by Helen Peters
Would they be rehoused in one of those tower blocks they had passed on the way into Linford?
What would Dad do in a block of flats?
Hannah pictured him endlessly pacing the rooms, day after day, as angry and depressed as a caged swallow, gazing out of the windows at the fields far, far in the distance.
And what about Sam? It had taken him ages to settle into school. What would happen to him if he was taken away from the farm and had to start all over again in a city?
And Jo. How would Jo cope without her animals?
And what would happen to Jasper and Lucy?
If Mum were still here, Hannah thought, then maybe we would have a chance. She could comfort Sam in the way Hannah remembered she used to comfort her – sit on the floor and gather him in her arms and rock him backwards and forwards and tell him, don’t worry, everything will be all right. She would run her hands through Jo’s curly hair and say, never mind, we’ll get you a pet. She might even understand Martha’s moods and tantrums and manage to calm her down.
And she would smooth out Dad’s frown and give him a hug and make him laugh again, just like she used to.
But Mum wasn’t here. And how could they survive this without her?
The final dance performance was called The Devastation of the Immortal Soul among the Incarnadine Forces of Modernity. A group of solemn-faced teenagers dressed in blood-soaked bandages writhed, wormlike, on to the stage, to the sound of a single drumbeat.
Hannah felt giggles rising in her throat. She bit her cheeks and fixed her eyes on the carpet. She mustn’t laugh, especially with Lottie’s mum sitting right behind her. She bit her cheeks harder.
But then she made the mistake of looking at Lottie. Lottie was leaning slightly forward, watching the stage in a ridiculously exaggerated impression of someone who found every movement deeply meaningful. Her fingertips were pressed together and she was nodding earnestly, a frown of concentration on her face. When she realised Hannah was looking at her, she met Hannah’s gaze and raised her eyebrows.
Hannah was biting her cheeks so hard they hurt. Her insides were nearly seizing up with the effort of not laughing.
And then she looked at the stage.
A boy in a gold Lurex catsuit with a garland of sunflowers round his neck was crawling among the dancers, unwinding the bandages with his teeth. Lottie made a strange noise in her throat. Hannah’s shoulders started to shake. Her face went bright red and tears of laughter poured down her cheeks.
Finally the drumbeat stopped and, after a second, people clapped dutifully. Under cover of the applause, Hannah bent double in her seat and howled with laughter.
Vanessa leaned forward and tapped her hard on the shoulder. Hannah took deep breaths and wiped her eyes. The applause died down and Lottie nudged her. She looked at the stage for more entertainment, but instead the Festival Chairman and the Mayor of Linford stood centre stage.
Hannah’s stomach did a giant back flip.
This was it. The drama prizes.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the chairman, “I have great pleasure in inviting Fran Butler, the Chair of our Theatre panel, to announce the winners in the festival’s youth drama category.”
Every fibre in Hannah’s body tensed to breaking point.
But Mrs Butler began yet another speech about the festival and the prizes and how it was all judged and organised and on and on and on. After what seemed like hours, she said, “And now the bit you’ve all been waiting for – the winners!”
And then she pulled an envelope out of her pocket, and Hannah could neither move nor breathe.
“Our first category is the under-fourteens section,” she said.
Lottie gripped Hannah’s hand.
Hannah’s hands were sweating. If they won, they could give the cheque straight to Dad and he wouldn’t have to load his cows on to a lorry on Monday morning. Not all of them anyway. Five hundred pounds must be enough to save some of the cows.
Fran Butler had really liked their play. And they had done it all themselves. That had to count for something. They would win. They just had to.
“We had some very strong entries in this category,” said Mrs Butler, “but in the end we had to decide between two excellent and very different productions. We can only have one eventual winner, but we wanted to single out both of these productions for a special mention. One of these was the Linford Youth Theatre, with their performance of Plague.”
Hannah and Lottie exchanged glances. Miranda’s group. Of course.
