How to Measure a Cow (8 page)

She came away from that meeting sensing that there was a new distance between her and Claire, Molly and Liz. She told herself that since their lives were now so radically different they couldn’t expect to feel the same connection. But she wanted to. The puzzle was, why did she want to? She had Tom, she didn’t need these friends as once she had. They, of course, did not like Tom. They’d only met him two or three times but that, it seemed, had been enough. She was convinced class had a lot to do with it. Tom was clever, he had a better degree than any of them, and he was holding down a high-level job in finance, but he didn’t look or sound like a man who was ‘something in the City’. His Liverpool accent was thick and his appearance rough. Even in his City suit he looked dishevelled. And his manners … She had to admit he did not have the manners of a gentleman. But these things were minor compared to what her friends really held against Tom.
They thought he dominated her, and despised them. They were wary, suspicious, uncomfortable in his presence.

‘You will look after her, won’t you?’ Liz had said to him at the wedding.

‘She doesn’t need looking after,’ Tom said.

What was so wrong with that reply? She supposed it was the way he’d said it: contemptuously.

What to wear?

What to wear, for a car ride? On a Sunday? The problem overwhelmed Nancy, threatening to take all the pleasure from the outing. She’d have to wear one of those seat-belt things, and if she wore her coat it might prove uncomfortable. It was a thick coat. But if she just wore a jacket – she had three to choose from, all different weights – she might not be warm enough. Would there be a heater on in this car? There was no way of knowing.

Then there was the matter of where they would be going, whether there was a destination in mind, one where she might be expected to get out of the car and walk about. In which case boots and her thicker stockings would be best. She didn’t wear trousers, never had. Everyone else did, a positive fright some of them looked, bulging out all over the place, but she never had. Skirts, dresses, that’s what she thought proper. Not always a hat, though. Once, she always wore a hat but often now she resorted to a headscarf, especially if she’d just had her hair set. They didn’t do perms any more, or the place she went to didn’t and she didn’t want to change to a place where they did. Her hair was still good. Thick,
a bit of a wave in it, and it responded well to being set every six weeks.

She was ready by ten. The note had said ‘about eleven’. She wished people wouldn’t be so vague. What on earth did ‘about’ mean? Five to eleven, five past eleven? And it hadn’t been made clear whether she should go across the road at ‘about’ eleven, or whether Sarah Scott would come and knock for her. Well, either way, she was ready by ten, sitting just to the left of her living-room window so that she could see if Sarah Scott came out of her door. The green car looked odd standing there. The other cars, at the other end of the street, were black or grey. Green stood out. It wasn’t, she thought, in very good condition. She could see a bit of rust on the back bumper, and there were one or two dents near the rear door, but maybe they didn’t matter. It was the engine that mattered. She felt quite pleased at realising this. She might never have had a car in her life, but she knew it was the engine that mattered.

She didn’t like waiting like this, but she was always doing it, getting ready far too early, and then waiting long before it was time. Once, she’d thought this a good habit, one to be proud of having, but now she wasn’t so sure. It made time go so slowly, and it made her anxious. Often, when the clock still had twenty minutes to go, she’d be exhausted with all the waiting. She thought about going over at five to eleven, when at last clock and watch both showed that was the time, to knock on Sarah Scott’s door, but that might make her look too eager, even though she was. She wanted to seem casual. Not offhand – that would be rude, ungrateful – but casual would be fine. She was going
to let Sarah Scott come and get her, and when she did she was going to pretend she had forgotten her scarf – ‘Oh, is that the time?’ she would say – and keep Sarah Scott waiting just a minute.

Casual.

Sarah Scott didn’t have a map. Tara would have thought nothing of this, but Sarah knew she would need one. After all, she didn’t know the area. She’d chosen it at random and the main attraction was that she didn’t know it. All she knew was the bus route to work, and the town centre which she’d walked round. The coast road, which she intended to drive along, was to the west of the town. The bus, at one point, crested a hill from which there was a brief glimpse of the sea. This always lifted her spirits, even on one of the many grey days when the sea was merely a mass of dark matter, still and sullen, not a white wave upon it. She would find that road easily, surely. And Mrs Armstrong would know the way.

At ten-thirty she was on the verge of cancelling the whole outing. The thought of sitting beside Mrs Armstrong for any length of time in a confined space, not knowing where she was going, made her sweat with apprehension. What had got into her, suggesting such a thing? It was madness, folly. She didn’t want her neighbour as a friend yet this would be interpreted by her, understandably, as a gesture of friendship. She would be committed ever after to continuing the uneasy relationship. Mrs Armstrong would likely reciprocate, and she would find herself invited to a cup of tea, and she would have to go, and it would trundle on, this ‘friendship’, and it would all be her
own fault. It would be the beginnings of a false friendship, one that would never deepen into anything more than the neighbourly connection it really was. Was she so desperate to prove that Sarah Scott could make, could have, friends, that she was prepared to throw herself at Mrs Armstrong?

