‘Right … ?’
‘So, when Silas runs off, then comes back with evidence of … recreational activity … I often have to find out where he’s been … recreating …’
‘Do you mean shagging?’ Tricia is keen to clarify.
‘I do mean shagging,’ she confirms. ‘The Country Code dictates that you can’t let your dog get another dog in the family way without apologising—’ I’m pretty sure it’s a little more nuanced than this ‘—so I have to follow his footprints. Of course, rain makes this trickier …’ She scans the sky, then squints at the horizon. ‘But Inge came from this way yesterday.’ She nods, knowingly, then kneels down and touches the earth, allowing a little of it to crumble through her fingers.
Give me strength …
‘And she carried supplies in a sack, which means her gait might have been heavier on one side,’ she goes on, with great gravitas. ‘The sack could have dragged a bit when she walked …’ She sniffs the air as if following a scent.
All right, Sherlock Holmes …
‘Plus, Magnus has enormous feet so we can tell they’re not our prints—’
‘You know what they say, big feet, big—’ Tricia starts, then Magnus vomits in a bush and even she can’t bring herself to continue this line of thinking.
I stare helplessly at the now-mud, unable to see clear footprints in any direction. But Melissa seems certain. ‘This way!’ she points. Margot doesn’t argue, and if there’s one person I secretly have faith in to get us out of here alive with some sort of Duke of Edinburgh/posh girl wizardry, it’s Margot. So Melissa must be on the right track. Mustn’t she?
‘You’re sure?’ Tricia asks.
‘I’m sure,’ says Melissa, sounding not at all sure. Magnus emits a wail that spurs us into action. Melissa, inexplicably, begins getting down on all fours. ‘Right, that’s it, I’m going to turtle him.’
‘What? What are you doing? Is that an official carry-move?’
‘Not sure …’fn1 she says, but gives it a go anyway. ‘Unnngggg …’ My sister turns softly puce while attempting to heave fifteen stone of floppy, faecal-stained man onto her back. ‘’S’OK … I can do this …’ she grunts. ‘I … Am … Strong … Legs … Plus I once had to punch an Alsatian in the face. Knocked him clean out.’
‘What? Why would you do that?’ I ask.
‘He’d already taken a tricep out of the gardener and was coming towards us, ears pinned back … so … you know … I love dogs but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta … unngggg …’ She braces herself and lifts again.
‘Here, let me help,’ Margot takes up his legs, allowing Melissa to slip out from underneath and grab his arms. The younger woman turns out to be superhumanly strong, offending Melissa only slightly (‘My muscles are for go, not for show,’ she explains). Between them, they toss Magnus up like a ragdoll and start moving in a direction agreed upon by Melissa.
We progress like this for some time, Tricia and I occasionally offering to take over, but finding we can’t carry him for more than a few yards (‘Excuse my sister’s poor upper-body strength,’ Melissa tells Margot. ‘She’s eighty per cent salad’). We’re soon acquitted of our duties and the professionals take over once more.
Margot and Melissa do an admirable job, but after we’ve covered a considerable distance, even superwomen start to flag.
This isn’t working. What are we going to do? I challenge myself.
‘Myself’ doesn’t come up with any bright ideas so I go bad-cop on her.
I said, ‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO?’ I don’t plan on wasting away in the woods, hungry, covered with mud and in charge of a shitting Viking. We need a plan. A PLAN, I TELL YOU! Come on, Alice, THINK!
‘Um … perhaps …’ I start, hesitantly at first before realising that no one else has any better suggestions and I should just go for it. ‘We need a stretcher?’ I point at Magnus’s sagging body, dangling and moaning between Margot and my sister.
‘A stretcher?’ Melissa demands. ‘And where are we going to get a stretcher from?’
‘Well …’
Think, Alice! You’re a medic, remember? A life sciences professional! You have a white coat … somewhere. And you wear special clogs to work. You can do this! You’ve said the thing out loud, now people are relying on you. Say something else. Something good … and fast …
‘We can … MAKE one!’ I sound … confident. ‘He’ll be easier to carry that way, plus if we had a stretcher, we could take a corner each.’
Margot and Melissa exchange a look as if to confirm assent and Tricia nods along, keen to contribute.
