The Secret Hen House Theatre

by Helen Peters

  “Ugh, it stinks in here.”

  “Hannah burned the porridge,” said Jo. “You look like a badger with that make-up all round your eyes.”

  “Shut up, you little weirdo. I’ve got beautiful eyes. Yours look like the bottom of a murky pond.”

  The door to the dining room opened and Dad and the policewoman walked out. Neither of them looked at the children. Dad’s face was grim as he showed the policewoman to the scullery door.

  “Well, thank you very much for your time,” she said as he pulled the door open. “We’ll be in touch. And if you find anything or hear anything that might help us discover the cause of the fire, let me know straightaway. Anything at all. If this was arson, we need to find out who was responsible.”

  Arson!

  Did the police think someone had burned Dad’s barn down on purpose?

  But who on earth would do that?

  Dad walked back into the kitchen. The children avoided his gaze. Since the fire, his mood was worse than ever.

  He stopped and stood by the table.

  “Were any of you playing around with matches in that barn?”

  Now they all looked at him. “No.”

  “Are you sure? What were you all up to yesterday afternoon?”

  The Beans looked at Hannah. “We were nowhere near the barn,” she said. “And we wouldn’t do anything like that. You know we wouldn’t.”

  He grunted. “Hmm.”

  “Why are you asking?” said Hannah. “The police don’t think we did it, do they?”

  Dad frowned. “They think it must be arson. There’s no other explanation for a livestock barn going up in flames like that. They even started asking me questions, for goodness’ sake.”

  “You!” said Jo. “Why would you burn your own barn down?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I soon put them right on that score. Not much point burning down your own barn if you’re not insured. Well, must get on,” he said, heading out round the back where he kept his boots and coats. “But if you lot see or hear anything, you let me know.”

  For the first time ever, Hannah wished it wasn’t the holidays. All the noise and bustle of school might have crowded out the image that kept flashing back into her head.

  Dad, groping his way out of the burning barn, And a concrete beam, falling, falling, falling…

  As soon as she had cleaned up the breakfast stuff, she found herself heading back to the barn.

  The foul stench of chemical smoke hung in the air all over the farm. But the sun was shining and sparrows chattered in the hedgerows. It felt wrong, like laughter at a funeral.

  All that was left of the barn’s structure were the steel uprights. The sun poured down on to the scorched ground, illuminating millions of ash flecks hanging in the air. Every little breeze blew up clouds of ash and soot, which got into Hannah’s nostrils and made her cough.

  She walked through what had been the barn and out the other side. The yard out there was black too. She walked on, down the back track that cut through the fields leading to the other side of the village.

  There was a matchbox lying on the track. Hannah hated litter. She bent down and picked it up. She would put it in the bin when she got back.

  She transferred it to her other hand to put in her coat pocket.

  As she did so, something caught her eye.

  There was writing on the back.

  Hannah’s stomach scrunched itself into a tiny ball.

  Miranda, said the writing, in blue biro. And, below the name, a mobile phone number.

  Hannah dropped the matchbox as if it was burning her fingers. Her heart thumping against her chest, she stared at it lying in the dust.

  When she’d last seen that matchbox, in the bus shelter, it was full.

  Now it was empty.

  And the barn had burned down.

  She heard Dad’s words again. “Were any of you playing around with matches in that barn?”

  And she heard Jack’s voice outside the theatre. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  She looked back at the huge burned-out skeleton of the barn.

  No.

  No. Don’t be crazy. They couldn’t have done that. They wouldn’t have done that.

  They wouldn’t have gone into the barn. The packet was here, on the track. They were probably just walking along the footpath. Nowhere near the barn.

  Something else must have caused the fire. It couldn’t have been them, could it?

  Because if it was … then she was responsible. Because it was her fault that they were on the farm.

  No. It couldn’t have been them.

  She looked at the matchbox on the ground.

  It wasn’t evidence, was it? She couldn’t report that to the police. Just a stupid matchbox?

