How to Measure a Cow (2 page)

There was someone opposite peering out of the window. It was only a shape, but it was there. Well, she had anticipated having to face up to neighbours. She’d been advised what to do, how to handle inevitable interest. She must not be evasive or hostile, but neither must she attempt to be too friendly. Polite,
distant, but wanting to keep herself to herself. That should be easy.

The town helped, the house helped, the dreadful furniture helped, but the job didn’t. She would have to stick it out, though. For the time being.

For the time being, for the time being … being what? The bus windows were steamed up. She rubbed a circle on the glass but she still couldn’t see out clearly. The bus was packed, people standing in the aisle. The coughing was like barking, deep rattling coughs.

‘Germs,’ the woman next to her muttered.

Was there any need to reply to that one word? To be safe, she made an ‘mm’ sound. The woman was large, her thighs bulging over her share of the double seat. She had a large plastic shopping bag on her knee and another between her feet. She was a smoker, the smell clinging to her clothes, her fingers discernibly yellow. This bus would be an ordeal for her. What smokers had to endure these days, now the comfort of a fag was denied to them. Rightly, of course. Rightly. The law was right. It always was. She’d heard a great deal about how the law, or laws, was, or were,
right
.

‘You all right?’ the woman asked. The word seemed to echo, right, right …

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Only you’re shaking. Cold, eh? Nowt like it will be though.’

She tried to smile. This only encouraged the woman. She was saying something about the cost of heating her flat, how she dreaded winter and wouldn’t be able to pay her bills, but if there was one thing she couldn’t face it was being cold in her own home and … On
and on she droned, not seeming to care that she was getting no response. People like her just want to speak aloud, get rid of all the ranting in their head. The bus stopped. Two people got off, four got on. So many stops, and they were only halfway to hers. Long before it was reached she’d have to disturb this woman next to her and start edging her way to the exit doors or else she’d never get there in time. At every stop, there were shouts of ‘Here! I want off!’ and sometimes the driver ignored them. Once, he shouted back, ‘You had yer chance.’ She thought there would be a riot, but no, this subdued people, though at the next stop there was a rush, and a lot of swearing in the driver’s direction.

‘Excuse me,’ she said.

The woman groaned. ‘You’ll have to hold this, pet,’ she said, and passed over the bag on her knee. It was very heavy. Once the woman was on her feet, she slipped it on to the vacant seat. The woman was now in the aisle, the standing passengers protesting as she picked up her other bag from the floor and swung it carelessly round. Eventually, the manoeuvre was complete. Someone sat down beside the woman and a conversation was immediately begun. The voices thickened, the accents strengthened, and she could hardly make out a word. Did she herself talk posh? It was a constant worry. To sound ‘southern’, or even ‘cockney’, or ‘Essex’ was OK, but not posh, not here. The way round this was to talk very little at all.

The relief to be off the bus! She stood for a minute, in the rain, staring at a puddle she’d stepped into, an oily swirl on its surface. Somewhere in her bag she had a small collapsible umbrella, but she didn’t think she’d get it out and put it up. She’d just get wet. There was
a certain curious pleasure in feeling the rain quickly beginning to drip down the neck of her coat, running in a steady trickle down her spine. She had no hat or scarf. Her hair was soon plastered to her head, and her ungloved hands and poorly shod feet were soon cold. But hadn’t she, not so long ago, longed to be out like this in the rain? They were never allowed out in the rain, not in a downpour like this.

She walked past her own front door twice. The number, 18, was not visible anywhere, and with the exception of one or two brightly painted doors, they all looked the same. There were probably other distinguishing features but she hadn’t learned them yet, and had to work out which was number 18 by counting from a clearly marked 22, white numbers on a slate at the side. Inside, she went straight to the kettle and put it on. Her cold, wet hands shook as she fumbled for a teabag and dropped it into a mug. She was shivering, knowing she should get out of her sodden clothes but incapable of moving until the tea was ready and she had something hot to cling on to. After the first sip, she held the mug up to her cheek, pressing it against her skin.

Twice today she’d forgotten her name. It still meant nothing to her.

‘Like a drowned rat,’ Nancy said to herself (but, as ever, aloud). ‘Not a hat to her name, not a decent pair of shoes, not an umbrella in sight. In the name of God, didn’t even know her own house.’ Oh, the entertainment was there in plenty. ‘Some folk have no sense,’ she went on. ‘What did the weather forecast say? Rain, heavy rain, this afternoon and all night. Some
folk …’ The sooner she went over there the better, but she delayed, not wanting to seem pushy. There was being welcoming and friendly, and there was being nosy, and she wanted no confusion. There’d been talk at the pensioners’ club that afternoon but she’d kept schtum. Rumours flew around like wasps, each with its sting. This new neighbour was a widow/divorcee/from London/Manchester, renting/buying/job at Tesco’s/at Morrisons.

‘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.