anybody other than a man who lives here on this island with me? People judge people on their appearance. Take some of my husband's clothes.'
That thought had already occurred to him. He took some clothes out of a chest. They smelled mouldy, of old sea.
'You look as if you're wearing hand-me-downs,' she said. 'You're taller than he was, but not as bulky.'
'I'm only borrowing them,' he said. 'When we leave Halsskär I shall burn them.'
'I want to see these people,' she said.
'You can't go scrambling over the rocks.'
'If they are where you say, on that headland in the west, there are some flat ledges I can walk along. I want to see those hats.'
When they came to the headland they found that the party had already landed. They were squatting behind a big rock. It took him a while to realise that they were making a film, one of these newfangled inventions with people flitting about jerkily in moving pictures, projected on to a white screen. He tried to explain to Sara Fredrika in a low whisper, but she was not listening.
The man had placed his cine camera on a stand. The ladies in white were running around on the rocks when suddenly a man with an amazingly long moustache and a white-painted face jumped out from behind a slab of rock and rushed towards the women.
Sara Fredrika dug her nails into Tobiasson-Svartman's arm.
'He's got a tail,' she hissed. 'There's a tail sticking out of his trousers.'
She was right. The man with black rings round his eyes had an artificial tail. The women looked as if they were praying and begging for mercy, their faces twitching. The man behind the camera was winding away at full speed, the women were screaming, but without making a sound. Sara Fredrika stood up. Her scream was like a foghorn. She bellowed and started throwing stones at the man with the tail. Tobiasson-Svartman tried to hold her back.
'It's not real,' he said. 'It's not real life, it's not actually happening.'
He snatched a stone from out of her hand and gave her a shake.
'They're only acting,' he said. 'Nobody's going to get hurt.'
Sara Fredrika calmed down. The man behind the camera had stopped winding and turned his cap the right way round. The ladies were staring in astonishment at the pair who had materialised from the rocks. The man had removed the tail and was holding it in his hand like a piece of rope. There was a flash of light from the yacht which was bobbing up and down in the swell. Somebody was watching them through a telescope.
Tobiasson-Svartman told Sara Fredrika to wait, and went over to the film-makers. The women were young and strikingly pretty. The man with the tail had a face he thought he recognised. When he held his hand out in greeting, he remembered having seen the man in a play at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. His name was Valfrid Mertsgren, the play was called The Wedding at Ulfåsa.
Mertsgren ignored his outstretched hand and eyed him up and down in annoyance.
'Who are you?' he asked. 'We were told this skerry was uninhabited. They said there was a ruin of an old cottage that we could use.'
'I live here with my wife.'
'For hell's sake, you can't live here. What do you live on?'
'Fishing.'
'Plundering wrecks?'
'If somebody gets into difficulties we help them. We don't plunder.'
'Everybody does,' said Mertsgren. 'People are greedy. They'd steal their neighbour's heart if they had the chance.'
The cameraman and the two women in white had gathered round him.
'Can you really live here?' asked one of the women. 'What do you do in the winter?'
'Where there's the sea, there's food.'
'Can't we include him and the fat woman in the film?' said the other woman, with a shrill laugh.
'She's not fat,' Tobiasson-Svartman said.
The woman who had made the suggestion stared at him. He hated her intensely.
'She's not fat,' he said again. 'She's pregnant'
'In any case, you can't be in the film,' Mertsgren said. 'We can't have a woman with a bun in the oven. This is a romantic adventure, pretty tableaux alternating with scary ones. We don't want any cows with one up the spout.'
Tobiasson-Svartman was on the point of punching him. But he controlled himself, spoke slowly in an attempt to disguise his feelings.
'Why make a film on Halsskär?' he asked in a friendly tone. 'Why here of all places?'
'That's a good question,' Mertsgren said. 'I really don't know why we're filming here.'
He turned his back