Nanny Piggins and the Daring Rescue 7

by R. A. Spratt

  ‘Hurray!’ cheered Samantha, making everyone turn and stare at her for reasons other than her ridiculous hair.

  ‘But we can’t let the children put jumpers on their heads. The parents will complain,’ complained Headmaster Pimplestock.

  Boris sucked in a deep breath, puffed out his chest and loomed over the headmaster. ‘Who is zee photographer here, you or me?’

  Headmaster Pimplestock was unaccustomed to being questioned, let alone menacingly confronted, and being a big cowardy custard he immediately backed down. ‘I’m going to my office. If no parents want to pay for their photos it’s not my problem.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Boris. ‘I am an arteest. I do not need such a silly man criticising my artistic vision. All right children, I will be handing around permanent markers and I want you to draw fake moustaches on yourselves. It will make the boys look older and more sophisticated, and the girls look mysterious.’

  The young students gleefully followed all Boris’ instructions. No child likes the way they look in a traditional school photograph. Really, it is very cruel to force children to have a formal photograph taken in their ugliest outfit – their school uniform.

  Fortunately Boris brought enough feather boas and pirate hats for everyone, so the horrible green tartan and grey shirts were soon well hidden.

  ‘Now children,’ said Boris. ‘In the past you have taken photographs where you stand and smile. This is true – yes?’

  The children all nodded.

  ‘Well, I will have none of that!’ declared Boris. ‘Do you hear?!’

  The children again nodded.

  ‘When I take my photograph I want it to be an action photograph,’ said Boris. ‘So think what you will do. How do you want to be remembered? Will you stick out your tongue? Will you poke your finger in your neighbour’s ear? Will you put your hand in front of your face because you have a particularly unpleasant pimple? The choice is yours. Is everybody ready?’

  ‘Yes!’ cheered the children, now genuinely excited to have their school picture taken.

  ‘Let’s do this ’ said Boris. ‘But before we take the photo I have to make one minor adjustment. You! The very nice-looking girl there.’

  Samantha was embarrassed because Boris was pointing at her.

  ‘Yes?’ said Samantha in a small voice.

  ‘I need you to stand behind this,’ said Boris.

  Boris climbed up into the bleachers carrying a great big board which he stood up in front of Samantha. When he uncovered it everyone could see it was one of those wooden outlines that you poke your face through to have your photograph taken.

  Boris had apparently ‘borrowed’ this one from the local zoo, because when Samantha stuck her face through it appeared in a kangaroo’s pouch, making her look like a cute little joey. But best of all her hair was entirely obscured by the board.

  ‘Perfect!’ called Boris. ‘All right, on the count of three . . . Remember, don’t be boring. One two three – ACTION!’

  At that moment every child in the school launched into action. Some wet-willied, some threw their ties in the air, some pretended to be action heroes abseiling out of helicopters. Out of the whole school only one child smiled beautifully at the camera. And that one child was Samantha.

  ‘What a beautiful photograph,’ said Nanny Piggins, as they all sat around the kitchen table later that day. ‘You look really lovely.’ Nanny Piggins gave Samantha a big hug.

  ‘You’re a brilliant photographer, Boris,’ said Derrick.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Boris, dabbing away a tear of pride.

  ‘But what I want to know is,’ said Michael, ‘where did the real photographer go?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I will admit I did bump into him on his way to your school.’

  ‘You didn’t kidnap him, did you?’ asked Derrick sternly. ‘He isn’t locked up in the basement right now, is he?’

  ‘Oh no, of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Really?’ asked Derrick, suspecting from the growing look of mischievousness on his nanny’s face that she had somehow found a loophole.

  ‘I’ll admit there was a little bit of kidnapping,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But I didn’t do it. I got him to kidnap me!’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed the children.

  ‘But how?’ asked Michael.

