How to Measure a Cow

by Margaret Forster

  Nancy relaxed – thank God, the girl wasn’t going to cry. She wondered if maybe the young woman had had a nervous breakdown in the recent past. It would explain a lot. She couldn’t ask her, of course, but silently tried to think of ways in which she could obliquely bring the subject up. None presented themselves to her at the moment.

  ‘Should we be getting on?’ she said, the soup finished.

  There was no reply.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Nancy asked.

  They’d be in a fine pickle if Sarah wasn’t fit to drive. Who could I call, Nancy wondered, what will I do? She wished this had happened in Workington.

  But Sarah had recovered.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘let’s get on, you’re right.’

  Nancy loved looking at the houses to let on Sarah’s list. On each doorstep, as the front door opened (all the houses were occupied at the moment) Sarah introduced herself, brandishing the estate agent’s details, and then said, ‘This is my friend Mrs Armstrong.’ This pleased Nancy inordinately. She didn’t want to be on Christian-name terms with strangers and Sarah had deduced that and shown respect. While Sarah talked to the householder, Nancy’s eyes darted round the rooms, taking in the damp patch on the ceiling and the signs of woodworm on the skirting board and the state of the kitchen sink. Two of the houses were so untidy she was embarrassed for the occupiers, unable as she was to believe people could live with dirty dishes piled high and waste bins overflowing, not to mention bathrooms with tide marks engrained on the porcelain and lavatories that hadn’t been bleached in weeks, if ever.

  Once back in the car, she exclaimed over what she had seen but Sarah didn’t seem shocked.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we used to live like that when we were young.’

  ‘Who?’ Nancy asked, before she could stop herself.

  ‘My friends and I,’ Sarah said. ‘We once shared a flat, just for a year, four of us. We were such slatterns except for Claire, and she couldn’t control us.’

  Nancy was silent. She tried to build up an image of Sarah as part of a quartet of slatterns.

  ‘Well,’ she said, after a long pause, ‘you’ve changed. You keep your house tidy and clean now.’

  ‘That’s because I’m not me any more. I’m not Tara,’ she said, ‘I’m Sarah.’

  Nancy frowned. She repeated the words to herself in her head: ‘I’m not me any more. I’m not Tara, I’m Sarah.’ What was going on? Was Sarah being funny? People were always telling her that they were ‘only being funny’ when she didn’t understand something. But it hadn’t sounded funny. It had sounded despairing, bitter. Nancy struggled with an urgent need to ask a whole list of questions but asked none of them. Best not to pry. She cleared her throat.

  ‘Which house did you like best?’ she asked, pleased at how innocuous her enquiry was.

  ‘None of them,’ Sarah said. ‘They all made me want to scream.’

  Scream. Here was another conundrum: what was there to scream about? They were just ordinary houses, nothing to scream about. Nancy realised she must have made some sort of sound that betrayed her surprise because Sarah/Tara, whatever she was called, then said, ‘Scream with horror at the ordinariness, the way it closed round us, strangling us.’

  This was getting ridiculous. The girl was away with the fairies.

  ‘Nothing wrong with being ordinary,’ Nancy said, rather grimly. She wanted to add, ‘I don’t know what you mean with this fancy, daft talk,’ but she didn’t. Best not to fall out, especially as Sarah/Tara, whatever, was driving and needed to concentrate.

  ‘Oh, I can’t bear ordinariness, dreariness,’ Tara said, ‘and now I’m ordinary too, looking at ordinary places to live and hating them all. I want to go back, and I can’t.’

  Now, Nancy wondered, which question can I ask first? What would be safe, innocent? ‘Go back to where?’ she dared to ask.

  ‘My life,’ said Tara.

  Nancy really could not take that in. Sarah/Tara was talking as though she had died. This sort of silliness, Nancy decided, should not be encouraged, so she said nothing, just shifted in her seat and fiddled with her seat belt. There was silence, though not a comfortable one, for several miles.

  Then Sarah/Tara said, ‘You like your own life, don’t you, Nancy?’

  Here we go again, Nancy thought, exasperated.