‘All right.’ Melissa sets the patient down. ‘So how do we do this?’
It worked? It worked! My plan has been approved! I resist the urge to high five myself realising that this is where schizzle gets serious: execution.
How to make a stretcher … I think back to old episodes of Holby City.
‘Well, we should start with two poles,’ I say, with as much confidence as I can muster.
‘OK then, genius,’ says Melissa. ‘Where do you suggest we find poles?’
‘Err …’ I gesture all around us.
‘Those are trees,’ she snaps. ‘We can’t carry whole trees!’
‘If we look, we should be able to find something more … streamlined …’ I’m not going to be deterred now. And, miraculously, the troops comply.
We manage to locate a couple of durable-looking but not too hefty branches, reasonably straight, and foliage-free apart from one sprouting end, which we start stripping. This doesn’t go brilliantly – in the rain, with fingers near numb from cold, to the soundtrack of a Great Dane with dysentery – but we do our best.
Deciding that our man-giant of a patient may need something fairly substantial to convey him cross-country, Melissa suggests adding a couple of diagonal branches to create a farm gate effect.
‘Great idea!’ Margot approves. ‘The triangle is the strongest shape due to the rigidity of its sides, which allows it to transfer force more evenly along its outline than other shapes!’
‘Ye-es …’ says Melissa. ‘That’s exactly what I meant …’
‘Good old physics A-level!’ Margot enthuses, as though this is something we can all bond over. It is not.
‘That’s right!’ I manage brightly. ‘Then we just need to bind them together and make a fabric base,’ I continue, as Margot is already shedding her outer layer to reveal a contoured, racing-backed technical top, so tight it displays her washboard abs.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘We’ll have to use our clothes, won’t we?’ she asks, innocently.
‘Err, yes,’ I try to sound authoritative. ‘Come on, everyone! We must all have something we can take off and tie together!’ I chivvy the others on.
‘Couldn’t we go back and get a blanket or something?’ Tricia looks around in desperation.
‘We’ve come too far.’ Margot shakes her head, then looks to me for reassurance. ‘Haven’t we?’
‘Yes, we have,’ I say, hoping this sounds decisive. ‘We’re better off moving forward now. The house must be close if he made it to us less than an hour after sunrise. We’ve been walking for, what, half an hour now?’ My sister checks her watch and nods. ‘So we’re more than halfway there!’
On the inside, I’m quaking at my own uncharacteristic Pollyanna-style positivity. On the outside, I’m breezy. You’re nailing this! I congratulate myself on my cool, calm, four-bags-for-life exterior.
‘OK then, come on everyone.’ Tricia peels off a layer of designer athleisurewear. ‘Let’s be having you!’ I relinquish my jumper to the rescue-mission, trying not to dwell on the fact that Sweaty Betty’s finest is now being used to form a stretcher for a shitting man. ‘I feel your pain,’ Tricia tells me as she holds up my sweatshirt admiringly before adding it to the war-effort. ‘When your face starts to fall apart, you have to buy slightly nicer clothes, don’t you? To distract the eye. Otherwise we can sta
rt to look a bit homeless, can’t we?’
‘We’? Does Tricia think I’m the same age as her?! Why does everyone keep assuming I’m older than I am? Do I give out old vibes? Vibes of ‘I’m completely knackered with life’? Must work on that …
‘Melissa?’ Tricia turns her attention elsewhere. ‘Your turn!’
But Melissa wraps her arms protectively around her maroon fleece. For a moment, I wonder whether she’s cold, but then I remember that Melissa doesn’t get cold; that’s my job.
‘Please may we have your top, too, Melissa?’ Margot asks, patient and polite to a fault.
Melissa mumbles something in barely audible tones.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, “No” …’
‘What?’
‘It’s my lucky fleece!’
‘Really?’
‘Not in the sexual sense … ?’ Tricia looks aghast at the stained, bobbling garment.
‘No,’ I answer Tricia on my sister’s behalf, with some confidence.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised. I do OK.’ Melissa raises her eyebrows by way of a challenge. ‘I’ve worn it for nine out of ten of my last dates with a hundred per cent strike rate, actually. This fleece equals slamming it.’
