The Farm Beneath the Water

by Helen Peters

  Two of the men strode up North Meadow.

  “Heavy clay subsoil with twelve per cent greensand,” one of them said.

  They wore ID cards clipped to their jackets. They came close enough to Hannah for her to read the words written on their badges, though they took no more notice of her than if she had been one of the sheep grazing in South Meadow.

  Aqua, the badges said. Delivering water to you.

  Hannah remembered seeing other people, wearing the same badges, walking over the fields during the summer holidays. But there were often people at the farm mending pipes or cables, and she had thought nothing of it at the time.

  “So there’ll be earthworks running right around the perimeter?” said one of the men.

  “That’s right,” said the other. “Half a million cubic metres of soil. We need to build up the banks to a ten-metre height to get enough depth of water.”

  “And what’s the total area to be flooded?”

  “Nearly four hundred acres. Right up to the wood there. It’s a perfect site. Only the one house on it. And the landlord’s happy. As long as the price is right, of course.”

  They chuckled.

  Hannah started to run. She hurtled down the bumpy track, leaping over potholes, hoisting the strap of her canvas bag back on to her shoulder every few seconds. She had to find Dad. Please, please, she thought, let him be in his office.

  As she raced past the gateway to South Meadow, one of the wasp men, absorbed in tapping a number into his mobile phone, stepped on to the track right in front of her. Hannah swerved and knocked his arm. The sheaf of papers he was carrying spilled on to the tarmac. The man swore and stooped to pick them up, the phone still clamped to his ear.

  “Sorry,” said Hannah, chasing after a couple of pieces of paper which had caught on the breeze and were dancing towards the farmyard.

  She grabbed them just before they reached a large muddy puddle, and turned round to give them back. The man was walking up the track, head down, his papers clamped under one arm. He obviously didn’t realise that two sheets were missing.

  Suddenly he gave a shout into his phone. “Finally, a signal. Listen, Terry, this place is a nightmare for reception so I might get cut off any minute.”

  As Hannah ran after him, her eye caught the top sheet of paper and she stopped.

  It was an aerial photograph of Clayhill Farm. Around the borders of the farm, a thick line had been drawn in black felt-tipped pen.

  There was a date at the bottom of the photograph. It was just over a year ago.

  Her heart thumping, Hannah pulled out the bottom piece of paper. It was the same photograph, with the same black border, but on this picture, the area inside the border was covered with heavy criss-crossed lines.

  Underneath the photograph were the words:

  Middleham Reservoir. Area to be flooded.

  The criss-crossed lines completely obliterated the farm.

  Hannah’s throat tightened. She looked across the land, at the pastures, the pig field, the ancient hedgerows full of songbirds, the ponds where the frogs spawned every spring, the veteran oak trees that were homes for owls and bats and countless other creatures, the yard with its centuries-old barn, stables and granary, and their own lovely, ramshackle farmhouse.

  Her father and her grandfather and other farmers for hundreds of years before them had spent their whole lives looking after this land. The water company couldn’t just destroy it. They wouldn’t be allowed to.

  Would they?

  She became aware of heavy footsteps approaching. She looked up. The man who had dropped the papers was striding back towards her. He stopped in front of her and snatched the papers from her hand. Then he turned back up the track without a word.

  For a moment Hannah stood there, too astonished to react. The rudeness of him!

  But she had more urgent things to worry about than rudeness. She turned back towards the farmyard and broke into a run.

  Hannah dumped her bag on the scullery freezer and ran up the bare wooden staircase. She could hear the clack-clack-clack of typewriter keys from Dad’s office. She edged past the dusty filing cabinets in the corridor, dislodging another lump of plaster from the wall, and pushed at the office door. It opened a couple of feet and then ground to a halt against the heap of files stacked on the floor behind it.

  Dad was sitting at his desk in the centre of the room. The floor around him was covered with piles of folders and sheaves of paper that had spread and multiplied over the years as though they had a magical life of their own, like the briars around Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

  “Have you seen all those water people swarming over our fields?” demanded Hannah.

  Dad looked up from the big black old-fashioned typewriter that he still insisted on using, even though Adam had recently installed a second-hand computer in the downstairs office.

  “Seen them? You could hardly miss them.”

  “Did you know they were coming?”

  He flicked a hand dismissively at the pile of post on his desk. “I dare say they sent one of their stupid letters.”

  “But you didn’t say anything about it. Why don’t you tell me anything?”

  Dad looked at her with a puzzled frown. “What do you want to know?”

  Hannah felt as though she might burst with frustration. “Everything, of course! I want to know everything about it! I want to help, Dad. And I don’t want any more horrible surprises.”

  Dad stared at her. Then he sighed. He pushed his chair back, stood up and walked between the heaps of paper to one of the several filing cabinets randomly scattered around the room, like self-seeded trees. He opened a drawer, pulled out a slim blue ring binder and handed it to Hannah.

  “Have a look through that if you like.”

  Hannah took the folder.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s all in there. Everything I know about the whole darned business.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  She took the file to her bedroom. Sam was kneeling on the floor, pushing a model tractor and plough very slowly over the threadbare carpet.

