by R. A. Spratt
And so the next day Nanny Piggins introduced Mr Green to Boris. They had never met before because Mr Green had never realised there was a ten-foot-tall dancing bear living in his garden shed. Nanny Piggins did not want him to find out now either. So she introduced Boris as her cousin Sergei from the Ukraine, who just happened to be visiting for a couple of weeks. And Boris wore a fake moustache so if, after this scheme was over, Mr Green should happen to bump into Boris in the street, he would never recognise him.
Boris gave Mr Green a dancing lesson. And this time he did make some progress. Mr Green was so terrified to be in the same room as a giant bear that he actually did as he was told. And Boris had a very good idea for helping Mr Green remember which one was his left foot. He put a big dab of honey on it. The honey did not help Mr Green’s memory at all. But having a ten-foot-tall bear secretly sneaking licks off his foot when he least expected it emblazoned which foot was which in his brain forever.
Normally it takes a student years to become a maestro at tap dancing but, luckily for Mr Green, Nanny Piggins and Boris knew lots of short cuts to help him pick it up quicker. For example, to teach Mr Green to be light on his feet, Nanny Piggins had the brilliant idea of giving him an entire three-hour dance lesson on a bed of burning hot coals. Even when the lesson on the coals was over, Mr Green skipped about the house touching the floor as lightly as a feather, thanks to the third-degree burns on his feet.
Teaching Mr Green rhythm was a little harder. He had no natural aptitude for that at all, until Nanny Piggins had the brilliant idea of sneaking into his bedroom while he was sleeping and gaffer-taping a metronome to his head. After just two short weeks the unending tick-tock tick-tock became imprinted on his brain. (The people at work did think it was odd that Mr Green had a metronome attached to himself, but they did not like to say anything in case he explained it. Having something explained to you by Mr Green was always such a bore.)
At the end of three weeks Nanny Piggins and Boris had successfully forced the fundamentals of dance into Mr Green’s brain with just one day to go before his big job interview with Isabella Dunkhurst.
‘Do you think Father is ready?’ asked Derrick.
‘He knows the dance,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but I don’t think he’s ready. He hasn’t got any passion for it. Dance is all about emotion and expression. I can teach your father where to put his feet but I can’t teach him to stop being as emotionally stunted as a lump of lichen.’
‘That’s not fair,’ said Boris. ‘Lichen isn’t emotionally stunted. It is a harmonious symbiotic partnership of fungus and algae. Most of us could never aspire to such a happy and sustained relationship.’
‘Have you been reading Derrick’s science text-books too?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘I try not to,’ admitted Boris, ‘but they’re just so shocking.’
‘Maybe you’re coming at it the wrong way,’ said Derrick. ‘Instead of teaching Father to be passionate about dance, maybe you should teach him to dance about what he is passionate about.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘Most dances are about love or despair, aren’t they?’ asked Derrick.
‘All the best ones are,’ agreed Boris. ‘Although some of them are about sad swans and hallucinating nutcrackers as well.’
‘But, what if you choreographed a dance for Father about what he loves – the tax code! That’s something he could really be passionate about,’ said Derrick.
‘Do you think you could do it?’ Nanny Piggins asked Boris. ‘You are a brilliant choreographer.’
‘I’m sure I can,’ said Boris. ‘The only thing is, I don’t know anything about tax.’
‘Don’t ask Father to explain it to you,’ Michael warned. ‘It will put you into one of your super deep hibernation sleeps.’
‘All you need to know is that Father hates paying tax,’ said Samantha, ‘and that he spends all day finding loopholes and setting up schemes so that his clients don’t have to pay the government.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Boris. ‘I’m beginning to visualise something.’
Boris and Mr Green disappeared into the living room. (Nanny Piggins had turned it into a makeshift dance studio by gluing aluminium foil to an entire wall to act as a mirror.) They were in there all day and all night. The only sense the children had of their progress was from the noises they heard coming from behind the door. Occasionally Boris would yell ‘Niet, niet, niet!’ (He always broke into Russian when he was frustrated.) Sometimes they heard Mr Green sobbing. And all day long they heard Boris demand, ‘No, do it again.’
