How to Measure a Cow

by Margaret Forster

  ‘She’s in number eighteen, Nancy,’ someone said, ‘opposite you. Have you seen her, eh?’

  ‘Of course I’ve seen her,’ Nancy said scornfully.

  ‘Did that lad of Amy’s tell you she was coming?’

  ‘I’m not saying,’ Nancy said which was correctly interpreted as a ‘no’. After that, interest in the newcomer waned. For the moment.

  It annoyed Nancy that the nephew was referred to as ‘Amy’s lad’. He was not her lad. He was not even a proper nephew, not a blood relative. The nephew was the stepson of Amy’s brother, who lived in Carlisle. The brother and his wife, and her son by her first marriage, hardly ever visited but when they did Amy made a big fuss. It had taken many years for Nancy to find out that this ‘nephew’, this golden boy (in Amy’s opinion), was not in fact properly related. Amy adored him. Photographs of him were all over her house, the ones taken annually at school and sent to her in their grey cardboard frames. She’d told Nancy she intended to leave him everything she had. Nancy expected she’d told the nephew that too. It kept him visiting, if infrequently, once he was grown up. He was at the funeral, of course, with his stepfather (his mother didn’t bother). Very appropriately dressed in dark suit, white shirt, black tie, well-polished black shoes. He had at least shown respect. The service was disgracefully brief. No hymns, not one. A prayer so hastily mumbled by the vicar that there might as well not have been one. The mourners who weren’t family were not mourners. Nancy recognised them all, women who scanned the local paper and turned up for the show, hoping for a sight of some genuine grief. They would be disappointed this time, except for the treat of the dead woman being buried, a real hole dug and the coffin lowered in. Rare, these days, with folk mostly whipped off to be cremated after the church service. And the nephew did throw a white rose in which would have cost him, it being winter.

  There was no funeral tea, or if there was Nancy was not invited, and if there was it wasn’t held in Amy’s house or at any of the venues well known locally for hosting such events. The nephew and his father shook hands with the vicar, got into their car, and drove off. Nancy walked home thinking how thoughtless some people were. No consideration. No speck of kindness. No thanks for all she’d done for Amy Taylor. She’d worked herself up into such a rage about the nephew and his father’s lack of appreciation by the time she reached her own door that she knew she was red in the face. There was a plant pot on the doorstep, enclosed in cellophane. She opened her front door without disturbing it, then cautiously nudged it inside using the toe of her shoe. It toppled over. She picked it up by the cellophane wrapper, dislodging a card. The handwritten message said, ‘With thanks to Mrs Armstrong for the help given to our beloved sister and aunt.’ Beloved! Beloved!

  Left on her doorstep. Not given to her, properly. Just left. And only a chrysanthemum, bright yellow and slightly wilted. She would rather have had a pot of bulbs. For a moment, she wondered if she could change it. She knew the shop. Even if she hadn’t known it, the address was on the card. Could she go straight away into town and say she was allergic to chrysanths and would like to change this plant for something of similar value, preferably a pot of daffodil bulbs (not hyacinths – she couldn’t abide the smell)? It made her agitated, this idea. Backwards and forwards she walked in her little house, her coat and hat still on, the chrysanthemum in her arms. She badly wanted to act on her idea of an exchange, especially as it would mean that she’d find out how much the nephew had spent. What had he reckoned she was worth?

  She didn’t go. She had a better idea. As soon as she calmed down and had a cup of tea, she’d give it to the woman who’d moved into Amy’s house – a welcome present. Then, if the nephew came again, as he was surely bound to if, as reliable rumour had it, the house was rented, not sold, then he would see the plant and get the message. Nancy wasn’t sure quite what this message said, but it amounted to a slap in the face.

  ‘A slap in the face!’ she said (out loud).

