The Secret Hen House Theatre

by Helen Peters

  Jo wiped at Hannah’s cheeks with what felt like her coat sleeve.

  “Eyes!” spluttered Hannah. “Wipe my eyes.”

  Jo wiped her eyes. Hannah blinked them open. And let out a cry of horror.

  “No, no, no!”

  Scattered all around her, floating in the puddles, trampled into the mud, lay the pages of her script.

  “Oh, no, no, no!”

  Hannah scrabbled wildly about, picking up all she could see. Some pages had already been ripped by the pig’s hooves. Others tore as she tried to peel them off the ground.

  Jo bent down to help but there was clearly no point. Barely a single word was legible.

  “Have you got a copy?” she asked.

  “It’s all handwritten – of course I haven’t got a copy.”

  “Ha ha, you’ve lost your play,” said Martha. “Serves you right for trying to hide.”

  Her dad strode over. Somehow he had managed to get the pig into her sty.

  “Good grief, you look a state. Get up out of that puddle, for goodness’ sake. What’s all this fuss for, girl?”

  Hannah said nothing. She stared down at the soggy brown scraps of disintegrating paper.

  “It’s her play,” said Jo. “It fell in the mud and Gertie trampled on it.”

  Dad looked at Hannah as though she’d just landed from another planet.

  “Your what?”

  “My play,” said Hannah. “I wrote a play.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake. This is a farm, not a theatre. Get out of that mud, girl.”

  He shook his head. Then his eye lit on an envelope floating in the puddle. The words “Strickland and Wormwood, Land Agents” and “URGENT” were just visible at the top.

  “What’s this?”

  “Oh,” said Hannah. “A man brought it. From the new landlord.”

  “Ha! Good. Best place for it.” Her father tramped to the pigsty, and the letter sank deep into the mud under the weight of his boot.

  He leaned over the wall and scratched Gertie behind her ears. “There you are, old girl. All safe and sound again. You just make yourself comfortable and I’ll fetch you some meal. I expect you’re thirsty too, eh, after all that running about? Let’s get you some more water.” He picked up a battered bucket and clumped across the yard towards the water tank.

  Hannah stood completely still in the middle of the puddle, muddy water dripping from her hair, sodden clothes clinging to her skin. Lottie was standing open-mouthed at the bottom of the loft ladder. Hannah looked at Lottie, and at the loft, and she heard her dad’s words again.

  “This is a farm, not a theatre.”

  Her eyes were shining. She squelched across the yard as fast as she could under the weight of the mud and water. Her heart thumped with excitement.

  Lottie’s look of pity and concern changed to one of bewilderment as she saw Hannah’s expression.

  “Oh, my lord, Hannah, look at the state of you. What on earth are you smiling at?”

  “Lottie,” said Hannah, grabbing her arm, “I’ve just had the most amazing idea.”

  Miss Francis, Head of English, smiled around at the sea of navy blue and grey assembled in the school hall.

  “Welcome, everyone, to our very first Key Stage Three Poetry Competition. We are most honoured to have with us as our judge a celebrity guest, local actress Monica Rowse, whom you will no doubt recognise from her numerous TV appearances. Thank you so much for coming, Monica.”

  Monica Rowse crossed her slim legs and smiled graciously. Hannah, sitting next to Lottie in the middle row, scrutinised the actress’s face for clues as to her taste in poetry.

  Hmm. Chicks and bunnies.

  On the little table in front of the judge stood a small shiny silver cup. Hannah imagined the look of amazement on Dad’s face if she pulled that cup out of her school bag at teatime and showed it to him. Maybe then he wouldn’t think her writing was just a waste of time.

  Her knuckles were white as she clutched her English exercise book. She had spent hours on her poem – poring over her thesaurus, writing and rewriting lines, trying out different rhythms and phrases, until it felt just right.

  “This year’s theme was The Natural World,” said Miss Francis.

  Danny Carr, sitting behind Lottie, yawned loudly. Hannah noticed that there was an empty seat next to him. Was he saving it for…?

