Free How to Measure a Cow by Margaret Forster Page B

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 hecouldn’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 hercoat 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