  ‘When I was rifling through his photography van trying to come up with a brilliant plan,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I discovered that he had been short-changing schools for years. And he was clearly some sort of evil sociopath because he had systematically been throwing away all the good photographs and only sending out the bad photographs – the ones where the children had their eyes closed, or something stuck in their teeth, or their hair sticking out at weird angles.’

  ‘That explains so much,’ said Samantha.

  ‘So when I confronted him and launched into my long list of denouncements,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘he kidnapped me. Can you believe it?! It was really very rude. He didn’t even put a packet of biscuits in the sack before he shoved me into it. No manners at all.’

  ‘Were you all right?’ worried Samantha.

  ‘My dear girl,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I was perfectly fine. I had my own packet of biscuits in my pocket, so there wasn’t a problem. But it is the principle of the matter. If you are going to kidnap someone, the least you can do is provide refreshments. Even the Ringmaster knows that.’

  ‘But how did you escape?’ asked Michael.

  ‘All thanks to my dear friend and a true gentleman,’ said Nanny Piggins fondly. ‘The Police Sergeant stopped the van. He said it was because the brake light was faulty. But I like to think that on a subliminal level he knew I was inside and that I had a pocketful of his favourite shortbread biscuits.’

  ‘So the photographer was arrested for kidnapping?’ marvelled Derrick.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘which is a good thing because apparently there are no formal laws against bad photography.’

  ‘There should be,’ said Boris.

  ‘And the photographer only has himself to blame if he gets sent to jail,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Because I told him that if he was polite to the Police Sergeant and he baked him a mouth-wateringly delicious cake, the Police Sergeant would probably let him off with a warning. But the photographer insisted on trying to kick the Police Sergeant, headbutt the Police Constable and run off into Hendersons Swamp.’

  ‘But they caught him anyway?’ asked the children.

  ‘Oh yes, you know how much the constable enjoys tackling people,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  Boris burst into tears.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘I love a happy ending,’ explained Boris.

  When the children got off the school bus, Nanny Piggins was waiting for them, and she was standing next to a giant box. And when I say giant I’m not exaggerating. It really was enormous – two metres by two metres at least.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Michael.

  ‘It looks like a cake box,’ said Derrick, ‘except about a thousand times bigger.’

  ‘And it smells like a cake box,’ observed Samantha.

  ‘It is a cake box,’ said Nanny Piggins excitedly. ‘I had Hans order in the super-duper large size because I wanted him to bake you a special cake to celebrate the last day of school before your spring holidays.’

  ‘It’s Thursday,’ said Samantha. ‘The last day of school is tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, but if you don’t go tomorrow then today is your last day, isn’t it?’ reasoned Nanny Piggins.

  None of the children wanted to argue when there was such a huge cake waiting to be eaten.

  ‘Come on,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘let’s take it home. I’ve got ten litres of chocolate ice-cream in the freezer, and the only thing that makes a huge cake taste better is a huge amount of ice-cream.’

  Fortunately the super-duper large cake box had wheels in the base so Nanny Piggins and the children were abl
e to quickly run home before their hunger got the better of them, causing them to stop, sit in the gutter and devour the cake like wild animals (which is what so often happened when Nanny Piggins was carrying something delicious). In fact, when they went down hills the cake box got up so much speed they could jump up onto it and ride it like a go-kart.

  So they were careening down their street screaming ‘Whoopeeeeeee!’ when their house came into view. And what they saw so shocked Nanny Piggins that she toppled backwards off the cake box and landed in Mrs Lau’s fish pond.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Derrick as he jumped off and brought the giant cake to a stop.

  ‘Look!’ cried Nanny Piggins, heedless of the water lilies sticking out of her usually immaculate hair.

  The children turned to look where Nanny Piggins was pointing and they too saw the shocking sight. Their house was entirely encased in a big stripy tent.

  ‘The Ringmaster has kidnapped our house!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘But he can’t have,’ said Samantha reasonably (although she did not entirely believe what she was saying because she knew, when it came to kidnapping, that the Ringmaster was capable of anything).