  ‘Of course I like my life,’ she said irritably. ‘I only have one, don’t I? You make the best of it, that’s all. It isn’t a matter of liking it. Goodness me.’

  That was as far as she was prepared to go. If she said anything else she’d regret it.

  They were on their way now to Cockermouth, where there were quite a few houses to rent. Sarah/Tara took to Cockermouth straight away, though Nancy didn’t care for it, never felt comfortable there. It was ‘too county’ she told Sarah/Tara, who didn’t understand what she meant, and Nancy couldn’t explain. It was several years since she’d been to Cockermouth and she had to admit that since the floods in 2010 the main street had been prettified with the shop signs different and the buildings freshly painted. They were looking for a house in Waterloo Street behind the main street.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Nancy said, even before they went in. ‘Look, it’s too near the river. It might flood again, and anyway there’d be all that damp all the time, coming off the river.’

  ‘I like a bit of danger,’ Tara said dreamily.

  Nancy clicked her teeth in annoyance. At times, she wanted to give Sarah/Tara a slap. They found the house, and Tara announced that she loved it even before the door was opened. Nancy saw nothing to love. It was a stone house, probably very old, and old houses caused all kinds of problems. Inside it was rather dark except for the kitchen at the back which overlooked the garden sloping slightly down to the river, currently rather high, the water gushing along at a great rate. Nancy shuddered, but Tara was in ecstasies.

  ‘I love it,’ she said to the estate agent, who’d met them outside. ‘I’ll take it.’

  Nancy was so shocked, words failed her.

  Tara wanted to wander around the little town and maybe have something to eat later, but Nancy said she had to get back.

  ‘Why?’ asked Tara. ‘What’s the rush? What do you have to get back for?’

  This was outrageous. ‘I have to get back’ should never be questioned. It was a well-known euphemism and Tara was deliberately not understanding it. She was, instead, seeking to emphasise that Nancy had nothing to get back for, no husband coming home from work and needing his tea, no children coming home from school, no dog, no cat, only an empty house and – Nancy felt – an empty life.

  ‘I’ll get a bus,’ she said, ‘you stay as long as you like.’

  She knew the bus service to Workington these days hardly existed, but she didn’t care. She wanted to emphasise to Sarah Scott – she’d always be Sarah Scott to her – that she was independent and had always been independent and always would be. Her face, she knew, she could feel it, was red with anger and Tara could see it and if she didn’t recognise what ‘I have to get back’ meant she would certainly interpret Nancy’s flush correctly. And she did.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nancy,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  They drove back in silence, with Nancy only relaxing when the grey street that was hers was turned into. It comforted her, just seeing the familiar houses, the narrow pavements, the tarmac-covered road with potholes in it at regular intervals. She could see that some might find it a depressing scene, but it did not depress her. Leaving this street would make her feel cast adrift. She saw, quite clearly, that this Sarah Scott, who wasn’t Sarah Scott, had never belonged here. Well, she’d thought that from the beginning, but she’d imagined the woman would adapt, and she’d thought she had, to a certain extent, over the last few months. But no. She hadn’t. This was going to be a promising friendship which would never mature. It was a shame, but nothing could be done about it. As usual, acknowledging that ‘nothing could be done’ about something made Nancy feel almost triumphant.
r />   ‘Thanks for coming with me,’ Tara said, as she pulled up outside her house.

  ‘I enjoyed the drive,’ Nancy said. She wasn’t going to say that she enjoyed anything else.

  ‘Will you come in and let me make you a cup of tea?’ Tara said.

  ‘No, thanks, I have to get home,’ Nancy said.

  If Sarah asked why, she might let fly, but she didn’t ask.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, as Nancy started to open the car door. ‘Sorry, Nancy, if I, you know, if …’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Oh, but there is,’ Tara said. ‘I’m full of lies, and I’m sorry.’

