by R. A. Spratt
‘That sounds like a lot of work,’ said Derrick.
‘Ah, but the good thing about baking 3240 cakes is that if you start eating the first ones as soon as they come out of the oven, the sugary buttery goodness will give you the energy you need to power through the rest of the job,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s amazing what you can achieve with five or six hundred cakes in your stomach. This is why Henry VIII was such a successful king.’
And so, four and a half hours later, Nanny Piggins, the truck driver and the children were licking the cake crumbs from their fingers from the 3240th cake as they sat in the garden enjoying the peace and tranquillity of the now entirely soundproofed shed.
Admittedly, you could still tell that Boris was in there snoring because the ground still vibrated with every intake of breath. But Mr Green would never notice that. He had not sat down on a patch of grass for 27 years because he so hated getting grass stains on his trousers, or to be strictly accurate, he hated paying drycleaners to get grass stains out of his trousers. In fact, when he proposed to Mrs Green he did it on a bitumen road because even though it was a lot more painful to go down on one knee, it saved him $5.60 in dry-cleaning fees.
At this moment the doorbell rang. (Mr Green had taken to ringing the doorbell even though it was his own house, because he did not want to walk in on Nanny Piggins and the children in the middle of one of their misdeeds. As a lawyer, he understood that the less he knew about their activities, the less he could be blamed for them in a court of law.)
‘It’s Father,’ said Derrick.
‘Should we hide?’ asked Michael.
‘Why?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Michael. ‘It was just my first instinct.’
‘Piggins, where are you?’ bellowed Mr Green from inside the house.
Nanny Piggins sighed. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t bite him for yelling at me today, given the level of deceit we are trying to get past him. But your father’s manners really are tiresome.’
‘Ah, there you are,’ said Mr Green as he opened the back door. Not that he could open it far, because the shed was so close to the wall. ‘What are you doing? Nothing illegal, I hope?’
‘Illegal? No,’ said Nanny Piggins, which was strictly true. There was nothing illegal about hiding a Kodiak bear in a suburban backyard, although if the local council had imagined such a possibility, there surely would be.
‘The journalist from the local paper will be here any minute,’ said Mr Green through the narrow gap in the open doorway. ‘I want you all to try to pretend to be normal for the duration of the visit. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Father,’ chorused the children.
‘I don’t suppose I could persuade you to spend the duration quietly sitting in the cellar?’ Mr Green asked Nanny Piggins.
‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins brightly.
‘Not even for a chocolate cake?’ asked Mr Green.
Nanny Piggins considered this for a nanosecond.‘No, I’m all right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve had a fair amount of cake already today. But if you ask me again tomorrow, I’m sure I’d consider it.’
Fifteen minutes later the journalist showed up. From the glimpse of her shoes that Nanny Piggins could see under the crack in the door (through which they were spying on Mr Green), she could tell that the journalist was an intelligent sophisticated young woman of 28 and three-quarters. As such, it took the journalist all of four minutes to become bored with Mr Green’s mundane answers to her questions and ask if she could have a look about the house. Mr Green tried to stop her but, unlike his nanny, he did not have a gift for fabricating spontaneous falsehoods. Plus women, especially young attractive ones, made him nervous.
So when she asked ‘Why not?’, Mr Green had to pause for several long moments before he came up with the answer. ‘I don’t have that information at this time,’ said Mr Green. ‘Could I get my secretary to send you my detailed response in letter form tomorrow?’
But it was too late. The journalist was already having a good stickybeak out the window.
‘Why is your garden shed right up against your back door?’ asked the journalist.
‘It isn’t,’ said Mr Green, trying to block the journalist’s view with his body. But even he was not stout enough for that.
‘And why is there a pig and three children digging a hole in your garden?’ asked the journalist.
‘Would you believe that they were home intruders that I’ve never seen before in my life?’ asked Mr Green.
‘No,’ said the journalist.
