Gone Viking Read online

  ‘Another woman was supposed to come but she twisted her ankle at a military fitness boot camp.’

  Boot camp? What is wrong with people?

  ‘No … err … men?’

  ‘This week? No. Now, shoes!’

  The older blonde gives a deep sigh in response, before being gee-d along to remove her shoes and place them in a hessian sack.

  ‘Socks too?’ she asks, reluctantly.

  ‘Socks too.’ Magnus nods before ‘treating’ us all to a demonstration of the sorts of skills he’ll be demanding, namely sprinting to the forest. His hands slice the air, Usain Bolt style.

  ‘Feet underneath hips!’ he calls out as he disappears into the distance. ‘Lean forward!’ He shouts now to be heard across the void. ‘From the ankles! Make your heels kiss the earth,’ is his penultimate yelp, before adding, ‘LAND ON YOUR BALLS!’ and shimmying up a tree.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I mutter under my breath.

  ‘Is he … ? Was that … ?’ Melissa’s eyes swivel as he vanishes into the undergrowth, then she turns back around to look at the rest of us. ‘Why?’

  ‘I think he’s showing us his technique,’ announces the model-esque twenty-something with the caramel-coloured hair and the ass that just won’t quit.

  ‘You can say that again,’ says the older blonde, fanning herself. She raises her non-fanning hand in greeting without taking her eyes off Magnus’s lithe form – now scaling the upper branches of a tree. ‘Hi, I’m Tricia.’

  ‘Alice,’ I respond.

  ‘And I’m Melissa!’ My sister bounds over and extends a paw to shake hands.

  As Magnus disappears from view, Tricia turns to give us her full attention, readjusting her ample bosom as she does so.

  ‘Marvellous to meet you both. That’s Margot.’ She points at the model-esque younger woman, who’s now perfecting her ‘crab walk’, looking determined, drenched, yet somehow simultaneously devastatingly beautiful – despite the Old Testament weather.

  ‘She looks like a child’s drawing of a lady,’ Melissa marvels.

  She looks like a pain in the arse, I observe.

  Balancing on her hands and feet, enviably flat abdomen raised to the clouds, head back and hips thrust effortlessly upwards, she takes a few crabby steps backwards and forwards. She moves tentatively at first, before building up speed and then stopping to look around her. Then, seeming to remember that she’s supposed to be a crab, she resumes her scuttling from side to side instead. The rest of us curve our necks and tilt our heads in sync in an attempt to follow her movement.

  ‘How does she … bend that way?’ I wonder out loud.

  ‘It’s like magic,’ Melissa murmurs.

  ‘It’s like being twenty-three years old,’ Tricia corrects her.

  We look up as Tricia gives us a rundown, as though delivering a news bulletin. ‘That’s her natural hair colour – I know, it’s enough to make you sick. And yes, she’s been scouted as a model on more than one occasion. She’s also a Pilates regular – fit as you like, minor aristocracy and nosebleed rich.’

  Melissa and I stare, nonplussed, wondering how Tricia knows so much about the new arrival – and whether we’re to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny.

  Thankfully, Tricia elucidates. ‘Shared a cab with her from the airport. Clocked her luggage. And gold cards. Plural. Plus her skin elasticity is Out Of Control …’

  I glance over at Margot and her amazing skin, as well as her amazing caramel-coloured hair. Just the kind of confident girl that wears hats indoors, I think, and culottes.

  ‘Wow! Do you think she knows the royals?’ my sister asks. As well as eschewing modern technology and pop-culture post 1997, Melissa has the cultural tastes of a woman twice her age. Her favourite things include: Julie Andrews (in, well, anything), shortbread and the queen. She occasionally refers to Fergie as ‘a bit fast’ and still hasn’t got over the death of Diana. Dad got her started on commemorative crockery when Edward and Sophie got hitched, so by the time Kate and Wills rolled around, she lost her royal-mug mess. In short, she’s as ardent a monarchist as one might ever have the misfortune to encounter.

  Tricia stoops to nurse an already uncomfortable and cold bare foot so I take the opportunity to hiss at Melissa. ‘Stop being so weird and impressed by posh people.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Melissa whispers back, shaking her head. ‘I love the word “cummerbund”.’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ Tricia springs up again, evidently overhearing. ‘I’m particularly fond of “lacrosse”. So, are you two friends?’

