The Farm Beneath the Water (5 page)

They worked in silence. The carpet was rough and scratchy and the threads clung to the shards of china, making tiny tearing sounds as Hannah extracted them. She placed each one gently into Dad’s hardened, work-calloused palm.

“I think that’s all,” she said at last. “Shall I have a go at mending them?”

Dad leaned his hand on the arm of the sofa and stood up slowly. He met Hannah’s eyes and gave her a small smile.

“Go on, then.”

She opened her palm and he tipped the broken china into it. “You’ll probably make a better job of it than I would.”

“Hopefully, when it’s done,” she said, “the cracks won’t show too badly.”

“Just do your best,” he said. “That’s all you can do.”

He turned to leave the room, but then he turned back, as though he’d suddenly remembered something.

“How did those try-outs go? For the school play? Did you get the part you wanted?”

“Er, no, not exactly. I mean, I am in it, but just a tiny part.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. Well, never mind, eh? More fool them. Right, better go and check those calves.”

Chapter Five

An Announcement

“Oh, I don’t think people with non-speaking parts need to bother coming to the meeting,” said Miranda, as Hannah and Lottie approached the hall doors on Tuesday lunchtime.

“Miss Summers said everyone should come,” said Hannah.

Miranda shrugged. “You’ll be wasting your time. But suit yourselves.” She strutted into the hall.

“We will,” said Lottie sweetly, “but thanks for giving us permission.”

In the hall, dozens of people already sat on the floor in little groups. Hannah and Lottie scanned the room for friendly faces.

“Hey, Roberts, hey, Pudding Face.”

Jack was ambling in with Ben and Jonah. Lottie scowled. “What are you doing here, loser?”

Jack pressed his hand to his heart. “Aw, you are
so
sweet.”

“He’s going to do sound and special effects,” said Ben.

“Special effects? It’s
Romeo and Juliet,
not James Bond.”

“Well, it might need livening up a bit. Anyway, I haven’t made any decisions yet. I’m not sure I’ll have the time. And I keep strict working hours. Every third Wednesday, 3–5pm, leap years only.”

“See you the year after next, then,” said Lottie.

Jack’s face crumpled. In a high, quavering voice, he said, “You are so
mean
, Lottie Perfect. Sometimes I get the feeling you don’t even
want
me in this play.”

Hannah laughed. Lottie raised her eyes to the ceiling.

Miss Summers called for everyone’s attention. Priya looked over and waved to Hannah and Lottie to join her and some other girls in their class. Hannah hesitated. Miranda and her friends were sitting just across from them. But Lottie was already walking towards Priya, so Hannah followed her.

“Thank you very much for coming,” said Miss Summers, when everybody had sat down. “It’s fantastic to see you all here. Today’s meeting will mainly be about backstage work, but first I’ve got a few exciting announcements to make.”

People turned to their friends and started whispering. Miss Summers waited for the room to settle before she continued.

“Firstly, you might remember that I said we were inviting a professional director to judge the house play competition. Well, I can now reveal that we are incredibly lucky that a very well-known theatre director, who has had many successful productions in the West End and around the country, has agreed to come and be our adjudicator. Her name is
Josephine Baxter.”

“Ooh!” said Miranda. “How exciting!”

“Just making sure everyone knows she’s heard of her,” muttered Lottie to Hannah.

“The second announcement,” said Miss Summers, “is a rather exciting new development. You know that local estate agents have sponsored our school fair for the past few years. Well, we’ve just had an offer from another local company to sponsor our very first Key Stage 3 house plays. I’m not able to give any details now, because a representative from the company will be coming into assembly soon to tell you more about it, but I can say that, as well as a rather impressive trophy, they’ve offered us an additional prize for the winning play – something that involves a day out of school for the entire house.”

There was a buzz of excitement all around the room. A day off school was a prize worth winning.

Miss Summers clapped her hands for silence.

“And now,” she said, “for the final announcement.”

The room quietened.

“When I introduced the house play competition at the beginning of term,” said Miss Summers, “I said we would have older students from each house directing the plays.” She paused. “Well, the Heads of House and I have had another think about that. The older students have a lot of opportunities to take on responsibility, rightly of course, but we thought it would be rather exciting to hand this project entirely over to Key Stage 3. And so, after a lot of thought,
we have decided to choose a person from each house to direct their play.”

Lottie nudged Hannah and pointed at Miranda, who was sitting up very straight, looking expectantly at the teacher.

“She thinks it’s going to be her,” whispered Lottie.

“It’ll be a Year 9, won’t it?” said Hannah. Please let it be a Year 9, she prayed. Please don’t let it be Miranda.

“The people I’m going to ask are all students who have experience in theatre groups,” Miss Summers continued, “and, if they’re willing to take on the big responsibility of directing a house play, I think they’ll do a great job.”

