by Helen Peters
“Oh, surprise, surprise, yours and Hannah’s names are first,” said Martha.
“They’re in order of appearance,” said Lottie through gritted teeth. “Like it says. I’ll do extra programmes for the dress rehearsal. Since apparently we’re now having a dress rehearsal. With an audience.”
She raised her eyebrows at Hannah. Hannah smiled innocently. It had taken a bit of persuasion, but she’d known Lottie would come round in the end. Hannah had just needed to convince her that a dress rehearsal would make the play more professional. Professionalism mattered. To both of them.
There was one thing she hadn’t told Lottie, though.
One really quite major thing.
And that wasn’t very professional, was it?
“Who’s going to be in the audience?” asked Sam.
Hannah’s stomach churned. She couldn’t believe she’d invited Jack. It was such a crazy thing to have done that she could sometimes almost convince herself it hadn’t happened at all. Especially since Jack had never mentioned it since.
It was horrible, though, having a secret from Lottie. It gnawed away at Hannah’s conscience.
She couldn’t tell her, though, could she? Lottie would go crazy.
And anyway, there was no way Jack would actually come. Not after the dead duck fiasco.
“My mum’s coming,” said Lottie. “Don’t worry, my dad isn’t,” she added in response to Hannah’s look of alarm. Lottie’s parents were divorced and they didn’t always manage to be civil to each other in public. “And my mum’s going to bring your granny. And my auntie and uncle and cousins are coming.”
“But how,” asked Jo, “are all those people going to come here and park their cars and walk to the theatre without Dad finding out?”
“I’ve told them we’re keeping it a secret from your dad because we want to surprise him at the actual performance. They’re going to leave their cars at the end of the track and act like they’re just having a walk on the footpath. So as long as he’s not actually in this field, he won’t see anything suspicious.”
“And what if he is actually in this field, freak?” said Martha.
“Why isn’t Daddy coming?” asked Sam.
“Well,” Hannah said slowly, “Daddy didn’t want us to have a theatre, remember? So this is all a secret.”
“But Daddy would want to come and see our play. I want Daddy to come. It’s mean not to invite him.”
Hannah looked at Sam’s face. If only it were that simple.
“We can’t, Sammy. If he didn’t like it, he might make us stop it and then we wouldn’t be able to enter the competition and all our work would be ruined.”
Sam opened his mouth to reply.
“Right,” said Hannah quickly, turning back to her notebook. “Item two: Costumes. The members of the theatre spent a very successful afternoon buying fabric and make-up at the Scouts’ jumble sale on Saturday 6th March. Miss Lottie Perfect to report on progress with costume production.”
Lottie pulled some items from a plastic bag. “OK, this is what I did last night. I’ve made my own costumes first. Just because I know my own measurements,” she said pointedly to Martha. “So, this is for the maid.”
She held it up. The maid’s blouse had originally been a white school shirt. Lottie had chopped off the collar and cuffs and sewn on lacy ones instead, made from a net curtain. She had made a white apron from an old sheet and altered a long black skirt from the jumble sale.
“That’s great,” said Hannah.
The Beans looked impressed.
“Gross,” said Martha.
“I’m going to wear black trousers underneath, then all I have to do is whip off the skirt and apron, put on a black jacket and I’m Prince John. His costume’s very plain because he’s modest and hates show-offs – so it will contrast with Prince Rallentando’s, which will be really gaudy. I’m going to use that satin jacket we got yesterday and sew on loads of lace – actually, you can do that, Hannah; it’ll be quite simple.”
“It will have to be, if Hannah can manage it,” said Martha.
“Now, I’ll need you to try this one on, Martha.” Lottie reached into her bag and took out a costume. Hannah recognised some of the things they had found at the jumble sale. The bodice was the top half of a swirly brown and pink print dress. The sleeves were shiny orange curtain fabric and the long skirt was made from a flowery bedspread on to which Lottie had sewn several large green bows.