  ‘Sisters.’

  ‘Ahhh …’ She nods, before adding, ‘Oh, here we go’, as Magnus descends from a tree and does a backflip for no conceivable reason. ‘No one has any business to be that flexible post twenty-five,’ Tricia adds dreamily. ‘He’s like spaghetti …’

  He’s, ‘like’, a massive show off, I think.

  ‘Phew! Hot work, hey, ladies?’ Magnus is back by our sides and before any of us can respond, the New Romantics shirt has come off and he’s doing sit ups. Just because.

  Tricia begins salivating. Visibly.

  ‘Look at him, all laid out there. Like a banquet!’ She preens under his gaze.

  ‘Oh, come on … !’ This is too much and I feel morally obliged to break my vow of conversational reticence with people outside of my immediate family.

  ‘What?’ Tricia demurs as he embarks on a series of star jumps. ‘He’s seriously hot! I could tear those harem pants off with my teeth …’

  ‘You’re mad,’ I mutter. ‘He looks like Aladdin …’

  She snorts slightly and smiles at me, so I smile back. Then Magnus begins strumming on his chest like a Scandinavian silverback and announces he’d like to assess our ‘initial equilibrium’ by testing us on our slack lining. Tricia starts tapping under her chin.

  ‘That’s something I’ve struggled with for years now,’ she confides. ‘My chap in Harley Street calls it wattle.’

  ‘I don’t think he means your neck,’ I whisper, then incline my head to the tightrope Margot is helping Magnus string up between two giant fir trees.

  ‘Oh! Good. Well, I’ll give anything a go once.’ She adjusts her breasts as if to check they are evenly aligned before stepping up to take her turn. It doesn’t go well and she clings to Magnus for support, tighter than might be strictly necessary.

  ‘How old do you suppose Tricia is?’ Melissa hisses now the older woman is out of earshot.

  ‘Which bit of her?’ I say, but Melissa is too nice to pick up on my meaning.

  ‘Reckon she’s had her teeth done?’ she goes on.

  ‘And the rest!’ I make my intent more overt by miming ‘grapefruits’ but am caught out, mid motion, by a loud, ‘You!’

  ‘Me?’ I drop my fake-boob charade as swiftly as I can.

  ‘Yes, you!’ Magnus is pointing at me. ‘It’s your turn.’

  Shit …

  He instructs me to ‘find my balance’ on the hastily assembled outdoor tightrope. Which, despite being a mere two feet off the ground, is terrifying.

  What if I fall? What if I get hurt? What if I look silly? My heart pounds as I step up … and fall. And get hurt. And look silly.

  ‘Keep trying!’ Magnus commands. ‘Always!’ So I do. But I’m just as bad at balance on a slack line as I am at ‘balance’ in every other area of my life. And starting the week joint ‘bottom of the class’ with Tricia doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better about our excursion, either.

  Then Magnus takes my smartphone away. And it hurts. Physically.

  I was supposed to have relinquished my device on arrival but conveniently ‘forgot’. Thanks to a handy pocket in the only vaguely exercise-appropriate trousers I own, I’ve managed to secrete the phone about my person until now – when a Facebook Messenger notification sets off a bright, unnatural sounding ‘ting!’ and I am hoist by my own electronic petard.

  ‘In the bag!’ Magnus the Merciless demands.

  Dropping my preci
ous white phone/mobile Internet connection/life-organiser/entertainment/sustenance/sanity into a hessian sack feels like giving away a beloved pet. If I’d ever had a beloved pet. Or could bring myself to compare my smartphone to a close relative or a child. Which, of course, I never would. Obviously. But still, it smarts.

  ‘Now, it’s time for you to be baptised by this life-giving rain with your new Viking names!’ Magnus bellows.

  Cult, I think, Definitely a cult.

  ‘You!’ He hones in on Tricia. ‘You shall be “Proud Chest”.’ She thrusts out her enhanced bosoms, delighted.

  ‘For you—’ he looks Margot up and down ‘—I’m feeling “Ulf”, which means “Night Wolf”.’ Margot nods very seriously as though adjusting to this new persona.

  ‘Here, we have Strong Legs!’ Melissa looks pleased, adopting an unfortunate Peter Pan stance to illustrate.

  And finally, he comes to me. ‘I’m getting … “Aslög”.’

  I look at him. Is he serious?

