Una smiled at Emily. “People always believe the things they want to believe. The museum man would probably like to be visited by a Crown Prince, THAT'S why he believed the letter.”
“Not at all,” insisted Emily. “It was because I wrote that letter exactly how I thought Her Majesty would write it. I just imagined myself to be the queen, and a boy’s mother, and wrote quite naturally.”
“Right, ma bonnies,” said Hettie. “Let’s not waste any more time. It’s enough that Nanny Emily’s idea came off. Now we can get down to the real work. Let’s away to the museum first, and see what’s going on there. Una, it’s your turn to look after the bairns while we go in.”
The nannies stood at the entrance to the hall and watched the men pull a heavy, yellow canvas sheet over the fossilized brontosaurus.
“There,” said Emily. “I told you. It’s just as I said it would be. We’ll watch for a few minutes.”
Hettie looked round the hall to familiarize herself with the positioning of the scaffolding.
The hall attendant strolled over to the group.
“Sorry, ladies. You can’t come in now. We’ve got some decorations to restore.”
A sly look came over Emily’s face. “Are you expecting visitors?” she asked.
“Expecting them?” The man scowled. “Lady, we’ve just had them. Nearly cost me my job. Some nut squirted Commie peace slogans on the ceiling.”
“Paint?” queried Emily.
The man nodded, and pointed. There were several large blotches on the high roof.
“And that ain’t all,” he growled. “You should read what he wrote on the walls about the president . . .” He turned to show them, then changed his mind. “Guess you’d better go now, ladies. We got work to do. Why not come back in a week’s time? You’ll be able to see the old bront, then.” He winked at Emily. “He ain’t going anywhere.”
Emily’s face was angry. She turned towards Susanne. The young nanny shook her head, violently. “It wathn’t me, truly,” she whispered, hurriedly. “It’th jutht a horrid cointhidence.”
“Robert Bruce, General Gordon, Flora Macdonald,” said Hettie, when they had joined Una in the park again. “And maybe the MacPhish of Kingussie.”
“Who?” asked Melissa.
“Sorry,” said Hettie. “We were just thinking of people we’d like to have with us on a raid like this.”
“I’ve heard of most of them,” said Susanne. “But who’s the MacPhish of whatever-it-was?”
“A relation,” said Hettie. She didn’t explain that it was her grandfather, a red-bearded giant of a drunkard who needed a whole lorry-load of Glasgow policemen to get him out of the Kingussie Street Arms any night of the week.
Susanne thought of the statue outside the museum. “I’d like to have Theodore Roosevelt with uth. He wath brave, and audathious.”
“Not so audacious as you, expecting him to help you rob his own memorial,” laughed Una.
“The dear, late king was always my hero,” said Emily, nostalgically. “He’d have taken a dinosaur to save England. I can picture him doing it just like the scene on the back of a gold sovereign.”
“King George, a saint! How perfectly apt,” said Hettie. “And how romantic. He was a REAL gentleman.”
“Breeding, my dear,” said Emily, brushing down the front of her uniform, then straightening the cushions in her baby carriage.
“Now for some careful planning. We’ve got to handle this like a military operation,” said Hettie. She pictured herself, a clan leader, kilt-clad and armed with a heavy claymore, with her followers on the eve of Culloden. “Over the top we’ll go. Trumpets sounding the charge. Horses’ hooves thundering. Banners waving in the breeze. Wi’ the clans hovering their war cries. That’s how it’ll be.”
The four nannies looked at her in amazement. “Well, er, not quite like that,” Hettie corrected herself. “We’ll be most lady-like, and extremely discreet.”
“D’you think we should try thmuggling the bones out under our thkirts?” asked Susanne. “I once heard of a shoplifter who dressed herself as an expectant lady and filled a thpecial pair of flannel knickers with radio thets. She’d have got away with it, too, but one of them got thwitched on, and the thtore detective heard her giving out a weather forecast.”
“Humph,” said Emily. “We’re not shoplifters. And I’ve not wasted my time during the last two days. I’ve already thought of a way of getting the bones out of the museum. I’ve found a good escape route. I started working on the idea, knowing that my letter was going to make the museum paint that hall.”
