The Farm Beneath the Water (12 page)

“Do you really think they’d do that?”

“Of course they would. We know they’ve lied about the map, don’t we? It’s exactly what they’d do.”

“But even if they are, how could we prove it?”

“We have to get evidence. We know some stuff already. All your dad’s bird surveys are written down. And Sophie’s doing a bat survey tonight. That’s the kind of evidence we need. So that people know what’s really here. Not just – what did Nick
Constable call it? – an unattractive, poor-quality, poorly maintained farm. Horrible man.”

“Is that what he said?” asked Sam.

“Oh, don’t be upset, Sammy. He’s just a nasty liar.”

“Sounds like he was talking about himself,” said Jo. “He looked very unattractive and poor-quality to me.”

“Exactly,” said Hannah. “And what we need now is the evidence to prove it.”

Chapter Fifteen

The Sunset Survey

As Hannah said goodbye to Lottie in the yard after tea, a little red hatchback came bumping down the track. Hannah remembered Sophie’s last visit and guilt washed over her.

The Beans tumbled into the yard, both talking at once.

“Where’s your equipment?” asked Jo as Sophie opened the car door.

“Are you going to be staying all night?” asked Sam. “Can we stay up with you?”

“Hello, everyone,” said Sophie, smiling as she got out of the car. “Well, not
all
night. I’m going to do a sunset-emergence survey of the colony – that’s to count the bats leaving the attic – and then I’ll be going home for some sleep, but I’ll be back before dawn to do a sunrise-re-entry survey.”

Now that Hannah knew Sophie wasn’t a potential stepmother, she thought what a nice face she had. Sophie smiled at her and she felt even more guilty.

“So you’re not staying all night?” asked Sam, clearly disappointed.

“No. Sorry. But I do have some very cool equipment.”

She opened the boot and took out a large plastic box. “Come into the garden and I’ll show you everything.” She looked them up and down. “First, though, we’re going to be in the garden for a good couple of hours, so you’ll need to wear warm clothes. As soon as the sun goes down, it’ll get pretty nippy.”

“I’d better get home,” said Lottie. “I’d love to help, but my mum’s expecting me. I really hope you find rare bats.”

Hannah gave Lottie a meaningful look. She knew the real reason Lottie was leaving. Lottie wasn’t at all keen on flying mammals.

“Right, let’s get set up,” said Sophie. “We need to start fifteen minutes before sunset.”

Martha was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a magazine.

“Do you want to do the bat survey, Martha?” asked Sam. “We’re going to count the bats flying out of the attic.”

Martha looked at Sam as though he’d just invited her to feast on tarantulas.

“Are you
mad
? Bats are evil.”

“Bats are amazing,” said Jo. “I’ve been reading about them. Their wings are actually hands they’ve adapted for flying, so they’re really flexible.”

“Really?” said Hannah.

“Yep. They’re even better at flying than birds.”

Martha shuddered. “Hands turned into wings? That’s like a horror film.”

“So cool,” said Sam. “If I could choose a superpower, it would definitely be flying.”

“Bats are gross. They’re just flying mice.”

“Actually,” said Jo, “they’re more closely related to humans than to mice.”

Martha snorted. “To you, maybe. Not to me.”

“And they can live up to thirty years,” said Jo. “Mice only live about two years.”

“Thirty-year-old bats?” shrieked Martha. “That is
so
disgusting.” She shuddered. “Imagine a thirty-year-old bat tangled in your hair.”

“There’s no way a bat would get tangled in your hair,” said Jo. “If they can sense a teeny-tiny insect in pitch darkness, they’re hardly going to miss your massive head, are they?”

“Whatever,” said Martha, turning back to the problem page. “Have fun with the rodents, weirdos.”

“Shall I catch one for you?” asked Jo. “A long-eared one. It would be such a cute pet.”

“Get lost,” said Martha, head down in her magazine.

The others went outside. Dad was standing by the garden gate talking to Sophie.

“Are you going to be helping with the bat survey, too?” asked Sam.

“I certainly am,” said Dad. “Should be very interesting.”

