of us had forgotten.

   “What’s that in euros?”

   “A thousand.”

   I laughed. That was a monstrous rate of exchange, but I suppose it was fair if 25 years’ interest owing was added.

   “I have it," I said. “And five hundred more. For the lift.”

   “Take a plane.” He turned and went back into the cabin. A seagull landed on the hatch and crapped on it.

   It was a while before he appeared again. I could hear him in the boat, the clank of spanners, the thump of hatches, the pop of gas as he put a kettle on. A familiarity rose in me, the memories came back. Already I could feel the comforting smell of the boat – bilge water, diesel and tobacco – which was as enticing and welcoming to me as the fetid odour of a prison cell must be to a recidivist. I had always seen the captain as a Bedouin, a caravanner, a camper, ever ready to move on, yet by the state of the boat I had a feeling he hadn't gone too far lately. When he showed his face again it was with a mug of tea, which he handed to me. It had the Ajax emblem on it, with 'Europa Cup 1995', a prized antique. The tea was horribly, reassuringly sweet. His own mug was a more recent acquisition. As he settled on the deck housing, he looked me up and down.

   "You are rich."

   I shrugged. It was no shame, though he said it accusingly, adding with equal displeasure, “You have been in the sun."

   “This will be my last trip. To London. Out of the sun.”

   “Into the sun, you mean. Into the west.”

   “Yes,” I said. “Where everyone goes, chasing the dying light."

   It could be the last trip for him, too, I thought, and I wondered if such an idea hadn't crossed his own mind. It didn't look as if the old tub could make it as far as the estuary of the Scheldt, let alone across the couple of hundred miles of one of the most unpredictable seas in the world. We used to go back and forth all the time, but I guessed it was a few years since Zeemeeuw had ventured beyond Flushing, or Vlissingen, as the Flems would have it. When I last sailed with him, there wasn't even a depth sounder on board. EU regulations would have caught up with him by now. One last trip, though, would prove it could be done.

   "So you're going home." He was non-committal.

   "I just turned fifty. I thought I would try to find out if my father is still alive."

   "Have you been in touch since you walked out?"

   I shook my head. I didn't even know if Dad was living at the old address. Nor had I ever cared. It didn't occur to me then to ask Van Mieghem if he himself had acquired any family in the past quarter century. When we sailed together there had been the occasional woman, but he never put himself out for them and they didn't stay long. Perhaps he had mellowed. He scratched his oily fingers on the bib of his overalls.

   "Why would I want to spend three of four days cooped up at sea with you on board?" he asked, not unreasonably. "You can't even boil a kettle, if I remember."

   I grinned. It had been a joke between us. One time I had put the kettle on and fallen asleep, burning a hole in it. I said, "I would like to hear those tales of the North Sea you used to tell, about the people from its past, the ones heading west. They were far more entertaining than any in-flight entertainment."

   It was true. His stories were always worth listening to. He would take on the part of the characters, do the accents, make up the dialogue. If he wasn't so selfish, he would have made a good father, especially at bedtime. He looked around at the boat, and I could tell he was wondering about its fitness for a sea voyage.

   "A thousand euro," I said, upping the anti. "Plus the thousand I owe you."

   Involuntarily, his eyebrows flicked upwards. He didn't look rich.

   "I could help you make ready," I added. "I'm in no rush."

   The sun was entering the golden hour, and it lit up his face, warming the pale skin. Light patterns from the water played over it, and it seemed like liquid, deep and old as the sea, full not just of his own character but of the all those who had sailed the seas before him, from the time of the Celts to immigrants of the Red Star Line, from pirates to princesses, from smugglers to economic migrants.  Already I was looking forward to his stories.

   He turned around abruptly. He had made his decision. 

   "What are you going to say to your father if you see him?" he asked.

   I shrugged. I did not know yet. I was hoping that this journey, with its many ghosts of the past – not just my past but my father's, too, since he had crossed this sea countless times – might take me not towards an answer, but towards the question I most needed to ask...


to be continued...