The Farm Beneath the Water (11 page)

“Oh, that’s a great attitude,” said Lottie. “So we should all just sit around letting terrible things happen and not even try to stop them?”

“Just get on with your life, that’s what I’m saying, instead of wasting time on pointless protests.”

“But this
is
my life,” said Hannah. “It’s my farm that’s going to be flooded, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, this is all just selfish, really, isn’t it? You wouldn’t care about the reservoir if it was on someone else’s farm.”

Hannah could think of no answer to this. She was sure in her heart that it would be wrong to flood Clayhill, even if it wasn’t her farm, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to convey what she wanted to say to Miranda.

Miranda gave her a triumphant glance. “Anyway,” she said, “I thought we were supposed to be having a rehearsal. Are we going to do this scene, or not?”

Chapter Fourteen

An Equivalent Farm

As she walked into the farmyard with Lottie on Friday afternoon, Hannah saw their land agent’s shiny black BMW parked in front of the tractor shed. She felt a sudden, sickening jolt in her stomach. A visit from the land agent was never a good thing.

“Why’s he here? The rent’s all paid until December. I checked with Dad.”

Lottie pointed towards the pigsties. “Listen.”

At first, all Hannah could hear were the grunts and snuffles of contented pigs. Gradually, though, she started to make out the sound of men’s voices.

“Maybe it’s about the reservoir,” said Lottie.

Hannah took a deep breath and clenched her fists. “Come on. Let’s find out.”

Between the yard and the pigsties was a straw-strewn path, bordered by the pig shed on the right and a thick blackthorn hedge on the left. Dad stood at the end of the path, his back to the girls, beside a wheelbarrow heaped with ripe-smelling dung. Two men were with him, also facing away from the girls. On Dad’s left stood the landlord’s agent. Hannah recognised his slicked-back dark hair and his stocky
figure in the black suit he always wore. A taller man in a grey suit stood to Dad’s right.

“In here,” whispered Hannah, ducking through a gap in the blackthorn hedge.

Lottie looked horrified. “No way!” she whispered. “My clothes will get torn to pieces.”

“There’s a really wide tunnel inside,” whispered Hannah. “I’ll hold these branches.”

Very cautiously, Lottie squeezed in through the gap Hannah had made. They crouched in the hollow hedge.

The agent held out a fat brown envelope to Dad. Dad made no move to take it.

“We sent the compensation package a fortnight ago,” said the agent, in his grating voice, “but since we’ve had no reply, I thought I’d bring you a copy, in case you hadn’t received it.”

“Oh, I received it all right.”

“Well then, you’ll have seen that we’re making you a very generous offer. You’d be a fool to turn it down.”

“A generous offer?” Dad gave a bitter laugh. “It’s all about money with you, isn’t it? I’m not interested in your compensation package. I care about this farm and I’ll see it destroyed over my dead body.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, eh?” said the agent.

Hannah gasped. Lottie was open-mouthed with outrage.

The other man shifted so the girls could see his face. Hannah drew in her breath.

“It’s him!” she whispered. “The Aqua man! Nick Constable.”

“As you know, Mr Roberts,” said Nick Constable in his oily voice, “this is Aqua’s preferred site. And the fact is that the wildlife findings at Clayhill have been much lower than at the other potential sites we’ve surveyed.”

“Oh, have they?” said Dad. “That’s very convenient for you, isn’t it? And can you show me these wildlife surveys?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Nick Constable, in a voice even smoother than before. “The raw data is still being analysed and the results are not publicly available yet.”

“No, of course they’re not.”

Hannah, squatting on the balls of her feet, leaned a bit too far forward and grabbed at a branch to keep her balance. The branch snapped and Hannah tumbled forwards. A shower of broken twigs and dead leaves fell all around her.

“Have you got rats?” asked the agent, frowning at the hedge. “I hope you’re taking appropriate measures to keep the rodents down.”

“There’s only two rodents I can see right now,” said Dad, “and I’ll be taking appropriate measures to get rid of them, don’t you worry.”

Lottie almost let out a snort of laughter. She clapped her hand over her mouth.

“The important thing,” said Nick Constable, his voice positively creamy with concern, “is to come to a genuinely positive solution for everyone concerned.”

