by R. A. Spratt
‘Are you sad to be leaving TV?’ asked Michael.
‘Not really,’ said Nanny Piggins between mouthfuls. ‘Television is much more fun to watch than it is to make.’
Nanny Piggins stared hard at the cake displays. She was making a decision, a very important decision. Nanny Piggins had come into a windfall. Her Great Aunty Doris had sent her ten dollars for her birthday.
It wasn’t Nanny Piggins’ birthday, but Aunty Doris believed in celebrating all her relatives’ birthdays on the same day (the way people do with horses) as it saved having to remember all those dates. So she had nominated 27 April as her Comprehensive Relative Birthday Day, then sent out ten-dollar notes to all her relatives who were younger than her, and rude accusing birthday cards to relatives who were older than her (usually denouncing them for not sending her ten dollars on her birthday).
Ten dollars was a significant sum for Nanny Piggins because she only earned 11 cents an hour. More importantly, it was significant because ten dollars would allow her to buy four of Hans’ cakes. But the difficulty was making a decision when there were so many good choices.
Nanny Piggins approached this sort of choice with the consideration and thoroughness that usually only top world leaders use in negotiating trade treaties.
There were so many factors to take into consideration. Chocolate éclairs were delicious but so too were lemon tarts. The crème brûlées were mouth-watering but the tiramisu was breathtaking. And if you were lucky enough to be able to afford more than one, there was the added dilemma of what combination to buy them in: perhaps a light meringue to stimulate the stomach, then a tangy key lime pie to cleanse the palate, finishing with a huge piece of chocolate mud cake to deaden the senses. The options were limitless. It was a very serious decision. She could not let her Great Aunt down. Aunty Doris would expect a ten-page letter describing the deliciousness of Nanny Piggins’ choice in the return mail.
The children sat silently eating mud cake at a table behind Nanny Piggins. They knew it was vital to allow her to concentrate on such an important matter. They also periodically fed her chunks of cake, because thinking always made her hungry.
‘The pecan pie is good today,’ said Hans, attempting to be helpful.
Nanny Piggins shot him a withering glare. ‘I am well aware that you put two teaspoons of almond extract and not one and a half in the pecan pie. I can smell it. You can’t palm your shoddy seconds off on me.’
‘You usually love Hans’ shoddy seconds,’ said Michael.
‘Not today,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I can afford to buy the very finest today.’
‘What have you narrowed it down to?’ asked Hans. ‘Maybe I can help.’
‘I’ve narrowed it down to everything!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘You really are a naughty baker to make everything smell, look and taste so delicious. It makes these decisions impossible.’
‘But surely we can rule out pecan pie because of the almond extract?’ suggested Samantha.
‘We can do no such thing,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Look at that crisp crust and glossy glaze, not to mention the nutty nuts! I am prepared to overlook half a teaspoon of almond extract for something as lovely as that.’
‘Should we order another mud cake to eat while you make up your mind?’ asked Michael.
‘Good idea,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We can’t allow ourselves to grow weak at such an important time.’
‘How are you going to pay for that?’ asked Hans.
‘I’m not going to pay for the mud cake,’ said Nanny Piggins dismissively. ‘Cash money sent from one’s aunt can’t be wasted on a thinking cake. Cash money should be spent on a cake for pure enjoyment. No, Mr Green can pay for the mud cake.’
Without taking her eyes off the display, Nanny Piggins reached down and took off her shoe, pulled out the insole and took out the credit card she had hidden in a secret compartment hollowed out in the heel. She handed Mr Green’s credit card to Hans, who took it in a pair of tongs (which, rest assured, he sterilised in boiling water immediately afterwards).
‘After all, it is a father’s duty to pay for his children’s lunch,’ said Nanny Piggins.
She went back to her concentrating while Hans disappeared to fetch another mud cake. She had only been staring for a few seconds when the door burst open behind her, clanking the shop bells roughly against the doorframe.