Sophie smiled round at them all. “So, what I propose is that we split into two groups and stand at opposite corners of the house. That way, we should
be able to see most of the bats flying out. But don’t worry if you can’t count every one. I’ll be doing several more surveys. This is just to give us an idea of how many bats roost here.”

She crouched down and opened her box. The Beans peered in. Sophie took out a pair of headphones plugged into something that looked like a TV remote control. She gave it to Jo.

“That’s for you two.” She handed a clipboard to Sam. “You can take turns with the bat detector and the clipboard.”

Jo looked at the black object in her hand. “Is this really a bat detector? How does it work? Has it got a camera?”

“I’ll show you how to use it. I’ve got one for your dad and Hannah to share, too. But actually your most important piece of equipment is the clipboard.” She handed one to Hannah. “I’d like you to make a note of the time you see the first bat, and then record, using a tally chart, how many bats you see. Arthur, if you and Hannah could station yourselves at the opposite corner of the house, we’ll cover this side. Oh, one more thing.”

She handed Hannah and Jo a sheet of paper each. It had six different silhouettes of bats on it, with information about their flight patterns. “That might help you identify the species. Write it down if you think you know what species it is, but don’t worry too much about it. It’s the kind of thing that takes practice. Same with interpreting the calls on the bat detector. But it’s fun to have a go.”

The bat detectors had two dials on the front. Sophie explained that one was a volume dial and one was a frequency dial.

“It’s actually a myth that bats are blind. They can see nearly as well as we can. But because they fly and hunt for insects in the dark, they use a high-frequency system called echolocation. They make calls as they fly and they listen to the returning echoes to build up a sound map of their surroundings. The bat can tell how far away something is by how long it takes for the sound to return to it.”

“That’s so clever,” said Jo.

“We can’t normally hear their calls because they’re too high for the human ear. But the bat detector catches them and translates them instantly to a frequency we can hear.”

“So we’ll be able to hear the bat calls live?” asked Hannah.

“That’s right. And the bat detector also records the calls, which can be very useful. This one can pick up most bats within about ten metres. Now, different species of bat echolocate at different frequencies, but to make it simple, I’ve tuned your detectors to the frequency at which you can hear the most common bat, the pipistrelle. Its echolocation call is a kind of snapping sound.”

She looked at the pink-tinged sky. “OK, sunset’s in about fifteen minutes. This is a waiting game, I’m afraid. We may not see any bats until half an hour after sunset, but we want the survey to be as accurate as possible, so we need to be prepared.”

“Do we have to be completely silent?” asked Hannah.

“You can talk quietly. Just no loud noises if possible. Good luck! We’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

Hannah and Dad made their way to the far corner of the house, by the orchard and the farmyard.

“Do you want the clipboard or the bat detector?” Hannah asked Dad.

“Whichever you like.”

Curious to hear what a bat might sound like, Hannah took the detector and placed the headphones on her ears. But then she realised there was no need to put them on until the first bats emerged. She should take this opportunity to talk to Dad.

“Lottie and I were thinking,” she began, “that maybe we could make leaflets about the wildlife on the farm and deliver them round the village. So people know what will be lost if they flood the farm. We don’t trust Aqua’s surveys, you see. We thought people should know what Lottie’s dad’s seen in his bird surveys. And put other things in, too, like the age of the trees, that sort of stuff.”

He nodded. “Good idea. Once we’ve got these bat results.”

“Do you know when that will be?”

He shook his head. “Sophie’s putting a lot of survey equipment in the loft and in some of the oak trees. Depends how long it takes her to go through everything once she’s got the recordings, I suppose.” He started rummaging in the inside pocket of his
jacket. “Right, better find a decent pen, if we’re going to record these bats.”

Hannah sighed. It looked as though the process of fighting Aqua’s plans might take a very long time.

The last trace of the sun sank behind the hills. The sky was reddish pink above the blue-grey outline of the Downs. The landscape had flattened in the evening light, so that only the shape of things was left.

Hannah was starting to think that maybe they wouldn’t see anything at all when Dad said softly, “There it is.”

Hannah followed his gaze just in time to see the black silhouette of a bat flutter into the orchard. Dad looked at his watch and wrote on the clipboard, “First bat 7.36pm. Pipistrelle.”