  Was it a crime? Withholding evidence?

  But she couldn’t tell the police. She couldn’t tell anyone. Because then they would know. They would know that she had invited Jack to the farm. And they would know that the whole fire was her fault.

  Hannah looked at the matchbox again. She stretched her fingers out. Withdrew them. Stretched them out again.

  Slowly she bent down, picked up the box with the tips of her fingers, put it in her coat pocket and trudged back towards the house.

  A big black BMW was parked in the farmyard. That looked familiar too, but Hannah couldn’t quite pinpoint why.

  The house was quiet. The others must all be playing in their bedrooms.

  “Hi, I’m back,” Hannah called up the stairs.

  The sitting-room door opened and Jo crept out. She pulled a face and pointed back into the room.

  “What’s wrong?” Hannah started to say, but Jo put a finger to her lips and beckoned Hannah to follow her down the hall.

  “That man’s here again,” she whispered.

  “What man?”

  “The one from the landlord. The agent.”

  “What’s he doing in the house? Who let him in?”

  “He said I had to.”

  “You had to?”

  “He’s got his clipboard.”

  Hannah marched into the sitting room. She would tell that man where to take his clipboard.

  He was standing in the middle of the room, looking from one window to the other.

  “Only fancied curtains on the one window then?” he said, not looking at Hannah.

  Hannah asked herself the question she always asked when confronted with rude adults. What would Mum say?

  “Can I help you?” she asked coldly.

  “Cup of tea would be nice,” he said without looking up from his clipboard.

  The cheek of him! She drew herself up as tall as she possibly could. “On what purpose are you here?”

  He waved a hand around the room. “Dilapidations. Got a right job on my hands too. Should have scheduled a whole day for this place.”

  Hannah didn’t know exactly what he was talking about but he was being rude about their house, that much was obvious. Every fibre in her body tingled with rage. “What does that mean – ‘Dilapidations’? And why are you in the house when Dad’s not here?”

  “It means I’m inspecting Mr Cashmore’s property to ensure it’s being properly maintained by the tenant. Routine procedure for which the tenant is obliged to provide full and free access. And long overdue, by the looks of it. Goodness knows what the last landlord was playing at. The whole place is a tip. That fire was probably a blessing in disguise. I bet that barn was piled to the rafters with junk. And as for your father –” he pronounced those words with a contempt that made Hannah really hate him – “he was sent a notification letter a week ago.”

  He walked over to the curtainless window, picked at the peeling paint and made a note on the form on his clipboard. Then he noticed the loose electrical socket underneath where the horse and dog painting usually hung. For as long as Hannah could remember, that socket had been hanging off the wall by one wobbly screw. It was fine as long as you remembered to push it hard into the wa
ll whenever you unplugged the heater.

  The agent wiggled the socket. It came off in his hand. “Strewth,” he said, and made another note. Then, leaving it dangling off the wall, he walked out of the door and started up the stairs.

  “You can’t go upstairs!” said Hannah, thinking in horror of her bedroom floor, covered with dirty clothes and whatever she’d tipped out of her school bag over the past several weeks.

  “I have a duty to inspect the whole property.” He poked the torn stair carpet with his shiny black shoe and made another note.

  “It’s not a property!” Hannah shouted. “It’s our house!” He ignored her. She followed him up the stairs, hoping he wouldn’t look upwards.

  He did, though. “What a state,” he muttered, staring at the cobwebs. Hatred surged through Hannah.

  At the top of the stairs he turned left. Oh, no. Not Dad’s bedroom. That was worse. Much, much worse. Her room was embarrassing but this would be painful.

  But he walked into Sam’s room instead.

  Sam was farming. He was pushing a model tractor with a seed drill fixed to the back of it across the worn square of carpet in the middle of the room. When the man walked in, followed by Hannah and Jo, Sam frowned and hunched lower over his tractor.

  “Got your tractor out, eh?” said the man. “I’d have thought you’d be playing with that big combine harvester over there.”