  ‘“Ass Log”? As in Ass Log?’

  ‘Aslög,’ he clarifies, making exactly the same sound as I have just made. ‘It means “engaged to God” in ancient Norse.’

  ‘I don’t care what it means in ancient Norse, I am not being called—’ I start, but he’s already swinging the hessian sack over his shoulder and striding off.

  Proud Chest and Strong Legs attempt to console me, and Night Wolf tries to persuade me that being crowned ‘Ass Log’ is a compliment (‘Oh bugger off, you get to be Night Wolf, like some hot TV Gladiator!’ I want to snap back). I assure her that I will not be operating under the name of ‘Ass Log’ for the next five days. And I don’t plan on using your daft ‘Viking’ names either, I think.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Tricia offers. ‘We’re in for a muff-heavy week, so it doesn’t much matter whether or not you sound like a stool sample.’

  ‘What? I didn’t come here to … to … hook up with someone!’ I’m not confident of the terminology here (what would Taylor Swift say, I wonder?) but I’m hoping my meaning is clear.

  ‘No? No. Of course. Well … well done, you.’ Tricia flaps slightly and I feel bad, so I’m grateful when Melissa leaps in.

  ‘Have you been on many of these types of retreats?’

  Tricia nods. ‘A few. The last one I went on was all chia berries and colonic irrigation. Before that it was transformational breath – “feeling up my clavicle” and bothering my abdomen. Then there was “family constellations”, where I shouted at a woman from Watford pretending to be my ex. Made her cry. Felt awful. I did crystal therapy in Croatia last year. Detox in Arizona. Yoga in the Himalayas. And, of course, Ibiza boot camp. And now, this.’

  ‘Wow.’ Melissa looks slightly overwhelmed.

  ‘So what made you come to this place?’ I can’t help asking.

  ‘Oh, it was a last-minute thing. Didn’t read too much about it. Just looked at what was available within the dates and booked.’

  ‘You’re lucky – took tonnes of arranging and anal calendar management to get Alice off work so she could come.’ Melissa overshares as usual and I worry instantly that Tricia will now think I have an actual ‘anal calendar’ – like a period tracker for the faecally retentive. So I’m relieved when she presses on.

  ‘I just had some holiday to use up … Well, I was given some time off,’ Tricia contradicts herself. ‘So, here I am …’

  That’s odd, I think. The only time I’ve ever encountered someone being ‘given time off’ at the last minute was when Steve from work was caught in a compromising position with Janet, the pharmaceutical rep, in his new reclining dental chair at the Christmas party. Esme told him to have a holiday with his wife, ‘pronto’. ‘And make sure you take her somewhere snazzy,’ she’d instructed. He’d had to do a lot of grovelling at the clinic to be allowed back – as well as paying for the chair to be deep cleaned – before his ‘holiday’ (aka suspension) was deemed spent.

  I look at Tricia, curiously. Could it be that she has her own dentist’s-chair/trade conference style indiscretion to hide?

  I’m curious to know what she does for a living but I let her quiz Melissa first on her own ‘professional status’. Just for kicks.

  ‘Err … I do grounds-keeping type things,’ is the vague answer she’s giving these days. Then she turns to me.

  ‘And how do you pay the bills?’ Tricia asks.

  The admission that I’m a dentist invariably makes people speak like a ventriloquist for a good ten minutes for fear of judgement, followed by a hushed outpouring of their dental history and any oral problems currently being experienced. Tricia is no exception and we talk tartar for a while before Melissa finally asks:

  ‘So, what do you do?’

  Tricia squints at her as though assessing whether this question is for real. Then seeing the guilelessness in my sister’s expression (see ‘Teletubby’) answers, ‘Oh, radio. Just local, these days.’

  ‘Cool,’ nods Melissa. ‘So why do you always play Celine Dion, Ronan Keating or UB40?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On local radio!’ Melissa goes on. ‘Is there, like, a law or something?’

  Tricia looks suitably baffled but is saved by a holler from a hundred yards away.

  ‘Viking rule number one: Keep moving!’ Magnus thunders.

  ‘Sorry!’ Melissa shouts back, and then, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Where are any of us going?’ is his reply. ‘That’s the journey! That’s the adventure!’

