The Adventures of Nanny Piggins (12 page)

'I suppose,' agreed Derrick. The pie did look very good. The children could see the sense in this and all nodded their agreement.

'In fact, it would be much better if we ate this pie because sixteen hours is a long time for a pie to sit around. So if I made another pie that pie would be fresher.

'That makes sense to me,' said Michael.

'As long as it wouldn't be too much trouble,' said Samantha.

'No trouble at all,' Nanny Piggins assured her.

With that all four of them fell on the pie and gobbled it up greedily. They did not even bother to use spoons.

And so the night progressed. Nanny Piggins baked pie after pie. But then tested them all so rigorously that none of them lasted. The night wore on. By six o'clock in the morning, Derrick and Michael fell asleep, exhausted from helping Nanny Piggins 'test' so many different pies – blackberry, blueberry, cherry, apple, apricot, chocolate cream, pecan and pear, just to name a few.

Samantha was also exhausted. She had tried reasoning. She had tried arguing. She had even tried hiding a pie in the bread bin. But she could not stop Nanny Piggins from testing (eating) the pies as quickly as she made them. Something had to be done. Samantha did not want her beloved, if somewhat pie-crazed nanny to be humiliated at the competition. So she snuck out of the kitchen and hurried across the garden to Boris' shed.

She knocked quietly on the door. Nothing happened. Then she remembered that Boris was a bear and you had to be less subtle with bears. So she broke into the shed and tipped a watering can full of water over his head.

'Is it time to get up already?' asked Boris as he wiped the water out of his eyes. He did not mind at all that Samantha had been so forceful with him. In fact he liked it because it saved him from having to shower later.

'Boris, you have to help,' pleaded Samantha. 'Nanny Piggins has become crazed with pie-baking.'

Boris shook his head sadly. 'She's been eating her own pies, hasn't she?'

'That's exactly it!' exclaimed Samantha. 'She eats every pie she makes. The entries have to be in by eight o'clock and it's six thirty now. If she eats all of this batch she won't have time to bake another.'

'Well, there's nothing I can do about that. I tried to warn her and she wouldn't listen,' said Boris as he lay back down and started snoring to pretend he was asleep.

'Oh, Boris,' said Samantha. 'You aren't going to abandon Nanny Piggins just because she has been silly, vain and greedy, are you? She's your sister. And it's times like these, when you have completely lost your mind and eaten over fifty pies, that you need your brother most.'

Boris immediately burst into tears. He often did this because he was Russian and extremely in touch with his emotions. 'You're completely right,' wailed Boris, throwing his arms around Samantha in a big bear hug. 'I can't abandon my beloved sister just because she has gone pie-crazy. I will come at once.'

In the kitchen the morning sun was streaming in through the window. There were dirty dishes everywhere. At some point during the night Nanny Piggins had run out of pie dishes and started baking pies in butter dishes, teapots, jam jars and even a goldfish bowl (the goldfish was happily swimming in the toilet cistern and there was a big sign on the toilet saying 'don't flush').

When Boris and Samantha entered, Nanny Piggins was sitting at the end of the table. She looked exhausted. There was one final pie sitting in front of her. It was an apple and pear pie with sultanas and a criss-cross pastry crust. It was perfect. As the early morning sun lit up the room and shone on that perfect pie, there was no doubt in Samantha's mind that her nanny had made the competition winner. But then she saw Nanny Piggins' face and the unmistakable look in her eye. Hunger.

'Don't do it,' begged Samantha.

'I have to,' said Nanny Piggins. She was practically weeping. 'This is the perfect pie. With just the right about of brown sugar, balsamic vinegar and brandy to win over the alcoholic judges.'

'It's beautiful,' Samantha agreed.

'That's just it,' said Nanny Piggins. 'I can't send this off to be eaten by strangers; heathens who don't appreciate the true beauty of a pie. The type of people who brush their teeth first so they can't taste anything. I can't do it. It wouldn't be fair to the pie!' And with that Nanny Piggins picked up her spoon.

'Stoooooop!!!' yelled Boris.

Nanny Piggins hesitated for just a fraction of a second. As Boris lunged towards her, Nanny Piggins desperately tried to take a scoop out of the pie but she was knocked onto the floor by her brother.

Now Boris was 10 foot tall and weighed 600 kilograms. Whereas Nanny Piggins was 4 foot 2 and 40 kilograms. So as the two of them struggled – Boris trying to get the spoon away from her and Nanny Piggins desperately trying to get back to the pie – you would think this would be an unequal wrestling match. But Nanny Piggins was an 8th Dan blackbelt in taekwondo and she liked to bite, which meant Boris had quite a fight on his hands.