Nanny Piggins did not turn round to look, she just assumed it was someone who desperately wanted cake. She had often clanked those bells loudly herself when she urgently needed a sugary pick-me-up. But then her attention was forcibly ripped from the cake display by someone grabbing her shoulders.
‘Piggins! At last I’ve found you!’ exclaimed Mr Green. ‘You have to help me!’
‘Are you grabbing me?’ asked Nanny Piggins, so shocked that her brain had not had time to tell her leg to stomp on Mr Green’s foot yet.
‘It’s an emergency, I desperately need your help!’ wailed Mr Green.
‘More of an emergency than buying and eating ten dollars’ worth of cake?’ asked Nanny Piggins incredulously.
‘This is much more important than cake,’ said Mr Green.
Nanny Piggins wrenched herself from Mr Green’s grasp. ‘Mr Green, nothing is more important than cake.’
‘But you don’t understand,’ whined Mr Green. ‘It’s my job! I could lose my job.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They’ve probably got wind of your outrageously dismissive attitude to cake.’
‘No, no, it’s worse than that,’ said Mr Green. ‘They are coming today, this afternoon.’
‘Who?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘The cake police?’
‘There’s no such thing as the cake police,’ said Mr Green.
‘That’s what my fifth cousin Betty thought,’ said Nanny Piggins sadly, ‘but then she substituted carob for chocolate in a chocolate Swiss roll and she was arrested the next morning. They forced her to spend two whole weeks doing hard labour.’
‘What sort of hard labour?’ asked Michael.
‘Whipping egg whites,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘which is very tiring for the triceps.’
‘Would you stop talking about cake for one second and listen to me?’ pleaded Mr Green.
‘If that’s the thing that will make you go away the fastest, I suppose so,’ conceded Nanny Piggins.
‘The firm has hired a team of efficiency consultants to run the office while they wait for Isabella Dunkhurst to wake up,’ explained Mr Green.
‘That doesn’t sound very efficient,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘to hire a team of consultants to do what one senior partner did.’
‘Efficiency consultants pay for themselves by firing people,’ explained Mr Green. ‘The firm hires three consultants. They fire thirty people and the firm saves money.’
‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m sure it isn’t as straightforward as that. What if all thirty people gang up and steal everything out of the stationery cabinet? It would be a false economy then, wouldn’t it?’
‘Getting rid of the stationery cabinet and making employees provide their own paper is always the first thing efficiency consultants do!’ wailed Mr Green.
‘But you always steal all your paper from work,’ pointed out Derrick.
‘I know,’ wailed Mr Green. ‘I’m going to have to start writing legal notes on the back of my hand.’
‘Or buy yourself a notebook,’ suggested Nanny Piggins.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mr Green.
‘Well, this is all very interesting,’ fibbed Nanny Piggins, ‘but if you could run along now, I’d like to get back to my cake-buying decision.’
‘No, that’s not all,’ said Mr Green. ‘I need your help.’
‘Why?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘My secretary quit this morning,’ said Mr Green.
‘Mrs Applebaum finally cracked, did she?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘Who?’ asked Mr Green.
‘Mrs Appleba
um, your secretary for the last twelve years,’ supplied Nanny Piggins.
‘If you say so,’ said Mr Green. ‘Anyway, the silly woman just quit. She has totally let me down.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Nanny Piggins shrewdly.
‘What do you mean, “What did I do?” I didn’t do anything,’ protested Mr Green.
‘Really?’ asked Nanny Piggins, ‘because I have ways of finding out.’
‘I may have yelled at her for one or two hours,’ conceded Mr Green.
‘One or two?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘All right, three,’ admitted Mr Green. ‘But I was just trying to bring home to her the seriousness of the situation regarding the efficiency experts.’
