High life | 9 October 2010

Some of our readers may be aware that the sainted editor’s wife is Swedish — and she has a sister — but I swear on the Koran that what follows has nothing to do with that. The sainted one wrote about Sweden in these here pages two weeks ago. About how the Swedes have bucked the recession by lowering taxes. What I will tell you is about the fun I’ve had with the hyperborean beauties of that country, starting with my first great love Kerin, wife of a great tennis player of the late Fifties.

We were touring together and as he would compete all week and I’d be out of the tournament by Tuesday or Wednesday, Kerin and I would spend a lot of time together. So much so that people talked. Although Kerin refused to sleep with me — she was on her honeymoon when she joined the tour — we’d sit watching her hubby play. But all she did was look at me. It drove me nuts, and the Indian players, who were among the first to notice, used to have a cheap laugh about it. I told her that I felt like Charles XII, known as a great king but the one who lost the whole kit and caboodle to the Russians. She just kept looking deep into my eyes.

Her hubby never let on except when I played him in Lausanne in the summer of ’59. I think I won one game and was lucky to get that. He was very good-looking, a great player, loved her but never spoke more than a few words to her. He retired over the next year or so and I never saw her again.