Fortunately, Samantha was quick thinking. She grabbed the pie and ran. She ran with it into the hallway, out the front door, down the garden path and all the way down the street to the town hall. She ran as fast as she could, considering she was still in her nightdress, she wasn't wearing any shoes and the pie dish was burning her hands. As Samantha turned the corner seven blocks away she could still hear Nanny Piggins' cries of 'Nooooo! My pie! My pie!' echoing behind her.

* * *

A few hours later Boris, the children and Nanny Piggins made their appearance at the town show. Nanny Piggins was turned out very smartly in her Sunday best. But emotionally she was feeling fragile. She kept saying the same thing over and over again. 'I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. I am so sorry.'

Boris was very kindly holding her hand. 'That's all right, Sarah, we know you have a problem with pies. But it's all over now.'

'I will never bake or eat another pie for as long as I live,' promised Nanny Piggins. 'It's frightening the way I lose control.'

The children hugged their nanny to show how much they loved her. As far as personal problems go, being the world's greatest pie baker was a very pleasant problem for the friends of the sufferer. The children had quite enjoyed spending all night eating pie.

Unfortunately they could not avoid Nanny Anne. She was standing next to her own competition entry. It was a one hundred per cent symmetrical low fat pumpkin pie. (As you know Nanny Piggins did not approve of putting any sort of vegetable next to a pie, let alone in it.) Nanny Piggins grimaced as she looked at the pie with disgust. It was an unnatural orange colour. There was not a single part of Nanny Piggins that felt like having a spoonful.

'Hello, Nanny Piggins,' said Nanny Anne. 'Do you like the look of my pie?'

'No, it looks disgusting. I'd rather eat my own trotter,' said Nanny Piggins. When she wanted to insult a person, she just insulted them. Fortunately, before a fight broke out, Michael was able to change the subject.

'Oh look, Nanny Piggins,' said Michael. 'The judges are trying your pie now.'

Nanny Piggins looked up to see three men wearing tweed jackets and a woman, who looked strangely like a horse, digging into her pie. There was something about the sight of other people putting their spoons into Nanny Piggins' pie that made her brain snap again.

Time seemed to stand still as an expression of pure hunger passed across Nanny Piggins' face. Then suddenly, she was galvanized into action.

'Noooooooo!!!!!' screamed Nanny Piggins as she ran forward and snatched up the pie. Th e next moment she was bursting out of the tent squealing, 'It's mine, it's mine, it's mine . . .' and running as fast as her trotters would carry her.

The judges chased after Nanny Piggins because they had only had one spoonful and the pie was so good they desperately wanted another. The children and Boris chased Nanny Piggins because they wanted to stop her before she had time to eat the pie. Nanny Anne chased the judges because she desperately wanted them to come back and say her pie was the best. And everybody else chased after them all to see what would happen next.

Sadly, nobody got to see what happened to the pie. After dodging around the Ferris Wheel, through the Fortune Teller's tent and under the Fairy Floss cart, Nanny Piggins escaped her pursuers by climbing up a tree (which is not easy when you are carrying a pie). The leaves hid her from view. But everyone knew what she was doing. A pig eating a pie as fast as she can makes a very distinctive noise. When the gobbling and licking sounds finished, they knew it was all over because the empty pie dish fell out of the tree and clunked onto the grass below. The hungry judges were crestfallen. Nanny Anne was delighted.

* * *

Later that morning, after Boris and the children had coaxed Nanny Piggins out of her tree and wiped all the pie stains from her face, they went to watch the pie medal presentation ceremony. Nanny Piggins had been officially disqualified for stealing her own entry and destroying it before it could be conclusively judged (the judges had wanted to test every last mouthful as well). So the Lord Mayor hung the gold medal for pie baking around Nanny Anne's neck. Nanny Piggins heroically resisted the urge to pick up a handful of dirt and throw it at her.

The Lord Mayor gave a little speech about what a wonderful cook Nanny Anne was and what a joy it was to find a truly delicious low fat alternative. It is amazing the lies men will tell to women when they are tall, blonde and beautiful. Nanny Piggins barely listened to a word he said until he got to the last sentence.

'And now that the pie-baking contest is over, we move on to the next stage – the pie-eating contest,' said the Lord Mayor

Nanny Piggins' ears instantly pricked up.