“Ugh!” said Martha. “That is disgusting!”
“It’s brilliant,” said Hannah. “Perfect for Esmeralda.”
“What do you mean, perfect for me?” snapped Martha. “Are you calling me ugly? Have you looked in a mirror lately? Do you know what your face looks like? Like a mouldy apple with a maggot sticking out of it for a nose.”
“She wasn’t calling you ugly,” said Lottie. “This dress is meant to be over the top. The whole point is that the queen has terrible taste and she forces Esmeralda to wear it. The one she chooses herself will be really nice.”
“Where is it? Show me.”
“I haven’t finished it yet.”
“Well, it’d better not be skanky like this one. Or there’s no way I’m going to be in your poxy play. People might think I chose it.”
“On the notice board in the dressing room,” continued Lottie, “there’s a list of times for all members of the cast to report to me so that I can take their measurements.”
“Thank you, Lottie,” said Hannah. “Now, item three: Rehearsals. As you all know, the dress rehearsal is a week from today, so everybody should be off the book from now on.”
“Off the what?”
“Martha, I explained yesterday. It means no scripts. Everyone should have learned their lines. Right, let’s go from Esmeralda’s first entrance.”
“OK then, Jo, I need to do your measurements,” said Lottie, moving backstage.
“Ready, Martha?” said Hannah.
Martha ignored her.
“Martha!”
Martha kept her eyes on her magazine. “What?”
“We’re going from your entrance. You need to be in the wings, stage left.”
Martha sighed, picked up her script and dragged herself into the wings.
“I said stage left.”
“I am on the left.”
“No, stage left means left from the actors’ point of view, remember? So you need to be on the other side.”
Hannah positioned herself in a queenly manner on top of a pile of crates that was going to be her four-poster bed. “Come in, Esmeralda, my dear,” she said in her most regal voice.
Martha held the script up in front of her face and spoke her lines in a flat, halting monotone, like a five-year-old struggling with an Early Reader.
“You … wanted … to … see … me … Mama?”
“Why are you doing that?” asked Hannah.
Martha made her eyes wide and innocent. “Doing what?”
“Pretending you can’t read. Or act. When I know you can do both really well. And why are you still reading from your script when you’re meant to have learned your lines?”
“This isn’t school, you know! You’re not my teacher. I don’t have to do anything you say, so shut up.”
Hannah took another deep breath. “Let’s start again.” She changed her voice back to the queen’s.
“Come in, Esmeralda, my dear.”
“YouwantedtoseemeMama?”
“Martha!”
“What? You said it was too slow before. I was doing it faster.”
Hannah decided to carry on.
“In a year, on your sixteenth birthday, you will be married to a prince, who, at this moment, my faithful servants are setting out to find.”
“But, Mama, Iwanttochoosemyhusbandbymyself.”
“Martha!! We’ve got one week! Will you just do it properly!”
Martha raised her eyebrows and drew herself up to her full height. “Are you being horrible to me? Because if
you are, I’m just going to tell Dad all about your little secret. Is that what you want?”
Hannah looked at her. For the first time in her life, Martha held all the cards, and she was loving every minute of it.
“Let’s carry on, shall we?” said Hannah, making her voice as calm as she could. “Silence, child! Before your beloved father died…” Hannah paused and bowed her head. “We both decided what would be best for you. You will obey me or you are disregarding his wishes. Do you understand, Esmeralda?”
Martha looked at Hannah demurely, the picture of obedience. She moved her lips but no sound came out.
“That was your cue, Martha.”
“I said my line.”
“You didn’t say it, you mouthed it.”
“You don’t like my voice, so you don’t have to listen to it. Now you can’t complain it’s too fast or too slow.”
Hannah put her head in her hands. “Martha, what is your problem?”
“My problem! What is your problem?”
“What do you mean?” said Hannah.
“Isn’t it enough for you that you boss me around every minute of the day at home, without bossing me around in the stupid play too?”
