With his wishes for godspeed in my ears and an internal bonfire of Bols and a hand smarting from his valedictory shake, I set off. We clinked them he emptied his at one gulp and I did the same. The landlord asked where I was going: I said: ‘Constantinople.’ His brows went up and he signalled to me to wait: then he set out two small glasses and filled them with transparent liquid from a long stone bottle. I put on my greatcoat, slung the rucksack, grasped my stick and headed for the door.

I made a second long entry in my journal – it was becoming a passion – and while the landlord polished his glasses and cups and arranged them in glittering ranks, dawn broke, with the snow still coming down against the lightening sky. The cat went in again at once I followed it and the ensuing fried eggs and coffee, ordered by signs, were the best I had ever eaten. A shutter went up and a stout man in clogs opened a glass door, deposited a tabby on the snow and, turning back, began lighting a stove inside. The cafes and seamen’s taverns which lay back from the quay were all closed except one which showed a promising line of light. Gulls mewed and wheeled overhead and dipped into the lamplight, scattering their small footprints on the muffied cobblestones and settled in the rigging of the anchored boats in little explosions of snow. The lanes opened on the Boomjes, a long quay lined with trees and capstans, and this in its turn gave on a wide arm of the Maas and an infinity of dim ships. Trees and masts were dispersed in clumps and the polygonal tiers of an enormous and elaborate gothic belfry soared above the steep roofs. Snow was piling up on the shoulders of a statue of Erasmus. The beetling storeys were nearly joining overhead then the eaves drew away from each other and frozen canals threaded their way through a succession of hump-backed bridges. I wandered about the silent lanes in exultation. I was still the only passenger in the train and this solitary entry, under cover of night and hushed by snow, completed the illusion that I was slipping into Rotterdam, and into Europe, through a secret door. I hadn’t known that Rotterdam was a few miles inland. Snow covered everything and the flakes blew in a slant across the cones of the lamps and confused the glowing discs that spaced out the untrodden quay. It was still a couple of hours till dawn when we dropped anchor in the Hook of Holland.

A time of gifts