‘O-kay then …’
Well, this just got weirder.
Thinking about your little sister having sex – not to mention in a bobbled maroon fleece – is a lot like picturing your parents at it: gross. And somehow against the natural order of things. In my head, she frolics around with dogs and horses and drinks loose-leaf tea out of Kate Middleton commemorative mugs. In my head, she, along with all other family members, is conveniently and hygienically asexual. Sans genitalia, even. A lot like Barbie and Action Man. Nowhere in the imagined version of my sister’s bucolic life have I got her going on dates with strange men before rutting away in a maroon fleece. I try to shake off the image, banishing it from my head to return to the task at hand.
‘I appreciate it may have … sentimental value,’ Margot is saying carefully to Melissa while tying the clothes donated so far to the poles with some pretty impressive knot work, ‘but I’m afraid we’re going to need something else, something substantial, to cover the large surface area of the stretcher –’ she breaks off ‘– no offence …’
‘None taken.’ Melissa smooths down the sides of her fleece as though agreeing that it is indeed roomy and made from the highest quality polyester. Reluctantly, she unzips, and I hear a crackle of static electricity as she unsheathes each arm in turn. Underneath, she’s wearing her ‘Keep calm and think about Cary Grant’ T-shirt, which, I hope, might soften the blow a bit. But she holds on to the fleece tightly and stalls in loosening her grip when handing it over. Margot has to near-wrench the garment away from my sister before she can begin to transform it from ‘ugly jumper’ to ‘emergency medical supply’. It does, as predicted, make an excellent final panel for our makeshift stretcher and I’m sure that The Duke of Edinburgh would be proud.
Once we’ve loaded on our cargo, we continue apace: Magnus moaning and periodically clasping a hand to his stomach while releasing toxic emissions, the rest of us holding him aloft. It’s far easier to carry him this way and with one of us on each corner, we do OK. Or at least, we would were it not for the fact that Melissa is a foot shorter than Margot and me, so that Magnus occasionally slides towards the lowest corner of our ambulatory rectangle.
‘You’re very long-legged women,’ she pants. ‘It’s difficult to keep up!’
This handicap reveals itself to be especially treacherous when crossing a babbling brook and we nearly lose our leader to a stream, heading out to sea.
Imagine the headlines! I think.
‘Viking’ dies at hands of four Englishwomen on experimental retreat.
One of the women, Alice Rat [probably], dentist and mother of two from Streatham, had recently been involved in a drink-breakfasting incident at a Premier Inn in the Midlands where she had to be asked to leave a family buffet. ‘She was a mess,’ several onlookers observed.
Then I remind myself that this isn’t all about me – and get my act together. Post stream-gate, we carry on, in a rhythm now, remaining alert to each others’ weaknesses (‘height’ and ‘poor strength’ mostly), factoring them in so that we move in sync, as one.
We navigate our way through a crag of rocks with a Chuckle Brothers’-esque finesse (‘To me!’; ‘To you!’), then just when I start feeling as though my arms and legs really can’t take any more, Tricia announces dramatically that she has, ‘Seen the light!’
Tramping through the driving rain for another few paces, I too spot lights flickering in the distance and a small chimneystack sending up a steady stream of smoke. And there, finally, is a house.
‘Bricks! It’s made from actual bricks!’ Tricia near keels over with delirious excitement. ‘And it’s got a door! And windows!’
Relief washes over us and I find myself erupting into nervous laughter that soon becomes contagious. My heart pounds – in a good way, for a change – and I feel … elated.
‘We did it! We really did it!’ I can’t quite believe it.
‘Who needs sword-forging – we just saved someone’s life!’ Tricia adds. ‘Probably.’
‘We are Vikings!’ my sister hollers, holding up a fist in victory and nearly dropping her corner of the stretcher in the process.
The resultant commotion and Melissa’s prolonged whooping is interrupted by a primitive, screeching noise.
‘Bloody hell! What was that?’
‘Magnus?’
We set down the stretcher to check whether or not the din is coming from our great leader, but aside from some drooling and more suspicious stains, Magnus looks peaceful, sleeping deeply. That or he’s dead, I worry. But for now, let’s go with sleeping … Either way, it’s not him producing the most atrocious pit-of-hell sounds I’ve ever heard.
