by R. A. Spratt
'Let's sit in it to see how it feels,' suggested Nanny Piggins.
'But you're only meant to drive it in extreme emergencies,' Samantha reminded her.
'We're only sitting in it. What harm can that do?' reasoned Nanny Piggins. Samantha could not argue with that. What harm could it do? Besides, she wanted to sit in the back seat and pretend she was the Queen waving to the crowds of loyal subjects. So all four of them happily climbed in.
Samantha pretended she was the Queen, Michael pretended he was a fire-engine driver, Derrick pretended he was a detective staking out a criminal's lair and Nanny Piggins pretended she was the nanny of a very silly man who gave her the key to a luxury car. It was a lot of fun. Having a car was even more fun than cockroach races.
'Why don't you turn the radio on?' suggested Derrick.
'How do I do that?' asked Nanny Piggins.
'Just put the key in the ignition and turn it one notch,' Derrick explained.
Nanny Piggins did as he suggested and, suddenly, the car was filled with noise. The loud, boring noise of two men talking about politics.
'Yuck, change the channel,' said Michael.
Derrick reached over and pressed a few buttons. Suddenly they were listening to music.
'You mean we can choose what we listen to?' said Nanny Piggins in amazement.
'Oh yes, there are dozens of stations to choose from,' Derrick explained.
'I assumed your father's radio was permanently set to the most boring station in the world. I didn't realise he could choose to change it,' said Nanny Piggins.
'Oh yes,' said Derrick. 'You just press the buttons up or down until you find a station you like.'
Nanny Piggins was astounded. 'Just think of all the times we've been in the car with him and we've either had to listen to him talk, or the radio talk. When we could have been listening to music instead. I would have done something about it had I known.'
The children could see that Nanny Piggins had a point. The car was so much more exciting now that their father was not in it.
'What does this button do?' asked Nanny Piggins, reaching towards a small black box sitting in the central tray.
'That opens the garage door,' explained Sam antha.
'Really,' said Nanny Piggins as she reached over and pressed the button.
'What are you doing?' asked Samantha, immediately suspicious.
'I thought we might take the car out for a little drive,' said Nanny Piggins.
'But you're only meant to drive it in an emergency,' said Samantha.
Now you must understand, Samantha was not a spoilsport. She loved her nanny. And she enjoyed fun. She just took a while longer to warm up to fun than most children. But once she finally stopped worrying and started to enjoy herself, she could be just as much fun as the next irresponsible youth.
'Yes, I know. But the problem is, I don't know how to drive. So I had better learn now. Th at way I'll know what I'm doing when an emergency does happen,' explained Nanny Piggins, using a logic that only made full sense to herself.
'Didn't you learn how to drive at the circus?' asked Michael with surprise. It seemed to him that Nanny Piggins had learned everything else at the circus.
'No,' said Nanny Piggins absent-mindedly, as she poked buttons, hoping it would make the car go. 'If I wanted to get somewhere I'd just have them fire me out of the cannon in that direction. So how do I make this go?'
'You turn the key another notch,' said Derrick, not really thinking about the consequences of his suggestion. Because his mind was too busy picturing Nanny Piggins shooting through the air carrying a letter on the way to the post office. Before he knew it, the engine had roared to life. 'Oh my goodness!' he exclaimed.
'Now we're cooking with gas,' said Nanny Piggins delightedly. This was one of her favourite expressions. She did not know what it meant precisely. But she imagined it had something to do with the delight cavemen felt when gas was invented and they could stop lighting fires by rubbing two sticks together.
'Where shall we go?' she asked the children.
'How about the shop?' suggested Derrick conservatively.
'How about you just back it out of the drive carefully?' suggested Samantha even more conservatively.
'How about Iceland?' suggested Michael, feeling not-at-all conservative because he knew the car had seven air bags so not only was he likely to survive a crash, it would probably also be exciting and fun.
'I know,' declared Nanny Piggins, 'let's do all three!' And with that she threw the car into reverse and went precisely nowhere.
'What's happened?' she asked Derrick.
Derrick opened his eyes. He had closed them to brace for impact just in case Nanny Piggins managed to back into a truck as she came out of the driveway. He looked over to see what Nanny Piggins was doing and immediately recognised the problem. 'Your legs don't reach the pedals.'
'What pedals?' asked Nanny Piggins, although she soon saw the answer for herself when she looked down and saw two of them.
'One is to make the car go and the other is to make the car stop,' explained Derrick.
