The Secret Hen House Theatre (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Apologies

Martha’s bedroom door was shut.

“Martha?” called Hannah.

No reply. Hannah tried the door. Locked.

“Martha?”

“Get lost, pigface!”

Hannah took a deep breath. It felt like preparing for an Olympic pole vault.

“Martha, I’m so sorry we accused you of telling about the theatre. We know it wasn’t you now. We should never have said it was. We were just upset that all our things were ruined.”

She waited for an answer. None came.

“Sorry, Martha,” said Lottie. “We’re sorry we said it was you and I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Still no sound.

“Go on,” whispered Lottie. “Apologise more.”

There was nothing else for it. She was going to have to grovel.

“Martha, we’re really, really sorry we accused you. We were just being mean and we shouldn’t have said it. We were really upset and we took it out on you, and we shouldn’t have. Please forgive us. Please
be in the play. It won’t be any good without you. You’re a really good actress and we need you in it. It would be such a waste if you missed it now, after all the rehearsals and everything.
Please
.”

Still nothing. Hannah looked at Lottie.

“Your turn. Grovel to her.”

Lottie scowled at her. “If you’d told me it was
you
who told Jack where the theatre was,” she hissed, “then I’d never have yelled at her.”

“I tried to, but you were too busy yelling.”

Lottie pulled a face at her and turned to the locked door. “Martha, I’m really sorry I yelled at you and accused you of telling the boys. I know you wouldn’t have done anything so horrible. I was just really upset about the costumes being destroyed. But we can get it all mended. My mum’s going to help and everything. So please be in the play. We really need to win it, you know we do, and we can’t win without you. You’re the main part.”

There was absolute silence from Martha’s bedroom. Hannah and Lottie looked at each other in despair.

“Right,” Lottie whispered. “Tell her it was your fault. Tell her you invited Jack and Danny to the play.”

“What!” hissed Hannah. “No way.”

Lottie gave her another hard stare. “If you don’t tell her, I shall.”

Hannah had thought that nothing could be worse than confessing her stupidity to Lottie.

But she was wrong.

This was worse.

Hannah faced her sister’s locked bedroom door and, knowing that at least she would never in her whole life have to do anything more humiliating than this, she told her everything.

When she finished, she stepped back from the door and waited for the shouting.

It didn’t come.

Bedsprings creaked. Hannah didn’t dare breathe. She glanced at Lottie.

The key turned. Slowly the door opened. Martha stood there, hatred in her eyes and tear stains on her cheeks.

Her voice was slow and quiet. “You evil, evil cows. You,” she said to Hannah, “are a liar and a coward, and you, Lottie Perfect, are a mean nasty bully. I hate you both.”

“Martha, I’m so sorry,” said Hannah. “I should never have let Lottie blame you, I know that. That was cowardly, you’re right. And I did a really stupid thing inviting Jack to the play. But we’re going to clear it all up before the judge comes—”

“And the judge will be so impressed with your acting,” Lottie said. “You never know, she might recommend you for a film part or something.”

“GO AWAY!” screamed Martha.

Hannah and Lottie leapt back as if they’d been jabbed with a cattle prod.

“I hate you all and I hate your stupid theatre! I’m never ever talking to you ever again!”

“But, Martha, the play’s to raise money for the
farm
,” pleaded Hannah. “If you won’t be in it, we won’t win the prize and the farm won’t get any money.”

“You won’t win a prize anyway, you freaks!” screeched Martha. “Your poxy little play in your poxy little shed is never going to win a prize. I don’t know why you’re even bothering. I hate you both, you ugly, evil pigs!”

“I hate you too!” screamed Hannah. “You’re mean and selfish and none of us will ever speak to you again!”

She turned and ran down the front stairs and out of the front door into the garden. Her head felt as if it was about to explode.

“Well, you were right,” said Lottie when she caught up. “She’ll never come back. But we can’t let her ruin it. I’ll call Alice and get her to come up now so you can rehearse her. What’s the time?”

Hannah looked at her watch and her heart started racing. “Half ten already!”

“Right,” said Lottie. “I’m going home to mend the costumes. I’ll send Alice straight over. See you as soon as I’m done.”

With a huge mental effort, Hannah pushed the image of Martha’s tearstained face out of her mind and turned her attention to the job in hand. There were the walls to scrub, the carpet to clean, the props to mend, a new princess to rehearse and … “Curtains!”

Lottie’s eyes widened. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll take the other pair down.”

“Hannah, you can’t!”

A thought struck Hannah. “No, you’re right. We can’t let Dad see them. We should have taken the others down yesterday.”

“What are we going to do, then?” asked Lottie.