“You mean a positive solution for you.”

Nick Constable gave Dad a patronising smile that made Hannah want to throttle him.

“I can see how difficult this is for you, Mr Roberts. I understand that you’re attached to this place.”

Dad snorted. Nick Constable moved smoothly on. “So we’re trying to make sure that you and your family are properly looked after. The compensation package we’re offering is above and beyond what we’re legally obliged to do. I’m sure you’d like to have something to pass on to your children, wouldn’t you?”

In an unsteady tone, which didn’t sound at all like Dad’s usual voice, he replied, “I’d like to pass this farm on to them.”

The agent gave a short bark of a laugh. “I’m sure you would, but we’re dealing with reality here. You know perfectly well what the situation is.”

“What situation’s that?” asked Dad, and his voice was harsh now.

The agent made an impatient noise. “Because of your late rent payments, Mr Roberts, you’re now on a short-term farm business tenancy, as you know. That’s not something you can pass on to your children. So there’s no guaranteed future for your family here, whatever you might like to think.”

Hannah felt cold inside. She hadn’t known that. She stared at Lottie. Lottie reached for her hand and squeezed it.

Nick Constable spoke again, in a tone that was clearly trying to be gentle and understanding. “The
thing is, Mr Roberts, people need water. That has to be our priority. And there’s a limited number of places we can put a reservoir. I mean, you wouldn’t want us to destroy a whole village, would you?”

“Of course I wouldn’t. That’s not the—”

“So I’m sure you can see, if you can manage to put your own feelings aside, that this place is ideal.”

“I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again,” said Dad, “this farm will be flooded over my dead body.”

Nick Constable’s voice was like clotted cream.

“Mr Roberts,” he said, “we have to face facts. This area desperately needs another reservoir. More houses are being built every year and people use a lot more water than they used to. They want power showers, sprinklers, jet washers, all those things. And as your water company, we have a statutory duty to provide that water. We’re responsible for more than six hundred thousand households, not just your family. Those are the hard facts. As a reservoir location, this place has everything going for it. It
will
happen. Clayhill
will
be flooded. And what we now need to focus on is securing the best possible outcome for you and your family.”

Paws skittered on the path and a blur of wet fur and waving tails shot past the hedge. Tess and Rags had clearly been swimming. Mud and pondweed clung to their saturated coats.

Nick Constable indicated the thick brown envelope in the agent’s hand. “I’d think very carefully before you reject this, if I were you.”

Rags skidded to a halt in front of the men and
shook herself vigorously, sending pond water spraying in all directions. Tess bounded up to the agent and planted her filthy front paws squarely on his chest.

The agent yelped and stepped backwards. “Call your dogs off me!”

“Rags, Tess, sit down,” called Dad, but he didn’t seem to be trying very hard.

Tess gave the agent’s hand an affectionate lick. He made a disgusted noise and looked around in vain for something to wipe it on. Rags nibbled at the bottom of his trouser leg.

“Will you get your dogs under control!” he yelled.

“Rags, Tess,” called Dad again, and this time the dogs knew he meant business. They sat down beside him. He ruffled the backs of their heads. “Good girls,” he murmured.

The agent swiped at his suit with his hands.

“Sooner this place is underwater the better,” he muttered.

Dad whipped his head up.

“Give me that envelope.” His voice was harsh.

The agent smiled. “I knew you’d see sense.”

He handed the envelope, now soggy and mud-spattered, to Dad.

Looking him hard in the eye, Dad ripped the envelope in half.

“What the heck are you doing?” spluttered the agent.

Dad tore each half of the compensation package in half again. He screwed the sodden pieces into a
ball and tossed it on the dung lump. Then he pushed his wheelbarrow right between the two men, forcing them to jump aside, and emptied the barrow full of manure on top of the ball of screwed-up paper. He righted the barrow and faced the men.

“I won’t have anything to do with your weaselly compensation package,” he said. “If this farm drowns, I’ll drown with it. Now, get out.”

There was a pause before Nick Constable said, “You might want to rethink your attitude before it’s too late, Mr Roberts. I don’t think you’ll have many allies. From past experience, I can tell you that I think you’ll find the village will be very supportive of Aqua’s plans.”

