Introducing D'Lila LaRue

by Nette Hilton

  Tuesdays with Nanny were the best, because on Tuesdays it was Nanny-Anny’s painting class.

  Every Monday night, paints and easels and aprons and lunches were packed. It was early-to-bed-on-Mondays because Miss Lizzie’s painting class had an early start.

  Miss Lizzie, Nanny said, was an artwork all by herself. A true fashionista.

  D’Lila said so too, and every week they would try to guess what Miss Lizzie would be wearing. Once she wore a fairy crown. Another time she wore striped socks and long shorts and ballet shoes.

  Miss Lizzie, said Nanny, was one-of-the-best.

  “And that,” said Nanny into the phone one night, “just makes it worse.”

  D’Lila sipped her lemon drink and waited until Nanny ended her call. “What’s worse?” she wanted to know.

  Nanny heaved a heavy sigh. “Poor Miss Lizzie won’t be there anymore. We have a new teacher, a proper one from the university.”

  “What did she do?” D’Lila could hardly begin to think about art class without Miss Lizzie.

  Nanny flicked a bit of fluff off her black skirt. “She got old,” she said. “That’s what she did.”

  Miss Lizzie? Old?

  D’Lila LaRue was horrified. “Everybody gets old,” she said.

  Apparently, it didn’t make any difference.

  “Our new art teacher starts this week,” said Nanny. “So there’ll be no mucking about.”

  D’Lila sipped her drink and oozed down a little in her chair.

  No mucking about. For goodness sake. They never did that anyway.

  Mostly.

  Tuesday morning everything was ready. The paints and the easels, the aprons, the lunches and the thermos of coffee.

  “Off we go then,” Nanny-Anny said as she closed the front door. She took a deep breath. “D’Lila LaRue, this week your job is to be the best ever. We don’t want a grumpy art teacher to deal with. A grumpy art teacher might just say that little girls don’t belong.”

  D’Lila liked having a job. It made her feel important and that was one of the best feelings in the world. Nanny-Anny was always saying so.

  And she certainly didn’t want to be left at home on Tuesdays. Well, it wouldn’t happen would it? Poor Nanny would have to stay home too, and that would mean she’d miss out on her art class.

  Miss her art class? D’Lila LaRue also took a deep breath. She was certainly going to make sure that didn’t happen.

  “Remember,” said Nanny as they hurried to the bus stop, “we’re going to have to stay on our toes.”

  Staying on her toes did seem to be a funny way to stop an art teacher from being grumpy, but D’Lila did the best she could. She stayed on her toes all the way on the 477 bus, which took them past the park and up the hill. It was hard to toe-walk up all the steep stairs that led to the art studio at the top, but she managed.

  Just.

  A man who was making a lot of huffing noises said she should stop mucking about and walk properly.

  Mucking about?

  As if.

  There’d be no mucking about today. None at all.

  “I’m staying on my toes for Nanny-Anny’s art lesson,” she said in the same sort of voice Nanny used when she needed to explain something difficult. “And you’d better do it too. There’s a grumpy old teacher in here if we don’t.”

  Mr Quarry said he was the Senior Lecturer in Art at the University of the Third Age and he was the teacher and he certainly wasn’t grumpy.

  D’Lila thought he sounded just a little bit cross but, before she could say, Nanny popped a raspberry lollipop into her mouth and sat her in the corner.

  “D’Lila LaRue, some people don’t understand small children,” Nanny said. “Your job is to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.”

  D’Lila liked her job. It was a lot easier than staying on her toes.

  She kept her eyes open and learned lots of things about artists and paints and the shape of things. She saw that red and yellow made orange and if you added blue you got brown. She saw that heads could be circles and bodies rectangles and arms and legs sausage shaped.

  Miss Lizzie had said it all before but it was interesting to hear it again, just the same.

  Miss Lizzie didn’t care about things being the right colour, though. She just liked colour.

  Mr Quarry liked the right colours.

  D’Lila kept her eyes open, just like Nanny had said and saw lots.