“I’ll get my bedroom ones. They’re tatty but they’ll have to do. Go on, you go and mend the costumes and I’ll get the Beans and clean up the theatre. And be back by two,” she called to Lottie’s retreating back. “We need to have a proper rehearsal with your cousin.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Arrivals

By two o’clock Hannah and the Beans had swept the floors, cleaned up the dressing room, hung the new curtains, scrubbed the carpet and painted over the graffiti on the panelling. The paint was still wet but as long as they didn’t touch the back wall it would be all right. Thank goodness they hadn’t left the candlesticks and the painting in the theatre. Hannah had completely forgotten to take them away last night, but Lottie must have remembered. Hannah shuddered to think of what Danny might have done if he had got his hands on them.

Hannah took a deep breath and silently repeated the mantra that she had been chanting in her head all afternoon. We’re going to win. We have to save the farm.

She looked at the tense, earnest girl standing in front of her. Trying to get Alice to act was like rehearsing Martha at her most annoying.

Except Alice wasn’t doing it on purpose.

Hannah summoned up all her reserves of cheerfulness and energy. “OK, let’s try again. This is a really important scene, remember? It’s the first
time Esmeralda has stood up to the queen. So she’s being very brave and determined.”

Looking at the floor, shoulders hunched over, Alice muttered in a flat monotone, “
I have made up my mind, Mother. I totally refuse to marry that odious Prince Rallentando. If I cannot marry Prince John, then I will marry neither.”

She looked at Hannah hopefully. Hannah forced a smile. “Great! Well done. OK, let’s go on.”

“Hannah! Open the door!”

Hannah ran to the door and pushed it open. There was Lottie, almost hidden behind a huge bundle of costumes.

“Take some of these. My arms are killing me.”

Hannah gathered up an armload. “Have you done them all? Are they OK?” She laid them down on the queen’s bed. “Wow, they look like new.”

Lottie dumped her bundle on the bed. “On most of them we could just sew up the rips, but on some, like this –” she held up Esmeralda’s dress “– I sewed a new bodice on top of the holey one. The skirts are quite full so hopefully the mended bits won’t show too much.”

“They’re amazing,” said Hannah. “Nobody will ever notice they’ve been mended. I can’t believe you’ve done them all.”

“Well, my mum did a lot,” said Lottie. She looked around the theatre. “It’s looking great in here, too.”

Jo looked up from where she and Sam were scrubbing the auditorium floor. “This nail varnish won’t come off at all.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Hannah. “We’ll just put a chair there. It’s much more important to have a last dress rehearsal now Lottie’s here.”

“And I’ve got make-up,” said Lottie, tipping up a carrier bag on to the bed. Expensive-looking lipsticks, eyeliners, mascara and blusher rolled all over the costumes.

“You are so dead when your mum finds out.”

“She won’t find out. Not until later anyway. She’s coming up at half two, by the way, and she’s going to wait in the yard to meet the judge and bring her over here. And my dad’s arranged to come up and see your dad at two forty-five, to walk round the meadows and discuss bird habitats. But he’s actually going to bring him into the theatre. And by then the judge will be here, and your granny and all my family, and he won’t be able to do a thing.”

Lottie sounded so confident. And Hannah had been swept along by her confidence when they had first made the plan. But now…

Now she was quite sure that if Dad didn’t like what he saw when he walked into the theatre, then fifty festival judges wouldn’t have the power to stop him closing it down right there and then.

The rehearsal was terrible.

Appalling.

Quite frankly, thought Hannah, Lottie’s cousin Alice might as well be a cardboard cut-out. There’s absolutely no hope of us getting a prize now. The most we can hope for is to perform the play without
completely embarrassing ourselves.

And even that’s a lot to ask.

“Oh, well,” said Lottie, as Hannah checked that all the props were back on the table. “They say a bad dress rehearsal means a good performance.”

“Huh. I shouldn’t think whoever said that had ever seen a dress rehearsal that bad.”

“Ssshh,” said Jo. “Who’s that?”

Hannah listened.

It was Vanessa’s voice.

Hannah’s stomach flipped over. Lottie’s mum was bringing the judge into the theatre.

The front-of-house door opened. The others moved downstage, trying to peek through the curtains to get a look at the judge. But Hannah couldn’t move. She stood completely still, full of dread. Her stomach churned.

And then she really thought she was going to be sick. For, somewhere in the thicket outside the theatre, she heard the unmistakable sound of her father clearing his throat.

So the plan had worked.

And here he was.

“It’s Dad,” whispered Jo. “Oh, I hope he likes it.”

Sam’s face lit up and he gave a little jump of excitement. “Daddy’s come to see our play!”

Lottie, despite her apparent confidence, had turned white. She stood rooted to the spot, gnawing her thumbnail.

Alice didn’t look up from her script.

Hannah couldn’t breathe. What would he do
when he came in? What would he say? Oh, why had they taken this ridiculous risk? There was no need to have brought him here. He was so unobservant, they could have carried on doing plays for years and he would never have noticed. She felt sure of that now, now that he was heading up the path, now that there was absolutely no turning back.

And suddenly, like a flash of lightning in her head, she realised.

She had agreed to this plan because, deep down, she actually
wanted
him to see the play.

