Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8

by R. A. Spratt

  The detour to the sweet shop took a full hour and a half and it was actually excellent debating practice, because they spent most of the time arguing which sweet would be optimal both for deliciousness and painfulness when thrown at an opponent’s ear. Clearly anything light and fluffy like marshmallows or strawberry bonbons would not do. They needed a heavier sweet, perhaps a hardened caramel or a boiled lolly?

  Eventually Nanny Piggins decided on a combination of chocolate éclairs and sherbet lemons (both were hard and heavy), with a side stash of extra-long chocolate bars either for eating or hitting her opponents over the head if they refused to concede she was right.

  So they arrived at the television station ten minutes before the scheduled start of the debate and were greeted by a very anxious producer.

  ‘You were supposed to be here an hour and a half ago,’ the producer wailed.

  ‘Get a grip of yourself, woman,’ said Nanny Piggins, shoving a sherbet lemon into the producer’s mouth in the hope that the sugar would help calm her down. ‘Remember, this is only television. If I hadn’t turned up, what is the worst that could have happened? You could show a re-run of The Young and the Irritable and the electorate would probably learn more. They would certainly be a lot better entertained.’

  ‘If you hadn’t turned up,’ said the producer as she ushered them through security and into the building, ‘things could have been much worse than that. The debate would have gone ahead with just Mayor Bloomsbridge and Mr Green.’

  ‘But that would be the most dangerously boring hour of television ever broadcast,’ protested Nanny Piggins.

  ‘I know, that’s why I’m so glad you’re here,’ said the producer.

  While the receptionist took forever misspelling their names on their visitors’ cards, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children took a moment to look about the television station. The debate was being filmed at the proper television station in the city and it was much more impressive than their local community television station. True, the building was still run-down – it needed a paint job and the halls were lined with faded photos of celebrities who hadn’t been famous for thirty years – but it was a big building with a lift, so it had a much more professional feel.’

  ‘Where’s the outfit you’ll be wearing?’ asked the producer.

  Nanny Piggins glowered.

  ‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ muttered Derrick.

  ‘What . . .’ asked Nanny Piggins, glaring hard, ‘is wrong with what I have on?’

  ‘Say “nothing, you look fabulous”,’ urged Michael.

  ‘Um,’ said the producer, ‘it’s just that you are wearing a floor-length, crimson designer evening gown and usually politicians wear grey suits.’

  ‘Further evidence that they are fools,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If they have not got the panache to look traffic-stoppingly fabulous, then that is their problem. I am a trained circus pig. Looking good, often while travelling at supersonic speeds through the air, is my speciality.’

  At this point they only had six minutes until the broadcast started, so the producer decided to avoid any further discussion and quickly usher Nanny Piggins into the lift.

  ‘Are you nervous?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘About what?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Being on television in front of millions of people,’ said Derrick.

  ‘Piffle!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘It is the viewers who should be nervous about what they’re about to witness.’

  Suddenly the lift lurched to a halt.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Samantha.

  The producer pressed the tenth-floor button on the panel over and over.

  ‘Unless that button generates energy through you repeatedly pressing it, I don’t see how what you’re doing is of any use,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘The broadcast starts in three minutes,’ panicked the producer. ‘We don’t have time to be stuck in a lift.’

  ‘Why don’t you try the emergency button?’ suggested Boris. ‘I always wanted to have an emergency in a lift so I could press that button.’

  The producer pressed the emergency button, and in the distance they could hear an alarm bell ring.

  ‘That just sounds like a loud doorbell,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If no-one does anything when a car alarm goes off, they are hardly going to leap into action because they hear a loud doorbell.’

  ‘Try the telephone,’ urged Boris. ‘The secret one behind the panel. I’ve always wanted to use that too.’

  ‘You use that all the time,’ chided Michael.

  ‘Well, sometimes in a lift I get lonely,’ explained Boris, ‘so I like to ring up the lift mechanics and have a little chat.’

  The producer picked up the phone and held it to her ear. ‘It’s dead!’ she wailed.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s an inanimate object.’

  ‘No, I mean the line is dead,’ said the producer. ‘There’s no dial tone.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because someone has cut that big wire,’ pointed out Michael.

  They looked down to see that the handset was entirely detached from the base unit. The cord had clearly been hacked in two by a blunt pair of scissors.

  ‘I am beginning to suspect sabotage,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘You think someone did this on purpose?’ asked the producer.

  ‘Of course,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘But who would do such a thing?’ asked the producer.

  ‘We must ask, who stands to gain from my being trapped in a lift two minutes before the mayoral debate is about to begin?’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Father,’ exclaimed Samantha.

  ‘And Mayor Bloomsbridge,’ said Derrick.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That one of them was capable of something as imaginative as this actually raises them in my estimation. Nonetheless, I shall have to escape and punish them as a matter of principle.’

  ‘But how?’ asked the producer. ‘We’re six storeys up. You can’t climb about in the lift shaft when we’re this far off the ground.’

  Nanny Piggins just laughed.

  ‘Nanny Piggins is the world’s greatest flying pig,’ Derrick explained. ‘She can do things six storeys up that most people can’t even do on the ground.’