Miranda’s friend Emily nudged her. Miranda smiled smugly. She had belonged to the Linford Youth Theatre for years, and they always won the Youth Drama competition in the Linford Art Festival.

Lottie turned to Hannah, looking terrified. “She wouldn’t, would she? She wouldn’t choose her to direct
and
play Juliet?”

“I really hope not,” whispered Hannah. The prospect of being directed by Miranda for the next two months as
well
as watching her play Juliet was truly depressing.

“Obviously, I’ll be there to provide support and advice whenever they need it,” Miss Summers was saying, “but it’s a very big job the four directors will be taking on and they will need your wholehearted cooperation.”

Miranda was arranging her hair carefully over her shoulders.

“So,” said Miss Summers, “without further ado, these are the students we would like to direct the house plays. For Conan Doyle’s production of
Macbeth
: Alex Jackson!”

Hannah didn’t know Alex, but he was clearly a popular choice, judging by the cheers from Conan Doyle House.

“For Kipling House’s production of
The Tempest:
Zara McIlroy!”

Zara looked astounded and delighted. Her friends whooped and hugged her.

The Milne House director was named next, a boy called Gabriel Ince. He went bright red when his name was announced.

“I don’t think it will be Miranda,” whispered Hannah. “They’re all Year 9s.”

“Fingers crossed,” murmured Lottie.

“And last but not least, Woolf House,” said Miss Summers.

Miranda sat up even straighter, looking eagerly at the teacher.

“The person we’ve chosen is…”

Miranda started to get to her feet.

“Hannah Roberts!”

Hannah stared. What had Miss Summers said?

Lottie hugged her, shouting, “Yes! Yes!”

Hannah sat there, open-mouthed and speechless. People were turning and looking at her, clapping and smiling, but she couldn’t take it in. It was as though
she were watching the world through a window.

And then she saw Miranda.

Miranda’s cheeks were bright red. Her face was contorted with rage.

Miss Summers raised her hands for silence. “I’d like all the directors to stay behind at the end, please. There’s no obligation to take on the role, of course, but this is a wonderful opportunity and I hope you’ll rise to the challenge.”

“She put on a play in a
shed
,” spat Miranda to Emily. “In what universe is
that
a theatre group?”

Emily squirmed. “Well, that play was the runner-up at the Linford Arts Festival, so…”

Miranda ignored her. “It must be because Miss Summers feels sorry for her. Just because her mother died, everyone thinks they have to be nice to her. And honestly, that was
years
ago.”

As Miss Summers started to explain about rehearsal schedules, Lottie gave a deep, contented sigh. She leaned towards Hannah. “The look on Miranda’s face when Miss Summers said your name!” she murmured. “If nothing else good ever happens in my life, I shall die happy, just remembering that.”

Chapter Six

Suspicions

On Friday afternoon, Hannah and Lottie, school bags on their shoulders, ducked under the fence at the side of the farm track and walked down North Meadow towards the thicket of thorn trees and bushes in the bottom corner.

Fat ripe blackberries hung from the brambles that grew over the bushes. Hannah picked one and offered it to Lottie.

Lottie shook her head. “No, thanks.” She was deeply suspicious of food that wasn’t sealed in plastic.

With the tips of her thumb and forefinger, Hannah parted a seemingly impenetrable tangle of brambles. The girls squeezed through the gap. In front of them lay the narrow path through the bushes that they had made last winter.

“We’ll have to dismantle the whole set,” said Hannah. “We’ll need every inch of space to rehearse the big fight scenes.”

“We’re so lucky to have the theatre for extra rehearsals. Miss Summers isn’t giving us anywhere near enough time to rehearse at school.”

“If people don’t mind coming all the way up here,” said Hannah.

“I don’t think they’ll mind, if it gives us more chance of winning.”

“Even Miranda?” Hannah felt a bit sick, as she always did when she thought about directing Miranda.

“Who cares about her?” said Lottie. “Do you really want her to come here anyway?”

Hannah wished she could be as unaffected by Miranda as Lottie was. Miranda hadn’t spoken to her since Miss Summers’ announcement, but she had taken every opportunity to whisper and snigger with her friends, while throwing sneering looks in Hannah’s direction. Hannah tried to ignore it, but it was hard not to let it get her down.

Everything else about the play, though, was really exciting. Since the meeting, Hannah had spent every spare moment thinking about her production. With the birthday money she had saved, she’d bought a purple ring binder and a set of dividers. The first thing she put into the ring binder was a copy of Miss Summers’ half-hour version of
Romeo and Juliet
. The script was photocopied on to one side of the paper and the facing pages were blank for Hannah’s director’s notes on the actors’ movements and gestures. The rest of the file was divided into sections: costume, props, lighting, sound, hair and make-up.

