They didn’t teach her about people like this at her school … And now I’m going to get lumped into ‘people like this’, thanks to my genetic proximity to the moon-landing-denier. Cheers, Melissa …
‘So you stockpile food?’ Margot seeks to clarify, ‘In case an asteroid hits?’
‘Not in case,’ is Tricia’s comeback. ‘When!’
‘I think we’ll be OK … for tonight at least …’ I try to bring this conversation back down to earth as delicately as I can.
‘That’s what “they” want you to think,’ Tricia says.
‘Do they?’
Tricia taps her nose as if to say ‘you didn’t hear it from me’.
Melissa nods in support of her fellow conspiracy theorist, as I flop back down onto my back in despair.
Margot, sensing that any attempts at scientific conversions are likely to be fruitless this evening, slowly lowers herself back down too, and we stare at the constellations in silence after this.
‘You don’t see those at home,’ Tricia murmurs eventually, to which Melissa replies that you do if you live round her way, in the ‘proper countryside’.
‘So not Streatham then?’ I ask.
‘No,’ she tells me firmly. ‘Sorry.’
I’ve never had much interest in the natural world before. But being treated to such an extravagant expanse of starry sky, extending forever, I think perhaps Melissa might be on to something with her countryside evangelism.
‘That’s a bright one!’ she nods, vaguely.
‘Getting a bit technical there,’ I tease and she sticks her tongue out at me. Yawning with a comfortable fatigue, I blink a few times, then a couple more – convinced I’ve seen a shooting star.
I rub my eyes to check they are to be trusted.
‘Did you see it too?’ Melissa asks.
‘I … I think so!’
‘Make a wish! Quick! All of us.’
And so we do.
Six
Burr-burrr-burrrr!
The blare of a horn starts up: a stirring, rallying call that blends into an alarmingly realistic dream sequence I’m currently immersed in involving the treatment of an impacted third molar.
Burr-burrr-burrrr! The summons continues, for what seems like an age, until I am fully awake and squinting to take in my surroundings.
Burr-burrr-burrrr …
I start to wonder when it will stop.
Burr-burrr-BURRRR!
Will it EVER stop?
The horn gets louder. And louder. Until an imposing figure, clutching an appendage from what must have been a pretty terrifying bull, is looming over us.
‘Impressive lung capacity.’ A crumpled Tricia emerges from a mass of blankets opposite and rubs her eyes. Margot and Melissa aren’t anywhere to be seen, but my sister, at least, I can hear.
‘Wake up! It’s a beautiful day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing!’ she is trilling from beyond the shelter.
‘All right, Snow White, keep your bodice on,’ I grumble, propping myself up on one elbow then deciding the outside world is far too cold, so slumping back down and burying my hands in my armpits for warmth. After listening to Melissa hum tunelessly, albeit with enthusiasm, for another five minutes, I decide I can’t take it any more. I’m going to have to get up. I wriggle a bra on underneath the jumper I’ve now taken to sleeping in and manage to turn my underwear inside out for a second wear. Yes, it’s come to this. And amazingly, I’m coping pretty well.
Maybe I am a Viking …
Margot appears, hands on hips, glowing almost ethereally and with a halo of early-morning sunlight making her caramel mane shine even more than usual. ‘Everything always feels better after a run, doesn’t it?’
Tricia and I exchange a look along the lines of ‘I wouldn’t know’, followed by a telepathically mutual ‘give me strength, and, preferably, espresso …’
On seeing Magnus, Margot stands a little taller than even her excellent posture usually allows. ‘Oh, hi! How are you today?’
But today, Magnus ignores her. Today, there is no time for such social fripperies. Because today, he informs us: ‘We are warriors.’
‘What about breakfast?’ I ask. Me! A woman who eschewed the first meal of the day for more than a decade! You’ve changed, Alice, I think.
‘Yes!’ Tricia attempts to smooth down bed hair and make herself presentable. ‘Isn’t there a kind of waking-up ritual for warriors?’ She tries to delay the inevitable. ‘A warm-up, perhaps?’ she suggests, grasping at straws. ‘Or a “getting to know your inner warrior” game … ? Something with quoits, maybe?’ I can tell by the look on our leader’s face that this isn’t going to be a goer. ‘No … ?’