‘And you didn’t think the efficiency experts would not look kindly on a lawyer wasting three hours yelling at his secretary?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘I just wanted her to tidy her desk,’ said Mr Green, ‘and use a protractor and spirit level to make sure everything in the office was at right angles.’
‘That poor woman,’ sympathised Nanny Piggins.
‘So I need you to come down to the office and pretend to be my secretary,’ pleaded Mr Green. ‘If they find out I lost my secretary I’ll be fired, or worse, they’ll realise I don’t need a secretary and not let me hire a new one.’
‘Can’t you just hire a temp?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ asked Mr Green. ‘Do you know how much they expect to be paid?’
‘Twelve cents an hour?’ guessed Nanny Piggins. To her mind that would be untold riches.
‘More!’ wailed Mr Green.
Nanny Piggins sighed. She did not want to help Mr Green, but she was becoming increasingly distressed on a visceral level that he would not leave her alone and let her make her cake-purchasing decision.
‘All right, all right, I’ll come down to your office and pretend to be your secretary,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Hooray,’ yelled Mr Green.
‘But there are conditions,’ warned Nanny Piggins.
‘Anything, I’ll agree to anything,’ said Mr Green desperately.
‘First of all I want you to go away and leave me alone for half an hour so I can enjoy my cake before I come down to your office to commence this charade,’ declared Nanny Piggins.
‘Half an hour before you start,’ said Mr Green. ‘That’s fine.’
‘Second, I want you to give me $1.17,’ declared Nanny Piggins.
‘$1.17? What for?’ asked Mr Green.
‘While I have been talking to you my brain has been multi-tasking,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘I have come to a cake decision. I want a cherry custard tart, a chocolate log, a cupcake and a tiramisu cup. Which comes to $11.17 and I only have $10.’
‘All right,’ said Mr Green, desperately searching for change in his pocket before Nanny Piggins could think of something more exorbitant to ask for. ‘I’ll pay.’
So Nanny Piggins ate her cake, walked the children to school and headed out for Mr Green’s office.
‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’ worried Samantha as they waved goodbye to their nanny. ‘In a building full of lawyers you don’t want to get into trouble.’
‘Pish,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘Just because they’re lawyers doesn’t mean they can’t be kept in line with a good sharp stamp on the foot.’
When Nanny Piggins arrived at Mr Green’s office, she found him to be his usual charming self. ‘You’re late,’ snapped Mr Green.
Nanny Piggins looked at her watch. ‘Only by fifteen seconds.’
‘That’s still late,’ said Mr Green.
As a boss he liked to rule with an iron fist. Nanny Piggins had not noticed this working for Mr Green at home, because she liked to rule with a diamond-studded fist (and as any elemental chemist can tell you, diamonds are a lot harder than iron).
‘It’s polite to be late,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘You’d better get started. There’s a lot to do,’ declared Mr Green.
‘I can see that,’ said Nanny Piggins, looking around his office. It was a shabby, old-fashioned room with no windows because it was in the basement of the law firm. (Even lawyers do not like tax lawyers.) There were filing cabinets on one wall, tax law books on another and a third devoted to Mr Green’s framed law degree (from a very mediocre university). Everything on Mr Green’s desk was as neat as it could be. (He had spent the last half hour using a protractor and spirit level to achieve this.)
Just outside Mr Green’s door was another smaller office. This was where the secretary worked. There were even more filing cabinets, stacks of archive boxes and a desk with trays full of paper.
‘Where do you want me to start?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Do you want me to burn your hideous clothes? Or paint the walls an attractive fuchsia? Or perhaps I should get some incense. It smells of something peculiar down here –’ Nanny Piggins sniffed about – ‘Rotting cockroaches, that’s what it is, the faint smell of rotting cockroaches.’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Mr Green. ‘You don’t have time to be distracted by interior decoration or aromatherapy.’
