Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8 (20 page)

‘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.

‘It wasn’t me!’ protested Mayor Bloomsbridge.

‘Don’t think your lack of initiative wins you any favours with me,’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘I fully intend to give you a good hard bite on the shins because I’m just that annoyed.’

‘It wasn’t me either,’ protested Mr Green, a lot less convincingly. ‘I didn’t do it. You can’t prove I bribed the lift technician. There is no evidence that will stand up against me in a court of law.’

‘I have no intention of taking this matter to a court of law,’ said Nanny Piggins in an ominously low whisper. ‘I’m going to take this matter to the court of my foot, which I shall soon be planting on your bottom for being such a disgraceful man.’

‘Someone stop her!’ pleaded Mr Green as he ran and tried to hide behind the debate moderator. This only did further damage to his campaign, because in reality the moderator was a heavily pregnant woman (not a pirate), and Mr Green using her as a human shield was not a pretty image for the television news bulletin.

‘How dare you tamper with the lift to trap us in a dark lift shaft just so you could blather on here in front of the cameras,’ accused Nanny Piggins. ‘I can understand you doing it to me. But your own children?! Have you no sense of decency?’

‘I’m a tax lawyer,’ said Mr Green. ‘They train us not to.’

What followed was an extremely exciting half hour of television. First of all Nanny Piggins chased Mr Green and Mayor Bloomsbridge around and around the studio, and then there was a lot of wrestling, some begging for mercy and a good long telling off. The audience enjoyed every moment of it. They unanimously agreed that Nanny Piggins was the clear winner of the debate. Even her policies impressed them. But then political policies do sound more impressive when you yell them at a political rival while sitting on him and giving him a wet willy.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ said the producer as she escorted Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children back to their car.

‘What for? For rescuing you from the lift?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Oh yes, that was very kind of you,’ agreed the producer, ‘but thank you for making some really great television.’

‘You do realise that the future leadership of our town is at stake too, don’t you?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Oh yes, and of course that’s important as well,’ agreed the producer.

‘Did you enjoy the debate?’ asked Derrick as they drove home.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Secretly, I’m even grateful to Mr Green for trapping me in the lift shaft. It meant I got to avoid all that boring talking they did at the beginning and just sweep in for the fun wrestling bit at the end.’

‘You know, political debates don’t normally include wrestling,’ said Derrick.

‘Really?!’ said Nanny Piggins, genuinely surprised. ‘They jolly well should. It’s the best bit as far as I can see. I think it humanises the candidates to see their faces squashed into a linoleum floor.’

Derrick, Samantha and Michael were having a very dull Saturday. For the first time since Nanny Piggins had become their nanny, they were teetering on the edge of having absolutely nothing to do because at 8 o’clock that morning, Nanny Piggins had left the house to join a roadside litter picking-up crew as a photo opportunity for her mayoral campaign.

Nanny Piggins was not trying to make a point about the deplorable amount of litter on their local roads under the current mayor’s administration. She was trying to make a point about local petty criminals who were forced to spend their weekends picking it up. She thought it was a terrible waste of their time.

‘Burglars, petty thieves and vandals have much better things to do,’ argued Nanny Piggins. ‘The burglars are good at breaking into things so they could spend their time helping people who have locked themselves out of their homes or cars. And instead of paying for roadside signs, the council could just get the vandals to spray important civic messages like “Don’t forget to wear a seatbelt” and “Please don’t run anybody over with your car”.’

‘But who would pick up the rubbish then?’ asked Derrick.

‘All the useless people who wouldn’t be missed elsewhere,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Headmaster Pimplestock for a start. I’m sure the school would run much more efficiently without him. Then if you round up all the insurance salesmen and lawyers, and maths teachers – give them a pointy stick and a sack and they could finally do an honest day’s work.’

Normally Nanny Piggins would have taken the children with her. She found that even the most tedious occasions could end up being educational, especially if you released a rat or threw someone in a swamp. But on this occasion the children were not allowed to join her, because of the occupational health and safety rules – you had to be over 18 to pick up rubbish. Nanny Piggins was all for dyeing their hair grey and setting them up with fake moustaches, but the children thought it better if she waited until she was mayor before she started flagrantly disobeying council regulations.

And so it was 10.53 in the morning. Derrick, Samantha and Michael had done all their homework, tidied their rooms, whipped up a chocolate cake to cheer up their nanny when she eventually got home, and now they were at a loss as to what to do with themselves.

‘What would Nanny Piggins want us to do?’ asked Michael.

‘Go frog catching?’ guessed Samantha.

‘Drop something off the roof?’ guessed Derrick.

‘She’d probably want us to go and rescue her from picking up rubbish,’ guessed Boris.

All four of them sighed simultaneously.

‘What did we used to do on Saturdays before Nanny Piggins was around?’ asked Samantha.

‘We had empty meaningless lives,’ said Derrick.

They all sighed again.

Saturday became much more interesting when Nanny Piggins burst in through the back door.

‘Thank goodness you’re all here!’ she exclaimed.