Miranda’s row rippled with excitement.
“This play,” said Mrs Butler, “was a subtle and thought-provoking meditation on a particularly tragic episode in our country’s history, performed with astonishing maturity and professionalism, using music and physical theatre with imagination and accomplishment.”
Hannah heard this with a heavy heart. How could they ever have thought they could compete against the Linford Youth Theatre? She didn’t even know what physical theatre was.
“The other play in our final two,” said Mrs Butler, “was By Her Majesty’s Appointment, written and performed by the Secret Hen House Theatre.”
What?
Had she heard right?
Hannah looked at Lottie. Lottie’s eyes sparkled and she was grinning an enormous grin.
She had heard right! She couldn’t believe it. They were in the top two!
“This play,” Mrs Butler was saying, “was a delightful comic fairytale, performed with verve and sparkle. What really deserves special mention is the fact that every aspect of the production – costumes, scenery, writing, direction and even the conversion of the building from a chicken shed into a theatre – was done entirely by the five members of the company, whose ages range from six to eleven. This was terrific ensemble work by a talented and passionate theatre group.”
Hannah felt as if she was about to take off with happiness. Here they were, in this enormous place with all these people, and their play in a shed was being singled out for special praise!
Vanessa leaned forward and put her arms round Lottie and Hannah. “Well done!” she whispered. But Mrs Butler was speaking again.
“After a lot of deliberation,” she said, “we did decide on our winner. The Wilmot-Fawcett Shield and a prize of five hundred pounds for the best production in the under-fourteen age range is awarded to…”
Hannah’s heart stopped. She sat rigid as stone, gripping Lottie’s hand.
“…the Linford Youth Theatre!”
The group across the aisle erupted into celebrations. They punched the air, cheered, whooped and hugged each other.
Hannah pulled her hand out of Lottie’s and clapped fiercely. She looked along the row to the Beans and Martha. “Clap!” she ordered.
So that was it.
The cows would be sold to pay the rent, and when the next rent day came round, there would be nothing left to pay it with.
And their farm and their home would be demolished.
On Monday night Hannah buried herself in the bedclothes and stuffed cotton wool in her ears. She tried to fill her mind with poems she knew by heart, so there would be no space left in it to hear the heartbreaking moos from the prison truck. But every poem she knew was about land and animals and they just made her feel worse.
The cattle lorry was three tiers high. The men drove the cows up the steep ramps, cramming them into a prison of slats and steel. Once they were all loaded and the doors were slammed shut, they would be hurtled hundreds of miles away to a massive dairy farm in Lincolnshire. Hannah couldn’t bear to think of it. Their huge bewildered eyes, their cries of pain when they lost their balance and fell against each other as the lorry swayed and bumped up the motorway.
And when they stumbled off the lorry in Lincolnshire, frightened and confused, who would be caring for them? There weren’t many farmers like Dad any more. His cows went on to that lorry as animals with names. But they would come off it as units of production.
When
Hannah dragged herself out of bed on Tuesday morning she felt as if she’d run an overnight marathon.
And it was the first day of the summer term.
“Why isn’t Daddy having breakfast with us?” asked Sam, looking up from his cereal bowl.
“I don’t know,” said Hannah. “I’ll go and call him.”
The farmyard was eerily quiet. The pig-shed door was closed and the chickens were still shut up.
Hannah crossed the yard to the milking parlour.
The sliding door was open. Her father stood in the silent parlour with his back to her, facing the blackboard where the cows’ names were chalked up. He held a cloth in his hand.
As she watched, he started to rub out the names of his cows.
He did it very slowly, as if his arm was stiff and heavy. Daisy, Buttercup, Clover, Chocolate, Primrose, Lily; one by one the names disappeared.
When he had finished he didn’t turn round. He just stood there, facing the blank empty board, the cloth dangling from his hand.
“Dad?” said Hannah. Her throat was so dry that her voice came out croaky.