‘And you don’t find the rotting cockroaches to be distracting?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘There is paperwork to do!’ exclaimed Mr Green, as though ‘paperwork’ was the most sacred mission entrusted to a mere mortal. He pointed to the trays on Mrs Applebaum’s desk. ‘This tray has to be typed up, this tray has to be filed and this tray has to be researched in the legal library.’
‘Aha,’ said Nanny Piggins, nodding her head.
‘I need you to answer all my calls, open all my mail and most important of all –’ said Mr Green, pausing dramatically for emphasis.
‘You want me to get you some teeth whitener?’ guessed Nanny Piggins.
‘No!’ exclaimed Mr Green. ‘I need you to make me a cup of tea.’
‘Okay,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Would you like that with or without spit in it?’
‘What?’ spluttered Mr Green.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll surprise you.’
Mr Green got the message. ‘I’ll make my own tea. You do everything else.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You run along to the break room. Let me get started on this paperwork.’
As soon as Mr Green left the room Nanny Piggins piled the filing, the typing and the research into one pile, opened a window and threw it out. (She did have to catch the lift up to the tenth floor to do this because of course there were no windows in the basement.)
Obviously littering is wrong, but throwing a couple of thousand sheets of A4 paper into the wind is actually very beautiful. The tauts and writs billowed about on the wind in a big plume of white rectangles. And paper is biodegradable (eventually), so we should not judge Nanny Piggins too harshly. Paper does come from trees – she was merely returning it to them in the quickest way she knew how. She got the lift back to the basement and was sitting behind her desk when Mr Green returned with his cup of tea.
Mr Green was going to walk straight past her desk without acknowledging her (as he would with his regular secretary) but he was startled when out of the corner of his eye he noticed the empty desk.
‘Where did all the paperwork go?’ he asked.
‘I dealt with it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m very efficient.’
Mr Green looked at her. She stared back. He decided, on balance, that he was frightened to ask any follow-up questions, so he scurried into his own office and shut the door.
Nanny Piggins looked about the office. The surroundings were drab, but when she went through the desk she was delighted to discover in the bottom drawer a tin full of chocolate-chip biscuits. They smelled delicious. She made a mental note to send Mrs Applebaum a thank-you cake in return. She was just putting her hind trotters up on the desk as she leant back in her chair to stuff the first half dozen biscuits in her mouth when the phone rang. Nanny Piggins groaned. She considered letting it ring wh
ile she ate the biscuits.
‘Answer it before the third ring!’ bellowed Mr Green from inside his office.
Nanny Piggins glowered at his closed door as she took her trotters off the desk, leaned forward and picked up the handset.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘This is Harris from Maritime Law. I need Green to –’ Nanny Piggins hung up and put the biscuits in her mouth, reasoning that Mr Green had told her to answer the phone but he didn’t tell her she had to speak to the person on the other end. Nanny Piggins sat back, closed her eyes and enjoyed the chocolatey sugary buttery bliss of the delicious biscuit.
The phone rang again. Nanny Piggins opened one eye and glared at it.
‘Answer it!’ barked Mr Green from inside his office.
‘Hmmpf,’ said Nanny Piggins to herself. She did not like it when a person told her to do something without saying ‘please’ (or offering her a slice of cake). She leaned forward and picked up the handset.
‘I think we were cut off before. I’m Harris from Maritime –’ said the voice. But Nanny Piggins cut him off again, this time by ripping the cord out of the wall socket, then taking the telephone and putting it in the bottom desk drawer, replacing it with the biscuit tin, which now had pride of place on her desk.
‘What did they want?’ barked Mr Green rudely from inside his office.
Nanny Piggins got up, walked over to Mr Green’s office door and opened it. Mr Green was startled. Mrs Applebaum had never done that (she preferred to eat her biscuits and not confront him).
‘I think we need to make one thing clear,’ said Nanny Piggins in a menacingly quiet voice. ‘I do not yell. It is beneath my dignity as a pig. If you want to speak to me you can open this door and converse with me at a normal volume.’