‘Come with me,’ is all Magnus says, extending a taut bicep to help each of us up, as though we’re Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I assure him I’m fine, but Tricia accepts, before accidentally-on-purpose brushing past his bare chest.
‘Smoother than a freshwater otter,’ she murmurs as he hoists her up and out of the hut.
‘Waxed,’ I whisper. ‘There’s no way a man with that much facial hair has a body-carpet that stops conveniently at the neck.’
Tricia honks with laughter and it’s then I notice that, today, our great leader has styled said facial hair into no fewer than three braids.
Like a tripod …
‘Say what you like about manscaping,’ Tricia regains her composure. ‘There’s a reason the woolly mammoth died out …’
After another decent tramp across scrubland and past the ‘craft sheds’, we reach a large, chimneyed … what exactly? Hovel? ‘House’ seems too grand a term. From inside comes the roar of flames and the hush of bellows, and I cough as my lungs adjust to the air, thick with blue smoke. Once my eyes have stopped watering at the prickling haze of carbon, I make out bare stone walls, wooden beams hung with tools, and what looks like something life-size in the far corner.
‘Is there someone in here?’ I whisper.
‘Oh, yes.’ Magnus looks a little irritated. ‘He’s just helping out.’ Then he says something in a language I don’t understand but that sounds a lot like he’s been drinking.
That, or about to solve a murder in a subtitled show set against drab skies.
The figure bellowing is apparently dismissed and moves past us quickly, a soot-smeared face turned away so that the only lingering impression is that of a smoky, musky smell.
‘Mmm.’ Melissa breathes it in. ‘Reminds me of a farrier.’
I have no idea what this means, but my sister turns a little misty-eyed at the recollection. Tricia translates that a farrier is ‘a specialist in equine hoof care – basically, they put shoes on horses’ (‘I did the third series of Celebrity Gymkhana on ITV2,’ she explains).
Now, Magnus is taking up the bellows and doing his best to control them with the same ease as their previous operative, telling us that, ‘The blacksmith was one of the most important people in Viking times. One king,’ he grunts between bangs, ‘had his blacksmith’s legs chopped off so he couldn’t leave the village.’
Unsure as to the appropriate response to this, we say nothing.
‘So, this is how you make iron,’ he puffs.
‘Right. And … err … how much of that do we need for a sword?’ Melissa asks.
At this, he turns on her sharply. ‘You’re not making a sword.’
‘We’re not?’
‘No!’ He laughs. In her face. Magnus shakes his head as though Melissa’s suggestion was simply ‘too funny’, then offers by way of compromise. ‘Most students start by making a nail.’
‘A nail?’ Melissa isn’t impressed. ‘We’re making a nail? On ‘weaponry day’?’
‘Yes. It takes years to become an expert sword forger.’
‘Right. And how long have you been doing it?’
‘Years,’ he responds.
Melissa adopts her best sulking face and even Margot looks put out. Tricia is busy dodging sparks from what
looks like several dozen firecrackers, but I realise that, deep down, I’m also disappointed that we’re not getting to fulfil my Xena: Warrior Princess fantasy.
‘I’m not making this nail on my own you know!’ Magnus barks, patting at a small fireball that has landed in his beard.
If there was ever a man in need of a welding mask, it’s a hipster, I muse.
Magus grunts and bellows some more. He’s in a strange mood this morning and even Tricia’s attempts at flattery and Margot’s short shorts can’t win him around. Making a nail, as warned, appears to take ‘a bloody long time’ as Tricia puts it and, midway through, she announces that she needs a comfort break. Since we’re stopping anyway, an early lunch is declared by mutual consent. At this, Magnus excuses himself and disappears into the woods, with an unusual gait.
We finish eating – salted herring from yesterday and bread that doesn’t taste too stale once it’s been toasted – then remain in situ, primed for the ‘thrills’ that lie ahead, when Tricia notes that our leader has been gone rather a long time.
