The Farm Beneath the Water (4 page)

Chapter Four

The Tea Party

“Do you want to come to mine for tea?” asked Hannah, as they walked home.

“Depends,” said Lottie. “Not if it’s overcooked beans on burnt toast again.”

“Actually, it’s shepherd’s pie.”

“Did you make it?”

“No, Granny did.”

“Oh. In that case, yes please.”

“Sometimes,” said Hannah, “I don’t know why I’m even friends with you. Do you need to ask your mum?”

“No, she won’t be home for hours. I was only going to stick something in the microwave.”

Lottie’s mum worked in London and she was always too exhausted to cook when she got home. Lottie ate better food when she stayed with her dad, but that was only every other weekend and the occasional week night. Her parents had been divorced for years.

“You were lucky not to get detention,” said Lottie, as they crossed the road at the top of Elm Lane.

“I was lucky not to get suspended. Seeing how
much he hates me.”

On the left of the farm track, the fields stretched away to the soft curves of the South Downs, hazy blue in the afternoon light. On the right-hand side North Meadow sloped down to a wide stream. Along the far bank of the stream grew a thick hedge of blackthorn, hawthorn, hazel and willow. Beyond the hedge, a patchwork of smaller fields rose to meet the ancient oak woods that marked the northern border of the farm. Ruby rosehips and deep-red hawthorn berries studded the hedgerows like jewels.

A pair of buzzards circled in the sky above North Meadow, looping and crossing each other in a complex dance. The air was alive with birdsong.

The girls left their bags on the freezer and walked into the kitchen. A buzz of conversation was coming from somewhere in the house. Hannah turned to Lottie, frowning.

“There’s people here.”

Lottie listened. “Sounds like quite a few people.”

“They must be in the sitting room.”

Hannah walked into the hall. Who could it be? The sitting room was never used except at Christmas.

The back door rattled open and slammed shut again with a force that could only mean Martha. Hannah heard the thud as Martha’s school bag was thrown down on the freezer. She must have been just behind them walking home, but she would never in a million years have been seen dead actually walking with them.

Martha came into the hall. She gave Hannah a contemptuous look.

“I said you didn’t stand a chance, didn’t I? I don’t know why you bothered.”

“Did you get a part in
The Tempest?
” asked Lottie.

“Of course. I’m a water spirit.”

“Well, Hannah got a part in
Romeo and Juliet,
too. A non-speaking part, same as you.”

“I’m only a spirit because Year 7s weren’t allowed the big parts. I’ll get the main part next year, you’ll see.”

She started up the stairs. Then she stopped, frowning.

“Who’s in the sitting room?”

Hannah shrugged. “You tell me.”

Martha marched to the door and flung it open. She stared in for a few seconds. Then she pulled the door shut and swung round to face Hannah and Lottie. She looked as though she was about to throw up.

“I
said
he’d joined a dating agency, didn’t I? Have a look in there. He’s gone and invited every tragic loser on
uglybride.com
to our house, and he’s giving them tea and cake.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Lottie.

“He had that woman round the other day and now he’s got a crowd of them here. He must have realised he had no chance with anyone young or good-looking. This lot’s ancient. Take a look.”

She opened the door again. “Ugh. Disgusting.”

“Martha,” called Dad, “if you’re hanging around in the doorway, make yourself useful, will you, and
fill up this teapot.”

“No
way
,” said Martha. “They’re not my mum.”

She turned on her heel and stormed up the stairs. They heard her bedroom door open and then slam shut.

Dad appeared in the doorway, holding a teapot. He was wearing his best jacket again. He frowned at Martha’s bedroom door. “What was that about?”

“I’ll make the tea, Dad,” said Hannah, taking the teapot from his hand. “Come on, Lottie.”

“Why are we making tea for them?” asked Lottie, as Hannah pulled her towards the kitchen.

“I need to know what’s going on in there.”

“You don’t really think he’s joined a dating agency, do you?”

“No. But what
are
they doing? It’s so weird. He has never, ever invited people round for tea before. Ever.”

“Except that woman the other day.”

“Exactly. And now this. We have to find out what’s going on. If we go round pouring tea, we can listen to what they’re saying.”

When Hannah walked into the sitting room with the teapot, the scene before her was even more bizarre than she had imagined.

Somebody – not Dad, surely? – had laid the little round table in the middle of the room with a white, floor-length linen tablecloth, perfectly ironed. In the centre of the table was a three-tier china cake stand which Hannah had never seen before, filled with cupcakes and biscuits and slices of buttered
fruit loaf. Hannah’s mouth watered at the sight of them. It was almost enough to distract her from the even more extraordinary sight of her dad sitting in an armchair in his best jacket, holding a saucer and drinking tea from one of her mother’s antique cups and chatting animatedly with a group of strange middle-aged women.

As Hannah stood there, transfixed, another woman burst into the room like a tornado of enthusiasm. She had a cloud of fuzzy brown hair and wide brown eyes. She wore a long loose dress that looked as though she had made it herself from an old pair of curtains.

“It’s amazing!” she exclaimed. “Incredible! These fields are an absolute treasure trove! You’ve got sneezewort, devil’s-bit scabious, dyer’s greenweed, creeping willow, carnation sedge – so many rare species. These meadows can’t have been ploughed in hundreds of years.”

Who was she? Had she come here to find a husband with a farm full of exciting botanical specimens?

“They haven’t,” said Dad. “There’s a hundred and forty acres of permanent pasture here, full of rare flora and fauna.”

The fuzzy-haired woman made appreciative murmurs.

Another woman shunted her chair across to join the conversation. Was there going to be a fight over Dad? Hannah couldn’t imagine that this lady was husband-hunting. She looked very nice, but she must be at least seventy.

“It’s an incredibly important site,” she said.

