Gone Viking

by Helen Russell

  ‘Just explore!’ Magnus exhorts. ‘Try things out! Taste! If you see something interesting, try a little of it. If it tastes bitter, probably don’t eat it. But otherwise, most things won’t hurt you. Except the toadstool mushrooms. Or yew seeds. And, obviously, try not to eat shit …’

  Wait, what? Is he deranged?

  Once we’ve all composed our faces again enough to assure him that we hadn’t planned to, he adds, ‘It’s just we have to mention it, legally. There’s this tapeworm that thrives in foxes and raccoon dogs around here—’

  ‘Raccoon dogs?’ Melissa asks.

  ‘Is that a thing?’ Tricia looks perplexed.

  ‘Yes,’ Magnus assures us. ‘A very real thing. You don’t have?’

  ‘Not in Lewes, no …’

  He goes on to explain that we’re unlikely to come across one during our trip – especially during daylight hours – but that if we do we’ll know them because they ‘look like a raccoon that got old and maybe a little bit diseased’.

  ‘Right, good to know.’

  ‘But the risk of infection is relatively small and can only happen if you get shit in your mouth. Which, of course, should be unlikely.’

  ‘One would hope.’ Tricia looks at Magnus as though perhaps the gloss is wearing off those oiled, pumped muscles, and I can’t help thinking that, on reflection, my preschool nature training served me well.

  ‘But in the case of a real S-H-T-F situation—’

  ‘S-H-T-F?’ Tricia asks.

  ‘“Shit hits the face”,’ Magnus clarifies, as Margot flinches. ‘We can lure it out – the worm, that is – with a flashlight up the butt and some sugar. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that …’

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ I murmur in astonished agreement.

  ‘And of course watch out for wolves,’ he adds.

  ‘What?’ Tricia snaps, again.

  Magnus sighs, as though aware that the ‘W’ word was going to cause a bit of a fuss and already wishing he hadn’t mentioned it. ‘It’s just that some people think they’ve seen wolves around these parts, looking for food. But sightings are very rare and, really, you have more chance of being killed by a runaway train.’

  Melissa gulps.

  ‘If I see a wolf, I’m going to pee my pants …’ Tricia says decisively, as though this should be a warning to any passing predators.

  Lesson over, we’re each given a cross body satchel in uniform-grey hessian (‘I feel like I’m in the Scandi branch of Chairman Mao’s army,’ Tricia observes. ‘The Hunger Games, more like,’ I mutter) and given our orders.

  ‘So now we’re going to pair you up,’ announces Magnus. ‘Proud Chest, you go with Strong Legs.’ Crap. ‘And Aslög, you can go with Night Wolf.’

  Great. Excellent.

  Margot beams and moves closer, so close that I note her every flawless pore. She’s so young and naturally lean that I can see the muscles in her actual face. Her skin is luminous, even after a night in a rudimentary log hut. And that hair! Close up! It’s lighter and thicker than expected, with more shine than a Pantene ad. Rich people have Really Good Hair, I think. She oozes health and has a fresh, natural beauty that makes me want to peel off my own skin. Or wear a balaclava for the rest of my life. Or steal her face and wear it as a mask …

  The dental surgery started doing Botox recently, under the rational that while they’ve got you in a chair in a sterile environment they might as well jzuz up your whole face. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been tempted. Expressions are overrated, I think, I don’t want anyone knowing when I’m worried or angry or anxious. And really, when you think about it, Botox is the ultimate in bottling it up – for three-to-four months at a time. Which is just … efficient …

  I think about asking Tricia about her experiences but then remember that the woman can’t raise her eyebrows effectively and so may not be the best guide. Perhaps it’s a case of ‘less is less’. But still, I feel I need to do something.

  I glance down at my papery hands with their Irish-blue skin, then look across at Margot’s neatly manicured, plastic-looking ones. And her arms! I continue my assessment: The girl has Michelle Obama arms, chiselled shoulders, a torso untroubled by childbirth, and long, slim legs. Urghhh … I pull down at my T-shirt self-consciously.