  “Hi, Sammy. How’s the ploughing going?”

  “Not bad. The ground’s a bit heavy after all that rain, but I’ve only got two more fields to do.”

  Hannah propped her pillow against the end of the bed. “What are you going to plant in here?”

  Every room in the house was a field on Sam’s farm. He kept a field plan under each carpet with a record of what was planted there.

  “Winter wheat.” He moved the tractor steadily across the carpet. “It’s a new strain. Farmers Weekly says it’s really good at resisting disease.”

  “Great,” said Hannah. She settled the file on her lap and opened it.

  The first document was a glossy brochure from Aqua, one of those incredibly dull quarterly magazines that companies send out to their customers. Hannah’s heart sank.

  Well, she had asked for more information, and now she had it. So she had better read it.

  She opened the brochure. Phrases like “demand management” and “supply side options” swam up from the dense mass of black type on page one. What on earth did it all mean?

  She read the first paragraph three times, but it was like trying to read a foreign language she’d barely studied. Half the words made no sense to her at all. If I keep reading, she thought, maybe it will become clearer.

  She struggled on, making a huge effort to concentrate. Twice, Sam asked her when tea would be ready and twice she told him vaguely that she’d get it in a minute. She mustn’t stop now. Somewhere in all this gobbledegook, surely there would be some information about the reservoir.

  But she got to the last page and she still hadn’t found anything. It was just unintelligible water-board jargon. With a sigh of defeat, Hannah closed the brochure and turned to the next document in the file.

  It was a copy of a letter from Dad to the landlord’s agent, dated five months ago.

  Dear Mr Cons
table,

  Following yesterday’s meeting in which you casually told me that Mr Cashmore is planning to sell the farm on which my family has lived and worked for nearly seventy years, and allow it to be destroyed to build a reservoir, I must ask you for more information about this proposed scheme and when the work is expected to start.

  Yours sincerely,

  A. Roberts

  The next letter in the file was also from Dad, dated two weeks later.

  Dear Mr Constable,

  I am still awaiting a reply to my letter of a fortnight ago. Your early attention would be appreciated.

  Yours sincerely,

  A. Roberts

  A month later, the land agent had replied.

  Dear Mr Roberts,

  Thank you for your letter enquiring about Aqua’s plans for Clayhill Farm.

  May we take this opportunity to reassure you that plans are still at a very early stage and that we do not yet have any detailed schedules of the works to be carried out. We shall of course keep you fully informed of all developments as they occur.

  Yours sincerely,

  N. Constable

  In other words, thought Hannah, they’re telling him nothing. Horrible people.

  After several letters along the same lines, in which Dad asked for information and got none, he seemed to have given up on the landlord’s agent. The next letter was to Lottie’s dad, thanking him for the “excellent and extremely detailed results of your bird surveys”. Then he had written to the Middleham Ecology Group, inviting them to survey the flora and fauna at the farm. This letter had a prompt and enthusiastic reply. They must have been the people at that disastrous tea party.

  Hannah had nearly reached the end of the file. The next letter was addressed to “Nick Constable, Assets Director, Aqua”.

  Dear Mr Constable,

  Although my family has farmed this land for nearly seventy years, we have not been informed of the extent of the land you would like to take for a reservoir.

  I must now ask that you forward a map without delay showing the exact location of your proposed reservoir.

  Yours sincerely,

  A. Roberts

  As with all the others, this letter was followed by another from Dad, dated three weeks later, asking for a reply to his first letter.

  The final piece of paper in the file was from Aqua, dated just a few days ago.

  Dear Mr Roberts,

  Thank you for your letter of 28th August.

  As you are aware, we are about to embark upon a number of environmental surveys at the site, as these are critical in determining whether it is suitable for a reservoir and, if it is, how any reservoir scheme would minimise any environmental impacts while clearly ensuring we have sufficient, available water supplies.

  Can I take this opportunity to reassure you that we are not yet at the stage of having a detailed design or, indeed, supporting drawings or maps.

  Yours sincerely,

  N. Constable

  Hannah gasped.

  “The liars!”

  Sam looked up from his tractor. “Who are liars?”

  Hannah didn’t answer. She picked up the file, jumped off the bed, ran to Dad’s office and shoved the door open as far as it would go.

  “Dad, you are going to the meeting, aren’t you?”

  “What meeting?”

  “The one next week, on Thursday. Aqua’s meeting about their plans. You have to go. You’ve got to meet those Aqua people and ask them questions to their lying faces.”

  He looked at her. “What’s got you so fired up?”

  “They’re lying to you, Dad. In this letter they say they don’t have a map of the reservoir, but they do. I’ve seen it. And it’s dated a year ago. You’ve got to go to that meeting and tackle them face to face. And I’m coming with you.”

  “You’re joking,” said Jonah, staring at the thicket. “This theatre you’ve told us all about is in there?”

  Ben laughed. “Is it an invisible theatre?”

  “Imaginary theatre, more like,” said Jonah. “I reckon Hannah’s built it all in her own head.”