  Sam looked at him with an expression that plainly said: are you really, really stupid? “I’m just planting the spring barley. It won’t be ready to combine until August.”

  The man cleared his throat and flipped the page on his clipboard. He pulled up the corner of the carpet to inspect the splintered boards, and revealed a sheet of paper. Sam snatched it away and clutched it to his chest. Hannah knew what was on the piece of paper. Every room in the house was a field on Sam’s farm, and under every carpet was a field plan, listing the crops he had sown in that field.

  He finished snooping round Sam’s room and without a word went back out into the hall. Hannah and Jo followed him, and Sam followed them, probably to check that the agent didn’t unearth any more of his field plans.

  As the agent opened the door of Jo’s room, Hannah’s shoulders relaxed slightly. Jo was the tidy member of the family.

  But this man clearly didn’t care about the ordered desk, the animal books carefully arranged on the shelves, the perfectly straightened bedspread. He just zoomed in on the peeling paint and the bits where the plaster had crumbled.

  Hannah glanced at Jo to see her reaction but her face was blank and unreadable. Hannah felt as though she was about to combust with hatred. Every tut, every frown, every prod and poke and snide remark cut into her flesh like a knife.

  He crossed the landing to Martha’s bedroom and turned the doorknob. The door didn’t budge. He pushed at it.

  “Get lost, you fat loser!” yelled Martha.

  The man stepped back from the door. His face had turned even redder. He hesitated for a second, as if he might make another attempt, but then he withdrew his hand.

  Oh, no. It was her turn. Hannah tensed up with mortification. What on earth would he say when he saw the state of her room?

  But he turned left again, heading for the door with a clay plaque on it that Hannah had made at infant school. It was decorated with seashells, and it said “Mummy and Daddy’s room”.

  He opened the door.

  “Strewth,” he muttered again as he stepped inside.

  Jo and Sam stayed at the door. Hannah pushed past the agent into the room. If you say anything, she thought, if you dare make one snotty comment…

  Hannah saw the room through the agent’s eyes as he stared around it. Cobwebs covered the windows. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling. Cobwebs clung to a dress still on a hanger on the outside of the wardrobe. Mum’s shoes, all grey now with dust, were neatly paired up along the wall. Only Dad’s slippers, sitting next to Mum’s, and the bed, with its covers still crumpled where he had got out of it this morning, were free from dust.

  For six years the dust had silently fallen on to Mum’s possessions. Dad had not moved one single thing of hers since the day she died. And nobody was allowed into the room.

  The agent shook himself out of his trance. He moved over to the wall and prodded at the crumbling plaster. He tutted over the peeling wallpaper and picked at the paintwork. Hannah noticed a gap in the bookcase and remembered that Mum’s copy of A Handbook for Drama Clubs, which she had been reading last night, was still under her bed. She must fetch it as soon as this man left. Thank goodness Dad hadn’t spotted it was missing.

  The agent moved over to Mum’s dressing table. Half-empty perfume bottles, entwined with cobwebs and thick with dust, sat clustered by the mirror. There were still some of Mum’s hairs in the hairbrush that lay on the grimy glass top.

  He stretched out his fat red hand and picked up the bottle of Mum’s favourite perfume. A perfect circle of shiny glass was left on the dressing table.

  Hannah took the poker from the fireplace. No one was allowed to touch Mum’s stuff. No one. And certainly not a mean-minded, sweaty-faced land agent.

  “Jeez,” he said, staring at the dust-coated mirror. “Looks like someone died in here.”

  Hannah held the poker straight out in front of her and moved towards him.

  “They did. Now, put my mum’s stuff down and get out of our house.”

  He turned around and laughed. “Are you threatening me with a poker?”

  “Get out of our house!” yelled Hannah.

  Downstairs, the back door slammed.

  “Dad’s here,” shouted Jo.

  Still holding the poker in front of her, Hannah moved towards the agent. He started to back out of the room.