Dad’s voice had a hard edge to it. “You think so, do you?”

“What the reservoir project will achieve, you see,” said the agent, “is to transform this place from a third-rate farm into a first-rate leisure facility.”

Hannah gasped. Powered by the force of her fury, she burst from the hedge, scattering twigs and leaves all around her, and ran to Dad’s side.

“How dare you?” she said to the startled agent. “How dare you call this place a third-rate farm? This is a first-rate farm and we’re not going to let you destroy it.”

“And there’s loads of wildlife here,” said Lottie, emerging from the hedge. “We know that and we can prove it.”

Nick Constable’s mouth was hanging open. The agent stared into the blackthorn, as if to see how
many more children were hiding there.

“You’re all a bunch of thieves and liars,” said Hannah. “But you can’t steal from us and lie to us and get away with it. You’ll see.”

They turned and marched down the path, leaving all three men staring, speechless and motionless, after them.

Hannah was shaking as they strode to the house.

“How dare they come up here and say that stuff to Dad? Third-rate farm? How
dare
they?”

“We should make leaflets,” said Lottie. “Post them through everyone’s doors. Tell the whole village what liars they are.”

Hannah slowed down. “Yes, that would be good. But we need more evidence. All we’ve got is your dad’s bird lists and my word against theirs about the map. It’s not enough. We need evidence that this isn’t the right place to build a reservoir – that it would actually be wrong to flood this land. Otherwise people like Miranda can just say we’re being selfish.” She opened the back door and threw her school bag on the freezer. “I printed out a newspaper article I found on the Internet. About whether we actually need reservoirs at all. I’ll read it tonight.”

In the kitchen, the Beans were spreadeagled on the tiles, drawing comic strips.

“What we really need,” said Lottie, stepping over Jo, “is more evidence that there’s loads of wildlife here. To prove their surveys are wrong.”

Hannah was rummaging for biscuits in the cupboard. “It’s pretty suspicious that they’re not
showing anyone their survey results, isn’t it?”

“Totally,” said Lottie. “My dad’s seen over a hundred species of birds on this farm. And that’s because your dad hasn’t killed the soil with chemicals and he’s left all the old hedges and trees. Dad says it’s a perfect habitat. And if it’s a perfect habitat for birds, it must be the same for other wildlife. Some of the birds that live here are globally threatened, Dad told me.”

“Globally threatened?”

“Yes. They’re on the international red list. Red for danger. So they’re really rare.”

“Like the bats,” said Jo.

“What about the bats?” asked Hannah.

Jo picked up a green pencil. “Sophie thinks there might be really rare bats living here.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“She told us. Because we’re professional batologists. That’s why she’s doing this survey tonight. She said it’s an incredible habitat. It’s because of all the old oaks and hedgerows. What did she say the hedgerows were, Bean? Wildlife something.”

“Wildlife corridors,” said Sam, who was colouring a kidney bean with a purple felt-tip.

“Yes, wildlife corridors. Animals use the hedgerows to travel from the Downs through the fields into the wood. The hedgerows protect them from predators, you see. If the hedges were destroyed then the bats wouldn’t be able to roam. And they need to roam to hunt for food.”

“But Aqua said their surveys didn’t find any rare
wildlife,” said Hannah.

“Probably looking in the wrong place,” said Sam. “Like the archaeologists.”

“Those archaeologists are so stupid,” said Jo. “We keep telling them they should be digging in South Meadow. But they’re just digging by the wood.”

“Oh, and you would know,” said Lottie, “because you two are professional archaeologists, right?”

Jo gave Lottie one of her hard stares. “That’s right.”

Lottie laughed. But Hannah was frowning.

“What?” asked Lottie. “What are you thinking?”

Hannah said nothing for a minute. Then, still frowning, she looked at Lottie.

“What if,” she said slowly, “the surveyors are looking in the wrong places on
purpose
?”

Lottie’s eyes widened. “You mean, because they don’t actually
want
to find anything.”

“Exactly. Because if they
did
find rare birds or bats, they might not be allowed to flood the farm. So they’re
deliberately
not finding stuff.”