  The rain had stopped. There was a sudden lightening of the sky, a pale whiteness edging out from under the black clouds. Standing at the bedroom window, she saw the chimney pots opposite outlined against this whiteness. Smoke came from a few of them, gently curling upwards, pale grey against the white. Pretty. She’d never thought to see anything pretty here. Her hands were on the red curtains, to draw them shut, when she saw the door of the house opposite open. An old woman stood there, contemplating a puddle in the road, watching it intently. She was clad in a curious assortment of clothes and was holding a plant pot. Over her head, which already wore a hat, she had a plastic scarf, tied under her chin. Her maroon overcoat had a belt round it, and she had a black bag with a long strap worn diagonally across her chest with the belt, going round her waist, on top of it. She looked to right and then left and waited, though there was no traffic, and then she skirted the deep puddle and walked across the road. The knock was loud.

  There was no possibility of ignoring it. Too risky, too certain to provoke the very curiosity which should not be encouraged. Tara practised saying, ‘My name is Sarah Scott.’ She’d wanted it to be Smith, but Smith was rejected, being too obvious. She’d thought it might be clever to be obvious, a sort of double bluff, but no, Smith would not do. Sarah was fine. A common name, everyone knew a Sarah, and it transcended age and class. It was safe, readily agreed to.

  ‘Hello,’ she practised again, as she went down the stairs, ‘my name is Sarah Scott.’ But she wouldn’t be asked for her name. Never volunteer more than is asked for. Hello would be sufficient. Would keeping this neighbour on the doorstep be sufficient? Was it a test? Would she be expecting to be asked in? Hello. Then wait. Let her visitor dictate what should happen next. Listen to what she says and take your cue from it. Maybe just ‘hello’, and then, if the plant was a gift, ‘thank you’, and a smile. And close the door.

  The woman was somehow inside and the front door closed before Tara realised what was happening.

  ‘Wet, out,’ the woman said, wiping her feet energetically on the threadbare mat. The narrow, dark passageway – it wasn’t a hall – was full of her. ‘Brought you this,’ she said, thrusting the plant pot at her.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tara, ‘thank you.’

  ‘I live across the way, number nineteen,’ the woman said. ‘Been there near fifty years.’

  Tara found herself nodding, as though she’d always known this. They were standing so close together, confined in the small space, that she could see every line on her neighbour’s face. It was embarrassing. She hadn’t yet said, ‘My name is Sarah Scott,’ but the visitor hadn’t given her name either. They couldn’t go on standing there. ‘Come in,’ Tara said, her voice weak, the invitation unconvincing. She started to lead the way into the living room, but was not followed.

  ‘I’m not stopping,’ the woman said, and opened the front door. ‘I’ll be seeing you, I expect.’

  And she was gone. The wretched plant pot slipped out of Tara’s hands, the yellow petals fluttering to the floor at her feet. Picking it up, her hands slipping on the wet cellophane wrapping, she felt dizzy, and let herself slide down. She’d done everything wrong. Hadn’t she? Had she? She went over what her neighbour had said and what she herself had said and she couldn’t decide. She’d given nothing away. That was surely good. She’d said ‘thank you’. That was good, polite. It was the visitor who had dictated the short interchange. She was the one in control.

  She put the plant pot on the table in front of the living-room window so that it could be seen.

  The first meeting was in Morrisons café. There were no introductions. They both knew the drill, identified in each other’s appearances what they had expected to identify. Tara had tea, the Man had a cappuccino. It looked rather too full of froth, but since he hardly touched it, just played with the froth, it probably didn’t matter.

  ‘Well, Sarah,’ he said, emphasising the name, ‘how’s things?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, maybe a little too quickly.

  ‘
Settled in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No problems?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’

  He was looking at her carefully. She knew he would note that she’d made an effort but not so that she stood out. Her clothes were the ones provided, which he would almost certainly know about, but she had added a scarf she’d bought the day before. Cheap but colourful, the blue background calling attention to the blue of her eyes. They were not the sort of clothes she had been used to wearing, but then those would have been hopelessly dated. Her shoes were her own, though. Extraordinary to think they had been kept. She had almost wept when she slipped them on and they fitted so beautifully, so comfortably, just as they always had. Even now, when they were becoming so worn, literally down-at-heel, she loved them.