“Not that I’ll need to write much about costume,”
she told Lottie, “since you’re doing everything. I’m so glad Miss Summers put you in charge. I can’t wait to see your drawings.”

“I’ll bring my sketchbook into school tomorrow,” said Lottie, ducking an overhanging branch, “if I finish the designs tonight.”

The secret path wound around the edge of a long, low wooden shed, covered with ivy and invisible from outside the thicket. It had a corrugated iron roof and a sliding door at each end: a stage door and a front-of-house door.

Hannah felt the familiar surge of joy as she ran her hands over the black metal sign screwed to the stage door. “The Secret Hen House Theatre”, it said, in curving wrought-iron letters. The sign was bordered by a pattern of brambles, with the silhouette of a chicken in the bottom left-hand corner. Dad had given it to her as a present for saving the farm last spring.

Hannah slid the stage door open and stepped into the dressing room. A costume rail made from a broom handle was suspended from the beams with baler twine. Against the opposite wall stood their dressing table, an old chest of drawers that the Beans had discovered in a cowshed. Cleaned up, it housed their jumble sale jewellery and the make-up donated by Lottie’s mum. An oval mirror was propped on top of it.

The thin wooden walls of the dressing room were bare except for one framed photograph. It showed Hannah’s mother standing in North Meadow,
holding baby Hannah. Hens pecked around her feet. In the background of the photo was a long, low shed, surrounded by bushes. This shed.

When Hannah’s mum was alive, this had been her hen house. After her death, when Hannah was six, it was abandoned. Ivy and brambles had grown up all over it. The shed had been forgotten until Hannah and Lottie had rediscovered it last winter.

They had cleared out all the junk, scrubbed the concrete floor and patched up the disintegrating walls with scraps of wood scavenged from around the farm. Using old fence posts and hessian sacking, they had built wings at the sides of the stage and a proscenium arch at the front. They had made scenery and costumes and entered the Linford Arts Festival with a play that Hannah had written.

“I reckon,” said Hannah now, surveying her theatre thoughtfully, “that this whole space is about the size of the school stage. It’ll be a perfect rehearsal studio.”

“What shall we move first?” said Lottie. “The dressing table?”

“OK. In that corner.”

There was a scuffling sound in the auditorium. Ugh. Mice. The only thing to do was to make as much noise as possible and give them time to get away, so you never had to see them.

They pushed the dressing table into place.

“I can’t believe we’re not allowed scenery in the house plays,” said Lottie, dusting off her hands.

“Well, there won’t be time to change scenery, not
with four plays one after the other.”

“But how’s it going to look like Verona, without any scenery?”

“Well, Jack had this great idea of projecting images of Verona on to the back wall of the stage.”

Lottie snorted. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure that was Jack’s idea.”

“It
was
.”

“Well, I’ll be really interested to see if Jack actually comes up with anything apart from ‘ideas’.”

Lottie was clearly never going to change her mind about Jack. Hannah changed the subject instead.

“Right, let’s move the window. All the bits can go against the wall.”

At the side of the stage, a sash window frame, found in another shed, was suspended from the beams. That was one of the great things about living on a farm. There was always loads of junk lying around. You could find anything you needed if you looked hard enough.

“It’s a bit sad, dismantling everything,” said Lottie.

Hannah untied the baler-twine knots that fixed the top of the window to the roof beam. “I’m sure we’ll use it again. It happens at the end of every play, doesn’t it? We’re turning the theatre into a rehearsal studio for our next production – ooh.” She stopped and looked at Lottie.

“What?”

“We should pin your costume designs on the walls. Then it will really look like a studio.”

“Oh, yes. And a copy of the rehearsal schedule.”

“And the props list, with columns for people to initial if they’ve got anything we need.”

Excitement flooded over Hannah as she pictured her theatre walls covered with sketches and fabric samples, timetables and props lists.

“OK,” said Lottie, as they leaned the heavy sash window against the side of the shed, “now the back wall.”

The panelled back wall of the stage, built from salvaged wood, was wedged in place between the floor and the roof beams. As the girls grasped either end of it, Hannah heard more scrabbling from beyond the proscenium arch.

The hairs on her arms stood on end. Not rats. Please let there not be rats here.

A stifled giggle came from the auditorium. Hannah and Lottie stared at each other. Then, in three steps, they were through the proscenium arch.

In the corner of the auditorium, with very guilty looks on their faces, huddled Jo and Sam. They clutched sheaves of paper and bundles of coloured pencils to their chests. A piece of paper was pinned to the wall behind them. It said:

Hannah’s mouth fell open.

“Have you two taken over our theatre?”

“We didn’t think you’d be using it,” said Jo. “Since you’re directing the house play now.”

“Well, we are. You’ve got your own place.”

“Daddy needs it,” said Sam. “He’s getting more pigs.”