  “Get out. Now. Because if my dad sees you in this room, it won’t be a poker aimed at your chest. It will be a shotgun.”

  Hannah stood in the scullery doorway and looked from the agent’s shiny red face to Dad’s dry, weathered one. Like plastic and leather, she thought.

  The agent cleared his throat. “Mr Roberts, I work for Strickland and Wormwood. I’m the land agent for Mr Cashmore. You’ll have had our letters.”

  “Have you been poking about inside my house?” asked Dad.

  “I gave you notice that—”

  “When I wasn’t there? Thought you’d help yourself, did you? Muscle your way in past my children? You arrogant—”

  “He came in our bedrooms,” said Sam.

  Dad’s face turned purple. “He did what?”

  Click, clack. Click, clack. Everyone turned around to see Martha, in a sequinned vest top, spray-on hotpants and her mother’s red stilettos, wobbling down the stairs.

  Dad caught the look of repulsed fascination on the agent’s face. “Martha,” he said in the quiet, stern voice that was far more scary than his yell. “Go and put some proper clothes on.”

  Martha jutted her chin out and didn’t move.

  “Do as I say. Now.”

  Martha sighed theatrically. “Fine!”

  The agent puffed his chest out. “Mr Roberts, I have a duty to Mr Cashmore to report on the condition of—”

  “He said the house was a state,” called Martha from the landing.

  “Oh, he did, did he?”

  The agent gave a short laugh. “Oh, come on, I’m only telling the truth. It is a state. I could have it condemned before you could say Polyfilla.”

  Dad’s voice was hard as flint. “Only telling the truth. Is that so? Well, there are many truths, Mr Whatever-your-name-is, and if you had a grain of understanding in your head you’d know that. There’s the truth that there’s a bit of dust lying around in my house, and then there’s the truth that my wife isn’t here any more but we do the best we can and this is our home. So clear off and write your snivelling report, and when you’ve finished, send it to me and I’ll feed it to the pigs. Or I would, if I wasn’t afraid they’d choke on it.”

  Dad turned his back and strode into the yard. />
  The man was scarlet now. He followed Dad out. The children followed him, a few metres behind.

  “You can say what you like, Mr Roberts, but the bottom line is that if this quarter’s rent isn’t in my hands by Midsummer’s Day, you won’t have a home or a farm.”

  Hannah drew in her breath as though somebody had slapped her. Dad whipped round, his face hardened with anger. “Are you threatening me?”

  Sam gripped Hannah’s hand. “What does he mean? Why is he saying we won’t have a home or a farm?”

  “Nothing, Sammy,” murmured Hannah. She put her arm round his shoulder and drew him close. “He’s just being silly. It’s not true.”

  It can’t be true, she thought. It just can’t. You can’t throw people out of their home just because they’re late with the rent, can you?

  Can you?

  What if you can?

  A tide of panic rose up inside Hannah. She looked at Jo to try to gauge her reaction, but Jasper had trotted across the yard to greet her and Jo was crouched down with her arms around him and her curly head nestled into his wool.

  “I’m just reminding you,” said the agent, “that whatever’s happened in the past around here, there won’t be any tolerance of late rent payments under Mr Cashmore. Rumour has it you’re having a bit of trouble finding the money.”

  “Well, when rents double overnight, people do have trouble paying,” said Dad.

  “The estate isn’t a charity. Rents have been too low for too long. This is prime development land, you know.”

  “Prime development land!” Dad practically spat the words out. “Prime development land! It’s a working farm, that’s what it is.”

  And our home, thought Hannah.

  “People need houses, Mr Roberts.”

  “Of course they do, but not at the cost of destroying a farm. Once you lose a farm, it’s gone forever. People need food too, and farms feed people.”

  “And what about the animals?” cried Jo suddenly. “And the wildlife?”

  Everyone turned to look at her. She blushed and shut her mouth.

  Go on, Jo, thought Hannah. Don’t let him shut you up.

  But Jo had buried her face in Jasper’s wool again.