  ‘Friends?’ he asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Neighbours?’

  She hesitated. ‘One woman, she lives across from me, an elderly woman. She brought me a plant.’

  ‘That was kind. Did she ask your name, where you were from, where you worked – anything like that?’

  ‘No. She just gave me the plant. A chrysanthemum.’

  ‘Not a nosy neighbour, then.’

  ‘No.’

  She thought that if he messed up the froth on his coffee one more time she’d scream. She should be meeting his eyes, but she wasn’t. Her eyes were either lowered, or else she was looking over his shoulder at the queue for food. Evasive, she was being evasive. Evasive was bad. And there were silences, long silences, while he studied her and played with his coffee. Should she be trying to fill them? Should she initiate conversation? Wasn’t that his job? Resentment built up in her mind, the feeling that whatever she said, however she acted, tiny things that were completely insignificant would be pounced on and interpreted to her disadvantage.

  ‘There is a letter,’ he said, ‘but you don’t have to receive it.’

  This made her look at him properly, trying to read his expression. His voice gave nothing away. Flat, imparting the information but nothing more. He waited, raised his eyebrows slightly. She should ask who this letter was from, did he know, and to which address it had been sent. But she didn’t. She was being offered a letter and it could only, she thought, be from one of three people, so she wanted it. She hadn’t had a letter for years, except for official communications which, though they came in envelopes, hardly seemed letters, or what she judged to be letters. Personal, handwritten, private.

  ‘It can be sent to your new address,’ he was saying. ‘Just say the word.’

  He smiled slightly and she hated his smile. It was the kind of patronising smile she’d seen too often on the faces of people like him. There was even, within it, a trace of enjoying his power over her. He’d probably read this letter, or someone had. It would look unopened when it came to her but it would not have been. Already, it was spoiled, but she told him that of course she would like it. She did not add ‘please’.

  He nodded, said he or a colleague would see her in three months’ time, but that he hoped she knew she could contact him at any time. She need never feel she had to manage on her own; she had support. It was her turn to nod. She wasn’t going to say ‘thank you’, or how grateful she was, or how she appreciated this ‘support’. She stayed at the table while he walked away through the crowded café, wondering how far he’d come. She could have asked him that, but she’d asked nothing. Had that been clever of her? Or had it made her seem hostile? She was so tired of constantly wondering how she looked and sounded, aware that in trying so hard to be anonymous she was presenting herself as odd, a strange, nervous, bland woman who was Sarah Scott.

  It went on and on in her head, a desperate litany repeated so that it could become second nature, but it never did. She didn’t recognise this woman’s life except for the few bits that matched her own.

  I am Sarah Scott.

  I am forty-three years old.

  I am divorced, with no living children.

  I am from Canterbury originally.

  I have no siblings alive.

  I trained as a nurse but retired through ill health.

  My mother is dead.

  My father is dead.

  I like to read, mainly non-fiction.

  I am nine stone four pounds.

  I am five foot six inches.

  There was more, lots more. She was bound to have forgotten half of it. Did it matter? It might, they’d said.

  The new neighbour was a creature of regular habits. A creature of rigorously regular habits herself, Nancy gave her credit for that. Left her house at 7.00 in the morning on the dot, returned between 5.45 and 6.10, which suggested the time depended on getting either the 5.20 bus or, if she missed it, or it was too crowded to board, the next one. She never put the light on in the hall. Nancy herself automatically snapped the light on as she entered. Everyone did. The hallways were dark even on the sunniest days, what with the front doors being solid wood with no glass panels and no fanlights above. This woman entered her house in the dark and put no light on for a full ten minutes or more. How did she manage to see her way round? Nancy couldn’t understand it. When a light did go on, it was always in the bedroom. The curtains, the thick red curtains, remained open even though the light was on. Nancy, standing well back from her own bedroom window, and with only the staircase light on, could see straight in. It was not her fault.