'If anybody would like to enter, just step forward now.'

Nanny Piggins did not so much step up to the front table as leap in its general direction. A competition for eating pies sounded to her like the best idea for a competition ever. And she had done so much training, having eaten fifty-three pies just the night before.

As you can imagine, Nanny Piggins easily won the competition. The best her nearest rival managed was seventeen pies. Nanny Piggins managed sixty-eight. She could have eaten more but they ran out. Well, they did not entirely run out. There was one pie left. The low fat pumpkin pie made by Nanny Anne. But Nanny Piggins refused to eat anything low fat on the grounds that diet foods were disgusting.

So Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children walked home very happy indeed. The children were happy because their nanny had yet again proved that she had skills greater than any other child-care worker. Boris was happy because, at the end of the day, his sister vowed never ever to bake pies again. But best of all, Nanny Piggins was the happiest pig alive because her gold medal was one quarter of a millimetre larger than Nanny Anne's.

Mr Green's Evil Sister

Mr Green liked making announcements at breakfast. It saved him having to spend extra time with his children. Nanny Piggins would have preferred it if he saved his news for just about any other part of the day. She thought meal times were sacred and that it was disrespectful to the food not to concentrate on stuffing as much of it in your mouth as possible. But she put up with Mr Green's peculiar ways because she did not want to spend any extra time with him either.

On this particular morning, when Nanny Piggins heard Mr Green folding up his paper and clearing his throat, she knew something was coming. So she quickly smeared a thick layer of jam over four slices of toast and stuffed them all in her mouth, just in case it was a long speech and she would need the extra energy to sit through it.

'I have an announcement to make,' announced Mr Green.

His children watched him warily. In their experience, announcements were never good but just how 'not good' they were could differ widely. Mr Green always used the exact same tone of voice whether he was announcing that the light bulb had blown in the downstairs bathroom or announcing that their mother had just died in a mysterious boating accident. So they sat hoping that this time it was just a light bulb. Sadly, it was something much, much more horrible than that.

'My sister, Lydia, is coming to stay,' said Mr Green.

Derrick and Samantha both managed to repress their instinct to groan. But Michael was the youngest and, therefore, the least able to control himself, so he burst out saying, 'Oh no! Not that old –' before Samantha was able to silence him by shoving a muffin in his mouth.

Having started his announcement Mr Green had stopped listening (he was not a man who was good at multi-tasking) so he did not notice.

'You children are very lucky,' went on Mr Green. Which was always a sure sign that he was about to say something that would prove how deeply unlucky they were. You may have noticed that adults tell you that you should not lie. But then they have this strange habit of starting speeches by saying something that is the opposite of the truth. For example, whenever you hear someone say, 'You'll be interested to hear . . .' or 'Funnily enough' or 'With all due respect' they always mean the exact reverse.

'Your Aunt Lydia has decided to come and live with us,' he announced to his horrified children and their equally horrified nanny.

Now, just so you understand, there was absolutely no reason why Aunt Lydia should go to live with the Greens. When her husband died (coincidentally, he too had died in a mysterious boating accident) she had been left a wealthy widow. Not as rich as a pop star, but rich enough to own her own home, buy good food and go to the movies whenever she liked. Which, as far as Nanny Piggins and the children were concerned, was untold wealth.

Aunt Lydia and Mr Green were very alike. Apart from having the same parents and spouses that had died in exactly the same way, they were also alike in that they were both very cheap. They were miserly, penny-pinching skinflints. They never spent money if it could at all be avoided. They did not mind spending money on themselves to buy things like nice cars, clothes and holidays but anything else like bills, home maintenance and food they deeply begrudged.

This is why Aunt Lydia wanted to come and live with Mr Green. She did not like her brother and she certainly did not like his children but she did like the idea of selling her house and having all that lovely money in a bank account earning interest. She also knew that if she lived in her brother's house he would have to pay all the electricity bills and buy all the food, which suited her very well.

The shocking thing was that Mr Green had an ulterior motive too, which Nanny Piggins and the children were about to find out about.

'So, er . . . if she is staying here . . . um . . . obviously . . .' said Mr Green, drawing his speech out as though he was afraid of the response the next sentence would create. (He had every reason to be afraid.) 'If my sister is here we will no longer need a nanny.'