But there she was again, comparing Sarah’s making of a friend with Tara’s. Tara hadn’t had to try. Friends had just happened. Friends had been made through people gravitating towards her rather than she to them. Or else they’d been made through events, not all of them dramatic ones like the rescue of the child in the river which had brought Claire, Molly and Liz to her. The sports she played had drawn people to her who went on to become good friends. Especially men. She hadn’t met Tom, of course, through tennis – he despised all sport except football – but she’d met several others before him, and had become involved with one of them, become more than a friend.

What was ‘more’ than a friend? Did the sex, or love, or sex and love, supersede the friend part? Did a man become less of a friend when he became ‘more’ than a friend? She thought so. Odd, hard to define why, but she thought so. The friendship part became overpowered by the sexual part. Sometimes, she’d wanted the pre-sexual friendship back, that time when she and Tom were finding out about each other, discovering similarities, accommodating differences. He never voted. That was a big difference, his disinterest in politics. It quite shocked her. She insisted he voted in the first general election after they became friends, telling him that she didn’t care who he voted for (though she did) but just that he voted. She said he
couldn’t be her friend if he did not exercise his democratic right, fulfil his democratic duty, to vote. She was only half joking, though he laughed for ages at her solemn passion. All politicians, he said, were crooks.

Sarah, of course, was older. ‘I am Sarah Scott and I am older and it is harder to make friends when one is older. I don’t play tennis, or any other game. My workplace is not conducive to making friends.’ She tried saying these things to herself but as explanations for her failure to make friends they didn’t work. No reason why she couldn’t join a tennis club in the summer, or find some other sport, or exercise, she could take up. Physically, she was fit. That was how she’d spent a lot of time in the past years, keeping fit, working out a regime of simple exercises like running on the spot, doing press-ups, avoiding the temptation just to slump. As for work, there were plenty of friendships in existence there. She’d heard women declare that it was the chat, the gossip, the camaraderie that kept them going, the way they all looked out for each other. But she, this new person Sarah, didn’t share in this. Why not?

Why not? Because she kept herself to herself for obvious reasons. Sarah couldn’t keep herself to herself and at the same time make friends because friendship meant
giving
something of yourself. Giving only a tiny bit was difficult. It led to a demand for more. And then there was the taking bit as well. You had to take as well as give for a friendship to develop and survive, and Sarah emphatically rejected the idea of involving herself in another’s life. No, she wouldn’t, couldn’t, do it. So, could she risk taking Mrs Armstrong for a ride? Too late now. It was five to eleven, and her
coat was on, the car keys in her pocket, and she was crossing the street to knock on Mrs Armstrong’s door.

Afterwards, once home, Nancy badly needed someone to listen to an account of her Trip (this was how she was already referring to it) but there was no chance of that. So she decided to describe it to herself, making a tale of it, editing and improving it as she went along. She would pretend that she was neither herself nor Sarah Scott but a narrator – that was the right term, wasn’t it? – telling a story in which she had no part. Then she could refer to herself as Nancy, or Mrs Armstrong. She loved this idea.

She hummed hymns as she took her coat off and set about making her tea. Then she began her tale. They’d had a cup of tea while they were on the Trip but nothing to eat. It wasn’t the sort of café, or the sort of place, she would have chosen to stop at but Sarah Scott had loved it. She gave a little cry of pleasure when they drove through St Bees and she saw, from above, the beach and the cliffs. Nothing special about them that Nancy could see but then she’d been seeing them since she was a child, taken there on Sunday school outings. The beach was vast, the tide well out, and only a few dog walkers were visible marching along, throwing balls for their animals who went mad with joy at all the space. For one awful moment Nancy thought she was going to be asked to accompany Sarah Scott along the beach, and she had all her excuses ready, but no, Sarah Scott wondered if she would mind if she herself had a quick walk and then joined Nancy in the café. Nancy didn’t mind the woman having a walk on her own – on her own,
thank God – but she did mind sitting in a café on her own, thank you. So she told Sarah Scott she’d just sit in the car and enjoy the view while Sarah walked, and then they could go into the café together. Otherwise she’d have finished her tea and they’d be wanting the table. This made no sense, but was accepted by Sarah who immediately left the car and ran,
ran
, down the steps on to the stones which separated the steps from the sand.

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.’