Hannah looked at him in surprise. “How can you tell?”

“Well, it’s the right shape. And see the way it flies, with those downward swoops and turns. Now that one’s come out, there’ll be plenty more.”

Hannah put the headphones on. A couple of minutes later, another black creature fluttered past them. Through her headphones, Hannah heard the most extraordinary series of loud popping noises. She turned to Dad, lit up with excitement. “I can hear it echolocating!” she whispered.

Dad looked just as excited as she felt. “Really?”

Hannah slipped the headphones off and handed him the bat detector, swapping it for the clipboard. Just as she took the clipboard, another bat flew past,
and then, immediately after, another and another. She added the lines to the tally chart and then looked at Dad. His face as he listened through the headphones was lit up with excitement. He caught Hannah’s eye and grinned like a little boy. “Incredible sounds they make,” he murmured. “Completely different from birds. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

Painted across the pale-blue sky were deep red-pink streaks and strips of watery grey clouds. As the bats continued to emerge, the red faded like a fire dying down to its last embers, leaving only the domed silhouettes of the oaks standing tall above the hedgerows. Birds chattered in the orchard. Rooks flew out of the wood. A dog barked. From the main road came the distant hum of traffic. And from under the overlapping roof tiles, bats continued to fly out of the attic.

Dad handed the headphones back to Hannah and she put them on. They were filled with popping, clicking, lip-smacking, tocking sounds, which meant nothing to her but were enabling the bats to navigate the world so accurately that they could hunt down and eat the tiniest insect on the wing. It was as though she had been handed a key to the world of night.

The sky was grey now. A full moon, huge and white, hung over the wood. The sky around it glowed silvery-gold. From close by came the screech of a little owl and, from further away, the
toowit-toowoo
of a tawny.

After two hours, just as Hannah’s toes were beginning to freeze and she was desperately wishing
she’d worn gloves, Sophie appeared around the corner of the house. She smiled at them.

“How long ago did you see your last bat?”

Hannah glanced at the clipboard. “About twenty minutes ago.”

“Good,” said Sophie. “Us, too. That’s all of them, then.”

“How many did you see?” asked Hannah.

“Shall we go into the kitchen and compare notes?”

Hannah imagined pulling off her boots and resting her feet on the warm Aga.

“Ooh, yes. I’ll make hot chocolate. There might even be biscuits, if Martha hasn’t eaten them all.”

It was bliss to be sitting in the cosy kitchen, warming her hands around a mug of hot chocolate. The Beans were huddled over their tally chart.

“We saw thirty-seven bats,” said Sam. “How many did you see?”

Hannah had already tallied her figures. “Twenty-nine.” She looked at Sophie. “Is that good?”

Sophie smiled. “That’s not just good, it’s really impressive.”

“Are any of them rare, though? Rare enough to stop the reservoir?”

“Sophie doesn’t know yet,” said Jo importantly.

“I was telling Jo and Sam,” said Sophie, “that seventeen species of bat breed in this country. The six on the sheet I gave you are the most common. And from what I’ve seen I think you have all of them here.”

“So which are the rare ones?”

“The rarest are the Bechstein’s and the barbastelle. The Bechstein’s is one of the rarest mammals in the country. And the barbastelle is exceptionally rare, too – there may be as few as five colonies in England.”

“And do we have any of those?”

“Well, they both roost in trees, not houses. The barbastelle likes woods with meadows around it, and the Bechstein’s particularly likes old oaks. So that’s why I’m surveying the trees and woods as well as the house.”

“And have you found any?” Honestly, thought Hannah, some people take forever to get to the point.

“Not yet. But they’re both really tricky to detect with bat detectors. The Bechstein’s echolocation calls are very quiet, and the barbastelle is easily missed, too, because its calls aren’t very distinct and they’re often masked by the louder and more repeated calls of other species. So you have to listen to your recordings really carefully.”

Hannah remembered her conversation with Lottie earlier.

“So it would be easy for a survey to miss those bats?”

Sophie nodded. “Very easy.”

“And if we had those species, would Aqua have to stop the reservoir?”