  She saw that the dog that old Mr Penhaligan had painted was not a dog colour. Dogs weren’t usually greenish. She might have said that a little blue might have helped, but she said nothing.

  Not a word. Her job was to keep her mouth shut.

  She didn’t make a sound when she saw that the dog was also sitting in a way that dogs could never sit. Dogs have legs on each corner. Legs don’t grow out of the middle of their chest. She wanted so much to help because the dog had such a nice face and Mr Penhaligan was working so hard to get it right. Mr Quarry liked things to be right. He’d said so right after he finished telling everyone about the right colours.

  But D’Lila’s job was to sit tight and be quiet. So she pointed and, when Mr Penhaligan was looking, she turned herself into a dog and did a very quick, wonderfully good impersonation of a dog sitting down.

  Mr Penhaligan was so happy he patted her on the head, turned his painting around and began to fix it up.

  “Whatever is that child doing now?” said Mr Quarry. He looked like he’d seen something that smelled bad. “She needs to be taken in hand.”

  Nanny decided to do just that.

  She popped one more raspberry lollipop in D’Lila’s mouth and suggested a new job.

  “You could be our model,” Nanny said and dragged a table away from the wall. “Remember to stay perfectly, perfectly still!” She sat D’Lila LaRue in the middle of the artists’ easels.

  “Can I move my eyes?” D’Lila asked.

  Nanny-Anny said, “Bless,” and hurried back to her place.

  Mr Quarry said he’d have to check the rules about using a child for poses in the art class, but he would let it happen JUST THIS ONCE.

  “Don’t move, little girl,” he said. “They need to get it right!”

  D’Lila liked being a statue but she decided that her next modelling assignment had better be a bird flying or firecracker on bonfire night.

  It was very hard to stay as still as a stone.

  She didn’t move a muscle. Her arms ached and her legs wanted to twitch but she was STILL.

  Everyone was working so hard and she would never, ever have moved, not a jot, except for the spider. A rather large spider crept over the window ledge and began a furry journey across the jackets and coats. Slowly, she lifted her finger to point and opened her mouth to warn, but the class, the whole class said, “Don’t move!” in whispery, busy voices that MEANT BUSINESS.

  And Mr Quarry glared with eyes as fierce as headlights on a dark road.

  D’Lila LaRue put her arm down.

  And her finger.

  And watched the spider move across the artists’ bags to sit on Loretta Sonyetta’s pink-shirted shoulder.

  The spider didn’t move for quite a while.

  Neither did D’Lila.

  Then she opened her mouth.

  “Don’t,” said Mr Quarry. “Keep it closed.”

  The spider was a huntsman. A very big one with pointy bits that might have been jaws at the front of its face. He might have gone back out the window if Loretta hadn’t decided to brush her hair back at that moment.

  D’Lila saw its eight furry legs hunker down when Loretta’s hand swooped over the top of it. Then she saw its front leg, the longest furriest one, reach up to touch Loretta Sonyetta’s rouged cheek. She was pretty sure its mouth had opened too. Biting Loretta Sonyetta would not be a good idea.

  D’Lila LaRue leaped. She flew off that chair screeching as loud as she could.

  “DON’T WORRY!” she cried as she soared through the air. “I’LL SAVE YOU
!”

  By the time Loretta had picked herself up off the floor, the spider was nowhere to be seen.

  It wasn’t under any of the easels that had somehow been toppled in all the excitement. It wasn’t glued to the wet paint on Mr Penhaligan’s T-shirt. His dog painting was though and it looked quite splendid even if it was a little greenish with a leg in the wrong place.

  Mr Quarry was huddled under the table with his art folio on his head.

  “Well, I think you did a brave thing,” Nanny-Anny said when everyone had picked themselves up after the HUGE FRIGHT. “Think how awful it would have been if Loretta Sonyetta had been bitten.”

  “I think it just wanted to give her a pat,” D’Lila LaRue said. “I watched it the whole time.”