‘Reeeeeeeeeer-urghhhhhh!’ someone – or something – cries again. I grab Melissa’s arm and hold on tight. Just in case she’s frightened …
‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘It’ll be OK …’ She squeezes my hand as a mud-crusted, corpulent creature waddles into view, fat rolls shuddering. ‘It’s just a pig!’
Oh God. Lord of the Flies. I knew it.
The beast pokes its head through a not-very-reassuringly-robust fence and screeches at us once more – ‘Reeeeeeeeeer-urghhhhhh!’ – before returning to the business of rucking up his field and scaring away several chickens, scratching at the earth.
Having now concluded that ‘Magnus keeps pigs as well as chickens’ we approach the door of the whitewashed house and stand nervously outside.
‘Should we knock?’ Margot asks.
‘Of course we should knock,’ I say, then nudge Melissa forward so that she can do the knocking. She raps, putting some welly behind the action, but there is no response. ‘Is there a bell?’
There is no bell. So we wait, like polite Brits, occasionally bolstering a now mewling and puking man-bunned Viking.
‘OK, let’s just try going in,’ says Melissa, reaching for the door handle.
‘No! We can’t!’ I object, swatting her hand away.
‘Why?’
‘It’s rude.’
‘He’s about to shit himself! That’s rude!’
This is a fair point.
Melissa goes for the heavy wooden door again, just as it swings open.
Inge, it turns out, is no less impressive on second sight: shrink-wrapped in black Lycra, as if working out were a constant possibility.
‘Mmm, hi …’ Melissa mumbles, awestruck.
I don’t fare much better.
‘I like your house,’ is my best effort at ‘talking like a normal human being’. Fortunately, Inge saves us. She holds up a hand to halt all further blathering, then cranes a swan-like neck around Melissa to take in the sorry sight behind us on the stretcher.
‘Is that my husband?’
‘Oh, god. Yes!’ Tricia declares.
‘He’s sick …’ I start, but there’s no need, since Magnus obligingly illustrates his ailments at this very moment with a violent purple chunder.
‘Again?’ She appears more irritated than concerned about her husband’s wellbeing. ‘I told him,’ Inge continues, riled now. ‘I said. “Use flashcards!” I said, “tourists never know anything about foraging and think berries come from a shop!”’
‘Ha!’ Melissa laughs, keen to get across her countryside credentials and distance herself from the tourist tag. Unfairly, in my view.
‘Well, they do, usually—’ I start.
‘I get them on a two-for-one from the supermarket.’ Tricia backs me up.
‘What’s a two-for-one?’ asks Margot, innocently.
Oh, that’s just like her. Of course she doesn’t shop around for bargains! Probably doesn’t even shop! Probably has someone to do it for her! Like a butler …
Inge, uninterested in our shopping habits, signals for us to get out of the way so that she can get to her ailing husband.
‘I’ll take him from here.’ She hauls Magnus up from a heap on the ground with apparent ease and carries him as though he’s a backpack into the house, calling back over her shoulder, ‘You’d better come in.’
We follow, over the threshold and into a hallway crammed with outdoor wear in various shapes and sizes. We’re led past a room full of footwear and – I spy with some joy – our shoes. A chubby infant is feeding worms to some chicks under an infrared light, crawling over a rusty chainsaw and several pairs of trainers to make sure a couple of the stragglers peck their fill.
Extraordinary …
The hallway opens out into a warm, predominantly wooden kitchen, where, Inge warns us, any strange sounds can be put down to ‘the lamb in the cupboard’.
For a moment I assume this is a euphemism or something that’s been lost in translation. Like Magnus and the windy pelicans, I think, until I hear a gentle high-pitched bleating and a small, pink nose appears from the cupboard under the sink. A spindly leg follows suit, and then another, until a small woolly face can be seen. Two beady eyes take in the new arrivals, then the creature bleats again, before retreating back into the cupboard. ‘Its mother abandoned it so we’re keeping it in here for now,’ Inge tells us, still lugging her Viking load.
Gone Viking Page 14