  ‘Sure, but really, what are we supposed to be doing right now?’ Tricia enquires. I suspect that she’s used to her retreats having a little more structure and is missing the security of ‘manicures at 1600 followed by cocktail hour at 1730 …’

  ‘OK,’ Magnus concedes, realising he’s dealing with a bunch of namby-pamby Brits here rather than hardy Nordic types. ‘I’m presuming many of you will be tired after your journey.’ This is the first sensible thing he’s said since we arrived. ‘So we’ll make a start on building shelter for the night in the forest.’

  We’re spending the night in the woods? We’re spending THE NIGHT? In THE WOODS?

  This is rapidly turning into my worst nightmare. And, it turns out, I’m not alone.

  ‘You want us to build a shelter ourselves?’ Tricia blinks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what if we don’t know how?’

  ‘I’ll guide you.’ This doesn’t fill me with confidence. ‘You will be empowered to use your hands and build something,’ he says, looking at me before adding, ‘You’ll be reminded that there’s more to life than spreadsheets! Like the sun, the sky and the earth!’

  How does he know about my colour-coded schedule? I think, enraged. And when might the sun be putting in an appearance? I grimace at the slate-grey sky.

  ‘It’s a buzz like no other,’ Magnus goes on, ‘sleeping in something that you made yourself. You don’t get that from Excel. So come on! Let’s do this!’

  There is grumbling (me), gossiping about whether or not Magnus has been on a tanning bed (Tricia, to a puzzled Melissa) and skipping to keep up with our hallowed leader (Margot, who has a fizziness about her that somehow annoys me. She … bounces. Everywhere. Far too much pep, I think, testily).

  We’re led to a mountain of logs, neatly stacked and arranged in a giant pyramid.

  ‘There you are!’ Magnus points.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I can’t even do flat-pack furniture!’ Tricia looks concerned. ‘Plus, these hands have modelled …’

  ‘Ooh, who for?’ Melissa asks.

  ‘Saga Magazine.’

  ‘Oh …’ My sister has no idea what this is.

  ‘And, err, what do we do for beds?’ I ask, optimistically.

  Magnus points at the sodden earth and I gulp.

  ‘Ha! Not really. I am just making a fun joke with you!’ he says.

  Oh, how we laugh …

  ‘Wait here.’ He ret
rieves a pile of distressingly ‘rustic’-looking grey blankets from behind the wood-stack, along with four rudimentary lilos that he sanguinely describes as ‘air beds’.

  ‘What if there are bugs?’ The words come out of me in a small, strained voice.

  ‘There aren’t any dangerous insects in Scandinavia,’ Melissa assures me. ‘Or even scary ones.’

  ‘She’s right,’ says Tricia. ‘This isn’t I’m a Celebrity. There are no deadly spiders and no kangaroo scrotums will be harmed in the making of these Vikings. I checked …’ This too passes Melissa by.

  I look around at the woodland surroundings that are apparently to be my home for the next week. Apart from a few rabbits, flashing a streak of white backside as they tear about, we are completely alone.

  A shiver trickles down to the base of my spine.

  ‘Right then.’ Melissa gives my arm a punch. I wish she wouldn’t do that … ‘Let’s get going.’ She knocks on the nearest trunk, then says authoritatively. ‘Yup, good trees, these …’, then heaves a log onto her shoulder and nods at me to take the other end. Reluctantly I move towards it and embrace the cold, wet wood, crawling with insects.

  I wish I had some of the latex gloves from the dental surgery with me now, I think, kicking myself for not having packed a few pairs. Like I normally do, in case of emergencies, along with the anti-bacterial lemon-scented hand gel.

  In lieu of such necessities, I use my bare, unsanitised hands and pull. The log’s damp, brown outer layer flakes away in my hands, but other than that, it does not move. I pull some more. But nothing happens.

  ‘Come on, put your back into it,’ Melissa cajoles.

  ‘I’m trying,’ I remonstrate, feeling my face colour and my heart race with the effort. Keep. Your. Shit. Together, I coach myself as I use all my strength to move the log … precisely nowhere.

  ‘Jeez Louise, you really are weak! I said you needed a good meal inside you,’ my sister commentates helpfully.

  Margot comes to my aid and is sickeningly strong for a girl with such a tiny bottom. She’s got … triceps, I gape, as she rolls up her sleeves to reveal perfectly sculpted arms: A bit ‘look at me’ though, isn’t it? Like a sort of, ‘Have you met my superior gene pool?’ *Arrow here … *