  Mrs Loretta Sonyetta called Someone a little beast and muttered words about That Person needing to MEND THEIR WAYS. Nanny said it was time to go anyway and they’d all had too much excitement to settle down and do any more art.

  Mr Quarry didn’t say anything at all.

  D’Lila LaRue stayed on her toes as they left the hall but she thought it might have been a little too late.

  Mr Quarry was already very, very angry.

  “Never mind,” said Nanny-Anny. “I suppose we can always find another art class.”

  Back they went through the park as the sun set lower in the sky.

  Another Tuesday art class finished.

  “Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.” Nanny Anny sighed as the 477 took them back home.

  It was a peaceful ride and they arrived home before the peak hour traffic so they were inside in no time at all. They were having an iced tea when Nanny’s phone rang.

  “Really,” she was saying and “Well, I never!” and “You don’t say” and then “Who? Miss Lizzie?” And then she started all over again. “Really. Well, I never . . .”

  D’Lila dunked her biscuit and waited.

  She’d eaten five biscuits before Nanny-Anny finished.

  “We’ve had the best news! You’ll never guess what?”

  D’Lila thought she could but Nanny-Anny loved surprising her so she guessed that Aunt Zelia was coming to stay which, of course, wasn’t going to happen because Aunt Zelia was never coming back after her last visit.

  Nanny shook her head.

  D’Lila guessed that they had won the lottery and they were going to London to collect their winnings.

  Nanny shook her head again. She looked as if her face would split right open she was so excited about her news.

  “Miss Lizzie is coming back! She’s going to teach us and Mr Quarry is only coming to help out occasionally. What do you think about that?”

  What was there to think about that? Only celebrations! They opened a tub of ice cream and loaded their iced biscuits with layers of chocolate and strawberry and vanilla.

  “And no dunking!” Nanny said.

  As if.

  Later, when their tummies were so full they had to stretch out on the floor to watch “The Footy Show”, D’Lila discovered a small, unsolved worry that was left over from the art class.

  “What did Loretta Sonyetta mean about mending my ways?” she asked, with her hands folded under her head as she gazed up at the ceiling. It was an unusual thing to say to someone who’d just rescued you from a spider. “Do you think I need to mend my ways?”

  Nanny-Anny sighed. Her voice was sounding as if she might have dozed off for a moment or two.

  “It’s something for us to work on,” she said as she rolled herself over and then climbed back up onto the couch. “But we might leave it till tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow was another day and another job that would need to be doing. And, if she was going to be the best at it, and the most help, and if there was mending to be done, well, they’d need some yarn.

  And D’Lila LaRue knew exactly where to find some.

  When you get to the end of the journey of a book and say “I wrote a book” you suddenly realise that, while you might have put pen to paper, an awful lot of people have been standing by to help you. This time, however, there needs to be special mention of the mob at Walker – Christina Pagliaro and Linsay Knight and Sue Whiting and just everyone else who took my phone calls and put up with my agonised attempts to open messages that wouldn’t open – all of us in isolation and learning new ropes.

  Anne Yi deserves my heartfelt thanks for her patience. What a hero and what wonderful artwork.

  Last, but not least, my long-suffering, ear-bashed darling agent, Jane Novak – thank you for keeping me in line – or at least giving it your best shot.

  Nette Hilton continues to write all sorts of stories and enjoy all sorts of adventures in her home on the far north coast of New South Wales. She is immersed in writing and reading through her judging for the CBCA and her connections to SCBWI and local bookshops. In this strange new COVID world she makes the most of isolation by trying to explore new ways to make books work . . . and to master the intricacies of guitar playing and dog walking. www.nettehilton.com.au

  For the real Nanny Anny. NH

  For my sister Susan. AY

  First published in 2021

  by Walker Books Australia Pty Ltd

  Locked Bag 22, Newtown

  NSW 2042 Australia

  www.walkerbooks.com.au

  The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted.

  Text © 2021 Nette Hilton

  Illustrations © 2021 A. Yi

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The illustrations for this book were created digitally.