By eight o’clock in the morning the children were actually beginning to feel sorry for their father. They were wondering if their dear friend Boris had been replaced by a much meaner identical cyborg, when the living-room door opened and Boris and his student emerged.
Mr Green looked exhausted and dazed. But Boris’ expression was much harder to read – he was almost proud.
‘How did you go?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘It was –’ began Mr Green.
‘A-a-ah!’ chided Boris. ‘Don’t tell her, show her.’
Mr Green looked up at Boris and Boris nodded. Boris went over to the stereo and turned the music on and then the most extraordinary thing happened – Mr Green launched into the dance.
Nanny Piggins and the children had been watching Mr Green dance for three weeks, so that in itself was not extraordinary. But for the first time in three weeks Nanny Piggins and the children saw Mr Green do the most amazing thing – he was dancing well. As he spun and sashayed about the kitchen, pounding the floor with his rhythmic taps, joy radiated from his face.
‘What did you do?’ marvelled Nanny Piggins. ‘However did you manage to teach him to be so good? He’s positively joyful!’
‘It was easy,’ said Boris with a smile. ‘I simply told him to imagine that his tax return was laid out all over the floor, and every time he tapped on a receipt, the tax department would no longer be able to audit it.’
‘So he’s happy because he’s imagining defrauding the government for thousands and thousands of dollars?’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Exactly,’ said Boris. ‘I think I’ve tapped into his inner child.’
‘Come on,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Let’s drive him to work for his job interview. We need to get him there before his brain leaks and everything we’ve taught him starts to seep out of his ears.’
And so Boris scooped up Mr Green and rushed him out to the Rolls-Royce. Nanny Piggins knew that the interview panel would find it a trifle odd for him to be dressed in dancer’s tights and pink leg warmers, but it was not worth the risk of allowing him to go upstairs and put on his three-piece suit. Putting on those boring clothes would undoubtedly suck the ability to dance right out of his legs.
Obviously Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children could not go in with Mr Green to watch the interview. (Nanny Piggins was not allowed in the law firm’s building because she had a nasty habit of pointing out how useless the lawyers’ lives were and making them cry.) But by dressing up as cleaning staff (which involved more fake moustaches), they were able to loiter outside the interview room.
Boris had given Mr Green a last-minute pep talk. He grabbed Mr Green by his head and gave him a big wet kiss on each cheek, then broke down crying (that is what all great Russian ballet teachers do before their protégé is about to dance).
At first it was an anxious wait because they had to listen to Mr Green answering the standard interview questions: ‘What are your strengths?’, ‘What are your weaknesses?’, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ and ‘Did you really steal five boxes of tea bags from the break room?’
Eventually they got to the bit they had been waiting for: they heard Isabella Dunkhurst say, ‘Is there anything else you’d like to add?’ Mr Green did not respond. He just got up, turned on his portable stereo and began to dance.
Boris wept.
‘I feel so proud,’ he sobbed. �
��My baby bird has flown the nest.’
Nanny Piggins gave her brother a hug and turned to the children. ‘I think your father is going to get that promotion. I wonder what it will mean for us. If he gets a pay raise, perhaps he will give me a pay raise. Just think of that! Twelve cents an hour!’
‘If he gets a promotion,’ said Samantha, ‘perhaps he’ll work even longer hours, and pay even less attention to the things we get up to when he’s not there.’
‘Oh I hope so,’ said Nanny Piggins, beginning to weep a little herself. ‘That would be wonderful.’
‘He’s coming to the end,’ said Boris as he listened to the music and the final flurry of Mr Green’s feet. ‘Wait a minute. Something’s wrong.’
‘What?’ worried Samantha.
‘He’s losing control!’ exclaimed Boris. ‘He’s becoming too emotional. He’s tapping too hard and too fast!’
Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children gave up any pretence of being cleaners and rushed to press their eyes to the keyhole. Unfortunately the keyhole was not big enough to accommodate one eyeball, let alone five, and with all the pushing and shoving none of them got to see what happened inside. Not until the door gave way under the combined force of their shoving and they tumbled into the room, just as the music concluded and Mr Green did one last enthusiastic high kick.
And that’s when everything went terribly wrong. Because as he kicked, his shoe flicked off and flew through the air with the force and speed of an Exocet missile, hitting Isabella Dunkhurst right in the middle of her forehead. The other lawyers screamed. Mr Green wailed. Isabella slumped backwards, her chair tipping over onto the floor so that she banged her head again as it thudded onto the polished floorboards.
There was a moment of silence. Then Mr Green burst into tears and the other two lawyers leapt forward to grab him, in case it was not an accident and his whole dance routine had been an elaborate assassination attempt. (This sort of thing happens all the time in law offices, where employees will do anything for a better parking space.)
‘Isabella!’ cried Nanny Piggins as she rushed over to her friend. There was a large lump swelling up in the middle of her forehead.
‘What have I done?!’ wailed Mr Green.
‘Oh dear,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You’ve knocked her unconscious. Never mind, I’m sure we can revive her, perhaps with a slice of cake.’
But it was not to be. Nanny Piggins tried waggling every type of cake she had in her handbag under Isabella Dunkhurst’s nose but nothing could convince her brain to snap out of its coma.
Isabella was soon installed in the brain injury wing of their local hospital (a department Nanny Piggins often had cause to visit herself), and the doctors advised everyone to be patient.
‘Comas are a tricky thing,’ said the doctor. ‘She could be out for a couple of hours or a couple of months.’
‘Don’t worry, Isabella,’ yelled Nanny Piggins into her unconscious friend’s ear. ‘I’ll tape The Young and the Irritable for you. You’ll be able to watch all the episodes you’ve missed when you get better.’
‘What if she dies?’ sobbed Mr Green.
‘Then I’m sure she wouldn’t be cross,’ said Nanny Piggins, patting his shoulder comfortingly. ‘For such a great tap dance enthusiast, there would be no finer way to go than to be hit in the head by a flying tap shoe.’
‘It’s not going to come to that,’ the doctor assured them. ‘Her brain just needs some rest.’
‘As anyone who watches soap operas knows – coma patients never die,’ Nanny Piggins added reassuringly. ‘They always wake up at the most interesting moment possible, usually during a wedding – often their own.’
‘There’s no way I’m going to get that promotion now,’ sniffed Mr Green, starting to cry all over again, as he realised he had another tragedy to cope with. ‘Giving the senior partner a brain injury is going to look so bad on my résumé.’
‘I’m sure they’ll hold the interviews again,’ said Boris, ‘and we’ll just find what the new interviewer likes and teach you to be good at that. Oooh, I hope they like eating honey. I’d enjoy teaching someone to eat honey. I’d have to do a lot of demonstrating, of course.’
And so Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children took Mr Green home. They were saddened that their dear friend was in the hospital, but relieved that Mr Green would not be going to jail. Because that would not be fair on their other dear friends in the maximum security prison, who were all very wicked men, but still did not deserve to be punished with such an unpleasant companion.
As Derrick, Samantha and Michael approached their house, they were nervous. Usually Nanny Piggins met them at the bus stop, but on this day she had not, and that could mean any number of things. She could have been kidnapped by a circus recruiter, she could have been arrested for wrestling with a cake wholesaler or she simply could have lost track of time after her watch had been bitten off by a crocodile.
So as they walked up their front path they were relieved, as well as concerned, to hear the loud banging and screaming going on inside. They were relieved because the screaming was in the distinctive voice of their nanny. But concerned because from all the yelling it sounded like she was single-handedly fighting off a team of sumo wrestlers.
Derrick, being the eldest, put his key in the lock and opened the door. Samantha and Michael stood defensively behind him as he stuck his head around the doorframe and called out, ‘Is everything all right?’
The thudding continued in a distant part of the house, as Boris burst into the corridor, tears streaming down his face. He rushed forward and gave Derrick a big bear hug, almost but not quite dislocating his spine. ‘Thank goodness you’re home,’ wept Boris.