  Here we go again, Nancy thought, another peculiar statement, but she wasn’t going to ask what Sarah – it was no good, she couldn’t call her Tara – meant by saying she was full of lies. It was too childish. Once she was in her own house, though, having her own tea in her own kitchen, and soothed by the familiarity, she naturally pondered what these lies could be. Clearly, something had brought Sarah Scott here, to a place where she did not belong, but how was a lie, or a whole lot of lies, involved? If she, Nancy, had responded with ‘What lies?’ would Sarah have started confessing them? Nancy shuddered. Always a mistake, letting someone confess to you. Lies should be kept quiet. The urge to share them was in itself a dangerous sign. She nodded to herself. She’d done the right thing by sidestepping Sarah’s invitation to hear about the lies she’d apparently told.

  But all that evening, she speculated.

  The house she’d taken in Cockermouth would be vacant in three weeks. And there was a job she’d applied for at the community hospital there as a receptionist, though she was pretty certain that checks on her application might be too thorough and she’d be ruled out. She’d made up the references needed, and then tore them up. Much too risky. Instead, she portrayed herself as never having had a job before owing to the ill health of her now deceased husband. She said she felt the experience she’d had with doctors and hospitals on his account made her aware of the skills a receptionist needed, balancing efficiency with sympathy. She was rather pleased with that bit. There was another job going, in Carlisle, in the pharmacy at the infirmary, but she didn’t dare apply for it. Checks there would be extensive, and she no longer had the Woman or even the Man to help her. But she had to have a reference of some sort, and there was no one in Workington except Nancy Armstrong who could give one. She couldn’t give the factory charge-hand as a reference because she was saying she’d never worked before. What a tangled web, etc. – a whole new network of complications.

  Inevitably, she thought of her old friends, in particular of Claire. All she’d be asking her to do was write a letter saying she had known ‘Sarah Scott’ for twenty-five years and could vouch for … for what? What on earth could she ask Claire to vouch for? Intelligence? Certainly. Claire would have no problem with the truth of that. Efficiency? That should be OK. Dependability? Probably not. ‘Caring nature?’ Oh, God, no. But did employers bother about all these qualities when the job was only a receptionist’s? She hoped not. Claire could make her reference as short as she liked. The thing to do was to represent it to her, obliquely of course, as an opportunity to make up for letting Tara down at a crucial time. But she’d have to give her address, if what she wanted was a letter, headed notepaper and all. Well, that wouldn’t be dangerous because she was moving soon.

  Then there was Nancy. She would have to ask Nancy, who’d known her some months but who didn’t know her at all. This would be an asset. She could truthfully write that Sarah Scott had been her neighbour this past ten months and she had found her quiet, dutiful and helpful. (Did taking Nancy for car rides count as being ‘helpful’?) Nancy, though, probably didn’t write anything regularly. She might see writing a reference as beyond her ability. But the minute she’d considered this, Tara scolded herself for being patronising. Nancy might well be in the habit of writing letters frequently to friends or relations Tara knew nothing about. She might even be flattered at being asked to give a reference.

  She was not. When Tara explained, over the inevitable cup of tea and shortbread biscuits, that she was going to apply for a job as a doctor’s receptionist, and needed someone to write her a short reference, Nancy said:

  ‘Who will you ask? No one knows you, except me and those you worked with, and you don’t even seem to know their names, from what you told me.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Tara said. ‘That’s why I want you to do it, just a couple of sentences saying how long you’ve known me and that I’m, oh, I don’t know, respectable, that sort of thing. I’d be very grateful, Nancy.’

  Nancy broke a biscuit in two and pondered long before selecting one of the halves and eating it. She munched slowly, though it was a very small fragment of biscuit.

  ‘I don’t know that I’m the right person to oblige,’ she finally said.

  ‘You’re the only person,’ Tara said. ‘I don’t know anyone else.’

  She wasn’t going to go into why she couldn’t ask for a reference from her previous employer. Nancy would think her reasons suspicious (and of course they were).

  Nancy drank some tea, and then said, ‘There’s nothing I could write. Best ask someone else.’ She got up, saying, as she inevitably did, ‘Oh, look at the time, I’ve got to get back.’

  Tara let a few tears appear in her eyes. (She’d always been able to turn on tears easily, a formidable talent she’d made great use of in her life.)

  Nancy saw them, as she was intended to, and said, ‘It’s nothing to get upset about, goodness me.’