  Hannah’s heart thumped. How could she possibly concentrate if he came and sat right behind her?

  Miss Francis consulted her list. “The first person to recite will be Miranda Hathaway, from 7B. Come up to the front, Miranda.”

  Miranda didn’t have far to go. She was already sitting in the front row.

  She made a great performance of taking her English exercise book from an expensive-looking bag printed with the words Hathaway Fine Art, Bond Street. Miranda liked everyone to know that her father owned a London gallery.

  She opened her book and announced, “‘My Golden Retriever’.”

  Miranda’s parents had probably hired a tutor and a poet to help her, Hannah thought. And they would have already entered her poem for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

  Miranda flicked back her long shiny auburn hair and began to recite.

  “His eyes of topaz jewels

  His coat of shimmering hues…”

  Hannah had seen that golden retriever. It was massively fat, with a permanent stream of dribble trailing from its mouth.

  Lottie made gagging motions. “Did you think any more about the you-know-what?” she whispered.

  “Of course I did,” said Hannah.

  She had thought of little else since the idea had exploded like fireworks in her head as she stood in that puddle yesterday afternoon.

  We could have a theatre in the tractor-shed loft!

  She had been dying to talk about it since she got to school but it had been far too dangerous. Miranda and her best friend, Emily, sat right in front of them at registration and they must never, ever get wind of this.

  Miranda continued to read her poem as if she was performing for the Queen.

  “His ears of silken threads

  His paws with velvet treads…”

  Lottie nudged Hannah. “Look at this.”

  She took from her bag a shiny red notebook. On the first page she had written The Tractor-shed Theatre Club. She flicked the page over.

  “This is how I thought we could set it up,” she whispered.

  Across the double page, Lottie had sketched a floor plan. Dressing room, wings, stage, auditorium.

  Hannah stared at the sketch and her heart beat faster. The pictures leapt into her imagination: swishing curtains, lavish costumes, sumptuous scenery. She heard the wild applause from the audience as the actors took their curtain calls.

  Lottie glanced up. The judge was gazing adoringly at Miranda as she wittered on about her big fat dog. “I’ve done costume designs too,” she whispered. She started to turn the page.

  Applause broke out at the front of the hall. Miss Francis stood up.

  “Thank you, Miranda. That was a beautiful tribute to your pet. Your use of metaphor was lovely. It is a shame,” she said, looking pointedly at Lottie, “that some people were not paying full attention. Perhaps you would do us the courtesy of listening properly from now on, Charlotte.”

  Lottie dropped the red notebook into her bag and folded her hands in her lap, the picture of studiousness.

  “Now, our next entrant is Emily Sanders from 7B.”

  Emily rose from her seat next to Miranda and stood facing the audience. Miss Francis smiled and nodded for her to begin.

  “‘My Horse, Starlight’,” announced Emily.

  “Starlight is my best friend.

  My love for him will never end.

  I visit him every single day

  To groom him, ride him and give him hay…”

  Hannah gripped her exercise book and tried to concentrate on the poems. For the next twenty minutes her heart thumped against her ri
bcage as an endless succession of students praised dogs and cats, bluebell woods and willow trees, autumn leaves and summer sun.

  Had she made a massive mistake? What on earth was the judge going to think of her poem?

  But the natural world wasn’t all sunny and fluffy, was it?

  Some people lived right in the middle of the mud.

  Vishali Patel, from 8M, finished her poem about snow and returned to her seat. Miss Francis looked at her list and said, “And finally we have Hannah Roberts from 7B.”

  Hannah felt sick. Lottie squeezed her hand and whispered, “Good luck.”

  Somehow Hannah got to the front of the hall. She found Lottie’s friendly face in the crowd and fixed her eyes on it.

  “‘The Promise’,” she announced. She took a deep breath.

  And as soon as she began, the hall and the people melted away and she was back in the farmyard.

