The interpreter! The Princess’ idea was a good one, and we went to the office of a tourist-agency. Yes, they had an interpreter. Maybe. Definitely. Yes.

They are deliberate in Sweden – very deliberate. There are two types of Swede: the agreeable Swede – a quiet, friendly man – and the disagreeable Swede. He is extremely proud and so obtuse he doesn’t notice how pig-headed he is. We were dealing with one of the helpful sort. An interpreter, yes, they had one, and they would send him along to our hotel the next morning. Then we went to eat.

The Princess knew about food, and in Sweden they ate well, so long as you stuck to cold hors d’oeuvres – to Smörgåsbord. Unsurpassable. Their cooking was average, and they didn’t have a clue about red wine, which rather distressed me. The Princess didn’t drink red wine much. Instead – and she was the only woman I’ve ever met who did – she liked whisky. Most women say it tastes just like a dentist’s mouthwash, but if it’s good whisky, it tastes of smoke.

The next morning the interpreter arrived.

A fat man appeared, a mountain of a man. This was Bengtsson. He could speak Spanish and very good English, as well as German. Or rather: I listened once . . . I listened twice . . . he must have learned his German in America, because he had the brightest, loveliest and funniest American accent. He spoke German like a circus clown, but he was what Berliners call ‘proper’. He understood immediately what we wanted, and immersed himself in maps, timetables and brochures. By the afternoon we were on our way.

We went to Dalarne. We toured the countryside around Stockholm, and rattled along dusty country roads to the remotest villages. We saw sullen fir-trees, stupid pines and majestic old deciduous trees under a blue summer sky scattered with white, cotton-wool clouds; but we didn’t find what we were looking for. And what was that? We wanted a very small, very quiet little cottage, secluded, comfortable, peaceful, with a little garden . . . that was what we had dreamed of. Perhaps no such thing existed.

Our fat man was absolutely tireless. While we drove around looking, we asked him about his job. Yes, he guided foreigners around Sweden. Did he really know all the things he told them about? By no means – but he had lived in America for a long time, and he knew his Americans. Figures! He gave them plenty of figures: dates and dimensions and prices and figures, figures, figures . . . Didn’t matter if they were wrong. His German became more fluent with every day he spent with us, but it also became more American.

Three weeks back,’ he said, when we had just returned from another unsuccessful expedition and were having supper, ‘three weeks back, there was this American family in Stockholm. I said to them, it takes just one visit to America, and you realise that the whole of the rest of the world is like an Amurrican callany. Yup. After that, the people rilly took to me in a big way. Bottoms up!’