Gone Viking

by Helen Russell

  ‘But I wasn’t!’

  I try to absorb this and say simply, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t get it …’

  Tricia, apparently, doesn’t get it either. ‘I feel I should explain a few things, too,’ she addresses me, ‘about the video …’

  Now, Tricia? Really? Timing is not this woman’s forte …

  ‘Well, what it was, was, that work had dried up a bit, and an old timer told me I should try going walking on the beach one day wearing something skimpy, “no-make-up” make-up – you know: heavy lip, big eyes etc. etc. I did some “frolicking”, ate a Mivvy suggestively, the usual. Then we got this friend to call the paps and made out as though a seagull attacked me. Thought it might up my profile ahead of Strictly—’

  ‘Paps?’ Margot asks.

  ‘Photographers. Anyway, total hatchet job. Said I’d had … “cosmetic assistance” … I mean, really!’ Tricia sounds offended. ‘So I had one heavy night – two, max – a few bad shows. Station said I was slurring – whatever that means! Then there was the to-do over cashews … I split up with Doug after a heated exchange in the Burgess Hill branch of B&Q. And then my former sidekick went on a confidence-building course and got a bit pleased with herself. Got new hair. And my show. And Doug, though frankly she’s welcome to him. But the show part stung. I mean – she hasn’t even got her own Wikipedia page! I realise now that it wasn’t her fault – any of it. She’s just a girl trying to get on in the world. I blame the system. Down with the patriarchy. Anyway, I don’t know where I was in my pill/wine/coffee cycle, but, wherever it was, I’d had enough. Thus the reel-to-reel ultimate Frisbee—’ She’s cut off by a slap in the face from a Baltic blast of ocean spray.

  This is too much, I think, as Melissa takes up the baton once more:

  ‘Then after Mum died, you just left!’ she gasps through the cold, turning on me to continue her indictments. ‘You didn’t wait for me. Or even talk to me. And I was sad – all on my own. And you went off and had all the fun—’

  ‘It wasn’t fun,’ I tell her, thinking back to the first year away from home: alone, lonely, skint,fn1 and a year younger than all my classmates so that I had to do a lot of pretending to make it seem as though I knew what was going on. As though I had a clue – about anything. ‘Not all of it, anyway,’ I add, in case she doesn’t believe me.

  She doesn’t.

  ‘It hurt. A lot. And you should know that,’ she tells me. ‘I’m over it, now,’ she adds. ‘I’m over you. I’ve tried and tried, all these years, only to have it thrown back in my face. I planned this trip as one more go at saving something – anything – between us. But you still treat me as though I’m a joke. Your plan B. Well, I’m no one’s Plan bloody B!’ she shouts.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I hadn’t realised that she felt like this. I hadn’t realised that she could read me so astutely – that she’d been doing so for years. All the assumptions and prejudices I thought I’d concealed so slickly with my camouflage of ‘busy’ have apparently been as conspicuous as a peacock in full plumage. I am an appalling human being. ‘You’ve … you’ve been so good to me,’ I say, struggling to get the words out. ‘I know I don’t always make it easy.’ I want to give her a hug. And not let go. So I do. She doesn’t seem thrilled by the idea at first but eventually relents and wraps her damp, sex-fleeced arms around me too.

  I can see why she’s so obsessed with this polyethylene terephthalate zip-up jumper, I think, admiring the way the synthetic fibres have protected her from the worst of the weather while remaining surprisingly soft. And although not exactly ‘warm’, I definitely feel less ice-cream-headache cold than before. My sister gives good hug …

  ‘You know, what you said in your letter, about keeping a lid on things? Well, really, don’t,’ I mumble into her hair, which now smells a lot like wet dog. ‘Your way is better. You were right to be honest about how you’re feeling. To get sad when you need to. I’m sorry I ever made you doubt that. I’m the one who’s been wrong. I’ve nearly given myself a hernia trying to push everything back down for years – but it doesn’t work. It always comes out, somewhere.’

  ‘Do you mean like in a Premier Inn en suite loo?’ Melissa asks.

  I nod. ‘Among other places, yes.’

  I close my eyes to stem the tide of tears currently threatening to add to our waterlogged situation, but can still hear Tricia, talking agitatedly above the crashing of the water.