  “All day, a driving, slashing rain

  Swirls through the yard in clouds. Rain tips

  From broken gutters, pours along the cracks

  In ancient concrete, churns

  With dung and straw and soil to form a paste

  Of claggy, stinking, filthy clay-grey mud.

  We stay inside. It’s better there. But he,

  In mud-encrusted, tattered waterproofs,

  Wind-whipped, head bowed against the gusts

  That stab like knives of ice, trudges through mud,

  Buckets in oak-gnarled fingers, crimson-cold.

  And in the barn, a slime-grey tangled mass

  Lies in the straw. A steaming, rancid stench

  Of rotten flesh. Twin lambs, too early born,

  To be slung on the dung lump with the waste.

  Outside, the silhouettes of hollow oaks

  Darken and sharpen against the evening sky.

  Impossible that brittle bare black twigs

  Could metamorphose into fresh green life.

  But spring is creeping upwards through the soil,

  Along the roots and branches of the oaks.

  Sharp silhouettes will soften into leaf

  From tiny, tight brown buds. And April’s warmth

  Will heal his winter-battered face again.”

  Hannah’s throat was tight when she finished. She had been far away as she read her poem. She had forgotten all about the audience.

  Now she risked a glance out across the rows of chairs.

  She wished she hadn’t.

  Because all she saw when she looked up was Danny Carr. He was leaning back on his chair and letting out the most enormous yawn.

  She bent her head down and, cheeks burning, hurried back to her seat through the jagged applause.

  Lottie squeezed her arm. “That was great, Hannah. You’ll definitely win.”

  Danny leaned forward. “Nice one. You should have seen that judge’s face when you were talking about dead lambs. I thought she was going to puke.”

  Hannah looked down at her muddy shoes. She wanted to curl up and disappear.

  She sneaked a look at the judge and Miss Francis. They were talking in low, intense tones.

  She should have written a prettier poem.

  She should never have mentioned dead lambs.

  Eventually, Miss Francis stood up and smiled. She thanked everyone for entering, and then she said, “It was very difficult to single out one poem among so many excellent entries, but our judge has chosen a winner.”

  Monica Rowse stood up, smiling her benevolent smile, and started on another speech. Hannah’s stomach twisted into knots.

  “And so,” she finished, “I am delighted to announce that the Walters Cup for Poetry is awarded to … Miranda Hathaway!”

  Of course.

  Miranda’s gang in the front row cheered.

  Lottie put her arm around Hannah’s shoulders. “Yours was miles better. That judge doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Sweet of Lottie to say that.

  But it didn’t make any difference.

  Maybe Dad was right after all. Maybe her writing was just a pointless waste of time.

  Miss Francis walked over as they were stacking chairs.

  “That was a wonderful poem, Hannah.”

  Hannah stared at her.

  “I think the judge’s taste was perhaps a little more … conventional, shall we say, but I have to say that, for me, yours was the one that stood out.”

  Hannah stood there, trying to take this in. The Head of English liked her poem best?

  “Do you read a lot of poetry?” asked Miss Francis.

  Hannah’s eyes lit up. “Yes, loads. I love Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. I love that they write about the countryside in a real way, you know? Not all fluffy bunnies and chicks and daffodils, but mud and blood and death. Not that the countryside’s always like that, obviously. But it’s a mixture – sometimes it’s beautiful and sometimes it’s ugly. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Spring wouldn’t be so beautiful if it didn’t come after winter.”

  She stopped. She was talking too much.

  But Miss Francis smiled at her. “Yes, absolutely. And I’d love to see more of your writing, if you’d like to show it to me.”

  “See?” said Lottie as they left the hall. “I said it was really good, didn’t I?”

  Hannah was glowing. The Head of English liked her writing!

  She turned left towards their form room, but Lottie said, “We have to hand in our maths homework, remember?”

  Hannah’s hand shot to her mouth.

  “Didn’t you do it?”

  “I was going to do it last night, but the sheep got out again. Oh, no, Mr Nagra’s going to kill me. I promised I’d hand it in on time this week. He said he’d phone my dad if it was late again. Oh, I’m so dead.”

