How to Measure a Cow Read online

  Nancy watched her, startled by her energy. How old was this neighbour of hers? She still didn’t know, though she’d laid all kinds of verbal traps for Sarah to fall into and unwittingly reveal her age. Definitely under fifty, but how much under? Nancy hadn’t revealed her own age either, though she was proud of it now, but Sarah had shown no interest in discovering it. She’d shown no interest in anything, come to that. Perfectly polite, and pleasant, but no curiosity. All her life Nancy had been trying to restrain her own devouring curiosity, a trait much frowned on by her mother. Now, watching Sarah stride down the huge beach, right beside the sea, almost in it, Nancy was framing questions in such a way that her inquisitiveness would be disguised and therefore acceptable. ‘You’re very fit’ was a statement, not a question, but ought to lead, with luck, to Sarah saying something like ‘Yes, I keep fit, I …’ and then some revelation about how indeed she kept fit. Nancy nodded with satisfaction at the thought.

  The café wasn’t busy but that was because it was a cloudy, windy day and it was almost closing time. They sat at a table in front of the window looking at the beach. Sarah went to the toilet, and on the way back stopped to look at a bookcase up against the wall in the corner. It was full of second-hand books donated for sale to raise funds for the lifeboats. She saw Sarah pick out and pay for two of them. They looked in poor condition to Nancy. There was a definite smell of cigarette smoke from one of them and the other had mucky stains on the cover. The titles and names of the authors were in too small a print for Nancy to read upside down and she certainly wasn’t going to touch them. Sarah smiled at her. She looked better after her walk, healthier, some colour in her pale face.

  ‘I like to read biographies,’ she said.

  ‘Very nice,’ Nancy said, knowing it was a meaningless comment, but pleased that at last she’d found out something about Sarah Scott without having to ask: she liked to read biographies. Well!

  But no conversation developed from this. They drank their tea. The two women doing the serving started putting chairs, upended, on the empty tables and turning the sign on the glass door to ‘Closed’. Sarah took Nancy’s arm to help her down the steps which Nancy found thoughtful of her but unnecessary. She didn’t like to think she might look as though she needed help. They drove on, down the coast road, mostly in silence. Sarah marvelled at the Lake District hills on the horizon to their left, and said she wanted to explore them another time, leading Nancy to list all the lakes and villages she’d visited. Sarah didn’t ask any questions about these places Nancy had mentioned, but then she was concentrating on her driving on a tricky stretch of road and Nancy conceded this might have held her back from talking. They were near Ravenglass by then, passing Sellafield.

  ‘What was here before they built that scary building?’ Sarah asked her.

  ‘Farms,’ Nancy said, and then, in a rush of speech which was out of her mouth before she thought better of it, ‘our farm was one of them. Compulsory purchase, they said. My dad went mad, but it was no good. Lost all his cows.’

  They turned round at that point and started back to Workington.

  ‘So you were a farmer’s daughter,’ Sarah said. ‘How lovely being brought up on a farm.’

  ‘Was nothing lovely about it,’ Nancy said. ‘Cows take a lot of work. I didn’t care about the cows going, only the land.’

  She’d said too much, given too much away. Now Sarah would pester her with questions, likely. But she didn’t. She only asked one, a silly one:

  ‘Were the cows like those?’ and she pointed out of the car window at a field full of black cows with broad white stripes across their stomachs.

  ‘No,’ said Nancy, ‘those are Belted Galloways. Ours were Friesians. They were big enough, though. I used to help Dad measure them.’

  ‘Measure them?’ said Sarah, laughing. ‘How do you measure a cow? And why?’

  So Nancy told her. Sarah listened carefully as Nancy went into detail and found herself repeating the instructions back to Nancy.

  ‘Measure from the shoulder to the second joint on the tail,’ Nancy was saying.

  ‘Do tails have joints?’ Sarah asked, amazed.

  ‘Of course they do,’ said Nancy, sounding bad-tempered now. ‘Any road,’ she went on, ‘multiply five times the length and divide by twenty-one to get the weight.’

