Then some skinny cow called Carol from Hartlepool – from Hartlepool! – says, matter of fact as you please, as if screeching, dancing houses are just ten a penny in the dark industrial north-east, says it will only stop when the right words are spoken. ‘Yeah, right,’ I say to her knowingly, rolling my eyes. ‘And what words might THEY be?’ But she just shakes her head at me, rolls her eyes in turn, then walks through the gate and starts talking to the house. As you do. But by this time, I’ve given up expecting sense. I’m not entirely sure I’m not still in the minibus, locked into some funky travel-fuelled nightmare – but if I am, that weekend workshop I did on lucid dreaming in Findhorn isn’t helping at all. I’ve absolutely no idea how to take back control of this one.
‘Turn your back to the forest,’ Carol says to the house. ‘Turn your front to me.’ And bugger me if the house doesn’t stop its pantomime right away. Slowly, it revolves, swings around to face us, and now, finally, I can see the windows and the door. They were all on the other side; wouldn’t you just know it. There are ludicrously ornate carvings around the windows, all picked out in red and blue and yellow, like a house right out of some silly old fairy tale. I suppose; I never was one for fairy tales myself. Could never really see the point of them as a kid. I preferred reading about things that were real, you know? All that stupid stuff about handsome princes and fairy godmothers and wicked old witches in the woods …
Well, anyway. All of a sudden the front door bursts open with a crash – and there she is. The reason we’re all here.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘I’m the Baba. But you all can call me Babs.’
What was she like? I don’t really know where to begin. She was everything and nothing; she was perfectly normal and perfectly strange. One minute, your average little old lady, bustling about the kitchen making tea. The next minute, she’d swivel sharply to face you, and everything in the room would suddenly grow still. The air would tingle, and the faintest feeling of pins and needles would set up a prickling in your fingers and toes. Your hair wanted nothing more in the world than to stand on end. She was a tiny little thing, but the shadow she cast was always huge. And it’s funny, now I come to think of it: she cast a shadow even when the sky was overcast, or when there was no direct light source at all.
When she opened the door to us, I couldn’t see anything but a silhouette, and all I can tell you about that silhouette is that it … changed. For a few seconds it would look like the outline of a perfectly normal human being, and then it would shimmer and shift, and you’d swear that a bear was standing in that doorway instead of a little old woman. So I was still hesitating, I can tell you, but the other three acolytes had followed Carol through the gate and now the lot of them had disappeared into the house. Deirdre and me hung back a bit, but when I looked to her for a bit of moral support, all she did was wink at me. ‘Sure, you’re all right out, so,’ she said, or something equally – and incomprehensibly – Irish. ‘I’m betting the first thing she’ll do is offer us a nice hot drop, and then you’ll be just grand.’ It took me three whole days to figure out that a ‘hot drop’ meant a cup of tea. Why she couldn’t just say that, I really don’t know.
So. I looked around a bit, playing for time. Igor was unloading our bags; he dropped them a good distance away from the fence, and there was something in the way he wasn’t looking at the house that made it very clear that nothing in the world was going to induce him to go through that gate. And then, having managed to accomplish the entire journey without saying a single word to anyone, he got right back into the bus and drove off down the track. No idea what all that was about; he didn’t even ask to be paid. So, when Deirdre headed off into the house as well, there was nothing for me to do but follow.
The front door opened right into a large, bright yellow kitchen. It wasn’t your average kitchen, I can tell you, and I began to realise there and then that there wasn’t going to be very much that was average about this whole freaking ‘experience’. The room was dominated by an absolutely enormous stove, built of white-painted bricks or concrete or something similar, that stretched the entire length of one wall. It had an oven that must have been a good six feet wide – no, I’m really not exaggerating! – and a sort of a seat built into it on one side. On that seat was a big cushion, and on that cushion was perched a particularly disagreeable-looking black cat. Yes, I know; I really wanted to roll my eyes at this point, as well. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Carol and her cronies had all been here before, I’d be beginning to wonder whether someone wasn’t seriously taking the piss. Setting us up, you know? But anyway: on the other side of the kitchen was an equally enormous dark wooden table, with a long, high-backed bench along the wall, and simple wooden chairs around two other sides. On the third side was a huge, intricately carved wooden chair that looked for all the world like a throne. There was a dresser, crammed with brightly painted dishes, and a giant ceramic sink that you could have had a bath in. The room smelled of smoky wood and freshly baked bread – with an undercurrent of very mature, probably seriously blue cheese. Stinkingly Stilton-esque. Grotesquely Gorgonzola.
