The Farm Beneath the Water (13 page)

“Well, they might say they could minimise the impact on the bats. But in fact, that wouldn’t be possible. The landscape you have here, with the buildings and old trees providing roosts, the woods
and meadows providing foraging habitats and the hedgerows providing safe commuting habitats, is absolutely perfect for bats. It couldn’t be better. And your father –” she smiled across the table at him – “is so careful, too, to maintain all the wildlife habitats and not poison the land with chemicals. That’s so important. Do you know how many insects one bat can eat in a single night?”

“Fifty?” said Hannah.

“A thousand?” said Sam.

Jo made a face at him. “Don’t be crazy. A hundred?”

“Actually,” said Sophie, “Sam was the closest. Bats have huge appetites. The common pipistrelle can eat over three thousand tiny insects in one night.”

They stared at her. “Three
thousand
?” said Jo.

“That’s right. So the presence of bats is a sign of a healthy environment. Bats are often at the top of their food chain. If there are plenty of bats, then all the little creatures below them in the food chain, which are so important to the environment, must be alive and well, too.”

“Not the ones that have been eaten by the bats,” said Sam.

Sophie laughed. “Well, no. But there must be a thriving population.”

“Can we do the sunrise survey with you, too?” asked Jo.

“That’s up to your dad.”

The Beans turned to Dad with pleading eyes. “Can we, Dad?
Please?
”

Dad narrowed his eyes at them. Then he looked at his watch.

“If you two scuttle up to bed right now and go straight to sleep, and if I don’t hear a peep out of you when I come up to check, then yes, I’ll wake you up in the morning for the sunrise survey.”

“Yay!” they squealed. “Thank you, Dad. Thank you so much!”

“Oh, and by the way,” Sophie said to Dad, “I’ve got the licence to do a catching survey.”

The Beans stopped in the doorway and turned round enquiringly. Sophie smiled at them.

“That’s one you can’t help with, I’m afraid. It’s very specialised. But it’s the best way to find the really rare ones, if there are any.”

Oh, let’s hope there are, thought Hannah. Please, please let there be rare bats living at Clayhill.

Chapter Sixteen

Hannah Takes a Stand

“Sam, this one’s got a maggot in,” said Hannah. “Do you really want maggot crumble for tea?”

She took the maggoty apple out of Mum’s basket and threw it into the long grass. A stout little piglet trotted across and snaffled it up. Hannah was pretty sure it was the one who had ruined her audition, but it was so cute that it was impossible to bear a grudge.

It was Thursday afternoon, and a perfect autumn day. Granny had taught Hannah to make crumble last weekend, so she and the Beans were taking advantage of today’s teachers’ strike to pick the late apples in the orchard, before the cast of
Romeo and Juliet
arrived for an extra rehearsal.

Ten sleek piglets, pink with black splodges, rooted at the children’s feet. Dad normally brought his sows indoors to give birth, but this one had farrowed early, so the piglets had been born in the field. The weather was warm and they were all healthy, so Dad had left them outdoors and they had the run of the farm. They spent their days trotting around the yard in a happy
gang, digging up grass with muddy snouts, their tails waving with pleasure and their floppy ears flapping.

Hannah reached for an apple on a high branch and another piglet started sniffing at her boots. Hannah shooed it away. As cute as the pigs were, she wasn’t about to let them chew the purple DMs that were her pride and joy. Lottie had spotted them in a charity shop, Hannah’s size and hardly worn, and had given them to Hannah for her birthday. They were, without a doubt, the best birthday present she had ever received.

Beyond the orchard, the thicket in North Meadow was full of birdsong. The leaves had fallen from the hawthorns, leaving dozens of nests exposed. Fieldfares and redwings feasted on the blood-red berries. Hawthorn berries are a rich source of antioxidants, Lottie’s dad had told Hannah, which is why so many birds eat them.

A tractor rumbled up the track. It had some sort of mowing machine fixed to the back of it.

“That’s not Daddy’s tractor,” said Sam.

The tractor turned into North Meadow and bumped down the field. It stopped in front of the thicket. The driver jumped out and started fiddling with the machine.

“That’s not Adam,” said Sam.

The driver climbed back into the cab, revved up the engine and turned the tractor round so the machine faced the thicket. Sam stood on the orchard railings to get a better look.

“It’s a mulcher.”

“A what?” asked Hannah.

Sam’s reply was drowned out by a roar of machinery and a whir of blades.

