Just like Anders and many others on Domarö, Holger came from a family of pilots. Through a series of clever acquisitions, marriages and other manoeuvres, the Persson family eventually ended up owning the entire north-eastern part of Domarö, an area covering some thirty hectares, measured from the shoreline inland, and comprising forest, meadows and arable fields.
This was what Holger's father had to look after when he came of age at the beginning of the 1930s. Summer visitors had begun to come, and like many others on the island he had a couple of boathouses done up and extended so that he could rent them out.
To cut a long story short, however, there were debts in the family, and Holger's father had an unfortunate tendency to hit the bottle when things were not going well. One summer he got to know a broker from Stockholm. Generous amounts of alcohol were proffered, and fraternal toasts shared. There was even talk of Holger's father becoming a member of the Order of the Knights Templar, the legendary masonic lodge headed by Carl von Schewen.
Well. Somehow the whole thing ended up with Holger's father selling Kattudden to the broker. A piece of land measuring about fifteen hectares where no trees grew and the grazing was poor. He got a price that was rather more than he would have expected if he'd sold the land to another islander.
But of course the broker was not interested in either grazing or forestry. Within a couple of years he had divided Kattudden into thirty separate plots, which he then sold to prospective summer visitors. Each plot went for a sum approximately half what he had paid for the whole piece of land.
When Holger's father realised what had happened, how thoroughly deceived he had been by the broker, the bottle was waiting to console him. At this point Holger was seven years old, and was forced to watch as his father drank himself into a morass of self-pity, while the Stockholmers happily erected their 'summer cottage' kit homes on land that had belonged to his family for generations.
A couple of years later his father took his shotgun out into the forest they still owned, and didn't come back.
Different versions of this story are told on many of the islands in the archipelago, but this was the Persson family's version, and it is undeniably one of the uglier tales. These transactions have given rise to a great deal of bitterness everywhere, and Holger was the most bitter of all.
His basic thesis was simple: Stockholmers were the root of all evil; some were guiltier than the rest, and the biggest villains of them all were Evert Taube and Astrid Lindgren.
Holger never tired of explaining his thesis to anyone who was prepared to listen: the archipelago had been a living community with a hard-working population, until Evert Taube came along and romanticised the whole thing, with his 'Rönnerdahl' and 'Calle Schewen's Waltz'. The real Carl von Schewen had become something of a recluse in his old age, thanks to all the curious Stockholmers who took a trip out to his jetty or lay there spying on him through telescopes from their boats to see if Calle might be busy building a haystack or dancing with the rose of Roslagen.
But this was merely a boring detail under the circumstances. The worst thing was that Taube's romantic portrayal opened the eyes of the Stockholmers to the archipelago, where people wore flowers in their hair, danced to the sound of the accordion and enjoyed a little drink in a picturesque manner. Those who could afford it bought themselves a summer cottage. The plots were bought up, and the archipelago became depopulated.
Just as the worst of the frenzy was dying down and the residents of the archipelago began to think they might be able to relax, the killer blow came with Astrid Lindgren's book Life on Seacrow Island, and the subsequent TV series. Now it wasn't only the rich who had to have a summer cottage. Brokers bought up everything they could get hold of in order to build small houses which they could sell or rent out by the week or month. Everybody wanted to go to the archipelago, to have exactly the right knack for starting up an outboard motor, and to find a pet seal of their very own.
The young people of the archipelago got to know the summer visitors, and began to long for the nightclubs and cinemas of the capital. Houses and farms were left with no one to inherit them, and of course the brokers popped up again, buying everything in sight until the archipelago resembled a corpse that came to life for a couple of months in the summer, then sank back into its silent grave.
This was the gist of Holger's thesis, and he would usually end with some detailed fantasy concerning what he would like to do to Evert and Astrid if they were still alive. These were terrible things involving both lead weights and petrol, and he would brook no contradictions.
The archipelago had been romanticised to death. That was Holger's considered opinion.
Anna-Greta
A wall of yellowing lilacs hid Anna-Greta's house from view. The only thing visible above the hedge was the metal roof of the tower, covered in verdigris. When Anders was a child he used to think it was a real tower, the kind you found in castles where knights lived, and he was frustrated because he could never find the way to it, and no one would show him.
Later he had realised that the pointed tower was purely decorative and the window on the gable was painted on. A hundred and fifty bygone years slumbered in that wind-battered wooden panel, and the impression of a haunted house lost in its own memories would have been complete, had it not been for the woman who opened the front door and came running down the garden path.
Anna-Greta was wearing jeans and a check shirt. On her feet she had rubber boots. Her long, white hair was woven into a plait that thudded against her back as she rushed up to Anders and threw her arms around him.
'Oh, Anders!' She hugged him, she shook him. 'It's so good to see you!'
She squeezed him so hard that for a moment Anders thought she was actually going to lift him off the ground, the way she used to do when he was little. He didn't dare respond with the same force-she was eighty-two, after all-so he stroked her back and said, 'Hello Gran.'
Anna-Greta suddenly let go and stared closely at his face for five seconds. Only then did she appear to notice Simon. She tilted her head to one side. Simon leaned over and kissed her cheek. Anna-Greta nodded as if to indicate that he had behaved correctly, and grabbed Anders' hand.
'Come on. The coffee's ready.'
She led Anders towards the house, and Simon lumbered after them. It wasn't that his gait had actually altered, but next to Anna-Greta most people looked as if they were lumbering, regardless of age.
It was as if she lived only on clear, salty air, and when the day came for her to pass away, she would probably do exactly that. Just take a step to one side. Dissolve into a north-westerly wind as it whirled around the lighthouse at North Point, then out across the sea.
The table was laid in the parlour: anchovy sandwiches with egg, delicate biscuits and cinnamon whirls. The hunger which Anders had refused to acknowledge suddenly caught up with him. Simon pretended to be offended, and said to Anders, 'I see, we're in the parlour because you're here. I have to sit in the kitchen. When I'm invited.'
Anna-Greta stopped and raised her eyebrows. 'Is that a complaint?'
'No, no,' said Simon. 'I'm just saying there seems to be some sort of preferential treatment going on here.'
'If you stayed away for almost three years, I'd probably set the table in the parlour for you as well when you came back.'
Simon scratched his chin. 'Well, perhaps I'd better do that, then.'
'In that case I'll walk straight into the sea and drown myself, as you well know. Sit down.'
Anders' father had once said that Simon and Anna-Greta were like an old comedy double act. They had their set routines, polished over the years; by this stage they knew them so well they were no longer routines, but rather a basis for improvisation. You recognised the theme, but the words were different every time.