There was Germany. You could just see a flat, wooded strip of coastline with houses and hotels, dwindling and receding, and the beach . . . Was that a very slight, faint, almost unnoticeable lurch? Let’s hope not. I looked at the Princess. She sensed immediately what I was getting at.

‘If you puked, laddie,’ she said, ‘that would really be a sooksay foo!’

‘A what?’

‘That’s French.’ She was getting very tetchy. ‘Now he doesn’t even understand French, when he’s spent five years in Paris, learning about Culture . . . Tell me, what did you actually do all that time? I can imagine! Running around with the little French tarts, eh! Such a rake! What are they like, then? Come on, you can tell Lydia. We’ll go up and down on deck, and if you feel sick, you can just lean over the railing, the way they do in books. Right!’

I told her that Frenchwomen were very sensible creatures, given to capriciousness, but always planning their caprices well in advance. Mostly they kept to one man apiece, a husband, or of course, a boyfriend – and perhaps a lover thrown in for the sake of respectability. And if they were unfaithful, they would be wildly cautious about it. But almost every other woman had a job. Though they didn’t have the vote, they ran the country, not on their backs, but with their common sense. They were calculating darlings, with sensible hearts which sometimes ran away with them, but always brought them back. I didn’t quite understand them.

‘They sound just like women,’ said Lydia.

The ferry wasn’t quite rolling – it was only threatening to. I was threatening something, too, but the Princess ordered me into the dining-room. There they all were, sitting and eating. I didn’t feel at all well when I saw that. They eat a lot of fatty foods in Denmark, and this was a Danish ferry. The assembled company were tucking into smoked eel and herring: herring fillets, marinaded herring, something they called sild, freshly caught herring and plain unvarnished herring. On dry land, each one more delicious than the last. To wash it all down, they were drinking that gorgeous schnaps for which all Scandinavians deserve to go to Heaven. The Princess deigned to eat. I watched, awestruck: she could hold her food.

‘Won’t you have anything?’ she asked between two herrings. I looked at the two herrings, the two herrings looked at me, and none of us said anything. I only revived once the ferry had docked. The Princess gently stroked my knee and said respectfully, ‘My little pirate!’ I felt thoroughly ashamed.