  ‘Then how do you explain the huge circus tent hanging over the house?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Perhaps Father thought it would be cheaper than paying to get the house painted,’ suggested Derrick.

  ‘Or that it would save him having to get the roof repaired,’ guessed Michael.

  ‘But a giant stripy tent is so eye-catching,’ protested Nanny Piggins, ‘and we all know your father does not like drawing attention to himself. He’s like one of those insects that pretends to be a leaf. The only difference is that an insect pretends to be a leaf so that it won’t get eaten, whereas your father pretends to be as dull as dishwater so that he won’t get audited by the tax department.’

  ‘Come on, let’s see what’s going on,’ said Derrick.

  ‘All right,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but we must be careful. We don’t want the Ringmaster to kidnap our cake.’ Nanny Piggins hugged the super-duper cake box protectively as they cautiously edged towards their house.

  When they got to their front gate there was a sign stuck on it, saying:

  DO NOT ENTER

  Hazardous Gases Within

  ‘What do they mean, “Hazardous Gases”?’ wondered Nanny Piggins. ‘I know your father is full of hot air, but I wouldn’t call that a hazardous gas. More of a dangerously boring gas.’

  Just then Mr Green pulled up in his Rolls-Royce.

  ‘Ah, Nanny Piggins, there you are,’ said Mr Green as he emerged from his vehicle.

  ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it,’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘If some rival circus tries to get at me by kidnapping our entire house, it’s not my fault.’

  ‘What on earth are you blathering about?’ asked Mr Green. ‘On second thoughts, don’t tell me. I’m not interested. As you can see, our house is being fumigated.’

  ‘Fumi-whatsied?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Oooooh,’ said the children, suddenly realising there was a far more sensible explanation for the tent than a two-storey house being kidnapped by a sociopathic circus rival.

  ‘The house is being fumigated,’ explained Derrick. ‘That means that it’s being sprayed with insecticides. The tent is to keep the gases in.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with the circus?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Nothing,’ answered Mr Green.

  ‘So this giant circus tent contains nothing but a house full of poisonous gas,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Well, there are going to be some bitterly disappointed children turning up to see a trapeze show. Why would you want to spray the house with insecticide?’

  ‘Because this morning when I went to the cupboard to find my second-best raincoat I discovered an infestation of spiders,’ said Mr Green.

  ‘So?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Spiders are disgusting!’ exclaimed Mr Green. ‘They had to be killed immediately.’

  ‘Killed!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘I thought when you said you were going to gas them, you were going to use anaesthetic gas to put them in a lovely sleep before you carefully carried them out to relocate them to a happier location.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ asked Mr Green. ‘They were disgusting, creepy-crawly spiders! I had the terminator around to destroy them right away.’

  ‘How could you?! You’re disgusting and creepy-crawly and we don’t have anyone round to gas you!’ yelled Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Actually, there was that one time you accidentally gassed him with the nitrous-oxide from the four dozen whipped cream cans that you had rigged up to release simultaneously,’ remembered Samantha.

  ‘Yes, but that was a kind gassing,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If he had done that to the spiders I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded at all. Oh children, this is terrible, I was the one who found Sophia and her little children and invited them to come and live in our closet. Now they’re dead and it’s all my fault.’ Nanny Piggins sat down in the gutter and wept.

  ‘You knowingly brought spiders into my house?’ yelled Mr Green.

  ‘Of course I did,’ sobbed Nanny Piggins. ‘She had such long furry legs, I knew she would be an excellent athlete in the Spider Olympics I was planning to hold during the school holidays.’

  ‘You didn’t tell us you were going to do that!’ said Michael.

  ‘I know,’ sniffed Nanny Piggins. ‘I wanted it to be a surprise.’

  Mr Green was shaking with rage. ‘They could have been venomous spiders. How dare you endanger my life with your absurd schemes!’

  ‘They wouldn’t have bitten any of us,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘There is no way they could have eaten an entire human, not after all the sticky date pudding I gave them. Oh well, I suppose we’d better get inside and eat this cake and ice-cream. It’s what Sophia would have wanted.’ Nanny Piggins stood up and started dragging the cake towards the front door.