  I looked like her once. Only it took a monumental effort on my part and I starved myself so much that my periods stopped. For ten years. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, on paper – but a part of me has never been able to let the proclivity go. Generally, I do OK. I can drown out the voices in my head and hold it together (See ‘four bags-for-life in the car at all times’). But the chorus of self-loathing is still there. Like a low-rent Greek tragedy.

  As a teenager, I had the whole ‘Victorian waif’ thing going on – a sort of ‘consumptive chic’ – that I think people assumed was my natural pallor. And all the while, Melissa was looking ruddier by the day, fuelled by mugs of strong tea, fried eggs and bacon. If my sister ever noticed I was looking a little more street-urchin than usual, she’d say, ‘You know what’s good when you’re feeling sad?’ and then hold up a brown paper bag of some baked goods or other.

  There was always this feeling that, because we were sisters, we were naturally similar. That we ‘worked’ the same way and should do everything together. That’s what happens in films. But it didn’t ‘work’ with us. After Mum got sick, the ignominy of having to repeat ‘Obesity Clinic, please …’ increasingly loudly to a partially deaf receptionist at the doctor’s surgery and deliver my sister to her monthly meetings fell to me. I felt I’d be judged in the harshest terms imaginable by a waiting room of flu-sufferers were I to have expanded even a millimetre in between sessions. So I went the other way. I ate less and exercised more.

  It was work that finally saved me, a decade later. You can tell a lot about someone from their teeth, and red, swollen gums were the first giveaway. My body started to de-prioritise my mouth – as well as my reproductive functions – in an attempt to salvage the nutrients needed to keep the rest of me running. I didn’t have enough vitamin D in my body to absorb calcium properly, my first boss told me with a look of distaste. The next step, he said, would be receding gums, then gum disease. ‘And no one wants a dentist with gingivitis,’ he told me. If I wanted to work at ‘the cutting edge of oral hygiene’, I had to ‘sort myself out’. So I started eating again. Within reason. And I stopped looking like bloody Margot …

  ‘Are you listening, Aslög?’

  Oh god, he means me …

  ‘Yes, err … foraging?

  ‘I was explaining where to look …’

  ‘Yep. Got it. Thanks.’ I assure him I’m totally up to speed (I’m not) and we’re sent off on our merry way.

  The wind has been getting up and now whistles around our ears as we move to higher ground. Combined with the yawning emptiness in my stomach, this makes for a distracting tramp, barefoot, through scrubland up a small incline to an area Magnus has assured us is ‘prime pickings’.

  The smell of sheep dung hangs heavy in the air as we walk – Margot striding purposefully; me, eyes flicking nervously from the horizon to where I’m putting my feet, amidst rocks and unfamiliar thistle type plants that hurt nearly as much as stepping on the kids’ Lego bricks in exposed feet. Which should have been good preparation for a week of roughing it, Danish style … Melissa and Tricia peel off towards the coast but Margot seems so confident in her mission that I don’t dispute her course and merely follow, treading as swiftly as I can.

  ‘So, what’s it like being a dentist?’ she’s asking me as I look up, frowning, and promptly step on a thistle. ‘I always love going up and down in the chair! And those little sinks for spitting mouthwash in!’ She’s speaking rapidly, either to match her pace or … could it be … that she’s nervous? I can’t tell. ‘Does anyone ever swallow?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The pink mouthwash, I mean!’ she bobs, hair swishing.

  Oh great. I’m stuck with t
he genetically gifted, model-esque, perfect, and so-young-she’s-practically-an-embryo girl who also happens to have verbal diarrhoea …

  ‘It must be very rewarding work!’ She is still talking. ‘I hope I’m really established in my career by the time I’m in my forties!’

  I give her a brilliant glare and find that all my muscles have tensed, as though ready to take flight or fight this exotic creature. ‘I’m thirty-seven,’ I correct her.

  ‘Oh! Right! I just thought –’ she gives a tinkly laugh ‘– since you’re so settled and everything … sorry …’ She tails off, shaking her head, and assumes an expression that I can only presume is intended to convey, ‘I’m such a klutz!’