Well, good old Babs stands in the middle of the room, puts her hands on her hips, and looks us all up and down. I look her up and down as well. She’s all got up in some ridiculous bright red, long velvet frock, with an embroidered apron over the top of it which really needs a good wash. What seems like an awful lot of steel-grey hair is bundled up into a shaggy bun that looks for all the world as if a crow or three has been nesting in it. She’s wearing Doc Martens on her feet, and a pair of thinly striped hand-knitted socks that don’t even pretend to match. The merriment in her eyes is quite at odds with the curious sharpness of her teeth.
‘A wery, WERY big velcome to all you girrrrrls,’ she says, in this comically thick Russian accent, like something out of a really bad Hollywood movie, or like that funny little bloke in the original Star Trek – what was his name? Chekov, that’s it – and I’m, like, this cannot be happening! ‘Jou must all go and brrring in your begs. And zen we will hef somesing to eat.’ Then, all of a sudden, she points right at me and bursts out into some mad cackle – I suppose everything I’m thinking must be showing on my face. She drops the whole act in a flash, chucks me a wink, and says, in a perfect take-off of Deirdre – who hasn’t even opened her mouth yet – ‘Along with a nice hot drop.’
So yeah, we had the works: a fine Russian brew from a silver-plated samovar, and a platter of unidentifiable but very tasty sweet things. The only thing that bothered me was that so much of the food was meat. You are what you eat, after all, and I’ve never been comfortable eating animals. Usually at these things there’s a vegan option. I know tofu isn’t to everyone’s taste, but Quorn have a nice selection of fake meat for the diehards. But yeah, you’re right. Maybe they don’t do Quorn in the taiga.
She didn’t say much that first night, and neither did anyone else. But the Fabulous Four were obviously completely in awe of her. Gaped at her like she was the goddess, or something. Her favourite seemed to be some young woman called Lisa. She lived in Manchester now, but was originally, she said, from Russia. Not too far down the road from Babs’s place, as it happened. I found out later she was married to the descendant of some Russian aristocrat. I didn’t think they had those any more, since Stalin. Maybe they all came out of the woodwork after glasnost. Beats me. The other two were like Tweedledum and Tweedle-bloody-dee. Neither of them spoke unless the other one did, and then they both spoke at once. Debbie and Dora from Shepherd’s Bush. I never did learn to tell them apart.
So anyway, while we were eating, I asked her about the schedule and format for the week ahead. Didn’t seem like an unreasonable question; I just wanted to know where the workshop room was, and when we’d have our alone time. Mealtimes – that kind of thing. How the wi-fi worked; there wasn’t any mobile signal, I’d already checked. Well – you’d have thought I’d asked whether it would be okay to take a shit in the corner of the kitchen. She raised those st
eely grey eyebrows at me, looked down her big old hooked nose, and said, with a pseudo-aristocratic sneer, ‘What – you think you’re at kindergarten or somesing? You want me to dress you in mornings, as well? Tell you when to use toilet, when to brush your teef?’ The Fabulous Four sniggered; even Deirdre grinned. I went red as a beetroot and, I can tell you, if I’d been back home in Totnes I’d have walked out right there and then and told her to stuff her shapeshifting speciality up her bum. But I very clearly wasn’t in Totnes any more.
It was all downhill from there, really.
After we’d had our tea, she announced that it was bedtime, and stood up to show us to our rooms. Nothing like a bit of good old Soviet totalitarianism, eh? Democracy certainly didn’t seem to be part of her scene. But it was pitch-black outside now, and although I couldn’t see a clock anywhere – and we couldn’t seem to find a watch that worked – it must’ve been getting quite late. She opened one of the two doors which faced each other on opposite sides of the kitchen; the other one, she said, was ‘forbidden’. That was her side of the house, and if we went into any one of the rooms down that corridor, chances were the floor would open up in front of us, and we’d plunge to a very unpleasant death. That was if we went through the blue door, she said – or was it the red? No, if we opened the red door, a guillotine would be displaced which would fall down and rapidly remove our heads. I asked whether we had to wait for Shakin’ sodding Stevens to show up and tell us what would happen if we all went a-knocking on the green door, but nobody else thought that was funny. Bunch of weirdos, the lot of them. Yeah, maybe they were all just a bit too young. Old Shaky pretty much died out in the nineties, didn’t he, when you come to think of it.