“Oh, is that it?” Hannah stared at Martha. And suddenly a light flicked on in her head. “Martha, who’s the main character in Cinderella?”
“Cinderella, stupid.”
“Exactly. Not the bossy stepmother, even though she has more lines. And it’s the same in this play. Esmeralda is the main character. The play is her story, and in the end she gets the prince she wants, doesn’t she? She stands up to her mother – only she doesn’t do it by screaming and shouting. She’s cleverer than that. You’ve got the main part in this play. But, you know what, if you want to swap and play the queen instead, that’s fine. You’ll just have a lot more lines to learn and a really gaudy dress to wear.”
Martha stuck her chin out and looked away.
“Well? What’s it going to be, Martha? Beautiful princess or ugly old queen? It’s completely up to you.”
By four o’clock they had been through the whole play twice and Hannah called an end to rehearsals.
“Right,” she said to Lottie as the others left, “shall we finish this panelling?”
Using bits of old doors, planks and crates that they had found around the yard, Hannah and Lottie had built a wooden wall for the back of the stage. On the reverse side there were nails and strips of wood all over the place, but from the stage it looked quite solid and smooth. Now they had to nail a grid of thin strips of wood on to it to create a panelling effect. And finally, they were going to paint it with a can of brown paint Lottie had found in her dad’s garage.
“Then the only thing that isn’t right will be the floor,” said Hannah. “We really need a rug.”
“And we need some ornaments for the dressing table,” said Lottie. “And we should hang a picture on the panelling. There’s always old oil paintings on the panelling.” Lottie visited a lot of stately homes with her mum.
Hannah looked at her and raised her eyebrows. “I know where we could get one of those.”
Lottie read her face. “Oh, no. No way. Don’t even think about it.”
Hannah was already pulling back the front-of-house door. “Come on! It’ll take two of us to carry it.”
“Hannah! Don’t be ridiculous! Come back!”
But Hannah was halfway down the secret path. “Come on. It’ll be perfect!”
Hannah stretched up to the grimy picture rail in the sitting room. “Imagine how great this will look in the queen’s bedroom.” She gripped the sides of the frame.
“Hannah!” said Lottie, out of breath from the chase. “We can’t take this to the theatre. Your dad’ll go crazy!”
“He’ll never notice it’s gone,” said Hannah. “We’ll put it back straight after the competition.”
She lifted the horse and dog painting off its hook. The string had been hanging there so long that it stayed as stiff as wire in its upside-down v-shape.
“Come on, take the other end.”
Lottie groaned, but she picked up the other end of the frame.
“Tell you what,” said Hannah as they carried the painting through to the hall. “I’ll bring those silver candlesticks out later too. They’ll look amazing on the queen’s dressing table. I’ll put new candles in them.”
“Hannah, you nutter, you cannot—”
The back door rattled open. Both girls froze.
“Tess! Stay outside, you bad dog.”
Lottie’s eyes gleamed in terror. “Your dad!” she whispered. “Oh, my goodness, you’re going to get us killed.”
“Hannah!” called Dad.
Hannah propped the picture against a chair. She grabbed a moth-eaten picnic rug from the hall cupboard and thrust it at Lottie, who looked like she had been turned to stone. “Cover it up,” she hissed.
Hannah walked innocently into the kitchen. “Yes?”
Dad was standing in the doorway in his wellies.
“Get some antibiotics from the fridge, would you, Hannah?”
“What’s up?”
“Calf with pneumonia in the barn.”
Hannah went back through the hall.
“What’s going on?” mouthed Lottie.
“Ssshh,” said Hannah. She found the box of antibiotics and took it to her father. As casually as she could, she walked back into the hall. “Through the garden,” she whispered to Lottie. “He’s going out the other way.”
“I was nearly sick waiting for you,” said Lottie, sidestepping a cowpat as they scurried across the yard. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
“It was worth it, though,” said Hannah. “Won’t it look great?”
