by R. A. Spratt
‘Boris, could you lift the dishwasher please?’ asked Samantha.
Boris lifted the dishwasher and Samantha picked up the jar containing the one maraschino cherry. She turned the jar upside down, poked the cherry with a fork and it fell out onto her hand.
‘You’re a genius!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.
‘Here you are,’ said Samantha, handing the cherry to her nanny. ‘For your cake.’
Nanny Piggins picked up the cherry and popped it in her mouth. ‘Oh, I ate that hours ago. I got so cross about my trotter being trapped, I ate the cake to control my temper.’
‘What shall we do now?’ asked Derrick.
‘How about we make another blackforest cherry cake, this time without the cherries!’ said Nanny Piggins, leaping to her feet. But as she picked up her wooden spoon she dropped it, crying out, ‘Ow!’
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Boris.
‘I think I’ve sprained my wrist!’ cried Nanny Piggins. ‘How did that happen?’
‘Perhaps it had something to do with your trying to yank your trotter out of a cherry jar,’ suggested Derrick politely.
‘Or putting a dishwasher on your hand,’ added Samantha.
‘Or having a ten-foot-tall bear pull on you while you had a dishwasher on your hand,’ added Michael.
‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I suppose it could have been that.’
‘Quick,’ said Boris. ‘Medicinal ice-cream!’
‘Good idea!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Chocolate-chip please.’
‘Not for eating,’ said Boris. ‘For your hand, to reduce the swelling.’
‘Can’t my mouth have some too?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘To reduce the swelling from the inside out?’
So they all sat around and ate ice-cream to help reduce the swelling of Nanny Piggins’ trotter, proving that a few thousand calories is a very effective anaesthetic.
‘Okay, what are we going to do now?’ said Nanny Piggins as she licked the last smear from the bottom of the ice-cream container.
‘We’re getting our photos taken tomorrow at school, and you were going to give me a haircut,’ Samantha reminded her.
‘But I’ve sprained my scissor hand,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t think I can do it. The ice-cream has dulled the pain and reduced the swelling, but I still don’t have full movement in my trotter.’
‘Oh,’ said Samantha, trying hard to be brave. ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter. My hair looks all right.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘No child of mine will look just – “all right”. If your photograph is going to be taken, you need to look fabulous.’
‘She does realise technically we’re not her children?’ Derrick whispered to Boris.
‘On some level I think she does,’ admitted Boris, ‘but it’s not for want of yelling at the people at the adoption office.’
‘You will get a haircut,’ declared Nanny Piggins, ‘and at the very finest establishment in town. Michael, get on the phone and ring Nanny Anne.’
‘Why?’ asked Michael.
‘I want to find out where she gets her hair cut,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘so we can be sure that we don’t go there. We don’t want you to come away looking like a plastic doll.’
And so, after half an hour of frantic research that involved the children ringing all their friends to find out where they got their haircuts, then Nanny Piggins ringing all these hair salons and quizzing them on the latest hair fashions, they made an appointment and set out.
The boys and Boris came along too because there was a park just up the road from the salon, so they planned to play a good game of guerrilla warfare while Nanny Piggins and Samantha were occupied. (Boris was very good at playing guerrilla warfare because back in his circus days he’d had a dear friend called Harold who was a gorilla. Harold had taught him all the tactics, the main one being to climb a tree when no-one is looking, then jump on your enemy’s head. And let me tell you, if a 700 kilogram bear drops on your head, they almost always win.)
When they entered the salon, Nanny Piggins was taken aback. It was a sterile-looking place with all the furnishing being black, white or metallic. But it was the hairdressers themselves who caught the eye. If you looked at their faces they looked like perfectly ordinary people that you might see on the bus. But it was hard to notice their faces when they had such extraordinary hair.
One woman had long bright purple hair on one side of her head sticking out in sharp spikes, while on the other side her head was shaven completely bald. Another woman had normal-coloured hair but it was so puffed up, tangled and messy she looked like she had been pulled through a hedge backwards. (Nanny Piggins double-checked the back of her head to see if there were any birds’ nests that needed liberating.) And there was a man whose head was entirely shaved bald and his scalp was so shiny, Nanny Piggins and Samantha kept being blinded as he moved about and light glinted off it.
‘That man could use his head to signal aeroplanes,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Perhaps he does,’ said Samantha.
‘Can I help you?’ said a surly young woman who looked like helping anybody was the last thing she would ever willingly do.
‘We have an appointment booked under the name Green,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘This way,’ said the surly young woman. ‘I’ll wash your hair.’
‘No need,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She washed it this morning.’
‘We always wash hair first. It needs to be wet to cut it,’ said the woman.
‘Haven’t you got a bucket of water you can tip over her head?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘It would be much quicker.’
‘The shampoo is included in the price,’ said the surly woman, becoming even more surly.
‘What a cheek!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Forcing someone to pay to have their hair washed when it’s already clean.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Samantha.
‘No it’s not,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Apart from anything else, we don’t have time to faff about. The boys are playing guerrilla warfare up the road, and I don’t want us to miss out entirely.’