“But the man in the hall thaid ...” began Susanne. “Stuff and nonsense,” said Emily. “Perhaps they ARE painting the hall because someone wrote something stupid on the walls. But I know they’d have done it, anyway. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the museum director found he couldn’t get permission to decorate the hall for his royal visitor, so he went out and wrote the rude slogans himself, in order to justify the work.”
“Quaite,” said Una’s exaggerately-refined North London voice. She glanced at her watch “My goodness, it’s four fifteen.”
Hettie checked her own timepiece. “We’ll have to hurry, or we’ll miss tea-time. Let’s go and have it at the Tavern. And we’ll talk more about the plan there.” She turned to Emily and whispered, quietly. “Remember, this is our responsibility, Nanny Emily. Partly your plan . . . but our full responsibility. We are still the senior nurse when it comes to making final decisions. Now, kindly explain your plan to us.”
Emily nodded.
They parked the perambulators in the tree-shaded open-air cafe, and sat at a nearby table.
“Tea, everybody?” asked Hettie, as a waitress neared them. “Not, of course, that we’ll get real tea, anyway. Teabag tea, ugh! I hate to think what would have happened if you’d served tea-bag tea to H.R.H. at a Royal Garden Party.”
“Coke for me, please,” said Susanne.
“Nonsense, girl. Tea ... or perhaps, as a treat, lemon-tea.”
“I want a sixty-foot length of rope,” confided Emily, her mind running through the equipment they would be needing.
“Sure, lady,” said the waitress, her face bland. “How do you British like it? Grilled, poached, or our speciality, rope suzette?”
Emily stared at the slim girl in her blue nylon dress. “Just tea, thank you,” she said, grandly. She waited until the girl had left them, then she turned to the others. “Providing Nanny Hettie agrees, then I’d like you all to get the night after tomorrow off. Meanwhile, here’s a list of the things that I . . . er, Nanny Hettie and I, want you to get. Melissa, you buy the rope. Sixty feet of mountaineering stuff. Try a sports equipment emporium. Susanne, you get two large adjustable wrenches and two big screwdrivers. And some grocer’s sacks and bags. Una, just lanterns, and torches. Four of them. And get spare batteries and bulbs. And Hettie, you and I will buy a lorry.”
“Lorry?” exploded Hettie. “Gracious me, and why would we be needing a lorry?”
“To carry the bones, of course,” smiled Emily. “And I shall drive.”
“You can drive a lorry, Nanny Emily?” Susanne looked at the old lady with surprise.
“I’ll have you know, my girl, I drove a caterpillar tractor during the war, on Lord Bramwell’s estate. I was responsible for ploughing five acres.”
“We heard about that,” said Hettie. “At the Land Army Club they said it was the longest furrow ever ploughed. Five acres it may have been, but it was in one straight line. You nearly cut off Devon and Cornwall. One furrow, from Exeter to Barnstaple. They had no electric power in the West Country for a week.”
“The throttle jammed,” Emily pouted. “I had to wait until the fuel ran out. Anyhow, I’ve borrowed a book about driving from the library, and tonight I’m going to read it. I’m quite sure that if a mere lorry driver can drive a lorry, so can I.”
“Aye, maybe,” said Hettie, doubtfully. She looked at her watch, then at the three younger nann
ies. “Time we were away. Now dinnae forget the things we told you about.”
Emily’s head wagged so vigorously in agreement that her pince-nez rattled. “Yes, and bring them round to my flat in the morning. You’d better bring some working clothes and gloves, too. It’s going to be a dusty job.”
Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack. Sam Ling peered down over the edge of his bunk, and tried to make out who was playing table-tennis in the evening steam-fog of the Tse Eih Aei headquarters.
“Van in,” said Fat Choy’s voice. “Where’s the ball?”
“In the comer,” replied Pi Wun Tun. “You’ll have to get it.”
Fat Choy groaned, and climbed out of his bunk.
“You two are the laziest sportsmen I’ve ever met,” Sam Ling muttered. “I’ve never before seen anyone playing Ping-Pong lying down.”
“It’s more relaxing,” grunted Pi Wun Tun. “And more skilful. One needs complete concentration to maintain accuracy from a prone position.” “Lotus-eaters,” said Sam Ling.