'How ingenious,' said Nanny Piggins. Humans could be annoying but they did come up with some clever things. 'Well there's nothing for it . . .'
Samantha hoped Nanny Piggins was about to say they would all have to go back in the house. But, of course, she did not. She said, 'Michael will have to crawl down there and press them for me when I call out.'
Michael was only too willing to do just that. So they were soon lurching backwards down the driveway with terrifying bursts of speed, followed by jolting stops. Derrick was reluctantly impressed when Nanny Piggins managed to get the car onto the road having only driven over one rubbish bin and a rose bush.
'We've got it out of the driveway. Now let's go to the shop,' yelled Nanny Piggins. She was excited and giddy with her new-found source of power. 'Just think, we can buy lollies without having to be exhausted from the walk there.'
'Oh my goodness!' exclaimed Derrick. For he had opened the glove box and was overwhelmed by what he saw.
'What is it?' asked Nanny Piggins.
'Look at all that money,' said Derrick pointing into the glove box. Because there in front of him was an entire $10 worth of small coins. It was the change Mr Green used for paying the toll on the way to work.
'It's like a pirate's treasure chest,' said Nanny Piggins, making a mental note to search Mr Green's things for money more often. 'Look at all that money. It's a fortune. Think how much chocolate we're going to be able to buy.'
Even Samantha was beginning to stop worrying at the thought of all that chocolate.
'Press harder on the "go" pedal, Michael, we've got lollies to buy,' ordered Nanny Piggins. And Michael, being a good boy, did exactly as he was told. The car shot forward and Nanny Piggins, using all her dexterity and skill from years of being a circus performer, was able to drive the car all the way to the shop without once asking Michael to press the stop pedal. At least not until they got to the shop, when Michael hit the brake so hard the car left two great long tracks of rubber burnt onto the road behind it.
Nanny Piggins and the children hopped out of the car and raced into the shop as fast as they could, not realising that they had left the engine on. It did not occur to Nanny Piggins that you needed to turn a car off, because she had never bought petrol before. She had no idea that petrol was expensive and that you should try to use as little as possible.
While it was always difficult for Nanny Piggins and the children to decide exactly what sort of sweets to buy, and coming to this decision usually involved them yelling and screaming at each other, the shrieking match was usually brief. Because no matter whether they preferred peppermints to chocolate, or chocolate to sherbet, they were all united in the common goal to get as much of it in their mouths as quickly as possible. So three minutes after entering, they left the shop carrying a large shopping bag full to the brim with their negotiated combination of treats.
They hurried b
ack to the car so they could enjoy their haul privately, without being criticised by passers-by, because it seemed that everyone was an expert on childhood obesity these days. And whenever Nanny Piggins let the children eat their own body weight in chocolate in the street, there was always some nosey stranger who would stop to give her a piece of their mind.
Once in the car, however, they had only got a handful of lollies in their mouths when they noticed that there was a fully grown man sitting in the middle of the back seat, screaming at Nanny Piggins to 'Drive! Hurry up and drive!' The man was waving what looked like an incredibly realistic water pistol so Nanny Piggins decided to do exactly what he said. She put the car in drive and asked Michael to press the 'go' pedal.
As they raced away from the strip of shops the man seemed to relax, although he still kept his realistic-looking water pistol trained on Nanny Piggins. 'What happened to Paul?' asked the man.
'Whatever do you mean?' asked Nanny Piggins.
'Where did he go? Paul was behind the wheel when I went into the jewellery shop. Are you his missus or something?' asked the man.
Nanny Piggins was about to get on her feminist high horse and explain that she was no man's 'missus', when she thought better of it. She had just had her hair set and did not want to be doused in water.
'Yes, that's right. I am Paul's missus and he asked me to drive you because his dentist had a sudden cancellation, so Paul rushed off to get some much needed root canal work.'
'Oh,' said the man. 'I didn't know he was having trouble with his teeth.'
'Paul doesn't complain about it. He's had a high pain threshold ever since he was shot fifteen times during the war.'
'I didn't know he was in the war either,' said the man.
Nanny Piggins realised she had better put an end to this line of fiction before she dug herself into a hole. 'He was ordered by the government not to talk about it for reasons of national security.'
'Right,' said the man. 'So why did you bring the kids to a job?'
'It's so hard to find affordable child care these days,' said Nanny Piggins. She knew this to be true because it was what Mr Green muttered every time he caught her doing something wrong. Which was quite a lot.
'Well, I reckon it's a stroke of genius bringing a car full of kids. Nobody will look twice at us. They'll think we're just out for a family drive,' said the man.