As Melissa is the only one of us to wear a watch, she tells us that we should give him another five minutes (‘You can’t hurry dump,’ she tells us, in an update of Diana Ross’s famous refrain).
Oblivious to any external pressures being placed on his bowels, Magnus does not return by the time five minutes are up. But somewhere around the six-minute mark, Melissa informs us, there is a strange, whimpering sound.
Please don’t let it be a wild animal, I beg silently. Don’t let Magnus have thought we’re all such voracious herring eaters that he’s gone and speared a squirrel … or sacrificed the shitting sheep … or been attacked by a raccoon dog … or a wolf …
‘Ohhhhhhh,’ the moaning goes up a notch, the timbre of a siren now.
‘Magnus?’ Margot looks concerned. ‘Should we go and look for him?’
‘The man’s answering the call of nature,’ Tricia says. ‘I think we can afford him a little privacy—’
‘Arghhhh!’ There is another audible outburst.
‘On the other hand …’
We’re just having a whisper-debate about what to do next when Magnus lurches into view, harem pants at half-mast, displaying all that this Viking has to offer. He sways, then slowly leans to one side. We watch, passively, still sure that he’s going to right himself until he topples beyond the angle of recovery, whereby we all leap to our feet.
‘He’s fainting! He’s going to faint!’ Tricia commentates as Melissa makes an admirable stab at running to save him, before being outstripped by a sprinting Margot. She catches him mid fall, just before his head can strike a particularly angular rock … and he loses control of his bowels.
‘Oh my …’ Margot struggles to support him and try to avoid getting covered in excrement ‘… crumbs!’
‘Crap more like.’ Tricia swears on Margot’s behalf as we take in the sorry figure of our once-great leader. An angry rash has spread from one cheek to the other, until he looks like a teen troubled by acne, and he is visibly perspiring. Then he vomits. Great pools of viscous liquid, largely mauve in colour, with the odd curl of foraged leaf in there.
Repulsed, yet fearing that this is something a woman with four bags-for-life in her car should be able to handle, I say the line I’ve been rehearsing since I was seventeen. ‘Let me through, I’m a medic.’
At which point, Melissa says the line she’s been rehearsing since she was fifteen. ‘You’re not a real doctor, you’re a dentist …’
‘Dental-care professionals undergo regular training in the management of medical emergencies to a level appropriate to their clinical responsibilities!’ I tell her impatiently.
‘And in normal person’s speak that means what exactly?’
‘We learn first aid!’ I retort. ‘Why, what are you going to do? Horse whisper him better?’ This shuts her up.
In truth, other than feeling his brow for a temperature, establishing he’s suffering from stomach cramps and confirming that he is too weak to stand, I don’t do much. There is, thankfully, no blood in his ‘emissions’ – from either end. But he’s shivering now, and there can be little doubt judging from the berry sick about what’s caused this. All eyes are on me. Well, the ones that aren’t currently rolled up into the back of our illustrious leader’s head.
Shit …
‘So what do we do now?’ asks Tricia.
I try to think, fast.
What would a woman with four bags-for-life in her car do in this situation? Then I remember. Survival skill 101: check the rest of the party is all right.
‘Anyone else feeling unwell?’
Heads shake, and other than suffering from nausea on account of the crime-scene investigation tableau in front of me, my stomach is lining is mercifully intact.
‘Did he eat the same as us?’ Margot asks.
‘I think so …’
‘Well, he did finish off those berries …’
I start to sweat now. Because having become fairly cocky about this edible plant malarkey, I now begin to worry that I may have inadvertently poisoned Magnus with some rogue fruit from the one tree I wasn’t supposed to pick it from.
I’m like Eve in the garden of Eden, I think, only I haven’t even got a sodding snake to blame …
Luckily, Tricia throws me a lifeline. ‘A lot of men have issues at this sort of age,’ she says with some authority. ‘My ex was always on the loo with something or other. Didn’t have the stomach for it. Literally.’
The blame storm is put on hold by the beginnings of rain and the returning bowel grumblings of our sickly Viking.
‘I have to go,’ he groans. ‘Again …’
Oh Jesus.