“No!” Hannah screamed. “Stop!”

But the tractor reversed right into the thicket. Their thicket. The thicket where the Secret Hen House Theatre lay hidden from view.

Hannah stared, paralysed, as the mulcher crunched its way through the thicket, screeching and scraping, crushing and flattening every tree and bush in its path. Birds flapped and scattered in all directions. Rabbits and squirrels bolted from the undergrowth.

She watched in horror as the machine backed deeper and deeper into the bushes. Its shining metal teeth spun round and the mulcher ripped and roared as it sucked the hawthorns, the blackthorns, the willow and the brambles into its jaws.

When it reached the other side, the driver shifted gears and the tractor drove forwards over the flattened trees. As the mulcher moved back over them, it sucked the branches in, chewed them into tiny pieces and spat the dusty splinters into the air in a great brown spray.

Sawdust and leaves rained down on the children, into their eyes and noses and mouths. Hannah coughed and blinked and rubbed her eyes as the tractor emerged into the field again. It shifted its angle. It was pushing back into the thicket to mow down another line of trees.

“The theatre!” she screamed. “It’s going to crush the theatre!”

Hannah raced to the orchard railings, scrambled over them and jumped down into North Meadow. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam starting to climb the fence.

“No, Sam, get back!”

She ran through the pile of leaves and splinters that, one minute ago, had been trees and bushes and birds’ nests. She had to stop the machine.

The tractor was reversing into the thicket again, the blades of the mulcher whirring round manically in a silver blur, crushing the trees with a jarring, scraping, screeching, roaring noise that drowned out every other sound in the world.

Hannah reached the driver’s door and beat her fists on the glass. “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop!”

But the driver was facing the other way, looking out of the tractor’s back windscreen, watching the machine plough its way through the vegetation. Hannah stumbled round to the back of the mulcher, yelling for him to stop, although she could barely hear her own voice above the grinding of the great beast’s jaws and the cracking of branches.

Suddenly the driver saw her. His eyes widened in shock. He shouted and gestured, and although she couldn’t hear a thing, she knew he was telling her to get away.

“No!” she yelled. “No! I’m not moving! Turn it off!”

His eyes looked panicked. He flapped his hands
wildly for her to go away. Hannah stood rooted to the spot. “No!” she screamed. “Turn it off!”

With a look of terror, he turned to the dashboard. The tractor engine cut out. The blades slowed to a halt. The silence was deafening.

The man wrenched open the door of his cab. “What do you think you’re playing at, you little idiot?” he yelled. “You could have got yourself killed.”

Hannah was shaking. “What do you think
you’re
playing at, you horrible man? You’re destroying our farm!”

His expression changed from fury to annoyance and then to mild amusement. “Well,” he said, “the tree-huggers are getting younger and younger.”

Jo and Sam ran up to Hannah. Sam threw his arms round her and burst into sobs. “I thought you were going to be killed.”

Hannah hugged him back, but she didn’t take her eyes off the man.

“Who sent you?” she demanded.

“Water board. They want the land cleared for a site office. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“It’s totally my business,” said Hannah, beside herself with anger. “I live here.”

“Did you tell our dad you were going to do this?” Jo demanded.

“Nothing to do with me. I’m working for Aqua, not your dad, whoever he is.”

“Were you going to demolish the theatre, too?” asked Jo.

“The what?”

“The theatre in those bushes.”

The man looked at her as though she was a lunatic. “Theatre? What are you talking about?”

Hannah pointed to where the near corner of the theatre could just be seen, inches away from the edge of the mulcher.

He frowned. “They never said anything about a building.”

“Well, they wouldn’t have. They don’t know it’s here.”

“Derelict, is it?”

Hannah felt like she might explode with hatred. “No, it is not derelict. It’s in use the whole time.”

He rolled his eyes and swore. “Typical,” he muttered. “Idiots. Never do anything properly.”

“What haven’t they done properly?” asked Sam.

“Needs a whole different set of forms if there’s a building involved. Nightmare load of paperwork. Else people start suing, see, if you demolish a structure without permission.”

“So you won’t be demolishing the theatre?” said Sam.

“Not without the paperwork. They’ll have to put their office somewhere else, if they’re in that much of a hurry.” He shook his head. “What a waste of a journey.”

“But you’re allowed to just destroy all these trees, are you?” asked Hannah.

The driver gave a derisive laugh. “You talking about this bit of scrubland?”