  ‘But I am upset,’ Tara said. ‘I was counting on you.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ Nancy said, quite sharply. ‘No good counting on people you hardly know. Leads to trouble.’

  Tara realised she’d made a terrible mistake: tears were not going to soften Nancy. Tears disgusted her. Tears were for dying children and other tragedies. Tears, because a reference was being withheld, were daft.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tara said. ‘I was being stupid, you’re quite right. But I need this job, Nancy.’

  Nancy was already at the front door.

  ‘Good luck, then,’ she said, and was out without a backward look, walking briskly across the road to her own house. Tara thought she closed her door with unnecessary force, quite a decided bang as she went in.

  So that was that. Then, suddenly, she thought of her landlord, ‘the nephew’ Nancy hated so much. He might give her a reference, along the lines of excellent tenant, orderly, neat, rent always on time. He even, in a way, owed her a favour, for giving her notice long before the time he’d promised she could rent the house. He wouldn’t care tuppence that he didn’t know her at all. A short reference from him and another, she hoped, from Claire, and that should suffice.

  She didn’t need Nancy Armstrong.

  So much was revealed in Tara’s short letter that Claire took a while to absorb it. Tara’s address, and her new name, felt sort of exciting to see. ‘Sarah Scott’, and the town in Cumbria, such a long way away. And a letter was wanted, on headed notepaper, ‘your usual impressive stuff’. Claire frowned over that. What was ‘impressive’ about headed notepaper? Was Tara mocking her? Surely not, when, after all, she was asking a favour, one she made sound simple but which was not simple at all. Claire got the message. She realised Tara was exerting a kind of emotional blackmail, along the lines of this being her chance to make up for having, so many years ago, let Tara down. But Tara had been guilty. Why should she have expected her friends to stand by her after she’d admitted her guilt? A question they’d never asked her when they’d had the chance.

  It was hard to get into Tara’s mind, but then it always had been. She did such odd things, reacted to events in such a strange way. You could never count on her, the way you could on Liz and Molly. Unpredictable, that was what she’d always been. It made her fascinating, just trying to guess what she would say, or do. And now she wanted a reference, concentrating, she said, on the nu
mber of years Claire had known her and emphasising her kind nature and pleasant manner and reliability. ‘Kind’, when she’d done what she did? And ‘pleasant’ wasn’t exactly true either. Tara could be pleasant, but it was not her outstanding feature. ‘Reliability’ was a problem too. Tara, in Claire’s memory, was always late for any appointment and not too apologetic about it when she did arrive. Writing a reference in which she did not perjure herself would be tricky, and that was if she wrote one at all.

  She expected that Liz and Molly would have been asked too, but no, they hadn’t, and they were a touch offended, though they tried to hide it (but Claire knew them too well).

  ‘I expect it’s the lack of headed notepaper,’ Liz joked. ‘In fact, I don’t think I’ve got any paper except plain A4 stuff.’

  Molly said it was a relief that she hadn’t been asked. ‘I’d have tied myself in knots trying to write a reference,’ she said. ‘I’m not good with words, as Tara knows. Poor you, Claire, picking on you. What will you write?’

  An hour of discussion on the phone with each of them followed, resulting in Claire deciding, with their encouragement, that saying Tara was ‘reliable’ was out of the question but ‘pleasant’ was permissible.

  ‘I’ll have to think of other words, other qualities,’ Claire said, ‘like her quick thinking, her adaptability, those kind of qualities.’

  ‘Good luck,’ the others said, ‘and don’t overdo it. She’s got quite a cheek asking.’ Claire thought so too, but then Tara had always been cheeky.

  She struggled over the reference for days, to the irritation of Dan. Every meal they had, Claire went over and over the difficulties of writing it, the battle with her conscience and yet wanting to help Tara.

  ‘I want to make up for not standing by her when she needed me,’ she said, making him sigh with exasperation.

  ‘We’ve been through that millions of times,’ he said. ‘Look, Tara was a friend and now she’s hardly someone you could call a friend at all. You’re trying to pretend you actually still know her and you do not. End of.’