She wanted him to notice her.

And then the stage door squealed back on its runners. Hannah swung round and her heart stopped. There in the doorway, wearing an ancient tweed jacket lightly dusted all over with pig meal, stood her father.

Chapter Thirty

Reactions

His mouth fell open. He said nothing at all. For the first time in her life, Hannah saw her father completely, utterly lost for words.

The children stood frozen to the spot, their eyes fixed on him, waiting in petrified silence for his reaction.

And then the strangest thing happened. At the sight of Dad’s dumbstruck face, Hannah found herself desperately wanting to laugh.

Giggles welled up inside her. She bit her cheeks until they hurt. She mustn’t laugh now, she just mustn’t.

Finally he found his voice. “What’s all this then?”

Hannah couldn’t control herself any longer. Into the midst of the silence, she let out a gigantic snort.

Once she had started, she couldn’t stop. All the tensions and emotions of the last few hours came bursting out of her. She laughed until tears poured down her face. She slid down the side of the chest of drawers and doubled up on the floor, howling helplessly.

She felt Lottie grab her by the shoulders and shake
her. “Stop it, Hannah!” she hissed. “Stop it! What are you doing?”

Hannah forced herself to stop. She looked up and saw her father, still in the same position, staring down at her as if she were a strange wild animal.

There was a horrible silence. She knew she had to say something. She scrabbled to her feet.

“Sorry, Dad,” she said. It sounded so lame. “It wasn’t you. I just – I don’t know—”

He cut her off. “What’s all this? What’s going on here?”

“It’s our theatre,” said Hannah, her heart thumping. “We’ve turned the shed into our theatre.”

His eyes narrowed and his jaw set harder.

“Come and see the stage, Dad,” said Jo, tugging at his sleeve. “It’s amazing. Look, there’s a carpet and real wood panelling and everything. You have to be quiet on stage, though, cos the judge is out there.”

Hannah’s stomach did a somersault.

“Judge?” he said. “What judge?”

Everyone was frozen still, but their eyes looked to Hannah.

“Well,” she began eventually, her heart pounding so hard she thought everybody must be able to hear it, “you see, we’ve entered our play into a competition – in the Linford Arts Festival – and the judge is here to watch it. And Granny and all Lottie’s relations, too. So we thought you might want to watch as well. If you’ve got time, I mean. If you don’t mind…” Her voice faded out.

“If I don’t mind! If I don’t
mind
! How many times
have I told you not to go messing about with the farm buildings? And then you come here, behind my back…” He looked around the theatre. “Where have you put everything that belongs here?”

Hannah gulped. “In … in other sheds.”

“In other sheds! Haven’t I told you never to move anything?”

“But you weren’t using any of it,” said Hannah. “It hadn’t been used since…” She braved his fierce stare. “Since … you know…”

“It’s none of your business whether it’s been used or not. It’s a poultry shed, not a
theatre
.”

Sam, who had been clutching Hannah’s hand all this time, said in a tiny voice, “So aren’t you going to watch our play then?”

Dad made a noise like a growl as he turned around sharply. “No, I am not. Fooling around with plays! Some of us have work to do.”

Twigs snapped as he stamped his way down the path. Nobody moved.

“Well,” said Lottie eventually, “it could have been worse, I suppose. I mean, he didn’t actually ban us from doing the play, did he?”

Hannah was about to make a sarcastic retort when there came a loud “Cooeee!”

Hannah jumped like she’d touched an electric fence. Lottie’s mum was peering round the panelling, a bright smile on her face. Oh, no. Did the audience just hear all that?

“Mum!” hissed Lottie. “What are you doing on stage?”

“I just wanted to wish you the best of luck,
darlings. I’ve been talking to the judge and she seems terribly nice. Although I’ve had to separate her from
your father,
Charlotte.” She stage-whispered this to Lottie, rolling her eyes. “Honestly, he was boring the poor woman to death about bird-watching. I don’t know why he can’t appreciate that
nobody
is interested.”

Lottie scowled at her.

“Anyway, sweethearts, everybody’s here now. Except Arthur. I thought he might be with you. I sent him backstage so he could wish you luck. He must have been so impressed with what you’ve done. Is he on his way back round now?”

Nobody said anything. Perhaps Vanessa guessed the truth, because her voice rose to a new level of brightness.

“All right, darlings, we’re all rooting for you out there. I’m sure it’s going to be absolutely marvellous. Break a leg, all of you!”

She disappeared again. Still nobody moved, but Hannah sensed everyone looking to her expectantly.

She glanced at her watch and the hairs on the back of her neck rose up.

It was three o’clock.

Hannah summoned all her strength. “OK, everybody, time to go! Alice, don’t worry, you’ll be brilliant, and we’ll all help you if you get stuck. Remember, everyone, don’t look at the audience. Forget all about the judge and everything. Just
act
and enjoy it. Let’s make this the best we’ve ever done it and let’s win that prize.”