So we all traipsed through the door we were allowed to go through, and I swear the place was like the Tardis. There was no way that many rooms could fit into the footprint of the little wooden hut we’d seen from outside. But by this stage I was so wiped out I didn’t care. I just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. We were all sharing rooms: Carol with Lisa, Tweedledee and Tweedledum together, and then me and Deirdre right at the end of the corridor. There were two bathrooms, and Deirdre and me stuck our heads in to have a peek at the facilities. They smelled of hot pinewood and birch leaves. So Deirdre said, anyway. I wouldn’t know a birch leaf if it hit me in the face. I was just happy to know there was running water.
The bedroom was nice enough. Two single beds built into sort of alcoves, with bright blue embroidered curtains so you could really shut the world out if you wanted. Then old Grandmother Stasi there tells us that all the lights will go out in half an hour and that will be that till morning. ‘Sleep well,’ she says, and she smiles, but I can’t help thinking that something about the way she bares those sharp teeth makes it sound like a threat. And bugger me, the lights do go off in half an hour. And there’s no way of getting them back on again. She must’ve turned the electricity off at the mains.
What do you mean, was there mains electricity right there bang in the middle of the forest?
Oh, I see. Well then, she must’ve had a generator somewhere. I never saw one, but then …
Whatever. So that was that. End of day one. Welcome to Russia, and welcome to the local lunatic asylum. Still, I slept quite well. Though every time I came to during the night, all I could hear was the sound of Deirdre snoring and Nosferatu the cat meowing and scratching at the door.
No, that wasn’t the cat’s name. It was probably Ivan, or something.
Did I let it in?
Not on your nelly.
Well, if I gave you a running commentary on everything that happened that week we’d be here all day, and I’ve got to get back for the team meeting this afternoon, or Spike’ll have my neck. So I’d better speed up a little, get to the most important bits.
She left us to our own devices at breakfast. Plonked an enormous pan of porridge down on the table, along with some kind of brown bread and honey. The coffee was far too strong, but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose; she just glared when I asked her for decaf. So that first morning I was just trying to get a feel for what was going on here, but the Fabulous Four weren’t exactly forthcoming.
‘You really need to just chill out and let it happen,’ says Carol.
‘Yeah, but let what happen?’ I say. ‘I’ve no idea what we’re supposed to be doing here. And what kind of shaman is she, anyway?’ I mean, she didn’t even have a rattle or a drum. Carol just shook her head again. If she didn’t watch herself, it was going to fall off. Snooty cow.
So that first day, all we do is go into the forest. We’re going to collect mushrooms, apparently. Well, la-di-bloody-da. My spirits rise for a minute when I think she might mean magic mushrooms, but it turns out we’re gathering brown ceps for our tea. Off we trot, like a passel of peasants, armed with dinky little baskets and ridiculously large knives. It was weird, though, walking into the forest from the clearing where her house is. It felt alive, somehow. As if the forest was a great big mouth, and it was opening to swallow you up. There were no paths; we just had to trust that she knew where she was going and make sure we kept up with her. But we kept hearing crackling in the distance, as if someone or something was treading on broken-off branches, and I got quite jumpy in the end.
‘So,’ I say to Carol, ‘are there animals in these woods?’
‘Of course there are animals,’ she says. ‘Moose, wolverines, wild boar, bear …’
‘Hang on a minute,’ I say. ‘Bear?’
‘Brown bear,’ says Carol, with satisfaction.
‘In these woods?’ I squeak. ‘Brown fucking bears?’ And I make a BIG mental note to check my travel insurance when we got back; I wanted to be very sure it would cover any accidental maulings. You really can’t be too careful, can you, when you’re in proper foreign climes?
Well, we finally found the mushrooms – stalks like tree trunks; I could see why we had the big knives now – and set about picking them. But I was really irritated by the whole thing, I can tell you. ‘When are we going to do some proper work?’ I whisper to Lisa. ‘Something other than gathering mushrooms?’