  ‘You can’t go inside,’ said Mr Green. ‘Not for a week, until the fumigation is complete.’

  ‘A week?!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘But my chocolate ice-cream is in the house. I can’t be separated from it for a week.’

  ‘Where are we all going to go?’ asked Samantha, more sensibly.

  ‘Well, I have been invited to a prestigious tax law conference,’ said Mr Green.

  ‘I’d rather go inside a house full of poisonous gas,’ said Nanny Piggins petulantly.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re not coming with me,’ said Mr Green.

  ‘Then where are we going?’ asked Samantha.

  ‘We could always stay in the shed,’ said Michael, thinking he would quite like to spend a week living with their good friend Boris.

  ‘No you can’t,’ said Mr Green. ‘That is being fumigated too.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Nanny Piggins, leaping to her feet, panicking that perhaps Mr Green had discovered her ten-foot–tall, 700 kilogram brother living there.

  ‘I wasn’t giving those spiders a place to retreat to,’ said Mr Green. ‘Anyway, I have made arrangements for you. I borrowed a tent from Peterson in Criminal Law. You’re going camping.’

  ‘Camping?’ said Nanny Piggins, making it sound like this was a dreadful swear word. ‘In a tent?’ She shuddered at the word.

  Nanny Piggins had, of course, lived in a tent for many years before coming to live with the Greens. And as someone who had spent years living in a tent, she knew all the drawbacks – the cold, the leaks, the complete lack of soundproofing and, worst of all, no oven to bake cakes.

  ‘You can’t do it to us!’ she protested. ‘You can’t. It’s unreasonable cruelty! I’ll report you to the social worker. You can’t force us to live in a tent for a week. You just can’t!’

  ‘Yes I can,’ said Mr Green. ‘In fact, I rang social services to run it past them. They said they encourage families to go camping. Outdoor exercise is good for the children and it’s bonding for the f
amily.’

  ‘How can it be bonding for the family when you’re not coming? You’ll be at a conference two hundred kilometres away,’ said Derrick.

  ‘I think I’d bond with Father better if he was two hundred kilometres away,’ said Michael.

  ‘I can’t stand here all day jibber-jabbing, I’ve got a tax-deductable motel to go and stay in,’ said Mr Green. ‘There are your tents.’ He dumped two tents out of the car onto the footpath. ‘Enjoy your camping trip.’

  ‘But where are we meant to go camping?’ asked Samantha.

  ‘In the woods, of course,’ said Mr Green. ‘Somewhere where it’s free. I’m not shelling out for access to a toilet block. You can dig a hole. It will be character building for you.’

  At this point Nanny Piggins lunged for Mr Green as he leapt into the Rolls-Royce, quickly speeding away for fear of the savage punishment she would wreak upon his shins.

  Nanny Piggins and the children found Boris hiding under a laundry basket in the garden. (He had been frightened when he came home to find his shed wearing fancy dress.) Fortunately, he had bumped in to Sophia and her children as they safely exited the house and they told him he could hide with them.

  After safely housing Sophia and her family in Mrs Simpson’s outdoor toilet, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children hiked all the way to the corner, where Nanny Piggins commandeered the ice-cream van (so she did have some ice-cream to eat her cake with) and got the driver to take them to the nearest wood. There they found themselves a grassy clearing by a babbling stream and surrounded by tall shady trees. They all stood and looked at the mouldy grey-green canvas tents Mr Green had left for them.

  ‘They smell of unhappiness,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘I think it’s just mould,’ said Derrick.

  ‘Is there anything unhappier than living in something that is infested with mould?’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Perhaps we should put them up,’ said Samantha. ‘It’s going to be getting dark soon.’

  ‘All right, go on then,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘What do you mean, go on?’ asked Derrick. ‘Aren’t you going to help? You lived in the circus. Don’t you know how to put up a tent?’