“It’s a completely unique environment,” said an intense-looking woman with a severe dark bob. “It’s absolutely vital that it’s preserved.”

“They’re clever,” murmured Lottie to Hannah as she glided past with the cake stand. “Saying all the things your dad likes to hear.”

“And the rare breeds,” chipped in a woman with a kind, round face and windblown hair. “Large Black and Middle White pigs, Southdown sheep, all sorts of rare poultry…”

“Ooh, great tactic,” whispered Lottie. “Praising his animals. That’s the winner.” She set the cake stand down on the table.

“And we’re just starting a herd of Sussex cattle,” said Dad. “Took delivery of the first calves last week.”

Another woman, wearing a yellow shirt and an earnest expression, leaned across. “And don’t forget that it might well be an important site archaeologically. There’s strong evidence that there was a medieval hunting lodge here.”

“Mmm,” murmured Lottie, busying herself with folding napkins. “Not such a good move. He’ll go for the one who likes his pigs.”

Another woman came over to join the group around Dad. She was small and wiry, with cropped chestnut hair and brown-rimmed glasses.

“The really important argument, I think, from a geological perspective,” she said, “is that it’s a totally unsuitable site. It’s an extremely shallow valley – if,
indeed, it can even really be called a valley – and that would mean—”

“Hannah,” cut in Dad, “could you clear some of these plates away?”

“– huge earthworks all round the perimeter,” continued the woman, “which would not only be unsightly, but—”

“Hannah!” snapped Dad. “Can you take these plates to the kitchen, please?” Hannah raised her eyebrows. “OK, OK.”

He handed his cup and saucer to Lottie. “Thank you, Lottie.”

“Cheek!” muttered Lottie, as they went into the hall. “If he wants waitresses, he should pay wages.”

“He was trying to get rid of us,” said Hannah.

“What do you mean?”

“That woman was saying something he didn’t want us hearing.”

“Why, what was she saying? Hey, don’t look at me like that. I just drifted off a bit at that point.”

“Fat lot of use you are. I’m not totally sure either, but something about earthworks. Whatever that means. And it being a totally unsuitable site.”

“Unsuitable for what?”

“I don’t know. But he didn’t want us listening, I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Let’s go in again. Clear some more plates. And I promise I won’t drift off this time.”

They walked back into the sitting room. But before Hannah had time to tune into the conversation, the civilised atmosphere was torn
apart by a piercing scream.

Hannah wheeled around. A ginger guinea pig had emerged from under the tea table in the centre of the room. And before Hannah could take this in, a hand shot out from under the tablecloth and grabbed at the guinea pig.

It missed. The guinea pig scuttled across the room. Jo’s curly head burst from the white linen and knocked the edge of the table. In terrifying slow motion, the table crashed spectacularly on to the carpet. People shrieked and jumped out of the way as tea flew out of cups, saucers shattered, sugar scattered across the sofa, the cake stand smashed on to the floor and scones rolled in all directions. And, before anybody could get a grip on the situation, the Beans scrambled from under the tablecloth, scooped up the guinea pig from where it had frozen in terror under the china cabinet, and fled from the room.

There was a horrified silence. The guests stared, wide-eyed, at the devastation. Eventually, Hannah said, in a small, strained voice that did not sound like her own, “Shall I get the hoover?”

“No!” barked Dad. “Don’t get the blasted hoover! Just leave everything alone, will you?”

The visitors left quite quickly after that. And Lottie decided she would find something to eat at home, after all.

Dad ordered Hannah to track down the Beans. She found them in the first place she looked: the empty
pigsty that was the headquarters of the Great and Mighty Society of Bean. Their faces were taut and pale and they followed her to the kitchen in terrified silence.

“What on earth did you think you were playing at?” shouted Dad.

The Beans said nothing.

“Well?”

Sam cracked first.

“We were spying,” he muttered, squirming under Dad’s glare.

“What?”

“They’ve got a spy club,” Hannah explained.

“A spy club? I thought you had a pea club or something.”

“
Bean
Club,” said Jo. “The Great and Mighty Society of Bean.”

Dad made an impatient noise. “The point is, what in Heaven’s name were you doing hiding under the table in the sitting room with a guinea pig when I had important visitors in the house?”

“We wanted to find out,” said Jo.

“Find out what?”

“Who they were. You don’t tell us anything, so we had to spy.”

Dad gave an exasperated sigh. “They’re just people who are interested in the farm, that’s all.”

“Why are they interested in the farm?”

Good question, thought Hannah.

Their father looked very tired suddenly. “No particular reason. Now, which one of you lot has
hidden the superglue?”

As she passed through the hall on her way to bed, Hannah noticed that the sitting-room light was on. The door was ajar. She slipped through it to turn the light off.

She froze with her hand on the switch. There, in the middle of the floor on his hands and knees, was her father. At first she thought he was picking up crumbs, and she wondered why he wasn’t using the vacuum cleaner.

Then she realised what he was doing.

He was moving very slowly across the carpet, picking up tiny pieces of Mum’s precious tea set with his right hand and transferring them to his left, which already cradled a handful of fine china shards.

So that was why he had wanted the superglue.

Hannah understood completely. Whenever anything of her mother’s got broken, Hannah felt like another little part of Mum had slipped from her grasp forever.

She hovered for a while, not sure whether he would want to be disturbed. Then she said, “Can I help?”

He lifted his head. There were dark shadows under his eyes.

He didn’t speak for a minute. Then he said, “The pieces are so small.”

“The light’s too dim,” said Hannah. “I’ll get a torch.”

She fetched the torch from the scullery and shone it on the carpet. But Dad’s huge rough hands still
struggled to pick up the fragments.

“Here,” she said. “You hold the light and I’ll pick up the pieces.”