  Play it cool, I tell myself while fuming inwardly. Just Play It Cool. I remember how I, too, used to be terrible at deciphering the age of anyone older than me, assuming they must all be ancient. I am an emotionally stable adult … I am an emotionally stable adult … I am an emotionally stable adult … who is going to KILL her …

  Margot does a really slow blink, which I naturally interpret as a declaration of war, before turning and continuingly nimbly up the hill. She’s already hard at it when I puff my way to the top – stuffing things into her bag at speed, as though she’s in a Nordic nature-lover’s version of The Crystal Maze. So I do the same, or at least, try. The trouble is, I’ve already forgotten everything Magnus taught us.

  Because, really, I don’t care.

  Other than getting through the next few days, these are not skills I need.

  I’m a busy woman, I justify my reluctance. There are better things I could be doing right now. Like root canals. Or extractions. Or denture fittings, fillings, implants, crowns – hell, I’d even take a teeth-whitening procedure around about now over this. With an average of thirty minutes per routine dental examination and most treatment appointments taking a minimum of an hour, I calculate that I’ve already neglected approximately twelve patients today, or twenty-four in total taking in yesterday’s tally, by dent of my Viking detour. I often work six days a week, so by the end of this debacle I will have missed … seventy-two appointments, I estimate. In short: I don’t have time for this.

  I never plan on living or working more than a hundred yards from a Tesco Metro and so ‘foraging skills’ are not – nor have they ever been – high up on my list of priorities. I’ll play along, but I’m only here for Melissa. I’m here because she made me come. I’m here because, apparently, there were ‘no spas available’ …

  But they can’t make me care about any of this.

  What I can do – what I’m pretty good at after years of practice and a millennium (or so it feels) of marriage – is dial it in. I’m adept at ‘getting through things’. It’s only a week, I rationalise, what’s the worst that can happen?

  I cast about, looking at what ‘nature’s bounty’ has deigned to offer in the way of snacks in the patch of scrubland that Margot has led me to.

  There was something about pesto, wasn’t there? And poisonous mushrooms … ? But which ones? I study a few shabby specimens in front of me that look distinctly grey. Like everything else in this country.

  I’m scouting around for inspiration (aka spying on what Margot’s picking) and trying to avoid stepping on the small black pellets that seem to be decorating the ground when I come face to face with an enormous, terrifying, horrific-smelling, hundred-kilogram beast.

  I haven’t seen sheep in the flesh since childhood – this being one of the advantages of living in a city and outsourcing any manure-smelling outings to the kids’ school and/or Greg, back when he could be bothered. I know, vaguely, from reading farmyard stories that sheep are not supposed to be scary. That accolade is reserved for elephants, tigers, lions, rhinos, dinosaurs etc. – some of which, apparently, aren’t even a threat any more. Sheep, I’ve been assured, are benign by contrast, with a reputation for following the herd. So why has this one gone rogue? Separated itself, like some sort of Mad Max of the ovine community?

  The creature looks me straight in the eye as if to say. ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you? We all know it …’ Then it emits a loud, low sound, possibly to alert others to my failings.

  Baaaaaaaa! It yammers, a little aggressively, then takes a tentative hoof towards me, chewing something intently and seemingly unconcerned by the Malteser-esque pellets currently falling with ease out of its arse.

  Don’t eat shit, don’t eat shit, don’t eat shit. My addled brain repeats the only piece of information from Magnus’s tutorial that I have apparently retained.

  Baaaaaaaa! The creature bleats again and Margot turns around with fresh fists of foliage.

  ‘Are you OK? Do you need a hand?’

  ‘I’m fine!’ I smile tightly, embarrassed to have been caught having a standoff with a sheep. I keep smiling until I’m satisfied that she’s not looking any more. God, I miss the city, I think, the perpetual glow and hum and regular opportunities for coffee in cardboard cups … Beats sodding nature any day …

  The sheep couldn’t care less about my metropolitan longings and, instead, continues to emit round balls of barely digested plant matter from its nether region. I’m planning to take my leave, when I notice that behind my adversary is a bush, heavy with bulbous, crimson berries.

  Food! Actual food! That I could eat!

