The following summer, something had changed. When Henrik tried to impress by riding on two wheels along the entire length of the forest track, no one was particularly interested. Some had been riding mopeds in the city, slick models modified for better performance, and when it came down to it, a platform moped was actually quite…rural.
Henrik and Björn fell from grace, and they fell hard. Perhaps as a reaction to the artificial importance they had enjoyed the previous summer, they now started to attract a certain amount of ridicule. They had the wrong clothes and the wrong hairstyles, they talked funny and they knew nothing about music. It was during that summer someone came up with that business of H and B. Hubba and Bubba. Big bubbles, no troubles.
Both Martin and Joel had let their hair grow during the winter. Anders, somewhere in between as usual, had medium-length hair, as did Johan. Hubba and Bubba had very short hair, and the others decided it was so the fish scales wouldn't get stuck in it. Or the dung, come to that.
Both Malin and Elin teased their hair up like Madonna, lots of spray, and although Cecilia and Frida, who were a year younger, didn't go that far-or use that much make-up-they too had started to show an interest in how they looked.
Joel had a T-shirt with 'Frankie says RELAX' on it, and through his dad, who had been on a business trip to London, he had the single 'Two Tribes' before anyone else had even heard it on Tracks. Henrik and Björn didn't know who Frankie Goes to Hollywood were, but since Joel kept on referring to them as 'Frankie', they drew the wrong conclusion.
One evening at Elin's, Joel was going on and on about how incredibly cool the video to 'Two Tribes' was, with Reagan and that Russian guy, whatever his name was, punching each other until the blood flowed. Joel had spent a couple of days back home in the city; he'd been watching Music Box, and had all the latest info.
'Two Tribes' was thundering on the stereo in the background, and Björn was sitting there following the beat with his head. When there was a break in Joel's monologue, Björn said, 'He's pretty good, isn't he?'
Just as a tern catches a flash of silver in the water and dives, Joel snapped up Björn's comment. 'Who is?' he asked.
Björn nodded towards the stereo. 'Him.'
'Who do you mean, Holly Johnson?'
Björn realised he was on thin ice and glanced at Henrik, who was unable to provide any help. Then he said uncertainly, 'Frankie, of course.'
This reply would be quoted frequently in the future. Whenever anyone in the gang asked who someone was the reply would be, 'Frankie, of course.'
The episode was typical. A number of similar situations made it perfectly clear that even if Henrik and Björn were more or less OK, they were basically peasants and not worth bothering with.
When Martin climbed up into the alarm bell tower, it was a feat. When Henrik did the same thing a week or so later, nobody was interested, despite the fact that he climbed higher than Martin, so high that he could rap on the bell itself with his knuckles, and the tower ought really to have given way. What fools do has no importance.
Not that Anders got involved in the status of Henrik and Björn. That was the summer he and Cecilia went up to the rock one evening, and there were other things to think about. He also had Music Box at home in the city and read the music magazine OA" from time to time, so he was able to keep up and avoid the worst of the hidden reefs; he was even able to venture an opinion sometimes, 'I just don't know what George Michael is doing with Andrew Ridgeley. They must be at it or something.' But he was mainly into Depeche Mode, and he was on his own there.
One evening before it was time to head home at the end of the summer, he and Cecilia had been alone in Anders' house, and he had actually done it: he played 'Somebody' to her. To his boundless relief she really liked it, and wanted to hear it again. Then they'd snogged. A bit.
When Anders came out for Christmas, Henrik and Björn had changed. There was six months between them, but even in their physical and psychological changes they seemed to stick together like Siamese twins. Both had grown, both had a fine crop of pimples, and they had left behind the innocent naivety that had characterised them up to now: they were quieter, more introverted.
But they still hung out together from time to time during the week; they rode the moped over to Kattholmen and played the odd fantasy game in the forest. There was no need to spell out that this was not to be mentioned to anyone else, it was self-evident. Through the same silent agreement they also stopped calling each other dickhead. Those days were gone.
Anders told them about his new discovery: The Smiths. He had been given a Walkman for Christmas, and it played Hatful of Hollow more or less continuously. Henrik had been given the guest cottage in the garden as his own room, and they sat there listening to 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' and 'Still 111'. When Anders was due to go back to the city, Henrik asked if Anders could make him a tape.
Anders gave him the one he'd brought with him, because he could easily make a new one when he got home.
When the summer came it was clear that Henrik and Björn had found their thing. Meat Is Murder had come out a few months earlier; Anders thought it was OK, but nowhere near as good as Hatful of Hollow. Henrik and Björn had a different view. They knew every single line of every single song, and both had become vegetarians, possibly the first ever on Domarö.
It isn't necessary to go into any more detail about the music that was cool that summer, suffice to say that The Smiths were definitely not cool. If Henrik and Björn had enjoyed a higher status, then perhaps the whole gang might have joined in and embraced the notion of meat-eating as murder, but that was not the case. With hindsight, of course, it was Henrik and Björn who were the most hip and the most London, but what good did it do them at the time? None. They were farmers, head cases.
They tried to get Anders to become a member of their private sect, but Anders wasn't having any of it. For one thing it wasn't in his nature to get so obsessed about something to do with music, and for another there was now a kind of sickness surrounding Hubba and Bubba. If you spent time with them you risked being seen as infected. They were still tolerated when the whole group was together, but nobody wanted to be regarded as their friend.
If the gang had gathered on the shore to barbecue sausages and drink weak beer, Henrik and Björn wouldn't eat any sausages, because meat is murder. If 'Forever Young' by Alphaville was playing on Joel's ghetto blaster, they would sit grinning scornfully at the infantile lyrics in poor English, making comparisons with the greatest living poet of the day: Stephen Patrick Morrissey.
And so on. They cultivated their outsider status, and knew they had a friend in the pale young man from Manchester. Someone who knew what it was like to grow up in a place where nothing happens. A brother in exile.
That winter Anders paid only a short visit to Domarö, and he avoided Henrik and Björn. They called him in the spring when they were about to embark on their pilgrimage to Stockholm to buy The Queen Is Dead, and wondered if they could stay over, but Anders said he was going to dinner with Cecilia's mother. Which he was, but not until the following week.
By the summer when everything got blown apart, Henrik and Björn's interest had escalated to unhealthy proportions. They dressed like Morrissey, both had acquired rockabilly haircuts, and when it turned out that Björn's eyesight was so bad he needed glasses, he was absolutely delighted, because it gave him a reason to get mottled grey frames like the army-issue ones, and even more like…well, you get the picture.