How to Measure a Cow

by Margaret Forster

  It was nearly five-thirty before she got off the bus, her knees sore and her back stiff from sitting bolt upright on the not very well padded bus seats. She didn’t feel like going home, knowing that being on her own while she felt so upset and cross would only make her worse. First, she needed a cup of tea, and to be among people just for a short while. The club would do. She didn’t have to speak to anyone. All that was required was to be among others while she calmed down. It was nearly closing time so there were not many women there when she arrived, and none she knew very well. It was easy to get her tea and sit in her usual seat. Better, she felt better. She was able to tell herself that she’d been silly, getting worked up about nothing. Sarah/Tara was nothing to her. A bird of passage, that’s all the woman was. Mixed up. Didn’t know what she wanted or who she was. To be pitied. Well rid of her. Nancy nodded as each thought occurred to her. A warning, it was.

  Once home, she took the offending letter out of her bag, smoothed the creased paper, and read it again. Then she took a match and held the paper over the sink, and burned it. Made a mess of the sink, but easily cleaned up. There. It was over.

  Tara was in a small room, opening off the hall in Claire’s spacious house. It had been a cloakroom in the days when people had cloaks but it was now converted into a spare room. Claire’s house had plenty of spare rooms, five bedrooms upstairs with only one in permanent use now that the last of her three children was at university and hardly came home at all, even in the holidays. But on account of the broken leg Claire thought Tara would need to be on the ground floor and so here she was. Claire had put flowers on the bedside table, and there was a pretty patchwork cover on the bed. Tara knew Claire would have made it herself.

  It was a perfectly adequate room. Small, yes, but neat. The window was narrow and didn’t let in much light and there was no view because the panes were semi-opaque. Dan was not home yet, which was a relief. Tara knew, with absolute certainty, that he would have strongly objected to his wife letting her stay for the night. He’d never liked her, and Tara did not like him. She hadn’t actually seen him for so long that she was mildly interested in how he would have aged. She warned herself not to make any comment if Dan now had a paunch and had lost his hair, but she rather hoped both of these changes had taken place. Smug bastard, so aware of his own good looks, always smoothing his thick blond hair down. She’d seen him, many times, pulling a comb out when he thought no one was looking and combing his hair lovingly. So unmanly, so unlike Tom.

  Tom had no personal vanity. He knew he was not good-looking. He didn’t care much about signs that he was developing a bald patch. His pride was in his physical strength, his muscles, his strong legs and broad back. He could take anyone on in a fight, he said. She believed him. He must, she thought, intimidate his colleagues though she had only ever seen one of them, Clive, at their wedding. It never occurred to her that one day he might intimidate her. On the contrary, she’d felt protected by his strength. It had attracted her, though she would never have admitted this, not even to Liz who she knew suspected this was the case.

  ‘What do you see in this Tom?’ Liz had asked. ‘Just give me a hint?’ etc.

  ‘What do you see in Alan?’ she’d snapped back. ‘He’s boring.’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ said Liz. ‘He’s quiet. That doesn’t make him boring to me. Quiet, dependable, agreeable—’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ she’d said, but Liz wouldn’t.

  ‘Give me a list of three things that attract you to Tom. Go on, any three. You can’t, can you? Because there’s only one. You’re attracted to him sexually. You think he’s a wild, dangerous man. Maybe he is, Tara, but that’s not enough.’

  ‘Have you finished?’ she’d said, and at last the subject was dropped.

  Now, Claire was still flustered and had gone off to her kitchen to make coffee. Her car, with the wheelchair in it, broke down on the way to the station, which was why she hadn’t been on the platform when Tara arrived. Claire wasn’t at fault. She couldn’t help her car breaking down, but Tara understood very well that Claire would regard this as her fault, in some weird way. She was full of sorry, sorry, sorry, and how awful, how awful, and oh, you poor thing, and there was no stopping the apologies. This was how it would be, this is how Claire was, wonderful, kind, but there was a price to pay. Succumbing to being bossed around, that was the price. And being grateful, loudly grateful and appreciative, that was essential. Imposing on Molly or Liz would have been preferable but neither of them had rushed to offer to have her until Claire had already done so.