‘Well then, the children are my children,’ he reluctantly admitted.
‘And the pig? Isn’t she the pig who is running for mayor,’ asked the journalist, a gleam appearing in her eye. Suddenly her story about Mr Green was becoming much more interesting. Instead of being hidden down the back of the paper it might appear in the front section, perhaps even on page two.
‘She’s an employee of mine,’ hedged Mr Green.
‘What does she do?’ asked the journalist.
‘I don’t really know,’ confessed Mr Green. ‘That way, if she ever gets taken to court I can maintain plausible deniability.’
‘No, I mean what does the pig do for you?’ asked the journalist.
‘She’s my children’s nanny,’ confessed Mr Green.
‘Really?’ said the journalist. But this was a rhetorical question as she was too busy writing this all down to take in any more.
‘You don’t want to write about her,’ said Mr Green. ‘Nanny Piggins is very dull, I assure you.’
Unfortunately his words were immediately contradicted by Nanny Piggins doing a run of tumbling acrobatics from one side of the garden to the other, so athletically impressive and perfectly performed she would have won a gold medal for gymnastics if she could ever bother turning up to the Olympics.
‘Where did she learn to do that?’ asked the journalist.
‘At the circus, I suppose,’ muttered Mr Green. ‘She used to work there.’
‘Let me get this right,’ said the journalist. ‘You’re running for public office even though you hired a circus pig to be your nanny, and she’s running against you?’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Mr Green.
‘And you don’t know what’s wrong with that,’ added the journalist, writing this all down. ‘This story gets better and better. I’ve got to interview her.’
‘No you don’t,’ protested Mr Green. ‘I won’t allow it.’
‘What’s that over there?’ asked the journalist, pointing to the doorway.
Mr Green turned to look, but when he looked back, the journalist had wrenched open the window and dived headfirst out into the azalea bushes. (This was normally something Nanny Piggins only did when Mr Green launched into one of his many long and boring monologues on the power of compound interest.)
‘Nanny Piggins, I wondered if I might ask you a few questions,’ called the journalist as she hurried across the yard.
‘I’m not saying anything until my lawyer gets here,’ declared Nanny Piggins. (Isabella Dunkhurst had trained Nanny Piggins to reflexively say this after her last disastrous brush with the law.)
‘I’m not a police officer, I’m a journalist,’ said the journalist.
‘Then I’m not saying anything until a very large cake gets here,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m a big believer in chequebook journalism. If you ring Hans’ Bakery and use my name, he will give you a ten per cent discount.’
‘It’s the least he can do,’ added Michael. ‘Nanny Piggins paid for his holiday to Barbados last year.’
‘His lemon tarts were particularly delicious last year,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘He earned every penny and deserved a relaxing break after making all that lemon custard.’
‘Mr Green tells me you’re his nanny,’ said the journalist.
‘That’s progress,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Usually he denies it.’
‘And these are his children?�
�� asked the journalist. ‘I didn’t realise he had children.’
‘Yes, he usually denies that too,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.
‘Are they adopted?’ asked the journalist.
‘What adoption agency would give a man like that three children?’ scoffed Nanny Piggins.
‘It’s easier to believe than a woman ever marrying him,’ countered the journalist. ‘No offence,’ she added to the children.
‘None taken,’ said Derrick. ‘We often wonder the same thing ourselves.’
‘I’m standing right here, I can hear you!’ complained Mr Green.
‘Well, go inside and fetch us all some chocolate milk,’ suggested Nanny Piggins. ‘That way you won’t have to listen to all the things we are going to say about you.’
‘But you will say nice things, won’t you?’ pleaded Mr Green.
‘Mr Green,’ chided Nanny Piggins. ‘It is wrong to lie. Especially in front of children. It’s not my fault that you’re a terrible father. It’s your fault. If this journalist asks me about it, I shall just have to tell the truth.’
Mr Green clutched his head in his hands. ‘I knew I should never have agreed to this interview at home.’
