How to Measure a Cow

by Margaret Forster

  ‘London,’ Tara said.

  ‘Big place,’ Nancy said. ‘There’s London and London, isn’t there?’

  Tara stared at her, the remark apparently worrying her because she frowned, and shook her head, and said, ‘Sorry?’

  ‘London,’ Nancy repeated. ‘I’ve never been, never wanted to, but I’ve heard things. There’s London and London, folk say – there’s Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square and all them bits you see on the television, and then there’s bits you don’t, unless something bad happens, riots and that.’

  ‘Oh,’ Tara said, ‘I suppose so.’

  It was such a feeble response that Nancy felt entitled to press on.

  ‘What brought you here, then? From London?’

  She was watching Sarah closely. Yes, her question had been direct and could be thought cheeky, but they’d had tea, which, in Nancy’s opinion, established a degree of intimacy greater than the neighbourliness which had existed before. If she wanted to, Sarah could dodge the question. She could say something evasive – ‘I hardly know myself’ – and laugh, and move on. But she didn’t.

  ‘I stuck a pin in a map,’ Tara said.

  Nancy knew instantly that this was the truth. Stuck a pin in a map! She was so tickled by this reply that her face creased into a smile the like of which it hadn’t known for years. She could feel her cheeks bulging and her eyes widening and her mouth opening in celebration.

  ‘Oh, dear me,’ she gasped. ‘Stuck a pin in a map!’

  Tara was nodding, smiling now herself.

  ‘Have another cup of tea,’ Nancy said, wiping away the tears of mirth which had suddenly leaked out.

  There were other questions she could ask, but she cautioned herself. It was like betting. Best to stop, at least for the time being, after such a success, unless Sarah herself now opened up and offered more. But she didn’t. She finished her tea and got up and said thank you and it had been lovely and she must go. Nancy let her. She saw her to the door and then she went and cleared the tea things away and then she sat down and had a good long think: a woman who came to Workington because she’d stuck a pin in a map. Plenty there to think about.

  She’d told the truth. Well, one small truth, nothing too revealing. Tara didn’t know whether what she felt was shock or elation. She hadn’t dissembled, out it had come, and she’d been believed instantly. Maybe it was that simple: someone asks a question and you just give them the correct answer. But what if her shrewd neighbour had asked a different question? What if she had asked why did you stick a pin in a map? Or why did you want to leave London? Or what if she had followed up her enigmatic remark about London – ‘There’s London and London’ – with ‘What part of London did you live in?’ How easy would the truth be then? So she stopped congratulating herself. She’d been lucky, that was all. A question thrown at her which had not been a real challenge. Nancy – she was Nancy now, permission to use her Christian name given as the cake was cut – Nancy had been amused. There was nothing particularly amusing about sticking a pin in a map but she’d smiled hugely.

  It occurred to Tara that she might be able to tell Nancy other things. They were, surely, becoming friends, were they not? Not friends as Claire, Molly and Liz had been her friends, but a new sort of friend. But, strangely, thinking of Nancy as a ‘friend’ felt too intimate, almost as embarrassing as it would have been if the term ‘lover’ were used instead. Even calling her by her Christian name felt too personal. Mrs Armstrong, neighbour, was much more comfortable. But there could be no going back.

  It was the Woman again. Same meeting place, same routine. The Woman was pleased with her. ‘You’re doing well, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Six months now, and you seem settled. Would you agree you’re feeling settled?’

  Tara, noting that her new name had been stuck to, gave a non-committal nod.

  ‘You don’t seem sure. Am I missing something? Work, perhaps? We’ve always known it is far below your capabilities. Is it becoming frustrating? Do you perhaps need to move on? Are you ready to try to get closer to the work you once did? Sarah?’

  The work she once did … She could hardly remember it. Lab work. Analysing things. What things? She couldn’t remember. Welwyn Garden City, that’s where she’d worked for a long time. On cytotoxic drugs. A tiny cog in a complex machine, but she’d needed a degree in chemistry to become that cog. A great career ahead of her, she’d hoped, starting off so lowly, then aspiring to greater things, only the aspiring hadn’t got her as far as she’d expected. Meeting Tom interrupted her ambition – that was it. She’d stopped aspiring. She didn’t want to go back to being ambitious. Once she’d progressed to being in charge of one small unit, she’d been satisfied.