“It’s not just a bit of scrubland. It’s an incredible
wildlife habitat. A hawthorn tree can support more than three hundred species of insect, did you know that?”

He snorted. “Insects? So what?”

“So, those insects nourish the soil and provide food for birds and bats. The hawthorn and blackthorn blossom make nectar and pollen for bees, and then the pollinated blossom becomes berries, which are more food for birds. The leaves feed hundreds of caterpillars, which turn into butterflies. Plus, the thorn trees make perfect safe nesting grounds for birds. Nothing can get them in here. Except you, with your tree-eating machine.”

He grinned, as though she had paid him a compliment.

Hannah looked at the desiccated splinters at her feet that were all that remained of the butchered trees. She felt a prickling behind her eyes.

“Do you know how long a hawthorn tree can live?” she asked the man.

“I haven’t a clue,” he said, “but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“Over seven hundred years,” said Hannah, and he actually did look surprised. “Seven hundred years these trees might have been growing, and in a few seconds your machine can mow them down and chop them into a thousand pieces. Not to mention all the birds and the nests and the voles and the wood mice and every other creature you’ve just killed.”

“It’s a powerful bit of kit all right,” said the man. “Does a beautiful job. Now, have you finished with
the hippy talk? Because if I can’t do anything else here today, I’ve got another job to go to.”

“Destroying more trees?” asked Sam.

“That’s right, sonny. See ya.”

He climbed back into his cab and revved up the engine. With a jolt, Hannah suddenly became aware of people behind her. It took her brain a few seconds to refocus on the cast of
Romeo and Juliet,
staring in bewilderment at the destruction.

“What’s going on?” asked Ben. “What’s happened?”

The tractor roared back up the field.

“It’s started,” said Hannah. “Look at it. This is just the beginning. They’ve started to destroy the farm.”

Chapter Seventeen

Hannah's Idea

Nobody said anything. Priya bent down and picked something out of the debris. It was a tiny blue eggshell, crushed to pieces.

Marie, crouched on the ground a few feet away, gave a gasp of horror.

“What?” said Katy, moving over to her.

Marie pointed to the heap of splinters at her feet. Half buried in the shards was the mangled body of a robin. There were cries of pity from around the group.

Hannah ran her finger over the raw jagged stump of a hawthorn branch.

“You know,” she said, “hawthorn blossom is incredibly beautiful, but there's an old superstition that it's bad luck to bring it into the house. People believed it was connected with death. And then, recently, scientists discovered that the chemical that produces the scent in hawthorn blossom is one of the first chemicals that's produced in a dead body.”

“Wow,” said Amy. “Really?”

“So?” said Jonah.

Hannah didn't speak for a moment. She was sure
this was important, but she didn't quite know how to put it into words.

“I don't know. It's just…”

The others looked at her expectantly.

“It just shows that … maybe, sometimes, people just know something. Instinctively. We don't know why we know it, but we just know something.”

“Is it really true that hawthorns can live for seven hundred years?” asked Ben.

“Yes. Seven hundred years of growing and giving food and shelter and protection to hundreds of thousands of creatures, and then somebody who probably doesn't know or care if it's a hawthorn bush or a privet is allowed to come along with a machine and destroy it in less than a minute. That
can't
be right. Can it?”

“No,” said Lottie. “It can't.”

“So was he going to demolish the theatre, too?” asked Millie.

“He would have done if he could have.”

“But Hannah stopped him,” said Sam.

“But he'll come back, won't he?” said Hannah. “It's only a matter of time. He'll come back next week or the week after, with a piece of paper giving him permission. And then what?”

“We can stand in front of the machine,” said Sam. “Like you did today.”

“But we'll probably be at school. You saw that machine – it could destroy this whole thicket in five minutes.”

In her mind's eye, she saw the mulcher reversing
into her theatre, rolling back over it and spitting it out in tiny pieces. Her mother's hen house. Another part of Mum gone forever. She felt sick.

“Come on,” said Sam, tugging at Jo's arm. “Let's go and find Daddy. He'll tell them they can't come back.”

The Beans ran up the field towards the track. Hannah stared at the devastation.

“This is it, isn't it? This is what they're going to do to the whole farm. Flatten it and flood it.”

She bent down and picked up a handful of dust and snapped twigs and chopped-up bark.