  ‘Divide by twenty-one,’ Sarah echoed. Her hands gripped the steering wheel even more tightly. ‘How to measure a cow,’ she kept repeating.

  It had annoyed Nancy. Remembering this, as she told the tale of the trip to herself, speaking bits of it aloud, pretending to be Sarah as well as herself, then to be neither, just a narrator. Nancy worried that Sarah had been mocking her. Had she been trying to suppress laughter? But there was nothing funny about measuring a cow. It had been hard. Her father got in a temper doing it. She should’ve told Sarah that.

  She was finished. The day had been gone over, all details about the trip covered. Nancy could find nothing else to add. But of course, she realised, she hadn’t included the small, telltale signs her sharp eyes had noticed. These were hard to list. Something about Sarah’s expression when she had to halt at a crossing while a child of about ten pushed a woman in a wheelchair over it caught Nancy’s attention. It was odd. Sitting beside her, Nancy couldn’t see Sarah’s full face but from the side she saw her chin go up in a sudden movement and she saw too that Sarah was not looking at either the child or the woman in the wheelchair. She was looking up, almost into the inside of the roof of the car. When the wheelchair was safely across, Sarah didn’t drive on. The engine stalled, and she had to restart it.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  Her hands on the wheel tightened. Nancy had seen the knuckles turn white. Now what had that been about?

  This little instance of a peculiar reaction to something ordinary stuck in Nancy’s mind. She must, she decided, be extra cautious with Sarah Scott. She was fragile, that was for sure, and tense, never truly relaxed. Had she had a breakdown, one of those nervous ones? Was that why she was here? It put Nancy off the woman. As her mother used to say, we could all have nervous breakdowns if we tried. She didn’t want to be involved in one. But then maybe there was nothing wrong with Sarah mentally, maybe how she’d reacted was just to do with some sort of memory. Now, that Nancy could relate to. There were plenty of such moments in her own experience when something jolted her memory so violently that for a second or two she was back within it, and she didn’t like it. Plenty of memories to make her own lips tremble, if they were suddenly recalled.

  But she didn’t invite Sarah Scott in immediately for a cup of tea. Best to wait.

  IV

  TARA BECAME AN explorer. Without Nancy Armstrong beside her, she followed whichever road took her fancy once she’d turned from the main roads and headed inland. These roads were empty and she felt as though they’d been kept clear especially for her. They twisted and turned, the hedges either side thick with hawthorn blossom, climbing ever higher. She passed through no villages until she came to a place called Pica, some five miles inland. It was the strangest collection of houses, just one long road, halfway down, at right angles. No shops, no school, no church, only two or three cars. It felt eerie, though it was a sunny day, but Tara liked it. She wondered how these tightly squashed-together houses came to be built here. Was it something to do with mines, at one time? Mrs Armstrong would know. There were no people visible. A ghost village except that the television aerials on every roof, sometimes three of them, indicated otherwise. And at the far end she could see lines of washing pinned to stout ropes, blowing vigorously, giant wooden props holding the lines up.

  She drove slowly through the village, then parked half a mile further on. The hills were in front of her, a far-off jagged row of dipping peaks zigzagging along the horizon. She fixed her eyes on them and began to walk. She’d always liked to walk. Her friends had complained about the speed she went at, Molly in particular objecting and asking what was the hurry. She felt strong as she marc
hed along. The smack of her feet on the road was comforting. It told her she was full of energy and now it had somewhere to go. She wondered how far she could get before she had used this energy up but turned back when the calves of her legs began to ache. Her car was so far away she couldn’t see it and the houses of Pica looked like distant blurs. The weather was changing. She could see the white wind turbines whirling furiously, and behind them huge, billowing black clouds bunching themselves into a great, ominous mass over the sea. Oh, it was an exhilarating sight, full of power, and though all the muscles in her legs were aching fiercely she began to run, a ponderous, slow run but still she was running. Her body was near to exhausted but her mind was alert and settled. She was Tara again.