‘What is it?’ asked Samantha. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Are the police trying to arrest her?’ asked Michael.
‘Is Eduardo the flying armadillo claiming to be the world’s greatest flying animal again?’ asked Derrick.
‘Did the drycleaner get the chocolate stain out of her silk dress?’ asked Samantha. ‘The one she had been saving because it was particularly delicious?’
‘No. Much, much worse,’ said Boris between sobs. ‘She’s got her trotter stuck.’
‘In what?’ asked Derrick, struggling to imagine what his athletically and acrobatically gifted nanny could possibly be stuck in.
‘In a jar of maraschino cherries,’ explained Boris. ‘She was making a blackforest cherry cake and obviously you need a whole jar of cherries for that. But the last cherry at the bottom of the jar wouldn’t come out. So Sarah reached in to get it but then she couldn’t get her trotter back out again.’
‘Did you try smothering it with butter?’ asked Samantha.
‘That was the first thing we tried,’ said Boris. ‘In fact we did it twice because the first time she kept licking it off.’
‘But why the thudding and banging?’ asked Michael.
‘She tried smashing the glass jar off, but then she worried that she might cut herself and blood would ruin the flavour of the maraschino cherry,’ said Boris, ‘so now she is trying to find something she can wedge the jar in so she can yank it off.’
‘And why the yelling?’ asked Derrick.
‘That’s been mainly at me,’ admitted Boris, a tear beginning to well in his eye once more. ‘She wanted me to yank the jar off for her. She says I’m a ten-foot-tall bear so I should be strong enough.’
The children looked at each other, not knowing what to say. Boris was enormous and super strong. They didn’t understand why he couldn’t just yank it off either.
‘Did you try?’ asked Samantha.
‘Yes, I’d do anything to help my sister,’ said Boris, ‘but every time I tugged, she yelped, which made me cry. Because I’d do anything not to hurt my sister.’
‘Let’s go and see if we can help,’ suggested Derrick as he led the way to the kitchen.
When he opened the door everything was disturbingly quiet inside. He could not even see his nanny
at first. Until they looked over the kitchen table and saw her on the floor. She was covered in flour, butter, cherry sauce, chocolate sauce and honey (where Boris had tried to help), and she was lying on the floor with her trotter wedged under the dishwasher.
‘Nanny Piggins,’ said Derrick politely, ‘what are you doing?’
‘Trying to get my trotter out of a jar of maraschino cherries, of course,’ she snapped.
‘But why is your hand under the dishwasher?’ asked Michael.
‘I wedged the jar under there so I’d be able to yank my hand free, obviously,’ replied Nanny Piggins.
‘And it didn’t work?’ guessed Samantha.
‘I got the jar wedged all right,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but it’s hard to yank your hand when you’re lying on the floor, covered in butter. I’m too greasy to get traction. Why don’t you try pulling me? Boris cries too hard to get a good grip.’
The children went over and dutifully grabbed hold of their nanny’s free arm.
‘Okay,’ said Derrick, ‘we’ll pull on three. One, two –’
‘Wait!’ called Samantha. ‘Before we pull, I’ve just got one question.’
‘What about?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘If you’re looking for baking tips, perhaps you could wait for a more convenient moment.’
‘No, I was going to ask – have you tried letting go of the cherry?’ asked Samantha.
‘What?’ asked Nanny Piggins, dumbfounded.
‘Well, you got your arm caught in the cherry jar because you were trying to get a cherry out,’ said Samantha. ‘I was just wondering if you had tried letting go of the cherry to get your arm out.’
‘What would be the point of that?!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Why would I want my arm back if it didn’t have a cherry at the end of it?’
‘Once your arm was out you could jiggle the cherry out with a fork,’ suggested Samantha.
Nanny Piggins considered this for a long moment as the others watched her mull over the possibilities.
‘All right,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I’ll try it.’ She relaxed her grip and slid her arm out. ‘It worked!’