  ‘No,’ she told the Woman, ‘I don’t want to do the work I used to do. My job is fine. No strain.’

  This was the right thing to have said. The Woman nodded.

  ‘Very wise,’ she said, ‘very sensible, for the time being, if you’re happy.’

  Tara laughed. It sounded forced, but it wasn’t. It always made her laugh when people used the word ‘happy’ so carelessly. It was ridiculous: happy! Such a silly-sounding little word, covering such a vast array of emotion. Did people go around declaring, ‘I am happy?’ She didn’t think so. Too dangerous. You could get struck down by a bolt of lightning for such daring. The word that could not be spoken or it would surely disintegrate.

  ‘Have I said something funny?’ the Woman asked, smiling, but clearly a little offended, suspecting she herself was being laughed at.

  ‘No, no,’ Tara said. ‘I was just remembering something, you know, that song, that dirge, “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.”’

  The Woman looked puzzled, so Tara sang it quietly, lightly clapping her hands.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t explain why I laughed. It’s complicated. Anyway, yes, thank you, I’m fine.’

  She couldn’t bring herself to say, as the Woman wanted her to say, that she was happy. Best to change the subject.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ she said, hardly able to believe she was about to say what she was going to say, ‘I’m thinking of having a holiday. Going away for a weekend soon.’

  The Woman said she was pleased to hear this. It showed that Sarah was making significant progress – it really was a very good sign that she was feeling able to do this – and she looked forward to hearing how this planned break went.

  It was a long way, something like 300 miles. Tara didn’t think she could do it in one day – she’d be too tired. Her concentration wasn’t good. She knew that her mind had a habit of drifting if she drove more than an hour or so, and she had to stop and pull herself together before going on. Why this should be, she didn’t know, and she was certainly not going to consult any doctor to try to find out. She’d had enough psychiatric tests of one sort or another in the last ten years and she didn’t want any more. Anything the matter with her, if it were not of an obvious physical nature, was always attributed to ‘trauma’. It was so lazy, sticking that label on her. She knew what trauma was and she knew she had not been traumatised. To say she had been was an insult to true sufferers.

  But there she was, driving to Pica very early on a Saturday morning and her mind wandering in this kind of way so that she hardly saw the tractor coming straight at her, its driver gesticulating imperiously that she should pull up to one side. Hurriedly, just in time, she obeyed, and a herd of cows behind the tractor plodded ahead, filling the narrow road. They were big black-and-white cows, udders full and enormous. They pushed and shoved their way past her car, banging the side, their tails swishing against the bonnet. Behind them came a boy on a bike, a long cane held in one hand. He ignored the car, swerving on his bike to avoid knocking into it, paying no attention to her. It took a full ten minutes for the herd to amble past. In her driving mirror she could see that half a mile behind her they were lurching into a field. But she went on sitting there, the sudden quiet overwhelming her. She knew how to measure those co
ws. It was the sort of arcane knowledge, utterly useless in normal life, which had always appealed to her. Measure from the shoulder to the second joint on the tail, she murmured to herself. But how would you get one of those hulking animals to stand still? How would she find the second joint in its tail? She wished Nancy Armstrong had demonstrated this art – or science, she wasn’t sure which – though the possibility of putting it to the test was beyond remote. She tried to see herself in the field where the cows now stood as she drove slowly back along the road. There was one standing a little apart from the others, chewing away at the grass. But its tail was upright and below it shit poured down.

  She would never be able to measure a cow. But she would never need to.

  Nancy knew something was up. Sarah was agitated. There was something funny about her all of a sudden. She kept getting into her car, parked right in front of her front door, and just sitting there. Sometimes, she’d sit for a full half-hour without moving. Was it because the engine wouldn’t start? Nancy peered and peered from her bedroom window and didn’t think that this was the problem. Sarah wasn’t pressing any buttons and her foot didn’t seem to be in action. She was just sitting. Then, when all this sitting stopped, she got out and stood looking at the car. She walked round it, not touching it. Was she checking for flat tyres? Nancy didn’t think so. She, Nancy, had had a squint when Sarah went to work. The tyres were fine. She looked in the car windows too and everything looked neat and tidy. What was going on? Why all this sitting in a trance in a car?