  ‘Everyone says it – they say, “Tricia, you’ve been doing this for years! You must be rich!” They say. “Why are you spending Christmas in Hull on a wire playing the wicked queen in panto?” And I tell them, “Because I love it!” But of course I don’t bloody love it! I’m spending Christmas in Hull. On a wire! The only booking I had over Easter was judging a cat show … all hissing and arching their spines – and that was just the owners … But that’s show business! If you’re not Gyles Bloody Brandreth or Sue Perkins, it’s all your agent can find you, that time of year,’ she says, her teeth chattering.

  ‘Mmm.’ Margot responds out of courtesy, as Tricia’s only ‘audience member’, and eventually my sister and I disengage. Melissa stares at me.

  ‘Are you crying?’ She looks pleased.

  ‘No!’ I half-laugh, half-sob. ‘It’s just raining … on my face.’

  ‘Yeah, same here,’ she says, dabbing at very wet eyes and then blowing her nose with her hand and wiping what comes out on her combat trousers.

  That’s my girl, I think with love.

  The boat tips and rears like a bucking bronco under a new barrage of ‘weather’ until we’re forced to sit, and I’m startled to find my bottom sluiced anew with waves of bracingly cold sea, slapping over the side. We seem to be far lower down in the water than we were during the test run earlier today.

  Uh-oh, this isn’t good. This isn’t good at all …

  ‘What was it Inge said about this being a two-man boat?’ I ask, fearful of the answer.

  ‘She meant massive Vikings, didn’t she … ?’ Melissa starts. ‘Three of us should be fine …’

  ‘Yes, but there are four of us now …’ I look around the boat and see my sister’s mouth moving as she does the calculation. I lean over the side. ‘And I’m pretty sure she said something about the water being no higher than two fingers below the top plank …’ I feel my way down but am immersed in icy water before I can trace a single ridge in the wooden panelling.

  ‘Christ, are we … ?’ Tricia murmurs.

  ‘Sinking?’ Margot looks worried. ‘As well as lost?’

  ‘We might just be.’ I shiver to get the circulation going, then start scooping out water with my hands as fast as I can. I spy the plug at the bottom of the boat, now refracted and magnified by the sheer volume of water on top of it, as though taunting us along the lines of: Ha! You thought I worked like a plug in a bath! Fools!

  ‘Stupid pissing plug,’ I mutter to myself.

  ‘What?’ Melissa frowns, also scooping out water with her hands now.

  ‘Nothing.’ I shake my head and hunt for the actual, official ‘bailer’ that I’m sure I saw earlier today.

  ‘Bloody hell, has it come to this?’ says Tricia, evidently choosing panic over bailing. ‘I’ve never been in actual danger on one of these retreats before! No matter how much I complained when they made me do burpee circuits in Ibiza!’ She wails now. ‘I don’t want to end my days here! I’d rather be in John Lewis! Shoplifting!’

  This is new …

  ‘You’re not going to end your days at sea in a Viking boat,’ I tell her, firmly. ‘Not on my watch, anyway. But right now, we need to focus and STAY CALM! What we have to do is get more of the water outside the boat than in and work at reducing our weight …’ Melissa looks up, outraged. ‘I mean of water and any … er … surplus cargo,’ I quickly clarify, casting around for anything that might qualify.

  ‘Like this!’ Tricia holds up a bucket and makes to throw it overboard.

  ‘No! Wait!’ I howl. But it’s too late: a faint sp
lash can be heard over the din of the storm and our bailer bucket bobs away into the cold black nothingness. ‘Great. Anyone got any suggestions for what we bail with now?’

  I keep going with my hands and Melissa does the same but when she’s close enough to be sure we’re not going to be overheard, she looks at me, pleading, and whispers, ‘Is this it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I confess. We could swim for it, I reason. But someone would have to carry/tow Margot as our resident non-swimmer. And the only one of us strong enough and fit enough to tow Margot is … Margot. What’s more, we have no idea which direction to aim for. Plus the water is cold. So cold that we’d probably be debilitated within fifteen minutes. By the half-hour mark, I calculate, hypothermia would set in. I’ve seen Titanic.

