Nanny Piggins and the Rival Ringmaster (8 page)

Just then there was a knock at the front door.

‘Who could that be?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘It’s not me, because I’m here,’ said Esmeralda helpfully.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Boris. (It was safe for him to answer the door because the truancy officer was scared of bears and would run away screaming.)

A few moments later he returned. ‘Look who it is!’ exclaimed Boris. ‘It’s Alistair, Min, Ki-Hoon,
Dexter and Amy. And Kevin is out on the front yard eating Mr Green’s dahlias.’

‘Oh my goodness!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘It is wonderful to see you all. What a tremendous surprise.’

‘Who are they?’ Michael whispered to Esmeralda.

‘I don’t remember,’ said Esmeralda.

‘Alistair is the knife thrower, Min and Ki-Hoon are the Flying Lee Brothers, Dexter is the stilt walker and Amy guesses people’s weights,’ explained Nanny Piggins.

‘And who is Kevin?’ asked Michael, concerned in case there was a velociraptor in their front garden.

‘He’s a camel,’ explained Boris. ‘He doesn’t have a circus skill as such, except for an amazing tolerance for small children who want to ride him. He only bites one or two per day. And spits on just two out of every three mothers.’

‘So what are you all doing here?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘If you are on the run from the law you are most welcome to hide in our basement til nightfall.’

‘We’re here because Esmeralda invited us,’ said Alistair.

‘I did?’ asked Esmeralda.

‘What a good idea!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘We’ll have a house party.’

‘Um, Nanny Piggins,’ said Samantha. ‘While it is always lovely to have house guests, surely we don’t have room for five circus performers and a camel?’

‘Six circus performers and a camel,’ corrected Dexter. ‘Rosalind is parking the car.’

‘Rosalind!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘How can she run away from the circus? She is supposed to be running it.’

‘Well she is a bearded lady first and foremost,’ Alistair reminded her, ‘and you know what circus folk are like – so unreliable.’

All eight circus folk in the room nodded at the wisdom of this.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You’re all welcome to stay here and take as long as you need to recover from your ordeal at the circus.’

‘But what is Father going to say?’ asked Derrick.

‘If he does notice our house guests I’ll simply tell him they are plumbers that have come to fix the pipes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘His dread fear of tradespeople will ensure he never makes any attempt to speak to them or make eye contact. And if he’s not making eye contact I doubt he’ll notice that
Rosalind is a gorgeous blonde bombshell with a waist-long beard.’

At that moment Rosalind herself burst into the kitchen, then burst into tears and wrapped Nanny Piggins in a hug. Boris, being a bear, and therefore a great bear hugger, could not resist joining in. And since circus folk are naturally affectionate sorts, it was not long before they were all enjoying an enormous group hug. Which Nanny Piggins followed up with an enormous amount of cake. Then after refreshments she took them out to show them all the exciting things she had been showing Esmeralda. (She knew Esmeralda would enjoy it too because she would not remember having seen them the first time.)

And so the circus stars began what became a wonderful ten-day holiday with the Green family. They loved everything Nanny Piggins planned for them – the meals, the adventures, then more meals. And they were just as fascinated as Esmeralda in the peculiarities of regular life.

Dexter could not get over how people did not steal mail when you could so easily reach in and take it out of a mailbox. Amy was amazed that pet shops sold goldfish but not piranhas, which were, in her opinion, the most practical type of pet fish to own (it saved you having to take kitchen scraps to the
bin). And the Lee brothers could not believe the way people just walked everywhere with no swinging, twirling or even somersaulting.

But they all agreed that the single most astounding discovery from the Green’s suburban life was Mr Green himself. The circus stars found him a constant source of wonder. In their guise as plumbers they would often carry wrenches into his office, tapping on the walls saying, ‘Just looking for pipes’ so they could stare at him some more. They could not get over how utterly boring he was. He was always either reading legal papers or being angry because his time was being wasted not reading legal papers.

‘He’s amazing,’ marvelled Amy. ‘It’s like his face was moulded out of plasticine that has sagged in the sun.’

‘Who would have thought that one man could scowl so much?’ agreed Dexter.

‘And pick his nose so much,’ added Esmeralda, ‘when he thinks no-one is looking.’

‘Normally no-one does look at him,’ explained Samantha.

‘True,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but in the circus it is customary to stare at freaks, not shun them.’

‘If you want to hear him be really boring,’ suggested Michael, ‘try asking him about his nut allergy.’

The circus performers rushed off to do just that.

Altogether Nanny Piggins, Boris, her friends and the children were enjoying a marvellous house party. That was, until one morning at breakfast, when Nanny Piggins was steaming open Mr Green’s mail and she found his credit card bill.

‘Oh dear,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Boris.

‘As you know,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘occasionally, when my ten-cent-an-hour salary proves insufficient for the educational activities I plan for the children, I add a little something onto Mr Green’s credit card account.’

‘If he is going to leave his credit card lying around in his wallet, in his locked sock drawer, in his locked bedroom, then clearly on a subliminal level he is crying out for you to memorise the numbers and work out how to forge his signature,’ agreed Boris.