  It was the end of May. The reunion was to be in late June.

  Nancy wished she had a car. Without one, it was impossible to find out where Sarah Scott went to on her, by now, regular outings somewhere. Somewhere … but where? Nancy hadn’t been invited again to accompany her neighbour. Why not? she wondered (out loud, as usual, wandering about her house, frowning into the living-room mirror above the fireplace, scowling at her reflection in the bathroom mirror). What did I do wrong? It was an insult, not to be invited again. Don’t be petty, she told herself but she replied, pretty sharpish, that she was not being petty. She didn’t expect to be invited every week, good heavens no, and she wouldn’t have accepted an invitation if it had been given every week, but occasionally, yes, occasionally, she would have. There was one possible explanation, of course: the failure to reciprocate. Well, she didn’t have a car, so how could she? But no, that was letting herself off the hook. Don’t be silly, Nancy, she said. There are other ways of returning a favour shown. Tea! A proper tea, with home-made cake and scones, and blackcurrant jam, of which she still had one jar left. She’d put a lace cloth on the little table and set out cups and saucers nicely. Then the two of them could have a proper chat.

  She’d waited too long. It was nearly six weeks since the car ride, but Nancy excused herself on the grounds that she’d been expecting another invitation to go for a run in the car and at that point she’d been going to ask Sarah Scott to tea. Oh, stop it, Nancy, she said, that doesn’t make sense. Just get on with it. Ask her.

  Tara sat for a while in her car, looking ahead towards the hills of Scotland across the sea. The silence was intense. She had the windows down, but the only sound was the merest whisper of wind. No human voice. No humans. She felt a sudden burst of happiness, a physical feeling in her chest, and found herself pressing her hands over it, to keep it there. She felt free of Sarah Scott though she knew that for the time being she was on her way back to the dreary woman. She served her purpose, provided a carapace under which her real self could hide until the time was right – but when would that be? A new life was only an external new life. She knew that it should be recognised. But at the moment, physically exhausted by her long walk, she felt free of the burden it imposed. It had been her choice, after all, her choice to recreate herself as someone calm and nice and fury free.

  But now she had to find a way out.

  Nancy Armstrong came out of her door the moment Tara parked her car. She waved. Tara got out and waved back, trying at the same time to reach her own front door.

  ‘You’ll be ready for some tea,’ Mrs Armstrong called. ‘I’ve made a cake. I’ve got the kettle on, come on in.’

  I am Sarah Scott, Tara reminded herself. Sarah Scott will go and have tea and cake with her neighbour Mrs Armstrong. Very well. But how she despised this weak woman, this Sarah Scott.

  There was always the possibility. Claire said this to Liz and Molly several times. They told her not to be ridiculous, that of course, considering there had been no reply to her letter of several months ago, there was no possibility of Tara turning up. But Claire, being Claire, persisted in this stubborn belief and included Tara in all the plans. These ‘plans’ were hardly extensive or complicated but, Liz and Molly agreed, Claire made a meal of them. She loved organising events, and even if there was not much to organise she created complications, trying to involve the other two in a way they resisted.

  ‘Oh, Claire,’ they sighed, ‘do what you like. Yes, yes, anything you think appropriate.’ Then they left her to it.

  But Liz and Molly looked forward to this reunion too. The fact was, the three of them hadn’t been together for years. The last time was on Liz’s fortieth birthday. They’d phoned each other often, and Liz had met Molly five or six times, for lunch, and they’d each had dates – ‘play-dates’ as they skittishly called them – with Claire, but they hadn’t had a threesome for all that time. Claire was the organiser and she’d been so busy organising umpteen other things that she’d had no time for organising reunions. Liz and Molly never even thought of taking on this not very onerous task themselves. No, no, Claire was the organiser.