“Well, you’ll have to find somewhere else, then.”

“Why don’t you use the tractor-shed loft?” suggested Lottie. “That’s pretty much empty.”

Sam’s eyes lit up. He looked at Jo enquiringly but she gave him a warning frown.

“I don’t think that would be suitable,” she said grandly.

Hannah raised her eyebrows. “Well, if you’re going to be that fussy…”

“What are you doing, anyway?” asked Lottie.

“We’re making our magazine,” said Sam.

Lottie picked up a stapled sheaf of papers from a chair.
Bean Stew,
it said in bubble writing across the top of the first page.
The official magazine of The Great and Mighty Society of Bean
.

Lottie flicked through the pages of articles, recipes, quizzes, letters and comic strips. “
Runner Bean Smashes World Record,
” she read. “
Broad Bean’s Diet Tips. Snow White and the Seven Dwarf Beans.
”

“You’ll have to do your magazine somewhere else,” said Hannah. “We’re going to be rehearsing in here.”

Jo blew out her cheeks theatrically. “Fine.” She started picking up the pencils scattered across the floor.

“What are we going to do with the carpet?” asked Lottie, looking at the rug on the stage.

“Roll it up and shove it against the wall, I guess,” said Hannah. Then a thought occurred to her. “No,
actually, let’s put it in the auditorium. It’ll give people somewhere to sit when they’re not in a scene.”

Jo slid the front-of-house door open and stepped outside. “Come on, Mung Bean.”

“We’re going to make a bean sculpture,” Sam told Hannah. “Out of dried kidney beans and—”

“Sshh,” hissed Jo. She poked her head back around the door, her finger to her lips. “Get the notebooks, Mung Bean,” she whispered. “Daddy’s out there, talking.”

“Who’s he talking to?” asked Hannah.

“I don’t know. It sounds like more than one person.”

Hannah looked at Lottie. “
More
visitors?” She moved over to the door and beckoned to Lottie. “Come on.”

“Hey, don’t push in,” hissed Jo. “We’re going first.”

Sam handed Jo a grubby yellow notebook. The Beans made their way in single file along the secret path. Hannah and Lottie followed them.

At the end of the path, they stopped and peered through the curtain of brambles that screened the entrance to the thicket. Dad was striding up North Meadow with his springer spaniel, Tess, who was his constant companion. But today there was a man and a woman with him, taking two steps to his one to match his pace.

“Who are they?” whispered Lottie. “Do you know them?”

Hannah shook her head.

The strangers wore walking boots and carried stout hazel sticks. The man had a bushy grey beard and the woman had a large camera slung round her neck.

“Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?” asked Dad.

Hannah stared at Lottie. What was happening to Dad? He had made more cups of tea this week than he had ever made in his life.

“Oh, that’s very kind of you, but we have to get back,” said the woman. “Anyway, you’ve given up enough of your time, showing us around.”

“No trouble at all.”

“It’s such a beautiful place,” said the woman.

“And so well preserved,” said the man. He stopped and gestured towards where the children were crouched. They drew back their heads. “It’s so rare nowadays to find a farm where thickets and copses haven’t been rooted out to make way for more crops. They’re invaluable wildlife habitats, places like this, impenetrable to humans.”

A smile flickered across Dad’s face. “This one isn’t
quite
impenetrable. My children seem to have found a way in.”

The man laughed. “Oh, children always do.”

“It’s fantastic that you’ve got things moving with Sophie,” said the woman. “She’s so lovely.”

“Yes, she might be just what we need,” said Dad.

Hannah’s stomach churned. She could tell Lottie was looking at her, but she couldn’t meet her eyes. She didn’t want to make the horrible possibility feel
any more real than it already felt.

The woman was looking at Dad in a questioning way. She opened her mouth as if about to say something. Then she closed it as though she’d changed her mind. Then she opened it again.

“Look, I know it’s none of my business,” she said, “but have you told the children yet?”

Hannah stiffened.

Dad hesitated. “Not yet, no.”

There was a slight pause before the woman said, “You might need to talk to them soon. You don’t want them finding out from somebody else, do you?”

Sam turned to Hannah. Hannah put her finger to her lips and reached out to squeeze his hand.

“It will come as an awful shock if they hear it from someone at school,” the woman continued. “And you’re not going to be able to keep it secret for much longer.”

Jo turned to Hannah with a questioning look and opened her mouth to speak. Hannah shook her head.

Dad started walking again. “Yes, well,” he said, in a tone that Hannah knew meant the conversation was over. “We’ll deal with that directly. Thank you very much for coming up here. I appreciate it.”

“It was our privilege,” she said. “This is a very special place. It’s been—”

But the rest of her sentence was drowned out by a flurry of barking, and once Tess had calmed down, Dad and his visitors were too far away to be heard.