The Boatyard

Adrien's yard is at the far end of the old dock in Ostend, where the quays stop being pretty. Past the fish restaurants, past the pleasure yachts, past the museum ship, there's a row of sheds in blackened brick, a patch of waste ground where thistles grow between rusty rails, and, right at the end, a big wooden gate painted green, with a hand-painted sign: Mertens Houtbouw — scheepstimmerwerk.

Mertens. That was his surname. I'd learned it from the sign, the first Sunday he took me there, not from him. I hadn't thought it odd. Now everything was odd.

I went on the Thursday, without warning, at eleven in the morning. I closed the studio with a note on the door: back at 15.00. I took the coast tram, the one that runs along the sea from Knokke to De Panne, sixty-seven kilometres, the longest tram line in the world, according to the leaflets. I took it as far as Ostend. I looked at the sea through the window for more than an hour without seeing it.