  ‘It’s always left to me,’ Claire complained to her husband Dan, but he didn’t bother responding to this. Claire liked to act put-upon but he knew how she relished being relied on, pleased to be doing things for others. Smug? Yes, she was a little smug, but not in an unpleasant way. What she wanted, he knew, was to be admired for her social conscience, her willingness to take the lead in bringing people together and giving them a good time. So long as she was appreciated this smugness did not get out of hand but unless at least one person told her she was a ‘treasure’ then it could get ugly. He waited for signs of this: ‘“Do what you like,” they say, as if I didn’t have enough to do, as if I were forcing them to have a reunion.’ He was diplomatic, assured her that Liz and Molly hadn’t meant to sound so offhand and that really they had such trust in her organising abilities that they’d meant to say they merely wanted to follow her lead. Grudgingly, Claire accepted this as a possible explanation. Plans went ahead.

  But as the day for the celebratory lunch drew near, Claire did wonder why she was feeling a touch apprehensive. This had nothing to do with the meal but with the awareness that Tara might indeed turn up. She’d always hoped she would, but now this hope was tinged with worry. Might there be a scene? Might Tara only turn up to accuse them of betrayal, disloyalty, etc.? And if she did, and in public, how would they deal with it? Claire, for all her practical abilities, had an imaginative side to her nature which sometimes astonished her with its strength. She saw Tara entering the restaurant, she saw herself and Liz and Molly rising from their chairs with cries of welcome, and then she saw Tara stride forward and shout – What? – and slap each of their faces. She had to stop herself at this awful point and tell herself not to be so melodramatic and silly. Nevertheless, several versions of this sort of thing played before her eyes and had to be dealt with. She dealt with them, firmly substituting an image of a rather shy Tara hesitantly approaching her friends, unsure of her welcome … and oh, how they would rise to that occasion, how they would vie with each other to say how glad they were to see her, how they’d thought about her so much and—

  And what? This, Claire decided, had to be prepared for. The excuses, the justifications. Best not to give either, because they all knew a test of true friendship had been failed. They had had a meeting at the time. No, not a meeting, a discussion over the phone, first herself with Molly, then with Liz. They had called each other often at that time, back and forth the calls had gone, all of them speaking for an hour or more about what they’d read, what they’d heard, and most of all about whether it could be true. No, they’d all agreed, it could not be true. But nevertheless there it was in the newspapers. Tara Fraser (interestingly, they thought, she’d never taken Tom’s surname even though she’d married him) arrested. For murder. That was the moment they should have acted, stood by Tara. Immediately, without hesitation. She wasn’t allowed bail so it would have meant applying to visit her in prison, and none of them had done that. If Tara came, should any kind of apology be attempted? Or would that at once strike the wrong note? Claire exhausted herself trying to decide, but as June approached the tension became almost unbearable: wou
ld Tara come, or not?

  The girl – Nancy thought of Sarah Scott as a girl, though not as a lass, the distinction clear in her mind, which was the only mind that mattered – the girl was hungry. She ate two scones, both liberally spread with jam, and needed no urging to have a large piece of Dundee cake. She ate daintily, neatly, no wolfing the food down, and Nancy was pleased to see the linen napkin used to dab the corners of the girl’s mouth even though, the jam being blackcurrant, there would now be a stain hard to remove. Nancy ate a scone herself, and talked. She told the girl how she had bought the blackcurrants in the market and made the jam back in July. She told her the exact location of the stall in the market, which was not to be confused with another stall nearby. She recited the recipe for the Dundee cake which she knew off by heart because she’d been making it for more than fifty years even when almonds were scarce. She talked and talked and then, when the girl had finished eating and had declined another piece of cake, Nancy waited for her to talk. And waited. Maybe she needed prompting. Nancy decided the girl, this Sarah Scott, needed help, just as she’d needed it on their outing. This politeness had gone on too long.

  ‘Where you from, then?’ Nancy asked, forgetting she’d already asked this when she had that cup of (awful) tea and that this simple enquiry had made Sarah freeze. But it was harmless, wasn’t it, asking someone where they hailed from? Course it was. ‘Where you from?’ she repeated.