At that moment Nanny Piggins and his three children gasped in horror. Derrick picked up his butter knife and wildly considered murdering his father then and there. Samantha tightly clutched either side of her dress because she did not know what her arms would do if she let them free but she was sure it would be very bad for her father and the furnishings. And Michael loudly said a word that can not be repeated in print.

Surprisingly, Nanny Piggins said nothing. She knew this was serious and when things get serious then it is time to start thinking before you speak. Her mind was racing through all the possible ways she could stop Mr Green; then all the ways she could get revenge on him for even thinking of it.

'Now, er . . . legally, Miss Piggins, I have to give you two weeks' notice,' said Mr Green. He had checked the law books the day before at work. He was surprised to learn that nannies had employment rights too. But legally they did and he would never dream of breaking the law unless he was certain he would get away with it. 'So you will be staying on to help my sister, er . . .' (he struggled to think of a word here because he knew his sister did not like being helped with anything) 'to adjust to the household.' Knowing full well his sister had never adjusted to anything in her life and that life had always been adjusted to suit her.

Mr Green looked about him to see the effects of his announcement. His oldest son was clutching a butter knife and glaring at him in the most unnerving manner. His daughter's face had gone bright red. And his youngest son was muttering very bad words, which he could only assume the boy had picked up from watching late night television.

The most frightening sight was, however, the glare being given to him by the nanny. Her look was so mean and intense he could have sworn she was trying to put some kind of ancient voodoo curse on him. (And indeed she was.)

Mr Green conveniently decided that he had better go to work. 'Your Aunt Lydia will arrive in about twenty minutes,' said Mr Green as he looked at his watch. 'I trust you will make her welcome.' With that he positively ran out of the room.

Neither Nanny Piggins nor the children said anything for a full minute as they each privately tried to contain their rage. It was Nanny Piggins who spoke first.

'Children, I know I should not speak ill of your father in front of you. But I am afraid one thing has to be said. He is a very, very bad man.' And that was it. She had opened the flood gates. The four of them spent the next fifteen minutes screaming abuse about what a horrible, selfish, nasty father Mr Green was. By the time they had finished they had done absolutely nothing to solve the problem but they all felt a whole lot better, having had a good scream about it.

'What are we going to do?' despaired Derrick.

'You can't leave us, you just can't,' whimpered Samantha. She was clearly on the verge of bursting into tears.

'Can we all run away? Please, Nanny Piggins, please,' begged Michael politely. He was always at his most polite when he desperately wanted something. (But then, aren't we all?)

'Now, children, it is very important we don't panic,' said Nanny Piggins as she struggled not to panic. 'I have no intention of leaving you.' Apart from the fact that Nanny Piggins liked how well stocked Mr Green always kept his cupboards, she had also grown very attached to the children. The thought of leaving them made her stomach go all hard and her eyes feel itchy. Nanny Piggins was not a pig given to fits of hysterics or collapsing and crying on the tablecloth, but she knew she was seriously upset because she actually regretted eating eleven muffins for breakfast. 'We mustn't do anything rash. We have two weeks to get rid of your aunt and disabuse your father of this ridiculous idea. We must handle this strategically and wisely.'

And at that exact moment the doorbell rang.

'Crikey, she's here!' exclaimed Michael.

'Should we hide under the table?' asked Samantha hopefully.

'We could just not let her in,' thought Nanny Piggins out loud.

But then they heard the unfortunate sound of a key in a lock. Mr Green had obviously given his sister her own key.

'We're doomed,' said Derrick. The others silently agreed with him.

'What are we going to do?' asked Samantha, turning to Nanny Piggins for reassurance.

Nanny Piggins had not figured out a whole plan yet but she did need a first tactic. She knew that it was traditional for children to be very mean and beastly to child-care workers they did not like. That is what always happened in books. So she decided they should take the opposite tactic. 'We are going to be incredibly nice and polite to your aunt,' declared Nanny Piggins.

'But why?' asked Michael.

'If she is anywhere near as unpleasant as your father, having people be nice to her will be a new experience and she won't know how to cope with it,' said Nanny Piggins. 'That should buy us time to come up with a plan.'

* * *

As it turned out, Aunt Lydia was even more unpleasant than Mr Green. She was very mean to Nanny Piggins. She seemed to think it was unusual to let a pig sleep in the house and was not at all impressed that Nanny Piggins had been a circus star.

Aunt Lydia was also extremely unpleasant to the children. One day when they were in the garden playing, she burned all their clothes in the fireplace. Then forced them to wear clothes she had handmade out of wool. Now wool can be very itchy at the best of times. But the clothes Aunt Lydia made were so itchy the children were sure she had put itching powder in them as well, just to be spiteful.