  ‘What are friends for!’ Claire exclaimed (trying to sound mocking, but failing), when she extended her invitation. Solidarity, that was the thing. You’d have done the same for me, she gushed, knowing that Tara would not have done, not ever, but she said yes, that’s it exactly, of course I would, if I could. Maybe Claire missed the implication in that last bit: I am not in a position to help anyone whatever their need. I am the needy one, down on her luck, the one who’s had bad times and bad luck, whereas you, Claire, you’re in clover, well off, husband of twenty years or however many it is, three healthy children, big house, it’s easy for you to be lady bountiful.

  What a bitch I am, Tara thought. What a bitter attitude, how unfair such a description of Claire is. I am making her pay for once, only once, letting me down. And I am enjoying it.

  Molly and Liz came, at considerable inconvenience, to help Tara settle into Barney’s place. Molly cancelled a hospital appointment and Liz didn’t go to a school concert where her youngest was playing a clarinet solo. Neither of them mentioned these things to Tara, of course, not wanting to seem virtuous. They told Claire, though, and Claire said she could have managed to ferry Tara to Barney’s place, and see her installed properly, on her own.

  ‘We’re sure you could,’ Liz said, the edge of sarcasm in her tone missed by Claire.

  They were all familiar with Barney’s place. That was where they gathered, in their last year at school, when Barney used to give Tara the key and pay her a fiver to go in and clean the place when he was away. That was where they drank vodka and tried smoking (only Tara got the hang of it, and continued) and where the boys came, not always by invitation. It was all harmless, though. These gatherings never got out of hand, nothing awful ever happened there, and they all helped Tara clean the flat up each time before Barney returned. It was exciting, at their age, to have somewhere to go apart from their respective homes. They all felt free, not worried about a parent or a sibling spoiling things. The very words ‘Barney’s place’ thrilled them.

  It was not in the least thrilling returning to it twenty-five years later. The whole house, with Barney’s flat at the top, looked like a condemned building: the steps up to the front door were cracked and moss covered, and the door itself bore only the faintest indication of once having been painted red. Silently, they padded up the steep, narrow stairs, remembering how they’d all giggled and shushed each other as they passed the door of the middle flat where an old woman lived who might complain about them to the landlord. (It was ages before they found out that she was completely deaf.) When they got to the top flat, there was a lock on the door, a padlock round the handle. The key Tara had didn’t fit.

  ‘We can’t break and enter,’ Claire said.

  ‘Oh, yes, we can,’ Tara said, but in the end there was no need.

  Liz, examining the lock carefully, discovered it was a fake. One twist, and it gave way. Triumphant, they all trooped in, Tara on the point of collapse. The stairs had almost defeated her and she’d ended up being half carried by Claire and Molly.

  There was nothing there to remind them of past good times. The flat was poky, the two main rooms far, far smaller than they recalled. How had they fitted sometimes forty teenagers in here? How had they once had a live band playing? It was inconceivable. Tara lay on the one bed, and closed her eyes. The comfort of Claire’s spare room the last week seemed the height of luxury.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to
be any hot water,’ Claire said, ‘and the bath and shower need a good going over.’

  ‘The fridge has been left closed and the power is off,’ Molly said. ‘Oh, God, the pong!’

  They were housewives now and were bound to be appalled by such things, which didn’t bother Tara in the least. They were fussing, all three of them, and annoying her.

  ‘Thanks, everyone,’ she said. ‘You can go now, I’ll be fine.’

  But Claire was unpacking what she called ‘a little picnic’ which looked like a full state banquet, and a bottle of champagne was already popping its cork.

  ‘You’re very good to me,’ Tara muttered, but they could hear the resentment lurking in her words.

  Claire thought about saying ‘What are friends for!’ again, but decided against it.