The fog swirled as the lift descended into the room, and Lui Ho stepped out. He wafted the mist away from him, flapping his hands. “Is everybody here?” he called.
“All except Nicky Po,” answered Sam Ling, swinging his legs over the side of his bunk and dropping to the ground. “He’s fishing again.”
Lui Ho’s eyes glazed. He ran a thin tongue over his lips. “Fish Manchu,” he whispered. “Lobster on a perfumed bed of snow-bleached rice. Delicate Pacific squid broiled in its own exotic ink.” The spies watched him with sad faces. “Thin slivers of pink shark meat balanced on silver skewers, and roasting over charcoal ...” Lui Ho sighed deeply. “Nicky Po is one true comrade who makes exquisite efforts to fully occupy his time and enhance our deprived diet.” Lui Ho made a visible effort to concentrate on Sam Ling’s report. “So, Second in Command to myself, what did you learn today about those female Capitalist lackeys?”
“Our plan worked . . . er, your plan. Pi Wun Tun’s efforts in the hall of the fake dragon brought immediate results. The museum authorities have begun their repainting, and the nanny-ladies have started phase two of their operation.”
“Excellent. Excellent.” Lui Ho rubbed his steam- slippery hands together. “So we act tonight?”
“No, tomorrow, if all goes well.”
“Good,” smiled Lui Ho. “See that nothing disturbs them at their work. Nothing, absolutely nothing, must go wrong with their plan.” He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out his red book. He flicked the pages.
Fat Choy sighed quietly. He wondered if, today, he was going to learn that he had too few toes.
Lui Ho cleared his throat and began to read. “Thousands upon thousands of martyrs have heroically laid down their lives for the people; let us hold their banner high and march ahead along the path crimson with their..
He was interrupted by a splashing, scuffling sound. An effluent-smeared figure staggered in through the mist, dripping eerily, its thigh-boots overflowing. It clutched a wriggling heap of mud in its arms. “Eee-ee- ee-ee,” it cried delightedly.
“A devil,” gasped Fat Choy, hiding his head under his damp blanket.
Lui Ho squinted through his moist spectacles. “Nicky Po.”
“I’ve caught one . . . I’ve caught one,” shouted the slime-covered apparition. “Tonight we will all have the most delectable and exotic repast.”
“Holy dung beetles,” moaned Lui Ho in horror. “Not another sewer alligator!”
FOUR
The sharply dressed young salesman at Happy Harry’s Used Car Lot and Rebuild Emporium flicked a minuscule speck of tobacco ash from the lapel of his shiny mohair, and peered through the one-way inspection window. Two women, children’s nurses, he guessed, from their white uniforms and lace-up shoes, were wandering around the truck section. They stopped in front of a yellow, seven-ton, long-wheelbase Dodge. He couldn’t believe it. Hardly anyone bought yellow, seven-ton, long-wheelbase Dodges in the condition of that one, especially nannies.
The short, odd-looking one, with the funny glasses and twitching nose, shook her head. The salesman split a match with his thumbnail and began picking his teeth. He saw her indicate a refrigerator truck further down the line. He bit on his piece of wood. Nurses didn’t buy refrigerator trucks, either.
He kicked open the shaky door of the timber shack that served as Happy Harry’s office, and strolled over to the two women.
“The automobiles are over there, lady.” He pointed to the battered rows of hasty repaints that were rusting away discreetly on the other side of the lot. “We got heaps of bargains, repossessions, insurance jobs, low mileage autos--last you--” he eyed the two women-- “last you a lifetime.”
“We want a vehicle for carrying things,” said the one with the pince-nez. “Not small things, but things a bit bigger than you.” She eyed the salesman. “Quite a few things, quite a bit bigger than you, my good man.”
The salesman immediately thought of “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
“You want a hearse?”
“Goodness, of course not,” snapped the other woman, in a Scots accent. “We’re not carrying dead bodies.”
“Well, not actually dead bodies,” added the older nurse. “But it has to be quite a big vehicle. And frightfully reliable, too.”