But poor Boris suffered the most. Unlike Mr Green, Aunt Lydia actually did like gardening. It gave her an excuse to hang around the backyard spying on the neighbours. So Boris had to hide himself in the compost heap every time Aunt Lydia went into the shed looking for garden tools, which was quite a lot. And if you have ever tried hiding in a compost heap, you will know it is extremely unpleasant. For a start, rotting vegetables are surprisingly hot. Then there is the smell, which is disgusting, even to a bear who does not have great body odour in the first place.

The tactic of being polite to Aunt Lydia did not work at all. She assumed that any child who said 'please', 'thank you' or 'excuse me' was simply being sarcastic. So politeness was met with exactly the same punishment as rudeness.

And Aunt Lydia had such strange ideas about disciplining children. To make them cleverer she would make them do their homework (which, in Nanny Piggins' opinion, was inhumane in itself). But then when the children finished their schoolwork Aunt Lydia would set fire to it and make them do it all again.

Arson was Aunt Lydia's answer to a lot of things. When Nanny Piggins went to answer the phone one day, she returned to the kitchen to find her chocolate cake on fire. Aunt Lydia did it to teach her lesson about not talking for too long on the telephone. Nanny Piggins had spent twenty-five seconds on the phone, which in Aunt Lydia's opinion, was twenty-three seconds too long.

Mr Green did not escape Aunt Lydia's sense of discipline either. She set fire to his neck-ties if she did not like them. She also set fire to his theatre ticket (he only had one because no-one would go with him) when she wanted him to stay home and handwash her socks. Aunt Lydia's personal motto was 'All life's problems can be solved with dry kindling and a match.' She had embroidered this on a wall hanging that she hung in her bedroom.

By the end of the first week, they were all exhausted from being tortured. 'Sarah, you have to do something,' begged Boris as he, the children and Nanny Piggins sat hidden behind a large bush in the garden, sucking the chocolate off chocolate-covered oranges.

'I know, but I can't figure out what,' said Nanny Piggins. No-one wanted to get rid of Aunt Lydia more than her. She did not like the glint in Aunt Lydia's eye every time she said, 'A pig's place is between two slices of bread in a bacon sandwich.' Which she managed to bring up in conversation quite a lot.

'Couldn't we put her in a crate and ship her off to Russia?' suggested Michael. He knew that Boris had arrived in a crate from Russia so he assumed you could ship a crate the other way.

'You couldn't do that to the Russians,' protested Boris. 'They've suffered enough. First communism, then your aunt – it would be too much for them.'

'I think Michael is on to something. There must be somewhere we could send her,' pondered Nanny Piggins.

At that moment they were disturbed by a hideous noise.

'What on earth is that?!' exclaimed Nanny Piggins, almost spitting out her chocolate-covered orange. 'It sounds like someone is murdering a cat in a blender.'

'Or running over a set of bagpipes with a lawn-mower,' said Boris.

'Or torturing a hyena with an electric pencil sharpener,' said Derrick.

'I know what it is,' said Samantha. 'It's Aunt Lydia singing!'

'No!' exclaimed Nanny Piggins. 'Surely not?'

They all peered around the bush they were hiding behind to have a look. And sure enough, there was Aunt Lydia kneeling in front of the border (weeding it for the seventh time that week) and opening and closing her mouth in the manner of somebody singing, even though the noise coming out of her mouth bore no resemblance to singing whatsoever. It was horrible, tuneless and un-rhythmic, not unlike the sound of a piano accordion being chopped up with an axe.

The children and Boris hastily picked up the pieces of orange they had spat out and stuffed them in their ears to try to block out the sound. But Nanny Piggins kept watching in awed fascination. She was beginning to get a brilliant idea.

Aunt Lydia finally got to the end of her 'song' and as soon as she finished her last quavering note, she was greeted by the sound of clapping. Nanny Piggins was standing a metre away, applauding.

'Bravo, Aunt Lydia that was beautiful. I am moved to tears,' said Nanny Piggins, dabbing her completely dry eyes, 'I never knew you had such a beautiful singing voice!'

'Oh,' said Aunt Lydia, somewhat taken aback. Unsurprisingly, she had never been complimented on the quality of her singing before. People usually commented on the power of her voice, or the piercing sound, or how far the noise carried. 'I have been singing with the church choir for forty years,' she said modestly.