  My mouth floods with saliva at the thought. It’s the only thing vaguely resembling a foodstuff that I’ve seen so far and I’m now so hungry, I’d pretty much do anything to get my hands on them. There’s only one thing for it.

  ‘Here sheep! Here, sheep sheep sheep!’ I try to lure the thing away with a handful of admittedly not-very-appealing-looking grass, but it doesn’t budge. Am I going to have to have a showdown? Dentist vs. sheep? Has it come to this?

  The clusters of dusty red fruit look a lot like the actual, official, ‘raspberries’ I’m used to seeing on supermarket shelves. Rationalising that a sheep probably won’t kill me (it might maim me, I think, which might mean a few weeks recuperating in hospital somewhere. Could be worth it for a bit of a break, I tell myself. At least there’d be food …), I decide to go for it.

  If you’ve never charged a sheep, I recommend it. Bracing myself, I rock back on my heels, then throw caution and barefootedness to the wind before rolling forwards, advancing until momentum takes over and I’ve leant so far that I’m either going to have to break into a run or keel over. Feeling slightly mad and seriously exhilarated, I take one stride, then another, then another – covering ground without realising it, until the ewe appears larger and larger in my mental viewfinder. There is a moment when I’m not sure it’s going to move and its compact horns suddenly seem incredibly sharp and treacherous. But by then, it’s too late. I’m propelled by my own velocity and there’s no stopping me. In the strangest game of chicken ever played, the sheep gives way at the last moment … and the berries are mine!

  All mine!

  I carefully liberate a couple of soft, velvety globes and study them, with no real idea of what I’m looking for. But feeling emboldened by my farmyard-face-off and, frankly, starving, I stuff them into my mouth … and am delighted to discover that they taste a lot like raspberries, too.

  I cram in a handful. And another. And another. I’m doing it! I think, I’m foraging … ! I wish there was someone around to witness and so validate this minor victory, but Margot is busy, halfway up a tree, harvesting some sort of nut.

  Once I’ve eaten a decent M&S-punnet sized quantity of berries and then picked a second and third, lain carefully in my satchel for the others, I look around to find Margot, weighed down with produce, watching me.

  ‘How did you get on?’ she asks, brightly.

  ‘Good, thanks,’ I say, as confidently as I can.

  ‘Good,’ says her mouth. But I can’t help thinking that her eyes are saying. ‘Damn it …’

  ‘You?’ I ask back. Because, well, you have to, don’t you?

  ‘Great,’ she emphasises the word, before adding, ‘thanks.�
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  ‘Great …’ I try to strike just the right note of sarcastic ambiguity, so that if anyone called me out, they couldn’t be sure there was any uncharitable intent.

  Melissa and Tricia are already back at base camp when we return, sitting on logs and poking at a vat of something. Tricia is swaddled in several Scandi-issue grey blankets and executing an impressive yoga move in an attempt to give her feet what has always been known in our family as a ‘hot potato’ – blowing on them and rubbing intermittently.

  ‘Musselling,’ she explains. ‘Semi-successful, on Melissa’s part at least, but extremely cold.’ She swaps feet and funnels hot air on the other one to revive circulation.

  Melissa, by contrast, looks in her element – trousers rolled up around her ankles, disproportionately large Hobbit feet remarkably unscathed by the sub-zero Baltic sea, closely resembling a latter-day Bilbo Baggins.

  ‘Pull up a chair!’ Magnus barks, and I look around, hopefully.

  ‘There are chairs?’ I miss chairs.

  ‘Sure!’ He points at the log pile. ‘Over there!’

  ‘Oh, I see … ha!’ I say, trying to raise a smile while deflating on the inside. But Margot is already on it, rolling a log towards the campfire before going back to fetch one for me. ‘It’s OK, I can do it.’ I smile, weakly.

  ‘No problem, it’s here now.’ Margot trundles ‘my log’ into place and brushes off some of the moss with her sleeve before presenting it to me. ‘There you go!’

  She even offers me an arm to lower myself down, as though I am some sort of elderly aunt.

  If I had shoes on, I’d throw one of them at her …

  ‘Thank you,’ I manage, as graciously as I can. But inwardly, I’m livid. And feeling every one of my thirty-seven years.