  ‘So,’ said Liz, at her most brisk, ‘are you staying down south from now on, Tara? Is the northern adventure over?’

  ‘It wasn’t a northern adventure,’ said Tara. ‘Don’t be so patronising.’

  ‘What was it then?’ asked Liz, not at all put out by Tara’s irritation.

  ‘I was trying,’ said Tara, ‘to start a new life.’

  ‘And you failed?’ Liz asked. At least she made it into a question.

  ‘You’d so like me to say yes, I failed, failed miserably, wouldn’t you?’ Tara said. ‘Maybe I did fail, but it wasn’t an exam. It was, it was a necessary process –’ Liz laughed but Tara wasn’t put off – ‘and I was really happy, ready to move to a different place and start another job. I was getting it together and I had a car crash. And I haven’t recovered yet, or decided anything, so shut up about failure, Liz.’

  They ate and drank, and talked about Barney a bit, what an odd man he’d been. Tara didn’t say much. Her dad had warned her about her ‘uncle’ Barney, telling her, when she was eight or nine, that he had ‘wandering hands’ where little girls were concerned and that if he tried anything she was to report back to him and he’d deal with it. But Tara didn’t report anything back. She liked Barney, who was kind to her, and only ever wanted her to sit on his knee and put her arms round his neck. Her dad never did that. He didn’t approve of arms round necks, or close cuddles. Her mum, her foster mum, wanted to give them to Tara but Tara didn’t want them from her. So Barney gave her the contact she wanted and she was perfectly happy to sit on his knee every now and again. His hands never wandered any further.

  At six o’clock, the picnic stuff was packed up, Claire efficiently putting remnants of quiche and salad, which was all that was left, into a tupperware container for Tara to have later. She’d already put milk in the ancient fridge and bread in the bread bin and some fruit in a bowl she first sterilised with boiling water, ‘just in case’. (Germs were taken seriously by Claire, as the others knew.) ‘Call us,’ the three of them said. ‘Call us at any time if you need help.’ And they each kissed her, Claire on her forehead, as though she were a child with a fever, Molly on the cheek and Liz on the mouth, in a determined fashion, a sarcastic expression in her knowing eyes. Tara had a sudden vision of Nancy Armstrong recoiling in horror.

  A month. She gave herself a month to recover fully from her injuries and then decide: the old life, the old haunts, the old friends, something, if she was lucky, near to her old job? Would all that ever be possible? Or the new life, the strange life she’d begun as someone else? She hadn’t quite pulled it off but she’d got near to the transformation she wanted. The house in Cockermouth was rented for a year and though she had no job there she could still find one.

  But she would have to visit her dad, her foster father, first. A visit she should have made long ago.

  X

  ALEX FRASER WAS in his garden, watering his sweet peas, when Tara came. He saw her coming down the side passage which he’d left open, but gave no sign that he had. Let her stand there, leaning on her crutch, trying to look pathetic and arouse his sympathy. She’d been good at that. As a child, she’d broken her left arm, going too high on a swing and slipping off; as a young teenager she’d broken two fingers in a fight with another girl; while still in prison, he’d heard she’d broken a leg, not the one so recently broken in the car crash, falling down some stairs. (Falling? He wasn’t so sure, but that was the official report, passed on to him for some reason.) Accident prone, then, that was Tara. But she was resilient, he gave her that. Endured pain stoically, healed well, bounced back. He couldn’t help but admire her toughness. He’d sensed it from the moment she came to them, a scrap of a child but that glare blazing out from her eyes.

  Why she’d come to see him he didn’t know, but he was suspicious. What did she want? Not money, she’d said. Not accommodation – she had Barney’s place for now. So what did she want? His wife might have known, she was good at sensing things, but he didn’t and he was on his guard. Tara, he reminded himself, was manipulative. Mary had been sure that all the child needed was stability and affection, which would, she promised, ‘turn her round’. But it hadn’t turned her round. The strain and stress of trying to turn Tara round over years and years had, he was sure, been the trigger causing Mary’s illness. Nobody could persuade him otherwise. He blamed Tara, and that was that.