  ‘But you’re wearing a floor-length, designer evening gown,’ said the producer.

  ‘We’ll soon change that,’ said Nanny Piggins. She undid the zip and stepped out of her dress. This was nowhere near as shocking as it sounds because, naturally, Nanny Piggins had worn her hot-pink wrestling leotard underneath.

  ‘Nanny Piggins!’ exclaimed Derrick. ‘Why were you wearing your wrestling leotard under your dress?’

  ‘I thought it would be best to prepare for all eventualities,’ said Nanny Piggins evasively.

  ‘You were planning to end the debate by putting Father and Mayor Bloomsbridge in a painful leg lock, weren’t you,’ accused Derrick.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I thought it would be a good way to demonstrate my ability to get things done.’

  ‘The debate is starting in 60 seconds,’ urged the producer. ‘If you’re going to get us out of here, you need to do something now!’

  ‘No problem,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Boris, would you be a dear and smash me feet first into that service hatch in the ceiling so I can kick it open?’

  ‘All right,’ said Boris as he spun his sister upside down and rammed her into the ceiling.

  ‘Ow!’ yelled Nanny Piggins, which made Boris drop her (on her head) and burst into tears.

  ‘Ow!’ she said again as she landed on the floor.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Samantha as they crouched around to check that their nanny was all right.

  ‘I’ve broken my sister’s ankles!’ wept Boris.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Stop weeping, Boris. A slight double sprain is all. I’ve never had any trouble kicking open a lift service hatch before. I suspect foul pla
y.’

  ‘When have you had to kick open a lift service hatch before?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Oh, many, many times,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The Ringmaster is always coming up with new and imaginative ways to kidnap me and sometimes they do involve lift shafts. Service hatches are designed to be easily opened in an emergency so this one must have been tampered with, possibly with superglue.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Samantha. ‘Does that mean we are trapped – forever?!’ She started to hyperventilate.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘This is a confined space. Only one of us can go into hysterics at a time and Boris has already gone first. You have to wait your turn. Here, have a bag of sherbet lemons. It will take your mind off things.’

  Samantha gratefully started sucking on her sherbet lemon. They were her all-time favourite sweet. If she was going to spend the rest of her life in a lift shaft, she was glad that this was the food she would be trapped with.

  ‘If the service hatch is sealed shut,’ continued Nanny Piggins, ‘we will just have to make another service hatch.’

  ‘How?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘Fortunately we have been trapped in the lift with a ten-foot-tall Kodiak bear in supreme athletic condition,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Boris, I want you to stop crying and punch a hole in the roof please.’

  ‘I can’t,’ sobbed Boris.

  ‘If you don’t, we’ll run out of oxygen in about seven minutes,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  Without hesitating, Boris used every ounce of his strength to slam an uppercut into the ceiling panels, tearing aside the insulation and sheet metal and making a neat hole up into the shaft.

  ‘Thank you, Boris,’ said Nanny Piggins kindly. ‘Now if you’ll just rip the sides of the hole so that it is a bit bigger, you can go back to having your hysterics.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Boris as he quickly tore the opening wider, then sat down on the floor and dissolved into wracking sobs.

  Nanny Piggins climbed up Boris, stood on tippy-toes on top of his head (which was not easy given that he was sobbing and therefore shuddering back and forth), then pulled herself up through the hole and into the darkness of the lift shaft.

  ‘What can you see?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s pitch-black. Lift shafts aren’t at all like they are in action movies. There is no internal lighting and no-one thought of putting in any windows.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I suppose I could light a fire,’ pondered Nanny Piggins.

  ‘No!’ yelled everyone in the lift in unison.

  ‘All right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know, I’ll just smell my way.’

  ‘What does she mean?’ asked the producer.

  ‘Nanny Piggins has an extraordinary sense of smell,’ explained Derrick.

  ‘She can smell things other people can’t,’ added Michael.

  ‘Like a chocolate truck travelling at full speed one hundred kilometres away,’ added Samantha.

  ‘Or how many cakes you could buy with the amount of money you have in your wallet,’ added Michael.

  ‘Surely not?’ asked the producer.

  ‘I can smell that you have a five-dollar note and two twenty-cent pieces in your pocket,’ called Nanny Piggins. ‘That would buy you one slice of mud cake and half a doughnut from Hans’ Bakery.’

  ‘You see,’ said Michael.

  ‘Okay, I’ve found the lift cable,’ called Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m going to shinny up that until I get to the floor where the debate is being held.’

  ‘How will you smell for that?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘I’ll sniff for pomposity,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Your father always has a heavy odour of it about him, and the mayor is even worse.’

  They listened to Nanny Piggins climb the lift cable. Which was not a very loud noise because she was such an expert climber of cabling. You have to be when you are a circus performer because the Ringmaster would sometimes try to hide from her by climbing up to the top of the Big Top tent, so naturally Nanny Piggins would have to shinny up the guy ropes to give his shins the good biting they deserved.