  The woman, who she had learned was called Sarah Scott, lay on the bed, on Amy’s practically new, expensive bed which she had hardly had time to enjoy. Nancy knew it was Amy’s bed because she had enquired after its fate when the nephew came round. This news pleased her. It would have been shocking if the brand new, costly bed had been carted off to a sale room, or even taken off by one of those house-clearance people. But the bed stayed, and this Scott woman obviously appreciated its comforts. She lay on it, every evening, for at least half an hour. Nancy couldn’t see if her eyes were closed, but she certainly gave the appearance of being asleep, lying, as she did, so very still. Odd, though, to have the light on if she was sleeping. She must come in extremely tired, to have to go and lie down like that. Her job must be exhausting, but what could it be? Nancy had not yet found out, though it would emerge through the usual channels. She’d hear soon enough. Meanwhile, she was content to know her neighbour’s name before anyone else. The postman told her. He was young and careless, and if she had had any letters sent to her, beyond bills, Nancy would not have trusted him to deliver them. He put letters through her own letter box which were quite clearly addressed to number 29 and not 19, and she had reprimanded him for it, making him take them back the next day and redeliver them to number 29. He laughed and said, ‘Righto, missus.’

  He had a red cart he pulled along. So lazy. Nancy saw no need for it. He was big and strong as well as young and could quite easily have carried a sack as postmen had done all her life. So lazy. And the way he left the cart at one end of their long street while he carried a bundle of letters for the first twenty houses was irresponsible. Anyone could pilfer from it in the time it took him to return. But he had told her the name of the woman who now lived opposite her. She hadn’t asked, she would never have asked. He’d delivered just one letter to her but nevertheless had noted her name. That, in Nancy’s opinion, was fishy, but she could hardly complain considering he had passed the information on to her which he most certainly had no right to do. She’d badly wanted to ask was it Miss or Mrs Sarah Scott, but of course she hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. It was the novelty value, she supposed. New people hardly ever moved into their street. It was not that sort of street. He liked having a new name, he said. Made delivering more interesting. What nonsense. He made it sound like something special when it was a job any fool could do, just sticking stuff through letter boxes.

  Sarah Scott: Nancy quite liked the name. Sort of posh, she thought, though she knew plenty of very ordinary, decidedly unposh Sarahs. Scott was not a local name. It wasn’t, she reckoned, a
ny kind of local name, even if it must have originated, she supposed, in Scotland, surely. Sarah Scott wasn’t Scottish, though. The two words she’d spoken when the plant was given to her proved that. She was from away. Away? Nancy realised ‘away’ was a very vague term. She decided that what she meant was that Sarah Scott was not Cumbrian, or even northern. So what had brought her here? And on her own. No visitors in six weeks. Was she to be temporary? Someone drafted here for a limited amount of time to do some particular job? Nancy didn’t think so. Sarah Scott didn’t look important enough. She didn’t look as if she did any sort of work that might rate her being sent for specially.

  One day, sooner or later, she would need help of some sort. This knowledge was a great comfort to Nancy. It didn’t matter how stand-offish or reclusive people were, the time always came when they couldn’t manage on their own. It was a rule of life, one she’d learned over many years of acute observation. Sarah Scott’s time would come.

  Tara waited for the promised letter with a mixture of apprehension – though she didn’t know what she was apprehensive about – and something that was near to excitement. She suspected it might be from Claire. Claire had written once. She hadn’t replied to this letter, resenting, as she did, its tone. Neither Liz nor Molly had written at all. They’d never been letter-writers. They were phone people, regular calls, which in Molly’s case were liable to go on a long time. If they had made calls, she never heard about them. Who would they have called, anyway? They didn’t visit either. None of the three. She’d been surprised by that, but got used to it. There would be reasons, she expected, though this realisation hadn’t stopped her being resentful. She knew how she would have responded.