Nanny Piggins and the Daring Rescue 7 (21 page)

‘Yes, what is it?' she began. ‘Hmm . . . A-huh . . . Oh dear . . . Yes, I understand . . . Yes, I understand . . . Yes, I understand.'

Unfortunately the children could not understand because this one-sided conversation was too cryptic for them. (And Boris was not trying to understand because he was busily licking the insides of a jar of honey.)

‘Now, Mr Green,' said Nanny Piggins, using her firm voice. ‘I want you to stop crying. Stop crying . . . I'm not going to talk to you until you stop crying . . . That's better. Now I know it's hard to start a new job. Have you tried making friends? . . . You smile at people and say, “Will you be my friend?” . . . All right . . . Okay . . . I'll be there as soon as possible.'

Nanny Piggins hung up the phone.

‘What's happening?' asked Samantha.

‘Apparently your father is not enjoying his new job,' explained Nanny Piggins.

‘But he never enjoys anything,' said Samantha.

‘I pointed that out,' said Nanny Piggins, ‘but he says in this job, they are actually torturing him and forcing him to work in inhumane conditions.'

‘Really?' asked Derrick.

‘That's what he says,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘He has begged me to come and rescue him.'

‘Are you going to do it?' asked Michael.

‘Well my instinct was to say “No”,' admitted Nanny Piggins, ‘but when I was in my hour of need, having run away from the circus one rainy night, with nowhere to go, and no umbrella to hold over the lovely suede shoes I was wearing, it was your father who took me in.'

‘But not because he was nice,' said Michael. ‘Because you agreed to work for him for ten cents an hour.'

‘Nevertheless,' said Nanny Piggins, ‘now that it's his hour of need I can't abandon him. If he wants to be rescued, then rescued he shall be.'

‘Awww,' said the children, ‘but what about the roller disco?'

Nanny Piggins looked at her watch. ‘Well, I said I'd rescue him but I didn't say I'd rescue him straight-away. I'm sure we can squeeze in some major house renovations and a roller disco party first.'

And so after a few short hours of pouring concrete, installing a disco ball, burning Mr Green's furniture and dancing on rollerskates, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children set out for the airport.

Fortunately they did not have to wait long for a flight. Nanny Piggins managed to convince a charter flight load of tourists heading to Marrakesh that Vanuatu was in fact a much nicer place to go. Then once the flight plan was resubmitted, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children hitched a lift with them.

They had a wonderful time on the flight. It was an old plane and the in-flight entertainment system failed thirty minutes into the journey. So Nanny Piggins and Boris leapt up and acted out the rest of the movie for all the passengers' entertainment. Nanny Piggins had never seen
Gandhi
before, but she had no problem improvising the rest of the storyline. In fact her version had a much happier ending than the real movie because in her story it ended with Gandhi getting married to a princess and opening a thousand chocolate factories across India so no-one would ever go hungry again.

When they landed in Port Vila, Derrick consulted a map to work out where they could find their father's office. He'd just found the street address when Nanny Piggins came running over.

‘Quick!' she called urgently. ‘Come with me!'

‘You've found Father already?' asked Michael.

‘Something much, much more important,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘There's no time to explain. You have to come with me now!'

The children grabbed their bags and ran with their nanny across the tarmac of the airport.

‘Where are we running to?' asked Michael. He disliked random running, whereas running after an ice-cream van or to a sweet shop was always worth the effort.

‘We have to catch this plane,' said Nanny Piggins.

They rounded a hangar to see a small propeller plane.

‘We're catching another plane?' asked Samantha.

‘Why?' asked Derrick. ‘Father's office is just a few kilometres into town.'

‘Something urgent has come up. We have to make a diversion,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘Quick, get in.'

The children and Boris got into the plane.

‘What's going on?' asked Derrick.

‘Where are we going?' asked Michael.

‘More importantly,' said Samantha, who had noticed something much more crucial, ‘where's the pilot?'

‘I'm the pilot,' said Nanny Piggins as she jumped into the front seat and turned on the engine.

‘I want to stay here,' wailed Samantha as she lunged for the cabin door.

‘Pish,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘You've flown with me in a space shuttle. A little six-seater plane is much less complicated.'

‘But a little six-seater plane flies much closer to the ground and mountains and other things we could crash into,' said Samantha between breaths as she started to hyperventilate.

‘Do you have permission to use this plane?' asked Derrick as they rolled out onto the runway.

‘Of course. I gave the owner a slice of chocolate cake I had in my handbag,' said Nanny Piggins, ‘and I promised to give him another slice just as delicious when I return the plane undamaged.'

‘What if you return the plane damaged?' asked Michael, knowing his nanny and thinking this was the more realistic scenario.

‘Then I promised to give him two slices,' said Nanny Piggins.

The plane was now shuddering down the runway, gaining speed.

‘But what about Father?' asked Derrick. ‘He's here in Port Vila. You promised to rescue him.'

‘I know,' said Nanny Piggins, ‘and I never break a promise, especially one to myself about eating more cake. So I'm not going to break my promise to your father. But I didn't say
when
I was going to rescue him. And something much more important has come up.'

‘What?' asked the children.

‘The yam harvest,' said Nanny Piggins as she wrenched on the joystick and the plane swooped up into the air.