Fortunately for Mr Green, at that moment the journalist noticed something even more bizarre than a circus pig working as a nanny or the fact that Mr Green had managed to get some poor woman to marry him. She noticed that the ground was vibrating, rhythmically, in a long drawn-out rumble, every three seconds.
‘Why is the ground shaking?’ asked the journalist.
‘It isn’t,’ said Nanny Piggins. She had been living with Mr Green so long, she had slipped into thinking all humans could be so easily fooled.
‘You just said you couldn’t lie,’ said the journalist.
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Yes, you did,’ said the journalist.
Nanny Piggins abandoned reasoned (or, in this case, unreasoned) argument at this point and simply stamped on the journalist’s foot.
‘Ow!’ yelped the journalist.
‘Children, fetch me something pointy,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I might need to drive this woman off.’
‘Nanny Piggins, you’re on your last warning with the Police Sergeant,’ reminded Samantha. ‘It’s bad enough that you are always going around kidnapping or being kidnapped by your circus colleagues, but if you assault a journalist, he’s going to be so cross.’
‘But if we bang her on the head she might get amnesia,’ argued Nanny Piggins.
‘She might get brain damage,’ countered Derrick.
‘No-one would ever notice in a journalist,’ pouted Nanny Piggins.
‘Why is that shed right up against the back of the house?’ asked the journalist.
‘None of your business,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘I bet that violates planning regulations,’ said the journalist.
‘Oh no,’ whimpered Mr Green. He might be unscrupulous about hiring untrained circus pigs to look after his children, but he hated the very thought of being caught breaking a rule.
‘I’m going to have a look,’ said the journalist.
But she did not get to. Instead, she got a better feel for the vibrations in the ground, because Nanny Piggins knocked her over in a flying crash tackle.
‘I’m not letting you,’ declared Nanny Piggins.
‘Wow, you could play for the Dulsford Mules,’ said Michael, seriously impressed.
‘I’m calling the police!’ exclaimed the journalist, pulling a mobile phone out of her pocket.
‘No, you’re not,’ said Nanny Piggins, grabbing the phone and, with pinpoint accuracy, lobbing it into Mrs Simpson’s compost heap.
The journalist was just about to pull Nanny Piggins’ hair and Nanny Piggins was just about to bite her shin (something that often happens to journalists, because they are such shocking busybodies), when they were interrupted by the deafening WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP sound of a helicopter swooping down above them.
‘Crikey,’ said the journalist. ‘I’m either about to be swept off to a secret location, never to see my family again, or this story is so good it’s going to be above the fold on the front page.’
Two people dressed all in black and carrying backpacks full of equipment abseiled down from the helicopter and landed in the Green’s backyard. The helicopter swooped away.
‘Cool!’ said Derrick.
‘Is everyone all right?’ asked a black-clad woman as the man with her took out a computer and various pieces of monitoring equipment and started setting them up.
‘This unprincipled charlatan has given me a nasty grass stain on my frock,’ accused Nanny Piggins, ‘but apart from that I think we’re all okay.’
‘We’re from the NSMI,’ said the woman.
‘The National Scrummy Macaroon Inquiry?’ asked Nanny Piggins, ‘because I’m not giving up my recipe, no matter how much they beg.’
‘No, we’re from the National Seismic Monitoring Institute,’ explained the woman. ‘We’ve registered a constant flux of earthquakes from this location. Has anybody been hurt? Is there any structural damage to your home?’
‘No, it’s reinforced with Mars Bars,’ said Derrick.
‘This is the epicentre of the earthquakes,’ said the male researcher, looking up from his equipment, ‘but the cause doesn’t seem to be seismic.’
‘How can that be?’ asked the woman. ‘The vibrations are so strong.’
‘It appears to be coming from that shed,’ said the man.
‘I suppose if I bonked everybody on the head, I wouldn’t be lucky enough for them all to get amnesia,’ sighed Nanny Piggins.