Samantha did not want to create a scene. She hated scenes. And scenes that involved Nanny Piggins often devolved into violence.
‘Why don’t you go and play with the boys?’ suggested Samantha. ‘I’ll be all right here on my own.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t want to come back and find you’ve been kidnapped.’
‘I’ve never heard of a hairdresser kidnapping a client before,’ said Samantha.
‘No,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘But are you entirely sure these people are hairdressers. They look more like circus folk to me. A nose ring and a few tattoos and they would be indistinguishable from your average freak show attraction.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Samantha.
And so Nanny Piggins left after drawing several diagrams, showing several cut-out pictures from fashion magazines and leaving detailed written instructions with the hairdresser explaining how she wanted Samantha to look when she got back.
Nanny Piggins and the boys had a wonderful time at the park. First Nanny Piggins caught Derrick, Michael and Boris and tied them up with vines. But then when her attention was distracted by a passing ice-cream van, they escaped and threw her in a muddy puddle. Then she chased them around the park several times pretending to be a mud monster.
These were just the sort of spirited games which made 45 minutes seem like 3 seconds. So Nanny Piggins was soon looking at her watch and saying, ‘We’d better go and pick Samantha up. Her haircut should be finished by now.’
But things did not go to plan. When they arrived at the hair salon Nanny Piggins started to panic.
‘She has been kidnapped!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘I knew these people looked like carnies. They’ve shipped her off to Madagascar to learn tumbling!’
‘Nanny Piggins!’ cried a voice. ‘It’s all right. I’m over here.’
&nb
sp; Nanny Piggins froze. ‘That sounded like Samantha but I don’t see her anywhere.’
‘Over here.’
Nanny Piggins, Boris and the boys saw an arm waving at them. But the person who waved the arm was unrecognisable. It looked like a girl who had been sleeping rough in a ditch full of motor oil.
‘Who are you?’ demanded Nanny Piggins, ‘and how did you learn to mimic Samantha’s voice?’
‘It’s me,’ said the voice. ‘I’m Samantha.’
Nanny Piggins squinted and tilted her head first to one side, then the other. Then she gave the girl a good hard pinch.
‘Ow!’ said Samantha.
‘It is Samantha!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘I’d know that “ow” anywhere. You poor girl! What have they done to you?!’
‘They cut it, then they put in a treatment, then they styled it,’ said Samantha.
‘Why didn’t you stop them?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Whoever did this to you was clearly deranged.’
‘That’s why I didn’t stop them,’ said Samantha. ‘She was deranged and holding pointy scissors so I didn’t want to make her angry.’
‘You poor girl,’ said Nanny Piggins, clutching the unrecognisable Samantha to her chest. ‘Don’t worry, someone will pay for this terrible crime that has been committed against your hair follicles.’
After Nanny Piggins had chased the hairdressers around their salon several times while yelling denouncements about their vandalisation of a poor girl’s head, the hairdressers broke down in tears and confessed.
‘We’ve been giving people the most dreadful haircuts we could think of for years,’ admitted the sobbing chief hairdresser (sobbing partly because she had been found out to be a fraud, and partly because running around the salon was the first exercise she’d had in seven years).
‘But why?’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You’re hairdressers. Don’t you have any professional pride?’
‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ sniffed the hairdresser. ‘People sit down to get a haircut and they just start complaining. They drone on and on about their miserable lives. It wears you down.’
‘I can understand,’ conceded Nanny Piggins. ‘It makes me sad to hear about people’s problems. Especially when they could almost always be solved simply by eating cake.’
‘Anyway,’ continued the hairdresser, ‘one day I just cracked. This woman was complaining about how her husband always left his wet towel on the arm of the sofa and I hacked half her hair off. But the thing was, she didn’t get angry. She loved it. She thought it was the height of avant-garde fashion.’
‘The fool,’ said Nanny Piggins, shaking her head. ‘Everyone knows partial baldness is only attractive in very wealthy men.’
‘All her friends came in wanting trendy haircuts,’ said the hairdresser. ‘The more I wrecked their hair the more they loved it. We were booked out.’
‘Well you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Just because people are silly enough not to know better is no excuse to make them look dreadful.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the hairdresser.
Nanny Piggins looked at her watch. ‘It’s getting late in the day so I haven’t got time to take over your shop, revolutionise your business model and turn this into the most successful hairdressing salon ever. At least not today.’
‘But what about my hair?’ wailed Samantha. ‘The photo is being taken tomorrow.’
‘Samantha dear, I may be brilliant at cannon blasting, circus skills, artistic inventions and scientific breakthrough as it applies to cake; I may shock and astound the world at least once a month with my undiscovered talent for new and different things, but even I cannot make your hair grow back in 24 hours,’ said Nanny Piggins.
Samantha started to weep.
‘My dear child, there is no need to despair,’ said Nanny Piggins, wrapping her in a big hug, then wrapping Boris in a big hug too, because he always started to cry once someone else started. ‘Admittedly you will have to go around looking simply dreadful for several months until your hair grows back, but there is no reason why we can’t fix your photograph tomorrow.’
‘What do you mean?’ sniffed Samantha.