Hannah made Dad’s cocoa at nine o’clock as usual, but he still hadn’t come in. She pulled her coat and boots on and stepped out into the farmyard.
The farm was cloaked in velvet darkness and the sky was dotted all over with tiny stars. The only sound was the occasional muffled grunt of a well-fed pig. As Hannah breathed in the silence, a barn owl swooped, feather-light, across the yard.
A dim glow came from the back barn. As Hannah approached, she heard the low murmur of her father’s voice. She tiptoed round behind the machinery to the far end of the barn, where a pen of calves was housed. One calf, bolder than the others, wandered over to the bars and sniffed at Hannah’s hand. She stroked its velvet back and let it lick her fingers with its sandpaper tongue.
The light came from an old-fashioned lantern strung over a beam with baler twine. It hung above a small enclosure made of straw bales. “There you are then,” Dad was saying to the sick calf. He heaved a bale from the stack at the side of the barn and added it to the straw wall. “Soon have you warm as toast. Don’t want any draughts, do we? We’ll put a few more bales around you here, get you nice and comfortable. Good girl, well done. I’m just going to see to the cows.”
He picked up a bucket in each hand, straightened up and saw Hannah. A look of fear crossed his face.
“What’s up? Something wrong?”
“No, no,” said Hannah quickly. “Everyone’s fine. Your cocoa’s ready.”
“Righty-ho. I’m just finishing here.” He moved towards the cows’ winter barn.
All of a sudden Hannah felt she had to talk to him.
She forced the words out through the tightness in her throat. “Lottie says the landlord wants to demolish the farm to build houses on. He can’t do that, can he?”
Her father gave a short laugh, like a bark.
“Don’t you worry about that. Cashmore’s a greedy money-grabbing snake, but as long as we pay the rent every quarter, he can’t lay a finger on this place.”
“But how will you—”
“See that old thresher over there?” He pointed to an ancient, ramshackle machine at the side of the barn. It was so old that it was built entirely from wood, even the wheels. It had once been salmon-pink but its peeling paint had faded to a pale past
el.
“What about it?”
“Bloke who bought the Field Marshall wants the thresher as well. They’re fetching it in a couple of weeks. Saves insuring it too. Costs a fortune to insure these old machines. So next quarter’s rent’s all covered. Don’t you worry for a second, all right?”
“All right,” said Hannah. “Night, Dad.”
“Goodnight.”
Hannah walked back across the yard with a spring in her step. So Dad did have it all sorted.
She could hear him talking to the cows. “Hello, Clover. There you go, old girl. Plenty there to keep you going. All right, Bluebell? Good girl, here you are.”
He gave each of his cows a name on the day they were born. All the names were chalked up on a board in the milking parlour, and he knew every one of them.
She should just have trusted him. There was no way Dad would ever let anything happen to the farm.
Hannah and Lottie spent every spare minute of the next week working on scenery and costumes. On Monday after school they made the queen’s four-poster bed. They tied fence posts to the corners of the chicken crates and cut up a big purple bedspread. Draped in purple damask, with matching curtains at each corner tied with gold ribbon, the bed really did look fit for a queen.
On Tuesday they painted a woodwormy old blanket box. Hannah had found it on the log pile and thought it would make a perfect window seat. Above it they fixed an old sash window they had found in a shed.
“That looks fantastic,” said Lottie. “And I’ve got a piece of blue fabric at home – we’ll hang that behind the window for the sky.”
On Wednesday Hannah led Lottie backstage and unveiled a surprise. “See,” she said, gesturing with a sweep of her arm to a sawn-off broom handle, suspended horizontally from the ceiling with baler twine. “Our costume rail. And the genius of it is, it doesn’t take up any floor space. When we don’t need to use it, we won’t even know it’s there.”
As she had promised, Hannah cycled to Lottie’s house every evening after she had put Sam to bed, and as the week went on the rail started filling up with costumes, each labelled, as Mum’s theatre books advised, with the character’s name and the scenes in which they were to be worn.