The sudden acceleration skyward made all the children and Boris feel like their stomachs had been left on the ground, so they spent the next few minutes searching the plane for sick bags, then struggling not to use them.

After that they could not ask Nanny Piggins any more questions because she was too busy talking to the control tower, specifically dictating her treacle tart recipe to placate them. The air traffic controller had been extremely cross that Nanny Piggins forgot to ask for permission to take-off. He only got to give instructions to half a dozen flights per day so he did not like to miss one.

‘Why do you think Nanny Piggins is flying us somewhere for the yam harvest?' asked Derrick.

‘Perhaps she's got some marshmallows she wants to use up,' said Boris. ‘Yams are delicious when they're baked with marshmallows and a little honey.'

‘Or perhaps she's gone totally crazy and she's going to fly out over the Pacific Ocean until we run out of fuel,' said Michael.

‘I don't think so,' said Boris. ‘There aren't any cake shops in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Even if she were to go bonkers, Nanny Piggins would never stray too far from a good cake shop.'

The speculation soon ended when Nanny Piggins shoved the joystick and they lurched downward, plummeting to the ground. The children clutched their seats, although goodness knows why. Being attached to their seats would not save them if they ploughed into the ground at 500 kilometres per hour.

‘Shouldn't you be bringing the plane into land at a more gentle angle?' yelled Samantha, wanting to be supportive, but not wanting to die.

‘That's the way some pilots do it, I suppose,' yelled back Nanny Piggins, ‘but when you want to get where you're going quickly, why faff about?'

The plane continued to spiral noseward to the ground until, at the last moment, Nanny Piggins yanked up the joystick, the plane pulled up horizontally and touched down gently on the island's runway.

‘There, you see,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘Perfect landing. I don't know why people make such a fuss of airline pilots. Although I suppose it's impressive that they can stomach all that airline food.'

‘Where are we?' asked Derrick.

‘You haven't brought us anywhere there are cannibals, have you?' asked Boris. (Boris had borrowed a book from the library about Vanuatu, but he hadn't realised it was a history book, not a guide book.)

‘Boris, you're a bear,' said Samantha kindly. ‘Even if there were still cannibals, they wouldn't eat you.'

‘Why not?' asked Boris, a tear beginning to well in his eye. ‘Don't you think they'd like me?'

‘They wouldn't dare eat such a good ballet dancer,' said Derrick, helping his sister out of her social faux pas.

‘How lovely,' said Boris, beginning to smile again. ‘It's nice to know that even bloodthirsty man-eaters have an appreciation for the arts.'

‘Children, I have brought you here today for the most educational experience of your lives,' said Nanny Piggins.

‘I thought you said that learning to bake a chocolate cake was the most educational experience of our lives,' said Derrick.

‘Then you said, learning how to break into the Slimbridge Cake Factory when you run out of cake ingredients was the most educational experience of our lives,' said Samantha.

‘And then you said, learning how to plead with the Police Sergeant to let us off with a warning after we'd broken into the cake factory was the most educational experience of our lives,' added Michael.

‘Yes, yes,' agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘That was an extremely educational field trip I took you on last week. But what we are doing today is even better.'

‘Are there any more sick bags?' asked Samantha. ‘I think I'm going to need one in a second.'

‘Today you're all going to try bungy jumping!' announced Nanny Piggins. ‘And not with modern elastic cords, but with genuine authentic jungle vines.'

Samantha filled her sick bag (admittedly only partly from horror – she was still recovering from the considerable turbulence of the journey).

‘What?' asked Derrick. He actually had about ten thousand questions he would like to have asked, but this one word seemed to sum them all up nicely.

‘We're on Pentecost Island,' said Nanny Piggins happily, ‘and we've arrived just in time for the annual land-diving festival, where villagers jump off a ten-storey platform with vines tied around their feet because they believe it will ensure a good yam harvest. We're at the birth place of bungy jumping. Aren't you excited?!'

Now Michael and Derrick used Samantha's sick bag.

After considerable persuading (including some sobbing), Samantha managed to get herself excused on the grounds that she was a girl and that only men did land-diving. Then Boris argued for his own exclusion on the grounds that he was a fully grown Kodiak bear who weighed 700 kilograms and he did not want to damage any of the villagers' nice vines. (It was a rare thing indeed for Boris to admit to his true weight, but necessity overcame vanity on this occasion.) Derrick asked to be excused on the grounds that he really, really did not want to die, and Michael got out of it by forging himself an absence note while the others were all talking.

‘All right,' said Nanny Piggins, shaking her head sadly, ‘if you want me to have all the fun and take all the limelight, I'll be the only one to jump off a ten-storey temporary structure and fling myself headfirst at the ground.'

‘We don't mind,' the children assured her.

‘Enjoy your moment in the sun,' said Boris encouragingly.

When they reached the village on the southern edge of the island, the locals did not immediately allow Nanny Piggins to climb up the scaffolding and have a go, as she had expected. Several of them yelled at her and called her a ‘silly tourist' and even more bravely ‘a silly pig', until Nanny Piggins insisted on being taken to their leader (if she was going to start stomping on feet she wanted to start at the top). As soon as she met the Village Chief, things changed rapidly.