  Nancy knew about trances. They were not good news. They meant something was up. Her father used to have trances, after he came back to the farm from the war. Long after he came back from the war, years after. ‘Don’t make a sound,’ her mother would tell her, ‘your dad’s having a trance, don’t go near.’ But Nancy did go near. She crept into the room where her father was sitting and she stared at him. He looked all right. It was just that he was very still, hands on his knees, looking straight ahead. A trance didn’t seem such a bad thing to be having. It was what followed that was alarming. He would shake his head at the end of it and then give a great sigh and tears would run down his cheeks, tears he made no attempt to mop up. Sometimes he would tremble, and then her mother would come in and say, quite sharply, Nancy thought, ‘Enough, John, enough. You’re here, you’re safe. Now come on, there’s work to do.’ She didn’t hug him or comfort him, so Nancy felt she should try, but at her touch, a mere pat of her little hand, her father would flinch, and say ‘Now then’ and shake her off.

  Of course, years later Nancy heard all about the battle of Loos and what had happened to her father’s regiment and how lucky he had been to survive, apparently unscathed. Except for these trances, when he saw things, things he never talked about, or at least not to Nancy. But she picked up, from newspapers and films, that trances, or what she’d been told by her mother were trances, even if that wasn’t the proper name for them, were to do with ‘emotional disturbance’. She pondered this phrase, when she came across it, for a long time. Her father, such a big, strong man, was never emotional, never, except for the tears and trembling when he came out of a trance. Was that the point, then? Was this him leaking emotion because he was disturbed? It made a sort of sense to her.

  Sarah Scott, though. Her trances made no sense. Nancy worried about them. There was no sign, so far as she could tell when she was looking out of a window some distance from the car Sarah sat in, of any emotion. No tears flowed. She could discern no trembling. But there was no doubting the sitting, absolutely still, in a trance-like state. Something was wrong. Nancy, witnessing this peculiar behaviour, felt responsible. Suppose something happened. How would it look, if she, Nancy Armstrong, had noticed trances happening and had done nothing about it? She ought at least to go out, the next time she saw one in progress, and knock on the car window and say are you all right? Ah, but when in a trance, it was best to let the person come out of it by themselves. Who had told her that? Her mother probably. Or she’d read it. Maybe it would be better to mention, casually, the next time she spoke to Sarah, that she’d seen her sitting in the car for ages and had wondered if she, or the car, was OK. What would be wrong with that? Nothing, except it would reveal that she was watching Sarah.

  She might not like that.

  Tara asked for the Friday and the Monday off, as part of her holiday entitlement. Management said they would prefer that she took a week. A Friday and a Monday was awkward. Tara couldn’t see what was awkward about it (for a moment the old Tara flared up again within her) but she gave in. She took a week’s leave. The moment this had been decided, an idea began to grow in her mind. She could go south a whole week for the planned reunion and do some checking out. ‘Checking out’? What did she mean by that term? Spying. That was what she meant, though she thought that to admit to such a thing was shameful. It was also, she knew, silly. How did ordinary people spy? Skills were surely needed that she didn’t have. But she knew where the urge to spy came from: she wanted to give herself an advantage. She wanted to have seen all three of them, in their habitats, before she saw them together, and before they saw her.