  ‘I don’t know why they have to put so much thick grease on the cables,’ complained Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s going to be devilishly hard to get off my hot-pink wrestling leotard. It was bad enough getting the chocolate stain out that time I wrestled the profiterole out of Headmaster Pimplestock’s hand because I felt anyone who stocked generic health food bars in the school canteen did not deserve a chocolate treat themselves.’

  ‘I suppose they have to put grease on the cables so that the lift can go up and down,’ said Michael.

  ‘Well, it’s very inconvenient to people like me who have to climb up here and dramatically save the day,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Hang on –’ they could hear Nanny Piggins sniffing – ‘I think I’m at the right floor, I can smell your father’s socks. He’s been wearing the same ones for three weeks because he is too lazy to wash them and too cheap to throw them away.’

  ‘How are you going to get the door open?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Nanny Piggins. ‘I left my crowbar in my other leotard. Boris, I don’t suppose you could climb up here and wrench these doors open for me?’

  Boris didn’t answer with words, he just wept louder (and being Russian, he had already been weeping very loudly to begin with).

  Nanny Piggins sighed. ‘If you do come up here and help me,’ she continued, ‘I’ll give you a honey sandwich.’

  Boris leapt to his feet and somehow pulled his considerable frame through the petite pig-sized hole, all in less than a millisecond. He was soon scrambling up the cabling to meet his sister.

  ‘Stand aside,’ he ordered urgently.

  ‘I can’t stand aside,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m hanging on a lift cable.’

  ‘Then stand on my head,’ said Boris, ‘so I can get this door open.’

  Nanny Piggins evidently did as she was instructed because soon a beam of light shone into the lift shaft where Boris had used his considerable strength to wrench the lift door open.

  ‘Honey sandwich?’ he asked hopefully.

  Nanny Piggins reached into her hot-pink wrestling leotard and pulled out a snap-lock bag containing a (slightly squashed) honey sandwich. She always carried one about her person, just in case she had a motivational emergency with Boris.

  Boris grabbed the bag (he found it hard to act like a gentleman in the presence of honey) and swallowed it whole. ‘Mmm, delicious,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘You didn’t even take the sandwich out of the plastic bag!’

  ‘My stomach knows,’ said Boris, ‘and it is grateful I didn’t waste any time with unwrapping.’

  ‘Now we’d better rescue the others,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Don’t waste time!’ urged the producer from down in the lift shaft. ‘Go and join in the debate!’

  Nanny Piggins peered down into the darkness.

  ‘That is the difference between you, a TV producer, and me, a normal, morally balanced pig,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You think it is more important that I go and contribute to some mundane television program that everyone will forget as soon as it is over. Whereas I think it is more important to rescue three children, and you, from being trapped inside a lift shaft.’

  ‘You can rescue us later,’ cried the TV producer.

  ‘It’s sad really,’ said Nanny Piggins conversationally to her brother. ‘Everyone in television has Stockholm Syndrome regarding their job. What sort of mayoral candidate would leave a seven-year-old, a nine-year-old, an eleven-year-old and a very silly grown woman stuck in a lift shaft just so they could appear on television.’

  ‘A winning one,’ argued the producer.

  ‘Derrick, give that woman a chocolate bar,’ called Nanny Piggins. ‘She’s talking absolute rubbish and I’m sick of listening to it.’

/>   ‘How are we going to get them up?’ asked Boris.

  ‘I was thinking we could put a whole heap of explosives at the bottom of the lift shaft and blow the lift right out of the building,’ suggested Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Do we have any explosives in the car?’ asked Boris.

  ‘No,’ conceded Nanny Piggins. ‘I took them all out so we could get more cake in the boot.’

  ‘How about I just pull the lift up, hand over hand, using the lift cable?’ suggested Boris.

  ‘Do you think you could?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Boris, ‘if I did it quickly, while the honey sandwich in my stomach is still giving me lots of energy.’

  And so that is what they did. Boris pulled up the lift until Nanny Piggins could reach down through their improvised service hatch and pull the children out one at a time. Nanny Piggins even pulled the producer out, although she did seriously consider leaving her there in the dark, stuck in a lonely lift shaft – to give her the opportunity to rethink her sordid profession.

  ‘Where’s this debate then?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Through the big double doors,’ said the producer.

  ‘Let’s get stuck into some political discourse,’ said Nanny Piggins with a menacing gleam in her eye.

  She strode forward and kicked open the double doors, which wasn’t the most sensible thing to do because they were swinging doors, so they immediately swung back at her. Fortunately Nanny Piggins was a gifted athlete so she deftly stepped forward, allowing the doors to swing back and hit the producer on the nose.

  ‘Right,’ said Nanny Piggins, pointing her trotter at Mr Green and Mayor Bloomsbridge. ‘Which one of you naughty men is responsible for me being trapped in the lift?’

  The audience was riveted. Several of them had fallen asleep during the long, boring and pompous monologues each candidate had already indulged in, and the ones who had not fallen asleep desperately wished they could, or fall unconscious, or astral-project their minds to a parallel universe. So they were delighted to see a grease-smeared pig in a hot-pink wrestling leotard burst into the studio and start yelling.