He didn’t move.
She tried again. “Dad?”
This time he turned round. When Hannah saw his face it felt like somebody had punched her in the stomach.
His eyes were swimming with tears.
Hannah hadn’t seen him cry since the day her mother died.
For a minute, he stared at her blankly. Then he cleared his throat. “What do you want?” he said. He sounded irritated.
“Nothing,” she mumbled. “Breakfast’s ready.” And with feet like lead she trudged back to the house.
The school dining hall stank of spaghetti bolognese. Hannah and Lottie leaned against the gloss-blue walls, edging along silently as the queue inched forward. All Hannah could think of were the cries of distress from the cows in the lorry and her father turning to her with his eyes full of tears.
Jack was showing off to a group of hangers-on a few places ahead of her. Behind the Year Eights, Miranda and Emily were gazing up at Jack like devoted puppies. Strangely, Danny wasn’t with him. And they hadn’t sat together in assembly either. Hannah remembered them arguing outside the antique shop. Had they fallen out?
Normally Jack’s presence so close to her would have sent Hannah into a flurry of self-consciousness. But today she didn’t care if her hair was frizzy. She didn’t care whether he was looking at her or not. She wouldn’t even have cared if there was a spot the size of Mount Vesuvius glowing on her chin.
“Hey, Roberts!”
Hannah didn’t look up.
“Hey, Roberts! What’s up? Forget to wash the mud out of your ears?”
“Leave her alone, Jack,” warned Lottie.
Jack ignored her. “Sorry your theatre didn’t win the prize. Did the sheep forget their lines?”
Miranda giggled. Hannah stared from Jack to Miranda and back again, her face blazing. Of course. Miranda would have told Jack all about the prize-giving. They would have been sniggering about it all morning.
“Well, they did come second,” said Priya. “That’s pretty good actually. There were loads of entries.”
Hannah shot her a look of surprised gratitude. But Jack was still talking. “Or was it the cows who let you down? Did Ermintrude refuse to put her frock on?”
Miranda giggled again.
“It’s true,” said Jack. “Old Farmer Roberts really does give his cows names. They’re all chalked up in his milking shed. He probably tucks them up in bed at night too.”
And then, just like that, it happened.
Hannah looked at Jack and it was like she was seeing him for the first time.
Not a witty romantic hero. Not a rebel with a heart of gold.
Just a pathetic thirteen-year-old coward who set people’s barns on fire and ran away.
“Isn’t that right, Roberts?” said Jack. “Does he sing them lullabies too?” He started warbling in a high falsetto. “Goodnight, my darling Buttercup, cow of my dreams. Sleep tight, my dearest Ermintrude—”
A volcano erupted inside Hannah.
Without knowing what she was doing, she swung back her arm and punched Jack square on the chin, sending him crashing into the wall. His startled face flashed before her eyes, and then the next punch landed on his left cheek and he roared in indignation and pain.
With a strength she never knew she had, Hannah pinned him to the wall by his shoulders. “You evil piece of scum! How dare you? How dare you insult my dad like that after you destroyed his barn? How dare you burn our barn down and run away, you horrible stinking coward! How dare you destroy our theatre, you and your pathetic friend! You’re vile and evil and sick and you’ve ruined our lives. I hate you!”
Jack stared at her, open-mouthed. As Hannah paused for breath and loosened her grip, he lurched forward as if to make a dash for it.
“Don’t you dare!” shouted Hannah. She jammed her knee into his crotch.
He let out a howl and doubled up. Hannah shoved him back against the wall, cheeks and eyes blazing.
“Trying to run away? Of course you are. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You destroy things and then you run away because you can’t face up to what you’ve done. Do you know what you’ve done? Do you?” She was screaming into his face now. “You’ve destroyed my family and you’ve destroyed our farm. Is that what you wanted? Is it? Are you happy now? Was it fun? Was it a laugh?”