  She had Claire’s address, but Molly and Liz’s were old. They might have moved from them long ago. But somehow she thought they would not have done, and even if they had there was a good chance that if she knocked on the door the present owner might know where they had moved to. Anyway, she could count on getting a glimpse of Claire, which was more important than catching sight of the other two. Claire had set this reunion up. She was the one who, by doing so, suggested feelings of guilt about how she’d responded, or rather not responded to what had happened to Tara. Guilt, or perhaps remorse. Tara liked the idea of both, and looming behind that possibility of relishing someone else’s guilt or remorse was a malicious delight in making them suffer …

  Tara rushed out of her house and sat in the car. The car calmed her. Just sitting there, enclosed by its doors and windows, secure in the small space, she felt all these bad thoughts begin to lose their power. What she must tell herself was that a hand of friendship was being extended and if she was going to accept it she must clear away all this resentment and bitterness that she’d harboured over what had happened when this friendship was put under intolerable strain. She must go to the reunion with happy memories, untouched by what had befallen her. It was like trying to leap over a huge crack in the ground, beneath which a stream of memory raged. There was no bridge, the jump had to be made, and once made she would be safe, in new country. She saw herself running towards the edge, gathering speed, then launching herself into the air and landing easily on the other side. It could be done. All she had to do was make the effort. Did she want to see Claire, Molly and Liz again? Truthfully? For good reasons? Not to blame them for disloyalty, but to enjoy their company once more?

  Yes, she did. She got out of the car, each time, reassured. It was exhausting, going through these clouds of doubt which filled her mind but, slowly, they became less dense and her resolution hardened. She would go, she would behave well.

  But first, yes, she would do a little spying.

  There was talk at the pensioners’ club that Monday. Someone had heard a rumour about Nancy Armstrong’s neighbour. She was not, or so this rumour ran, what she seemed. There was a pause after this gem had been delivered in Nancy’s hearing. There was always a significant pause at this stage of repeating a rumour. Sometimes the lack of any reaction was enough to destroy it – nobody was interested enough to challenge it, so the rumour fizzled out before it had really got hold. But not this time. Several voices spoke at once, always a good sign for a rumour to have legs. Keeping oneself to oneself was respected, but not if this tendency went too far. How could it go too far? Easily. Not sharing anything at all in the way of ordinary information, harmless stuff. That was going too far. Not joining in for a cup of tea if invited was going too far. Sarah Scott, it was said, never lingered after work. She never accepted lifts from those with cars who were going her way
. She preferred the bus. And she met people who, it was claimed, ‘looked like’ officials of some sort, in Morrisons café. It was upon these crucial sightings that the rumour hung. She’d been teased about having coffee with a man and the teasing resulted in the colour leaving her face. And her face was quite pale anyway. Nancy dealt with that one scathingly. ‘Can’t a woman have a cup of coffee with a man in a place like Morrisons café without it being commented on?’ she asked.

  The suspicion was that Sarah Scott might be on benefits, and the man she saw, and also the woman later on, might be checking up on her. Fraud was in the air. Members of the club were very hot on fraud. It was thought to be rampant these days. But try as they might – and they tried very hard – no one could pin anything definite on Sarah Scott. Nancy was vociferous in her defence. ‘She’s a decent young woman,’ she said, ‘and I should know. I’ve been in her house and she’s been in mine and there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s just shy, quiet, likes to mind her own business as some folk here should be doing.’ It was a good line to leave the club on, and Nancy duly left, knowing that the minute she’d gone the rumour would get going again. There was nothing she could do about it. She hadn’t seen Sarah with a man in Morrisons café. She’d never set foot in the place. Maybe it was simply a stranger who had sat down at Sarah’s table and to whom she’d been polite, that’s all. But there were eyes and ears everywhere in a place like this and Sarah somehow stood out as different, suspicious.

  Nancy thought about this a lot. Sarah dressed in dull clothes, hardly wore any colour, and drew no attention to herself in that way. She walked with her head down, not seeming to pay any attention to her surroundings. Her voice was low, low enough for people to have to ask her to repeat whatever she said (as Nancy had had to do several times). But in spite of her demeanour, there was something about her that attracted attention. What was it? Nancy pondered and pondered and came to the not-very-satisfactory conclusion that Sarah had some sort of fence around her. No, she didn’t mean fence, not a real fence obviously, but a barrier of some kind which gave off a ‘Do not approach me’ signal. Only determined people like Nancy could penetrate it, caring people. Sarah was also, she decided (though she was self-aware enough to realise she was getting carried away now) like an animal, like a timid cat, maybe, which had to be soothed and coaxed to accept a saucer of milk, a cat which had perhaps been ill treated or abandoned, and was wary of all human beings.