‘Vaguely. You couldn’t have a cocktail without ordering food, something like that.’
‘In the restaurants, wine and beer were unlimited, but did you ever try the beer in those days? Distilled water, I assure you. No drinks were served before noon. A woman could not really have a full drink of hard liquor until three o’clock. And then, as you point out, when you were served, you had to buy food with it, if you were hungry or not. No food, no spirits. Most restaurants became quite clever. They would serve you the drink with an old, old egg they used over and over again. And no matter what your needs, you were limited to what you might call four shots a day. It did not help a particle. In the ten years before the end of the war, there were a quarter of a million people here found guilty of misdemeanours induced by alcohol. Even the prohibitionists were against Bratt, though for different reasons. There was one temperance society, the Blue Band, that objected because the law made people waste valuable food to obtain drink, and this while half of Europe was starving. Well, we’re a rational country, and the people would not stand for it. It was our one national deformity. Bratt had been so personally abused that he had gone into exile in France. So, in 1955, the Riksdag abolished liquor control, overwhelmingly. And I am proud. You do not fetter an entire people’s thirst. I do not drink-oh, a medicinal sip or two at nights before bedtime, to keep me tuned-but I am proud. If you wish a bottle, you can now walk two or three blocks from here, to the first shop, and order whatever you like. No ration books, and no questions, although they will not sell to a customer who is obviously drunk. Of course, a new inequity has already arisen. The price of a bottle of alcohol, and the tax on it, makes it very dear. I do not believe that is fair, either. Pricing hard drink out of reach may be a means of creating a false temperance, but it only indulges the rich who can afford to drink as much as they please, and it deprives the labourer and the poor. Everyone who reads me thinks I am an eccentric old lady who lives in the country and thinks only of nature’s beauty and bird-watching, but I am more than that, Mr. Craig. I am concerned about all injustice. I abhor it on any level.’
‘I’m on your side,’ said Craig. He had read about Ingrid Påhl, but had never read her books, and had not known what to expect. Now, he liked her enormously.
‘Here is your drink,’ she said. ‘I am sure I have made you ravishingly thirsty.’
The waiter served them, and after a short argument, Craig won the right to sign the bill.
Ingrid Påhl lifted her cup of cocoa. ‘Down with Bratt and up with skål,’ she said.
‘Skål and down with Bratt,’ said Craig, and he drank.
‘I have your programme,’ she said, and touched the folded paper that she had found while fumbling around in her handbag, and had placed beside her saucer. ‘Do you want to see it now?’
‘I’ll read it later. What are the highlights?’
‘The first highlight is today, two o’clock, at the Swedish Press Club. You and the other winners will be formally interviewed by the world press. Tonight, at seven, cocktails and dinner in the Royal Palace with the King. It is full evening dress only for the nobility. Tomorrow, a grand tour of the city. Count Jacobsson and an attaché will be your guides. The day after, a formal dinner in the country tendered by Ragnar Hammarlund, our billionaire industrialist. It is optional, but as an author, I would not miss it. After that, all sorts of small events, until the final Nobel Ceremony at Konserthuset-Concert Hall-at five o’clock in the afternoon. Does your head spin?’
Craig smiled. ‘A little.’ He consulted his watch. ‘Do you mean in only four hours from now I have to meet all those reporters?’
‘I am afraid so.’
He shook the ice in his glass. I’d better stick to one drink.’ He looked at his companion. ‘How are these press conferences? Are they rough?’
‘Very.’
He brought the glass to his lips. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’d better make that two drinks.’
It was 2.10 in the afternoon, and the four press conferences of the Nobel laureates were already under way.
With a sigh of relief, Count Bertil Jacobsson sat in the straight-backed chair behind the reception table in the seclusion of the second floor cloakroom of the Swedish Press Club. Under his direction and that of his secretary, Astrid Steen, the Club had been prepared earlier for these interviews. The immense hall, beyond the closed door of the cloakroom, had been partitioned by half-a-dozen screens into two separate and private rooms. The Drs. Marceau had been installed in one half, and Professor Stratman in the other half. Off the hall, the confined rear reading-room had been assigned to Dr. Farelli and Dr. Garrett. The nearest, larger lounge had been turned over to Mr. Craig.
It had been planned that the different winners would meet one another formally this evening, during the cocktail period, at the Royal Palace. But since they were all assembling here in the afternoon, Jacobsson felt that their simultaneous presence, without introduction, might be awkward. At the last moment, he had requested the participants to arrive at a quarter to two, instead of two, so that they might become acquainted informally.
The fifteen minutes before the press conference, when the laureates had been herded together in the hall, introduced to one another, and served sherry and whisky with ice, had been curiously uncomfortable minutes for Jacobsson, and apparently for all concerned. Individually, each of them seemed sociable, even amicable, but together, as a group, they did not jell. It was odd, reflected Jacobsson. Perhaps it would have been wiser to invite their wives and relatives, who were at this moment elsewhere, being treated to luncheon by the wives of the various members of the Nobel academies.
Except for Dr. Farelli, an overpowering and gregarious personality, none of the others had mixed or conversed easily. They had met as strangers, and they were strangers still, despite their common victory. Professor Stratman had taken several pills with his sherry and had appeared preoccupied. Drs. Denise and Claude Marceau had not exchanged a single word with each other-there was definitely some disagreement between them-and had been too strained to mingle with the others. Dr. Garrett, whom Jacobsson had introduced first and properly to his co-winner Dr. Farelli, had seemed to be struck dumb. He had stammered several inarticulate words to the Italian, and then left him as he might a leper, and he had thereafter been mute and unaccountably agitated. Mr. Craig, who had arrived last, had been disinterested in the others and had devoted most of his attentions to the waiter, consuming three Scotches with ice in the fifteen minutes. It had been with sincere gratefulness that Jacobsson had greeted the first press arrivals, and had ordered Mrs. Steen to take the laureates to their separate stations.
Drumming his fingers nervously on the cloakroom table, Jacobsson wondered if the mistake had been his own. Perhaps he should have avoided their meeting until evening when the different winners, without the stress of a press conference ahead, mellowed by the spirits and food of the Royal Palace and the presence of His Majesty, would have been more receptive to one another. The idea of a simultaneous press conference, never before attempted, had been his own touch of showmanship. Several local newspaper executives had protested, for it meant assigning four reporters instead of one to manage full coverage. But Jacobsson had been adamant. He had felt that requiring more reporters in attendance this year would make the newspapers even more conscious of the importance of Nobel Week. Furthermore, he had assumed that the concurrent release of interviews with all six winners in the four categories would make a greater impression on international readers. Now he hoped that he had not been wrong.