‘A photograph is just a chemical capturing of light rays as they enter a tiny hole at the front of a camera,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Altering reality is very difficult, but altering light rays as they appear at a tiny given point shouldn’t be too hard at all.’
‘How?’ asked Derrick. ‘Are you going to strap a mirror to Samantha’s head?’
‘That would certainly solve the problem,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but I think we can come up with a less crude plan. Just give me a night to think on it. We’ll have crème brûlée for dinner. Caramelised cream always gives me tremendous ideas in my dreams.’
The next morning the children sat at the dining table eagerly waiting for Nanny Piggins to appear and tell them what her plan was. Samantha was particularly anxious (she was always anxious about something, but having a haircut that made her look like she’d been attacked by a very angry hedge trimmer had made her even more anxious than usual). The children did not have to wait long. Nanny Piggins soon burst out of the kitchen carrying plates full of waffles covered with chocolate, ice-cream and strawberries.
‘Good morning,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful day? Anyone for a chocolate-covered waffle?’
‘So,’ said Samantha. ‘What’s the plan?’
Nanny Piggins looked puzzled. ‘To eat until we’re almost but not quite sick? Isn’t that the plan every breakfast time?’
‘No, about my hair!’ wailed Samantha. ‘You were going to come up with a plan for the school photograph today so that my hair wouldn’t be permanently recorded for all posterity for my children and my children’s children to laugh at for generations to come!’
‘Oh dear,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I entirely forgot.’
‘But you said the crème brûlée would make you come up with an idea in your sleep!’ yelled Samantha, starting to get hysterical.
‘It did,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It gave me the idea to serve waffles with chocolate ice-cream as well as chocolate sauce with strawberries dipped in chocolate, and an extra silver spittoon to put on the table that you can spit the strawberries into once the chocolate has been sucked off.’
The children looked at the spittoon.
‘That is a brilliant idea,’ said Derrick.
‘But what about my hair?’ sobbed Samantha.
‘Eat some waffles,’ suggested Nanny Piggins. ‘It won’t seem nearly so bad after you’ve eaten a few million calories. And don’t worry, I said I would see to it and I will. It must be hours until you have your photo taken.’
‘Two hours and 18 minutes,’ sniffed Samantha.
‘You see, that’s buckets of time for me to come up with a brilliant plan and save the day,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Have a waffle. They are particularly good if you put on so much chocolate sauce that you can’t see the waffle anymore.’
And so when they left for school, Samantha was in a chocolate-addled state.
‘What are you going to do?’ Derrick asked his nanny as they walked to the bus stop.
‘I could always stop the photographer from getting to the school,’ mused Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m sure I still have my kidnapping sack somewhere.’
‘You can’t kidnap him!’ said Michael. ‘The Police Sergeant has let you off with a warning for kidnapping five times in the last six months. If you do it again he’ll get so cross.’
‘Hmm, I suppose,’ agreed Nanny Piggins reluctantly. ‘But don’t worry, I’m sure I will think of something.’
And so the children rode to school. Samantha spent the whole journey with a paper bag over her head, partly so that no-one would look at her haircut and partly to stop herself from hyperventilating.
The photograph was to be taken immediately before recess. The morning dragged for poor Samantha. She seriously considered taking matters into her own hands by
leaping out the window and running away, but her classroom was on the second floor and much as she did not want to get her photograph taken, she wanted to break her legs even less.
When the teacher instructed all the students to make their way to the school oval, Samantha’s feet felt like they were made of lead. If only they were, then she could get lead poisoning, which would be an excellent excuse to call an ambulance and be whisked to hospital.
As the students were all being arranged in rows on raised bleachers, Samantha had a brief opportunity to speak to Derrick.
‘Where’s Nanny Piggins?’ Samantha asked.
‘I haven’t seen her,’ said Derrick.
‘You don’t think she’s forgotten, do you?’ asked Samantha.
‘No, of course not,’ said Derrick. ‘Although The Young and the Irritable is on right now, and watching that can give her sympathetic short-term memory loss, like the time Bridge was in a car accident and got amnesia from banging his head on the cup holder, and Nanny Piggins forgot to make fudgsicles for dinner.’
‘I’m doomed,’ said Samantha. She would have wept but she did not want to make herself look even worse.
The children were arranged according to height, prettiness and who could be trusted to sit properly in the front row. Being of medium height and looks, Samantha was tucked in the middle but her head was still visible. And every time Samantha tried to stand behind the girl next to her, one of the teachers would angrily snap, ‘Samantha Green, stand still!’
Just as the last few students found their places, a panicked buzz spread through the crowd. ‘He’s coming! The photographer’s coming!’
Samantha’s heart turned to ice. There was no escaping now.
‘Zis is not good enough!’ called the photographer. ‘No no no. It will not do!’
Samantha perked up. That fake Italian accent sounded familiar.
‘All the blonde children must take their jumpers and wrap them on top of their heads!’ ordered the photographer. ‘There is too much glare off their hair.’
Samantha looked up. The photographer was wearing a beret and he had a pointy little moustache. But underneath this cunning disguise he was clearly Boris.