  A deep, heavy feeling takes over my core at this sobering train of thought. I carry on scooping out water as fast as my now-numb cupped hands are able, but on reflection I have – if not given up – then certainly made peace with whatever is to come. At least we’re together, I think, as we all scoop in silence for some moments.

  Cold is something you can handle when you know you’ll get warm again soon. Or dry. I’ve been a fan of cold showers in my time, in an attempt to boost circulation or tauten the skin or make my hair shinier (at least, that’s what the magazines tell me). I can even bear those bitter winter days where you have to muffle up before leaving the house to make it to the car or the tube without frostbite. Primarily because you know that soon you’ll be rewarded with a hot fug of fan heating, or the communal perspiration and expelled carbon dioxide of a dozen or so other commuters. But this? With no end in sight? I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. I’m frightened that it really might be game over.

  ‘Wait!’ Tricia sits bolt upright, then starts wriggling her arms inside her sodden sweatshirt.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘This!’ She releases and then dangles a sizeable padded bra an inch from my face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing gets through this,’ Tricia point, then bends over to demonstrate and begins to scoop. ‘See?’ She tips a good two litres of water over the side from her DD-cups and then repeats the motion. It’s an improvement on hand-scooping, and I find my sports bra also does an adequate job, if I’m quick. Melissa’s M&S cotton number isn’t much use, however – and Margot, as she insists on reminding us, ‘doesn’t wear a bra’. So we’re two underwear bailers down, but it at least feels as though we’re doing something. Anything …

  Lightning slaps and cracks on the horizon and then the thunder rolls in, closer now. Perhaps death by lightning would be preferable … Quicker, at least. And it would certainly warm us up, I muse, as another fire bolt pierces the blackness and Tricia shrieks in terror. But then I notice something.

  Could it … ? Would it … ?

  It’s our only hope. So I say nothing, but cross everything.

  By the time the third strike comes, I’m ready, braced to look all around me for the fraction of the second that the sky is lit up by electrostatic discharge. Straight ahead of me I see a straight line, clear now, where sea turns to sky, but to my left the horizon is stippled and prickles with … trees.

  ‘Land!’ I yelp, a mouthful of seawater making its way in simultaneous with my outburst. ‘There’s land! Over there!’ I point. ‘And trees!’ The other women scan the nothingness, struggling to share my enthusiasm, until another bolt of lightning flicks the temporary switch and illuminates the world once more.

  ‘Land!’ Melissa echoes me. ‘I fucking love land!’

  ‘Me too!’ Margot can’t even be brought down by profanities this time.

  ‘We’re going to make it, we can do this!’ I tell myself as much as anyone else.

  What did Inge say? I scroll back through the events of the past couple of days and start downloading, rapidly. ‘OK, we need two oarswomen and a steerswoman and bailer, so Margot, you’re the strongest, if you and Melissa row first then Tricia and I can steer and bail to try to keep us afloat, then we’ll keep switching until we’re close enough to wade in.’

  We jostle into position to battle the elements for a final, bone-crushingly exhausting and by now sub-zero push.

  We take it in turns to row and bail, alternately, until the trees get bigger and lights can be seen twinkling between a dense tapestry of fir. We heave on the oars until we can heave no more and the base of the boat hits a welcome barrier of sand.

  ‘Oh, thank God.’ Tricia collapses and then proceeds to vomit with relief, exuberantly and over the very section of the boat that Melissa has just swung herself out of.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ pants Melissa, ducking away from the worst of it but not wavering in her mission to heave what’s left of the boat up on to the beach.

  Together, we drag the wooden carcass ashore. And while I’m slowly analysing the various ‘next-step’ options open to almost-shipwreck survivors – a scant knowledge gleaned exclusively from children’s’ books featuring tropical beaches, coconuts and monkeys – Melissa appears … confident.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, wiping a few lingering chunks of Tricia’s stomach lining off her sex fleece. ‘It’s this way.’

  Tricia too appears relaxed, post-puke. She wrings out her bailer bra, flings it over her shoulder, then follows Melissa up the waterlogged sand dunes and towards a light in the distance.

  Margot and I look at each other, still in the dark – in all senses. But with few options open to us, chilled to the marrow, and – secretly – consumed by curiosity, we slowly make to follow in their soggy footsteps.