There was nothing she or the children could do to stop the journalist, Mr Green and the researchers as they walked towards the shed, then peered in through the window. There was a moment’s pause as their brains processed what they were seeing. Then the journalist was the first to speak, or rather scream, ‘Aaaaaaggghhh! There’s a giant bear!’
Then pandemonium broke out. Mr Green ran for the house with an amazing turn of speed. It quite impressed Nanny Piggins. But then he totally nullified the good impression by locking the back door – locking his own children outside, undefended against a giant bear (we know Boris was a loving warm-hearted bear, but Mr Green did not).
The NSMI researchers leapt over the fence into Mrs McGill’s garden, where they were both knocked unconscious by Mrs McGill’s home defence system. She threw baked bean tins at their heads. (Mrs McGill had played in the women’s professional baseball league during the war, so she had a very good fast ball.)
The journalist scrambled over the other fence into Mrs Simpson’s yard and took off down the street.
‘Oh dear,’ said Samantha, slumping to the floor so she wouldn’t have far to fall when she inevitably fainted from hyperventilating.
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Michael.
‘Right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We’ve got about five minutes before the journalist raises the alarm and the authorities get here.’
‘Animal Control?’ asked Derrick.
‘The Police Sergeant?’ asked Michael.
‘Either that or someone from the local insane asylum,’ guessed Nanny Piggins. ‘We’ve got five minutes to wake Boris up and get him out of there.’
‘How are we going to do that?’ asked Derrick.
‘Derrick, you shinny up the drainpipe, climb in through the upstairs bathroom window and get the oscillating fan from my bedroom,’ instructed Nanny Piggins.
‘I’m on it,’ said Derrick as he sped away. (He’d become quite good at shinnying drainpipes since Nanny Piggins had become his nanny.)
‘Michael, go into the laundry and use a crowbar to pull up the floorboards,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Why?’ asked Michael.
‘Because the laundry is the one room of the house my brother never goes into, because he doesn’t wear clothes,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘so that is where I hid his birthday present – a 200-litre drum
of the finest honey.’
Two minutes later Nanny Piggins had set up the fan and Michael had rolled out the drum of honey.
‘How is this going to wake up Boris?’ asked Samantha.
‘Open the shed window,’ instructed Nanny Piggins as she levered open the lid of the drum. As soon as the smell wafted up, the children immediately understood Nanny Piggins’ plan.
‘You’re going to smell him out!’ exclaimed Derrick.
‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Turn on the fan.’
Michael turned on the fan and the delicious waft of honey floated across the yard and in through the shed window.
‘How long will this take to work?’ asked Michael.
‘Oh, I should think –’ began Nanny Piggins, but she didn’t have to finish her sentence because at that moment the shed exploded into a thousand pieces as Boris leapt to his feet and launched himself at the drum, shouting, ‘Honey!’
Eighteen seconds later, having drunk all the honey, it looked like Boris might now go into a sugar-induced coma, but Nanny Piggins was not standing for that.
‘Boris,’ she declared, shaking him by the paw, ‘you have to get out of here before the authorities come for you.’
‘I just want a nap,’ protested Boris sleepily.
‘He’s never going to budge,’ said Derrick.
‘I know how to motivate my brother,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Boris, I heard that the retired Army Colonel who lives round the corner is having honey sandwiches for afternoon tea.’
The children barely saw Boris leave. He was a blur of movement, too fast for their eyes to register as he leapt over the fence and took off.
When Animal Control, the Police Sergeant and the media turned up, there was nothing for them to see except a nanny and three children reconstructing a shed (reinforced with Mars Bars).
Nanny Piggins accused the journalist of concocting the whole story to sell papers; the seismic researchers assumed that the whole thing had been a hallucination as the result of an inner ear disturbance caused by too much abseiling; and Mr Green just did what he always did – pretended the whole thing never happened.