“Just think how many creatures had their homes destroyed in that one minute. And then multiply that by thousands. All of this –” and they followed her gaze as her eyes took in the oak trees, the meadows and the ploughed fields, the hedgerows, the stream and the little pigs snuffling in the orchard – “this whole farm will be gone forever.”

“What about your dad?” asked Ben. “Isn't he doing anything?”

Hannah sighed and shuffled her feet in the debris. “He's had people up here to do surveys, which is great, and he's written letters to the landlord and Aqua, but the landlord wants to sell the land to Aqua, and Aqua just ignore his letters, so nothing's really happened. I think…” and she hesitated, because she didn't want to admit this, “I think he doesn't really know what else to do, and he's so busy just running the farm that he doesn't have the time or energy to do much else.”

“We should get up a petition,” said Priya. “Loads of people would sign it.”

“My dad says they don't take much notice of petitions,” said Lottie. “It's so easy to sign a petition, you see, so it doesn't mean much, unless you get hundreds of thousands of signatures.”

“Well then, what can we do?” said Jonah.

Everyone stared at him.

“
We?
” said Hannah.

“What are you looking at me like that for?”

“But … you're all in favour of the reservoir.”

“I was. But this…” He gestured around at the destruction. “They can't be allowed to just come on to your farm without even asking permission from your dad, and start destroying his land. That's crazy. There must be some way of stopping them.”

“Letters,” said Lottie. “My dad said letters are really powerful. If enough people actually take the trouble to write a letter, they can change things.”

“But Dad's written all those letters and got nowhere.”

“Maybe he's been writing to the wrong people. Dad says you have to write to the government. The Environment Minister. She has to give permission for a new reservoir to go ahead and apparently she really does take notice of letters, if she gets enough of them. Well, that's what my dad says, anyway. He's already written.”

“But loads of people think the reservoir's a good thing,” said Katy. “So how many people are really going to write?”

Hannah remembered Nick Constable's words after the Croxton meeting.

Absolutely nothing to worry about … piece of cake … easiest reservoir deal I've ever made … we've already won
…

He was right, wasn't he? If nobody could be bothered to oppose the reservoir, he
had
won.

“If we care,” said Hannah, “then we're going to have to fight. And we're going to have to make other people care, too. Make them care enough to write letters. After all, Jonah's changed his mind. Maybe other people would, too, if they knew what was going on.”

“Everyone who uses the farm,” said Lottie, “Scouts and Guides who camp here, walkers, horse riders – they should all be writing.”

“So how do we tell everyone?” asked Ben.

“We should make leaflets,” said Lottie, “like I said. Put them through everyone's doors.”

Marie wrinkled her nose. “People get leaflets through their doors all the time, though, don't they? And they mostly just chuck them in the bin.”

“Well, have you got a better idea?” snapped Lottie.

“Call a meeting?” suggested Owen.

Ben laughed. “Who's going to come to a meeting called by us? No one likes going to meetings, so why would they turn up just because we asked them to?”

“We need a captive audience,” said Katy. “Literally. Penned in a room so they
have
to listen.”

A spark of an idea flashed into Hannah's mind. She drew in her breath.

“What?” said Lottie.

Hannah said nothing. But her mind was whirring so fast she couldn't keep up with it.

A captive audience…

The house plays…

Hundreds of people would be there. Students, teachers, parents. Half the village would be there.

What if…?

“Hannah!” said Lottie. “What are you thinking?”

But Hannah still couldn't put it into words. Images whirled around in her head.

What if…?

In her mind's eye, she saw the cast of
Romeo and Juliet,
waiting behind the closed curtains, ready to begin the Prologue. She saw the darkened auditorium, filled with the hush of expectation. She saw the stage lights go up and the cast turn to face the audience. She saw them raise their heads, open their mouths to recite the opening lines of
Romeo and Juliet.
And then…

What if…?

“What
is
it, Hannah?” asked Marie.

Finally, Hannah looked at her friends.

“I don't know if we can really do it,” she said, “but I might have thought of something.”

“Well, tell us, then,” said Priya.

“You might not want to do it. It could get us into massive trouble.”

Lottie made a noise that was remarkably like a growl. “Hannah, you're driving us all mad here.”

Hannah drew herself up to her full height and
took a big breath.

“OK. Come into the theatre and I'll tell you. But you'll all have to swear, whether you want to be a part of it or not, that you won't breathe a single word of what I'm about to say. Not to anyone. Not to a single soul. Is everyone OK with that?”