‘This isn’t about doing,’ she says. ‘It’s about being. You’re supposed to watch her. See how she is, here in the forest. Learn from her.’
‘Learn what, though?’ I say, frustrated. ‘I didn’t come all this way for a mushroom foraging course!’
‘What can you be thinking?’ she says. ‘Do you actually do thinking at all?’ And then she tosses her shiny blonde hair and flounces off to pick in another patch.
Well, really. I mean, there was no call for that.
But I tried, then – I honestly did. After all, I’d paid a small fortune to be here. I needed to extract something from the experience. So I watched her. But all she seemed to be doing was watching the forest. And talking to things. She talked to crows quite a lot. ‘What is she saying to them?’ I ask Deirdre. ‘And what’s the point?’
‘Crows know things,’ says Deirdre, helpfully. ‘In Ireland we have this crow goddess called the Morrígan. She’s really fierce, so. Flies over battlefields and gnaws on the bones of the dead. That sort of thing.’
‘Lovely,’ I mutter, and walk away with a mock-vomit. Jesus. Sometimes I thought Deirdre was a little bit slow, you know? She was always talking about things like fairy hills and fairy woods and fairy fucking forts, and it was all beginning to get on my tits. Well, I decided there and then that I was never going to come on one of these things again unless someone like you was with me, so I could have a proper conversation with someone halfway normal.
So anyway, eventually Babs turns to us and starts up her preaching again. ‘Ze forest is a community,’ she says. ‘Pine talks to oak, oak talks to birch. Birch whispers to crow, who passes it on to grey owl. Deer comes along, hears what’s what from bear. Bear heard it all from mushrooms, whose network goes to root of things. Listen – can you hear it? How, when you are silent, and open ears and heart, everything speaks to you? How stream sings
and wind whispers?’ Well, I can get that kind of bullshit from a poetry book; I don’t need to listen to it live from some Russian version of Granny Weatherwax channelling Mary bloody Oliver. Any minute now she’d be off like Mary, waxing lyrical about the earth remembering us and taking us back tenderly, when actually it was absolutely bloody perishing and I was freezing my arse off. What I wanted was to connect with my power animal, not muse poetically on the social networking capabilities of a brown cep. I don’t think that really illuminates my soul’s purpose in this particular incarnation, do you?
Oh, I just stopped listening at that stage. What was the point?
But Babs had clearly tuned into the fact that I wasn’t having it. Turns her beady black eyes on me and ‘Beryl,’ she snaps – she knew perfectly well my name was Cheryl, but all week she insisted on calling me Beryl – ‘there are many portals in the woods. How will you find them if you don’t learn to see?’
And I think, but don’t actually say, that if I could learn to see the portal that’d whisk me back home to Totnes, I’d be off out of this loony bin in a flash.
What was really irritating is that she made us do the housework as well. No, I’m not having you on! I didn’t pay to spend a week skivvying, either, but she wasn’t a woman to be argued with, that one. Carol was to do the dusting; she handed me a broom. Didn’t even have a vacuum cleaner, FFS.
Well, I suppose she sees the look on my face, because she sets off on one of her moralising little lectures, silly old git. ‘It is work that transforms us,’ she announces. ‘Work that transforms base metal into gold. Learn to apprentice yourself to the work, and you will reap rewards of your own becoming.’ Yeah, right. Reap the rewards of becoming a glorified skivvy – can’t think of anything I’d rather do, I’m sure. ‘I am teaching how to keep your house in order,’ she drones on. ‘How to sort wheat from chaff.’ And then, while we’re running around working our fingers to the bone, she plonks herself down on that comfortable hot-seat by the stove – Nosferatu must’ve gone out on one of his daily bloodsucking expeditions – and starts telling us some ridiculous old story about some princess or other who was given a task by a wicked stepmother, or wicked witch – buggered if I could keep track of it all – which involved splitting a ginormous heap of mixed grains into piles of the same kind, which of course she can’t possibly do, and then she’s nice to a bunch of starving mice or something and so they help her sort the grains … Everyone else was lapping it up but I just closed my ears and started humming ‘Heigh-Ho’ out of spite. You know, that song from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? The one where they’re all coming home from work, or something, and seem to be really happy about it?
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