“I got a good one here,” said the salesman, pointing to a battered green Ford. “Almost brand new inside. Just wants a slight clean-up. A rare model. Only done twenty thousand miles.” He thought for a moment. “One careful operator... a doctor.”
Emily’s brows furrowed. “Then the gentleman must have been a witch doctor. It looks as though it was driven here from darkest Africa. How about that one?” She nodded toward a deep blue Chevrolet that looked like a furniture removal van. It had a split and dented fender but otherwise seemed fairly clean. “How much?”
“Three hundred dollars, lady,” said the salesman. “Best truck in the lot. Perfect working condition. It’s a steal. Broke the guy’s heart to get rid of it. He owned a pet shop. Only used it to carry animals and birds. Came in yesterday.”
“Start the motor,” said Emily, sternly.
The salesman reached in and twisted the key. To his relief, the batteries spun the engine to life. He stepped back.
“First-rate,” he said. “Good starter, excellent runner.” He looked at the two women. “It carries our usual seven-day guarantee.”
“We’ll take it,” said Hettie. “Show our friend here how it works.
“How it works?” asked the salesman.
“Yes. How does it start? And which is the gear lever?”
“You sure you ladies want a truck?”
“We’ll pay cash,” said Hettie.
“How’s that?”
“Cash, man, cash!” repeated Hettie, opening her handbag. She pulled out a roll of notes. The salesman bit his lip. He couldn’t remember the last customer of Happy Harry’s who’d even had fifty dollars in bills.
“You’ll never regret buying this truck, ladies. I’ll take you round the block, personally. Make sure you know how it handles.”
Minutes later, the truck was back outside Happy Harry’s Lot. Emily sat at the huge wheel, joyfully revving the engine, while inside the shack-like office, the salesman was collecting three hundred dollars from Hettie and handing her the vehicle documents in exchange.
The deal completed, they emerged together through the door.
“Well, good luck, ladies,” called the salesman, as Hettie settled herself next to Emily. “Don’t forget what I told you--keep her on a tight leash. She’s a mile- eater, that one.” He grinned as the old nanny trod down on the clutch pedal and crashed into gear. The wheels hopped. Then the truck bounded away.
“We’re a wee bittie nervous,” confessed Hettie.
“Nervous? Nervous? Nonsense, woman. I’m perfectly competent at driving, now.”
“Not about the driving, the bairns.” Hettie shuffled herself more comfortably on the passenger seat. “We’re just
nervous leaving them with Melissa and Susanne. We dinnae feel they’ve got enough experience to manage so many.”
“They will have by the end of the week,” promised Emily. “We’re all going to have to share each other’s children. What better way could they learn?”
“That reminds us,” said Hettie. “Last night we had an odd telephone call. A strange voice--very deep for a woman’s. Said they were the Comrade Nanny-Ladies’ Replacement Bureau. It’s some service we haven’t heard of before. Charitable ... doesn’t cost anything. Whenever a nanny needs extra time off, they send a specially-trained nurse as replacement. They said days or nights, for as long as necessary. And it’s free.”
“Thoroughly untrustworthy, I should think,” said Emily.
“Och, of course,” nodded Hettie. “As if we’d leave a child of ours with strangers.”
Emily was enjoying herself. The truck was big and powerful. She liked sitting high above the other traffic, and she began to understand how bus and lorry drivers felt, on their thrones, when they leant out of their cabs and cursed and swore at the other road users.
She glanced at the speedometer. It showed eighteen miles an hour. The transmission was howling for a gear-change. But by the time she’d remembered the correct procedure, had pressed down the clutch pedal and sought the second gear position, the truck’s speed had fallen to five miles an hour. Then it jerked, and stalled.
“Why have we stopped?” asked Hettie.
“Adjustments,” replied Emily, fiddling with the gear lever, and then repositioning her pince-nez.
She remembered the salesman’s instructions, pulled the gear stick into neutral, turned the ignition key and started all over again. This time she changed gear successfully. Three times! There was the sound of a siren alongside them. A motorcycle patrolman waved.
“He recognizes us,” said Emily.
Hettie sniffed and wriggled her shoulders primly. “We don’t think we recognize him.”
The speedcop shouted something at them. He swerved his machine in front of the truck, missing them by inches, then slowed down.
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