‘Of course,’ concurred Nanny Piggins. ‘And he never notices because I stick two pages of his bill together or apply liquid paper over one or two of the more inflammatory purchases.’

‘Also because he is scared of you,’ added Derrick. ‘And if it isn’t too much he doesn’t want to argue about it.’

‘That too,’ conceded Nanny Piggins. ‘But I think, this month, in my efforts to be a good hostess to our house guests, I may have taken things a little too far.’

The children were immediately alarmed. Their nanny always took everything too far. So for her to be saying she had taken things a little too far, they knew that meant she had done something impossibly ridiculous.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Samantha.

‘Well, there are a couple of items listed here,’ said Nanny Piggins as she looked over the credit card bill, ‘that I think may catch your father’s attention. For example, the two thousand dollars I spent having camel feed flown in from Afghanistan.’

‘But that was delicious,’ protested Kevin the camel.

‘I’m sure it was,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but I’m afraid that Mr Green is not a gourmet. There is also
the $800 I had to pay the real plumber to come and unblock the toilet.’

Esmeralda blushed. ‘I said I was sorry. I didn’t realise human toilets had such a limited capacity.’

‘Nobody is blaming you, dear,’ said Nanny Piggins reassuringly. ‘It’s just that with the $1500 to get the chandelier replaced when Min and Ki-Hoon used it to demonstrate their quadruple flip, and the shampoo and conditioner costs for maintaining Rosalind’s beard, these things add up.’

‘Just because I have a great big beard doesn’t mean I don’t like to look nice,’ sniffed Rosalind, her eyes beginning to water. (Running the circus had been such a strain she was still prone to bursting into tears for next to no reason.)

‘I’m not blaming anyone,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Money spent on enjoying a good holiday is an excellent investment that should never be regretted. I just think that perhaps we need to find a way to raise a little money and pay off ten or twenty thousand dollars of this bill before Mr Green sees it. After all, if he dropped dead of a heart attack it would be very inconvenient. I might not automatically get custody of the children. The authorities are very funny about letting single nannies adopt. And for some inexplicable reason they’re even funnier about single pigs.’

‘But how are we going to raise thousands of dollars?’ asked Rosalind. ‘The Ringmaster wanted me to raise five million dollars for his bail money. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. The banks don’t like it when you try to rob them. Even if you ask nicely and say please.’

‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Leave it with me. I’m pretty good at coming up with money-making schemes, provided someone else takes care of the money and doesn’t let me spend it on chocolate.’

As it turned out, Nanny Piggins had to look no further than their front gate for an idea. You see, ever since the circus performers had turned up at their house, all the local children (and many children who caught the bus or cycled over from other neighbourhoods) would spend hours each day peering over the Green’s front fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of an African elephant learning to tap dance (Boris had been giving Esmeralda lessons), or a knife thrower whittling a duck whistle out of a block of wood five metres away, or Nanny Piggins herself bursting out into the backyard with a burning saucepan after she tried using a flame thrower on her crème brûlée.

‘Perhaps we could charge the children a little something to come in and have a look around?’ mused Nanny Piggins.

‘But there are only fifty kids out there,’ said Derrick. ‘You’d have to charge them $200 each.’

‘Oh no no no,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘that’s much too steep. Even if they did have $200 each I would not approve of them spending any less than $199.50 on chocolate and sweets. So the most I could possibly charge would be fifty cents.’

‘But that would only get us twenty-five dollars,’ said Michael. ‘That wouldn’t pay off Father’s credit card bill.’

‘True, but it would be seed money,’ argued Nanny Piggins. ‘Once we had twenty-five dollars we could invest it.’

‘Invest it in what?’ asked Derrick suspiciously.

‘Cake ingredients of course,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Once I convert the money into cake, a truly delicious cake of course, I’ll easily be able to recoup tens of thousands of dollars.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ asked Michael.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s all about marketing. Even an average-tasting chocolate mud cake will sell for $500 if you stand outside a Weight Watchers meeting waiting for the poor miserable women inside to come out.’

‘So you’re going to charge fifty cents for them to come in and have a look around?’ asked Samantha, worried by any of her nanny’s plans that sounded so simple.

‘And perhaps put on a little show,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘A little show?’ asked Derrick.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘A little backyard circus, just a few friends improvising a simple show to amuse the local children.’

Five hours later, the word having spread about this simple backyard circus, there were now six hundred small children hanging over the Green’s front fence and the Green’s backyard had been entirely transformed.

Nanny Piggins’ idea of
simple
and
small
differed greatly from the standard dictionary definitions. She had gone around to see the retired army colonel (who was deeply in love with her) and borrowed his biggest tent. Once they had erected the tent, Ki-Hoon and Min took the chandelier from the Green’s living room (it was already wrecked so they thought it might as well be put to good use) and
set it up as a trapeze swing. Boris’ shed had been transformed into a freak show alley where Rosalind would horrify the children with tales of her arduous beard-care regime. Kevin the camel was going to give rides. The Green children were in charge of selling tickets and refreshments (cake). And Nanny Piggins had ‘borrowed’ a piece of stormwater pipe from a local building site which she had converted into a cannon to blast herself into the sky, for the grand finale of the show.