  “Just copy mine when we get to the classroom. It won’t take long.”

  Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, Lottie, thank you so much. You’re the best friend ever. You can copy mine next time.”

  “So,” said Lottie, “do you really think your dad will let us have the loft?”

  The wonderful vision of the theatre flooded into Hannah’s head again. “Why wouldn’t he? He doesn’t use it for anything.”

  “We need to ask him today, though. I’ve got to email the entry form to the festival people by tomorrow. And we have to put the name and address of our theatre on it.”

  Hannah skipped with delight. “Can you believe it? We’re going to enter the Linford Arts Festival! We’re going to have our own theatre!”

  “So can I come up after school? Will he be around?”

  Hannah stopped in her tracks and her eyes lit up. “Actually, that’s perfect. He’s taking the Field Marshall to a steam fair today.”

  “To sell it?”

  “No, don’t be silly. He’d never sell it. To show it. The point is, he loves the steam fair. He stands there all day showing off his Field Marshall and all these old blokes in tweeds come up and admire it and ask him questions about it. He goes every year and he’s always in a good mood when he gets back.”

  “Fantastic. So I’ll come up after school.”

  Lottie pushed open the door of their maths room. It was also 8M’s tutor room and, since the sky was hurling sheets of rain against the windows, most of 8M were in there. They huddled in groups around the tables, chatting and texting.

  Hannah did a quick scan of the room.

  No. He wasn’t there. He must be off sick today.

  Was she relieved?

  Or disappointed?

  It was so hard to tell.

  There was a pile of 7B’s maths books already on the homework shelf in the corner. Lottie sat down at the empty table in front of the shelf and pulled her maths book out of her bag. She opened it to reveal a page of work so neat that it deserved to be blown up to poster size and displayed to the world right there and then.

  Hannah knew as certainly as she knew her own name that every single answer was right. Lottie had never in her whole l
ife got a maths question wrong.

  Hannah opened her own book and wrote yesterday’s date at the top of a clean page. She started to copy the first question.

  The classroom door swung open and cracked against the wall. Every head turned.

  Hannah looked up and her stomach did a back flip.

  Into the room sauntered Jack Adamson. And, if it were possible, he looked even more gorgeous than usual. His wavy hair was all messed up and he had a cheeky grin on his face.

  “Better late than never,” grunted Danny, looking up from his phone.

  “Yeah, well,” said Jack, rearranging his expression into one of deep sorrow. “It’s just, I was a bit upset. Family tragedy.”

  Vishali Patel was sitting at the table next to Hannah and Lottie. Her eyes widened in concern. “Oh, no. What’s wrong?”

  Jack gave a heavy sigh and plonked himself down in the chair beside Vishali’s. He looked deeply into her eyes. Something stabbed at Hannah’s chest.

  “It’s my goldfish,” said Jack sadly. “He got run over.”

  The room erupted into giggles. Except for Lottie, who raised her eyes to heaven. Hannah looked down at her feet so Lottie couldn’t see her smiling.

  Vishali smacked Jack on the shoulder. “You pig. You really had me going.”

  “Aw, sorry, Vish. Hey, you couldn’t give us a lend of the geography homework, could you? I was going to do it but my mum’s on a life support machine and I had to go and put another 50p in the slot.”

  Vishali giggled. “Oh, go on then.” She fished in her bag.

  “Thanks, Vish, you’re a lifesaver.” He winked at her. Hannah felt that stab in her chest again.

  “Loser,” muttered Lottie.

  Jack looked up and caught Hannah’s eye. Hannah felt herself going red. Jack grinned at her.

  “Saw you all pedalling to school this morning, Roberts.”

  Danny snorted. “What, in that skip they call a car?”

  Jack turned to his friend. “Don’t be mean, Dan. Her dad built that car himself. It’s all made from bits that fell off his tractors. One day he’s going to put an engine in it, then they won’t have to pedal any more.”

  Hannah put her head down to hide her smile.