The knock on the door came some time in the afternoon. It was not a firm knock. I had deliberately left the door on the latch because I did not wish to be seen to do him a courtesy.

‘“Come in.”

Yes, it was Rick, not remembered but there at the time. He came in cautiously, head right up by the top of the door, body still as big but somehow different in shape. Perhaps his chest had slipped a fraction. He stood just inside the door, blinking against the light. Then he looked round the room very carefully as if he suspected an ambush. He peered across the table at me.

“It really is you, Wilf?”

“Yeah.”

His mouth widened, showing a lot of American teeth.

“I trust you’ve had time to acclimatize, Wilfred—sir?”

“Yeah.”

He saw the paper. My goodness me, his eyes widened almost as much as his mouth. You could have thought he had no eyelids except—ah, the storyteller’s power of observation!—the eyelashes stuck out all round them. A handsome hunk, our Rick.

“In fact, Wilf, I can see your signature!”

“Yeah.”

His eyes, unable to widen any further, bulged a bit. I nodded at him.

“Take a good look, son. We’ll butt heads. I’m not going to avoid you, like in Navona.”

His eyes went back in. I could see that he deepened the corrugations in what was visible of his forehead. Have I told you about his hair? No. Well, Professor R. L. Tucker had abandoned the half-length and gone afro. I mean it. His hair was frizzed and much lighter than erstwhile; and now I saw other things that only a trained observer would notice like for example the clothes he was wearing. His white trousers were flared at the bottom and the gores were sequinned. I’d been so enjoying his eyes that I had neglected all else and now I saw that his shirt, or vest as we say roundabout thirty west, had a huge chunk carved out of it clear down to where his navel would have been in view if that thatch, coppice, undergrowth of Tuckerish hair hadn’t hidden it. Well, if you have hair on your chest, why not say so? As it were. But somehow the high fashion of his gear put me right back to being British from the mid-Atlantic ridge I’d been affecting.

“Won’t you sit down, professor?”

He sank into the chair opposite and I heard it creak.

“How was Rome, professor?”

“You were calling me Rick, Wilf, sir. When would that be?”

“Come now! Right after I left here last time about a century ago, when you followed me down to Rome. That was clever. Luck too, of course.”

But Rick wasn’t listening. He had returned to staring at the paper on the polished table as if it might fly away at any moment. To make the situation plainer I took it up and held it.

“There is absolutely no reason for you to do that, Wilf, sir. I assure you.”