Still pinning Jack to the wall, she wheeled round to face Miranda, frozen in shock.
“Why aren’t you laughing, Miranda? Don’t you think it’s really funny? Isn’t it great that my dad’s going to lose his farm? Isn’t that really, really hilarious?”
Firm hands grasped her shoulders and an adult voice said, “Hannah, Hannah, stop. Stop it right now. Let go of Jack.”
The words hit Hannah like a nail punctures a tyre. She started to crumple. She allowed the teacher to prise her hands from Jack’s shoulders. She was surprised at how tight her grip had been – her fingers actually ached.
As she was led out of the room and her surroundings began to swim back into focus, she suddenly realised that the entire dining hall was silent.
Every single pair of eyes was staring at her.
Mr Collins leaned forward in his chair and frowned across the desk at Hannah. She looked down at her lap. She wondered if the Head even knew who she was.
She had never been in his office before. It was cold and sparse, painted a greyish-blue colour. There were bookcases filled with folders and dull-looking documents, and three grey metal filing cabinets. A cork board on the wall was covered with laminated notices pinned to it at precisely spaced intervals. Mr Collins’s desk was completely bare.
“I gather from Miss Haywood,” he said eventually, “that you were involved in a serious incident in the dining hall this lunchtime.” He spoke in exactly the same way as he did in assembly, as if he were weighing up each word carefully before he uttered it.
Hannah didn’t know whether she was supposed to reply. She nodded. It felt like it wasn’t really her in that chair at all. Everything that was her had been sucked out and all that was left was a great big blob of nothing. It was as if she were watching a film of all this happening to somebody else. Nothing Mr Collins could say or do could hurt her now. After all, she wouldn’t even be at this school soon.
But then the Head’s secretary poked her head around the door and said, “Mr Roberts is here.”
Dad? He’s called Dad into school? Hannah’s stomach turned over.
So she did have some feelings left then.
She gripped the sides of her chair and fixed her eyes on the floor as her father walked in. She couldn’t even bear to imagine the next few minutes.
“Thank you for coming in so quickly, Mr Roberts,” said the Head. “Please, take a seat.”
He gestured to the one other free chair. It was uncomfortably close to Hannah’s. Hannah caught a whiff of pig manure as Dad sat down, scattering wisps of str
aw on to the grey carpet.
“I am sorry to inform you,” began the Head, “that your daughter was involved in a serious incident this lunchtime in which she physically assaulted another student.”
Hannah could feel her father’s impatience as he shuffled in his hard little chair. “What do you mean by ‘physically assaulted’?”
The Head paused for an irritatingly long moment. It was as if he found it a real effort to come out with the unadorned truth.
“I am afraid,” he said eventually, “that your daughter hit another student.”
“Who?” demanded Dad.
Mr Collins cleared his throat. “I don’t think that is relevant to the issue.”
“Of course it’s relevant,” Dad scoffed. He turned to Hannah. “Who did you hit?”
Hannah glanced from the Head to Dad and back again before replying, “Jack Adamson.”
“You hit Jack Adamson?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
Hannah could have sworn she saw a flicker of amusement cross her father’s face.
“Apparently, Hannah, you accused this boy of vandalising a theatre on your farm,” said Mr Collins.
Oh, no, no, no! Why oh why had she gone and told the entire school that she had a theatre on her farm? How stupid could she be?
“He did what?” said Dad.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, Mr Roberts,” said the Head. “I was not intending to use any names until the facts had been established. I have since been informed by another student that in fact the boy Hannah attacked was not involved in the vandalism at all; that in fact the vandalism was committed by a completely separate person.”
“What?” said Hannah. “Who? Who told you that?”
Mr Collins frowned at her. “Hannah, as I just said, I am not going to jump to conclusions or reveal any names until I have thoroughly investigated this matter. I shall be interviewing all the relevant people in the course of the afternoon. I just need to confirm with you whether your theatre was indeed vandalised.”