  He blamed her most of all for withholding herself from Mary’s love. Mary was overflowing with love for all children, unable to accept the truth (that she couldn’t have her own). Tara, even at three, had realised this instinctively and for the next fifteen years she exploited it. To Alex, it looked like a kind of revenge, but revenge for what? The child came to them in an almost catatonic state, scrawny, bedraggled but fierce. There were reasons for her appearance but no detail was gone into. They were only supposed to be fostering the girl until other arrangements were made. Two separate sets of adoptive parents started the long-drawn-out process of adoption, and twice it collapsed, to Mary’s relief. She wanted them to try and adopt Tara themselves but he thought remaining as her foster parents was enough. Why? He didn’t know. Maybe an innate sense of caution. By then, Tara was five, and physically unrecognisable from the girl who had come to them. Under Mary’s care, she’d put on weight, her skin was clear, her lovely auburn hair shining, and she was dressed in pretty clothes, made by Mary’s own fair hand.

  So what was wrong with her? Because something was, and this ‘something’ became more troubling with every year. High-spirited? Possibly, but that wasn’t all. Rebellious? Certainly. Perfectly normal. He and Mary didn’t need to be told that. It showed some spirit, they said to each other, as a comfort. Once this ‘spirit’ found its direction, all would be well. Tara was clever and would go far. But it was the depth of her deceit that troubled them more than the smoking and drinking in her early teenage years. She lied all the time. Small lies, pointless lies, as a sort of amusement. Found out, she wasn’t at all bothered. Confronted with evidence that she’d lied, she’d laugh and shrug and was entirely lacking in shame or embarrassment. It drove Mary to tears.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ Tara would say, quite cross with Mary. ‘It was only a lie. I didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘But why do you lie?’ Mary would wail.

  And Tara would say, ‘Why does there have to be a why?’

  Then there was her temper. Frightening. Tara could lose it completely. She threw things, anything to hand, breakable or not, and screamed abuse, her body shaking and quivering with rage. He would come home to find Mary white faced and tearful, the living room wrecked. They sought professional help, but it didn’t help at all. Tara played these professionals with consummate skill, giving them what they wanted. She never showed remorse. Mary never got an apology, or a promise not to behave so violently again. He tried his own methods of dealing with Tara, since Mary couldn’t cope. Physical activity, that was his way. Exhaust the girl, get rid of all that excess energy by encouraging her to swim and run and jump and throw. To some extent, it worked. Mary was protected. But then Tara began just disappearing. For hours. Where did she go, what did she do? She wouldn’t say. They worried that she was getting int
o bad company but then she saved that little boy from drowning and suddenly she was in excellent company, friends with three nice, well-brought-up girls. They relaxed. It was a mistake. It was a shock, learning of what Tara was supposed to have done. His first thought was thank God Mary was spared this. His second was that his wife would have said, ‘Go to her.’ At that stage, he hadn’t seen Tara for something like four, maybe five, years, and he’d been relieved not to have done so. Her few visits, after she’d married this Tom, after Mary died, had been disturbing. She seemed to be blaming him for things of which he had no recollection. He listened, as Mary would have wanted him to, but he couldn’t think how to respond to her accusations. He never really loved her, she said. He was ‘scared of his own feelings’. What on earth did that mean? He thought, she said, that teaching her to swim and taking her running was all a father needed to do. He was distant, he’d rejected her love … On and on she ranted. It was deeply embarrassing. And why now, when she was married to this Tom? Nothing made sense. Abruptly as she’d arrived, she left, and he was relieved. He’d sat there, silent, observing her, wondering if she was in the middle of some breakdown. Well, maybe all the stability and affection she’d been given couldn’t overpower how she was made. There was something about that thought which Mary wouldn’t have liked, but he couldn’t help it passing through his mind.