  Fourteen

  Trees glisten with wet, refracting a light now shimmering in the distance. Margot strikes ahead, holding back a bushy branch of fir not quite long enough to let me pass, so that it pings back in my face, showering me with chilly droplets afresh.

  FFS … I look upwards: Seriously? I need to get even wetter?

  Still shivering and distinctly briny – lips, fingers, everything in fact shrivelled by seawater – I can’t manage much more than a stagger to follow my leaders.

  Melissa and Tricia are a long way ahead now, tiny doll-like figures disappearing into the woods as Margot and I struggle to keep up. But beyond the final barrier of pine-scented foliage, we’re rewarded with a celestial vision: a bleached wood cabin with a terrace extending out onto a ridge of boulders. Candlelight flickers in the windows and there’s evidence of a fire within, with smoke trickling valiantly through the rain from a small chimneystack.

  Warmth! I scream silently. If we can just get inside, we could get warm! This is all I can think about as I keep putting one foot in front of the other, urging on every sinew in my exhausted body.

  Amidst the timpani of raindrops, I can hear music now – upbeat and poppy but with a base that thuds through the earth, competing with the gamelan of weather so that my feet seem to be vibrating. Either that or I’ve still got sea legs, I think, feeling unsteady.

  ‘You OK?’ Margot asks, extending a hand to help me up the final steep incline.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ I insist, but take her hand anyway, reasoning that dented pride is a small price to pay for getting dry, sooner. Besides, I think, we’ve all had a few bubbles burst in the past twenty-four hours, haven’t we? I don’t suppose that any of us are feeling particularly proud. None of this seems to matter any more, either, because the golden light is drawing us in, ever closer, to the majestic fortress up ahead. A wooden sign, creaking and swaying in the wind, reads:

  ‘Welcome to Valhalla.’

  We push open heavy golden doors to reveal a crowded room, dominated by a vast stone fireplace (Vikings + fire obsession, exhibit #9) with logs popping on the hearth. Whitewashed walls give way to rough hewn beams, festooned with low-slung lamps. A dozen or so obscenely photogenic Vikings – all looking as though they’ve stepped out of a catalogue – lounge against walls or perch on sheepskin-lined benches. Lean, tanned necks disappear into crisp cotton collars, beautifully knitted confections, or simple
white T-shirts and the clientele turn, as one, to take in the two bedraggled forms who’ve just let in a draft of icy cold air.

  ‘Err, hi!’ I try, in my best ‘pan-Nordic’ accent (i.e. talking slowly, loudly, and with a lilt of Borgen). ‘Has anyone seen my sister?’

  I skim their faces for Melissa – or rather, the gaps between their faces, since I’m guessing my sister is a good foot shorter than all of them. My extremities burn with relief at being out of the cold and I smooth back my hair, attempting to make myself presentable and failing miserably. I am not cool enough for this place, I acknowledge.

  But my sister, apparently, is.

  ‘Is that … Melissa?’ Margot points and my eyes follow her outstretched arm. Peering, I make out two diminutive figures in the centre of what is now officially a Scandi-throng, being welcomed like old friends. Blankets are flung around their shoulders, drinks are placed in their hands, and Melissa … I screw up my eyes to check that they aren’t playing tricks on me … Melissa is being … kissed. Full on the mouth.

  ‘Isn’t that … Inge’s cousin?’ Margot, a regular oracle, as it turns out, observes. I try to get a better look at the man my sister is currently having mouth-sex with, but what I can mostly make out is beard and a mass of brown curly hair. I think back to the man to whom Margot is referring, striving to conjure up a clear image.

  Didn’t we meet him the day Magnus got poisoned sick? The day of the Terry’s Chocolate Orange Proustian-tart? The day I drank all the beer and let slip about Mr Teeth? The day Melissa officially stopped talking to me? A lot’s happened since then, I conclude. I can be forgiven for poor facial recognition. Can’t I?

  I look again. It’s a shock to see my sister in flagrante. I’m also experiencing mild disbelief at the unlikely pairing.

  ‘Him? Really? The guy channelling Peter Jackson who smelled of buns?’ I somehow murmur out loud, still staring at my sister who is now on tiptoes and touching foreheads with the bear-man, staring into his eyes.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Margot confirms, ‘Otto? Wasn’t his name?’