‘Can you make it over to the bushes?’ I ask.
Magnus moans some more.
‘Well?
He shakes his head.
‘Right then,’ I say, but discover that I can’t move either.
What is wrong with me? Why is nothing happening?
‘Right.’ I have another crack at sounding convincing, but all in vain. I am frozen to the spot.
Please don’t have another panic attack, please don’t have another panic attack …
‘Get out of first gear!’ Melissa berates me. Then she pushes up her sleeves and ducks her head under one of his arms, trying to lift him while still grumbling at me. ‘You have kids – you’ve dealt with human crap before—’
‘They were cute tiny babies! Not fifteen stone of Viking!’ I find I can’t unclench my buttocks as fear flows through my veins. ‘Besides, you have animals!’ I counter.
‘So? So does Tricia! And a son!’
‘Your animals are bigger!’ I come back. A little Shih Tzu hardly compares.
‘Err, shows what you know because a) horse poo is mostly hay, b) the rabbits eat theirs, and c) my dogs are very well trained to go in the woods. I don’t handle faeces of any kind. It’s one of my policies in life.’
‘Oh good. It’s important to have values.’
Tricia intervenes, looking worried now, her lust for Magnus decreasing with each unpleasant aromatic emission: ‘Come on. What we have here is a shit-uation. We can’t just leave him here …’
‘We can’t. Can’t we?’ I ask, hopefully.
‘No!’ The women turn on me.
‘We were awful at fishing, the hamper supplies will only last so long, and I don’t want another meal of mystery food—’ Tricia starts before being cut off.
‘And more importantly he needs help.’ Margot looks at Tricia, incredulous.
‘Yes,’ she catches herself. ‘That. Mainly that.’ But Tricia isn’t finished. Because … what if one of us gets sick next?’
We all look at each other, secretly calculating – in my case, at least – how we’d divvy up further deep-cleaning duties between us.
‘Well, I’m steering clear of berries,’ says Melissa.
‘Oh, thanks very much!’ I say. ‘What if it was the mussels?’
‘They were f
irst-class sea molluscs!’
When she puts it like that, even I want to vomit.
‘What were those leaves, you know … ?’ Tricia addresses Margot.
‘Wild garlic? The wild garlic was fine,’ she responds smartly.
‘You’re sure?’ Tricia asks.
‘Yes!’ Margot snaps, feeling the pressure. ‘Daddy has a book on edible plants in the downstairs loo –’ I see Melissa mouth the word ‘posh’ ‘– plus I did a course …’
Surprise, surprise …
‘Let me guess,’ I hear myself saying. ‘Duke of Edinburgh?’
Margot nods, oblivious to any scorn. ‘Platinum.’
‘Platinum? Does that even exist?’
‘Not a lot of people know about it,’ she admits.
‘You pay enough in school fees, you can have what you like,’ Tricia mutters.
‘It was probably a yew berry seed,’ Margot announces.
Busted …
‘You?’ Melissa gets the wrong end of the stick, pointing at me.
‘Yew!’ three of us bark at her. After this, we eye each other suspiciously until Melissa shakes her head and says, at the precise moment that the heavens open, ‘Nature can be a cruel mistress …’
Magnus groans again and it becomes very clear that he Needs To Go. Now. He doesn’t seem able – or inclined – to speak any more so, by a series of mimes, we establish that he’s at Critical Code Brown.
Melissa agrees to put her cast iron constitution to good use, even cleaning up afterwards, with the help of Margot and whatever foliage they can find.
Who manages to look pretty while cleaning up poo?
Margot: that’s who.
After what Melissa describes as another ‘Close Encounter of the Turd Kind’, there is an implicit understanding that we’re going to need to get help. My sister, who’s warming to her role as an Enid Blyton heroine, starts to talk tracking.
‘We need to work out where he lives. The house must be nearby. And what about Inge? Shouldn’t we tell her what’s happened? Take him there?’
‘If only we knew where “there” was,’ I say.
‘Well …’ Melissa thinks. ‘When Silas—’
‘Silas?’
‘One of my dogs. Likes to run off. Randy.’
Gone Viking Page 13