'We are just out for a family drive,' Nanny Piggins pointed out.
The man laughed. 'That's right. That's the story we'll tell them if we have to.'
'Would you like a sherbet lemon?' Samantha asked the man. She did not really want to give him one of her sweets but she knew that it was polite to share. And she did not want to go any longer without eating one herself. Besides, it was most disagreeable the way he was pointing his water pistol at Nanny Piggins and she thought if she gave him a lolly he might put the pistol down to open it.
'Ta, that's very kind,' said the man. 'Here, mind this for me.' He put the water pistol on the armrest and turned to look at the view out of the rear window. For some reason he was more interested in the view from the back of the car than he was of the view from the front. So Samantha simply closed the armrest, pushing it up into the seat and hiding the nasty water pistol from view.
'I think we lost them. You've done some good driving, sweetheart,' he complimented Nanny Piggins warmly. 'I've known some fast getaway drivers in my time. But you're the first one I've known who never touches the brakes.'
'I didn't know you could just touch the brakes,' admitted Nanny Piggins. 'I thought you just jammed on them as hard as you could when you wanted to stop.'
The man laughed. 'I like a girl with a sense of humour. Your Paul is a lucky man.'
But having said that, his pleasure with Nanny Piggins abruptly ended as the car engine began to splutter and die.
'What's going on?' the man demanded. 'Where's my gun?' he added as an afterthought.
But the man never got to find his gun. Regrettably for him, Nanny Piggins knew absolutely nothing about the internal combustion engine. As a result, the car coasted to a fuel-less halt right out the front of the local police station just as the police sergeant was stepping out onto the footpath to go to lunch.
And unfortunately for the man with the water pistol, the sergeant immediately recognised him as Billy McPhearson, the well-known bank robber and jewel thief.
'Well, well, well, what have we here then?' asked the sergeant as he grabbed Billy by the collar, before he could crawl over Samantha and make a quick exit from the car. 'You wouldn't have anything to do with the jewellery shop robbery on Bridge Street, would you?' This is the type of rhetorical question police officers ask all the time.
'We've just come from Bridge Street,' Derrick innocently informed them.
'Well, well, well, you've got some explaining to do, Billy. But first you had better hand over your gun. I know you always carry one,' said the sergeant.
'I don't have one on me. I swear on my mother's eyes!' exclaimed Billy.
'It's true,' said Samantha helpfully. 'Although he did give me his water pistol to mind.' For she believed it was tremendously important to be helpful to people in uniform. She pulled down the armrest and revealed the weapon.
'Thank you, young lady,' said the sergeant kindly. 'I'm surprised at you, Billy. You're losing your touch. Letting yourself be disarmed by a little girl.'
'I gave him a sherbet lemon to get him to put it down,' said Samantha truthfully.
'An interesting tactic, Miss,' said the kind sergeant. 'I'll have to suggest that next time they come to teach us hostage negotiating.'
* * *
And so it was only after three hours of questioning, when Nanny Piggins and the children were finally sent home, that they realised the enormity of what they had done.
'Who would have thought that we could catch an armed robber,' said Nanny Piggins in wonder.
'I never would have given him a sherbet lemon if I'd known he was a bad man,' said Samantha.
'If you hadn't given him the sherbet lemon, we all would have been killed in a shoot-out at the police station,' Derrick pointed out.
'So in a way . . .' said Nanny Piggins (this is how she started all her best excuses), '. . . taking the car and using your father's money to buy sweets saved our lives.'
'It did more than that,' protested Michael. 'It got an armed robber off the streets.'
'Good point,' said Nanny Piggins. 'And that's what we'll tell your father if he asks why there are so many dents and scratches on his car.'
'We'll say the armed robber made you drive badly at gunpoint,' suggested Derrick.
'Exactly. Now we've got our story straight. Let's really enjoy this chocolate.'
So Nanny Piggins and the children ate sweets and raced cockroaches, truly satisfied that they had done a good day's work.
CHAPTER 5
Mr Green Asks a Small Favour (Then Immediately Regrets It)
It was seven o'clock at night and Nanny Piggins and the children were down in the cellar, happily using the late Mrs Green's power tools to make a rat trap. They wanted to catch a rat because Derrick had been humiliated in front of his class for getting seventeen spelling mistakes in a twenty-five-word spelling test. And Nanny Piggins was determined to get revenge on Mrs Anderson, his nasty English teacher, by putting a rat in her handbag.