  Hannah said nothing. She pulled the curtain of brambles aside and slipped through the gap on to the secret path.

  As the boys jostled and shoved each other into thorn bushes, Hannah began to wonder whether inviting twenty people to rehearse in her theatre had been a really bad idea. And to learn sword fighting, of all things! What had she been thinking?

  Each house only had one after-school rehearsal a week in the hall. Woolf House’s first slot was tomorrow. Hannah knew it would take a long time to choreograph the fight scenes, so she had wanted a head start. But suddenly she was terrified. What if the boys just went berserk and her first rehearsal turned into a massive fight? What if nobody took the slightest notice of her? After all, why should Year 9 students show any respect to someone a year younger than them?

  She looked at the beautiful sign on the stage door and it gave her strength. She took a deep breath and slid the door open along its metal runners. And when the actors stepped into the long, low shed, the jostling and the laughing stopped.

  All along the left-hand wall, Lottie had pinned costume designs for every character. On the opposite wall were several typed sheets under big headings saying Cast Notices and Backstage Notices. A heading above a large hand-drawn poster on the far wall said Stage Combat Positions.

  “Wow,” said James Talbot, the gangly Year 8 boy playing Mercutio. “Is this really yours?”

  “It’s amazing,” said Amy Perello.

  Hannah’s heart swelled with love and pride for her theatre. Amy was in Year 9 and so incredibly pretty that Hannah had always been a bit in awe of her. To have Amy praise her theatre was quite overwhelming.

  Several people were looking at the diagrams of stage combat positions. Others were studying the costume designs.

  “Are our costumes really going to look like this?” asked Marie, trying to extract a thorny twig from her thick blonde hair.

  “Yes,” said Hannah. “Lottie’s brilliant at sewing.”

  Katy Jones, Marie’s tall, dark-haired best friend, was looking at Lottie’s sketch for Lord Capulet. “Wow, these are amazing. Did you really do them, Lottie?”

  Lottie looked awkward, as she always did when someone was paying her a compliment. Instead of answering, she pointed to a sketch further along the wall. “That one’s yours. It uses some of the same fabric as Lord Capulet’s, to show the link between you. And this one’s yours, Priya.”

  Priya turned her attention away from the props list and came to look at the design.

  “That’s stunning.”

  “It’s a similar design to Lord Capulet’s and Lord Montague’s,” said Lottie, “but because you’re the Prince, you show your status by a fuller cloak that trails on the floor and has more jewels on the collar.”

  “Are you really going to make them all?” asked Marie. “Where will you get the material?”

  “Jumble sales and charity shops, mostly,” said Lottie, “and then I chop things up and reuse them. Old curtains, throws, dresses, anything. There’s a notice on the backstage board to sign up if you want to help with sewing.”

  Hannah clapped her hands. “OK, everyone, let’s get started. So today this space is our fight studio. We’re going to learn the basic stage-combat techniques, and then use those moves to choreograph the fight scene at the beginning of the play.”

  “To do what to the fight scene?” asked Jonah, who had gelled his fringe into a quiff today.

  “Choreograph, you plum,” said Marie.

  Jonah shook his head. “Means nothing to me.”

  Hannah wrenched open the stiff bottom drawer of the rickety dressing table and pulled out an armful of decorative silver swords made from moulded plastic. Jonah lunged for a sword but Hannah swiped his hand away.

  “OK, can everyone sit on the carpet, please?”

  “Ooh,” said Jonah, “are you going to read us a story, miss?”


  People laughed, but they moved away from the costume designs and settled themselves on the big rug in the auditorium.

  Hannah had a moment of amazement as she watched all these people, half of them older than her, following her instructions without a murmur. Never in a million years would she have ordered them about like this in normal life. It’s like I’m playing a part, she thought. I’m playing the part of director. And when I’m playing that part, somehow I can do this.

  She took two swords from the pile and a battered pack of plasters from the drawer, and moved into the auditorium.

  “So I’m going to show you the five basic cut targets and two thrust targets, and then I’ll teach you the fundamental techniques of the French system. That’s the one they use to choreograph fight scenes for films.”

  She was quite pleased with the way that sounded. No one would have guessed she had only learned it from the Internet last night.

  “Can I have a volunteer, please?”

  Owen Griffiths, the freckled, red-haired Year 8 boy playing Lord Montague, jumped up, grinning. Owen was always willing to put himself centre-stage.

  “OK,” said Hannah, “so these are the five basic cut targets. Two here.” She stuck a plaster on to each of Owen’s upper arms. “A few centimetres below the shoulder. You don’t want to aim right at the shoulder, because the sword can easily slip and get the neck.”

  She peeled another plaster and stuck it on the side of Owen’s trousers.

  “One either side here, halfway between the waist and knee. These are called the flanks. And the final one is straight down from the top of the head.” She stuck a plaster at the top of Owen’s forehead, on his hairline. “Although I don’t think we’ll use that one. It’s a bit close to the face, and you must never touch the face.”

  She stuck two more plasters on Owen, in the centre of the chest and at the belly button. “These are the two point targets, where you would aim to thrust your sword in to kill someone.”