Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion (12 page)

'All right,' said Nanny Piggins. 'Of course Mother died when I was very young, but what I remember, I remember well. She was a wonderful woman and a great natural athlete, especially in the vicinity of food. Mother could have been a flying pig if her career as a chef had not held her back.'

'She was a chef?' asked Samantha.

'Oh yes,' said Nanny Piggins. 'At one time she won an award for being the greatest chef in Paris.'

'Wow!' said the children.

'She was the first pig to be awarded the honour. But she was sacked from her chef's job shortly after that,' said Nanny Piggins sadly, 'for refusing to send any food out to the customers. She insisted on eating everything she made. The problem was she was so good at cooking she could not resist her own food.'

'What a remarkable woman,' said Jo. 'Tell us more.'

'Have you heard about the time she jumped from a moving train into the backseat of a sports car going at one hundred and forty kilometres per hour in the opposite direction, because she caught a glimpse of the driver eating a particularly delicious looking cinnamon doughnut?' asked Nanny Piggins.

'No, but I'd love to,' urged Jo.

And so Nanny Piggins launched into the amazing tale of the late Mrs Piggins' years as a travelling chef. Jo scribbled down notes and had to replace the tape in the machine eleven times to keep track of it all.

By two o'clock in the morning Nanny Piggins had just got up to the time her mother leapt off a yacht that was passing through the Dardanelles because she caught a whiff of Turkish delight. At this point Nanny Piggins noticed that the children were struggling to keep their eyes open and Boris was snoring loudly, so she stopped in the middle of her tale. 'Perhaps we should leave it there and pick up again tomorrow,' said Nanny Piggins.

'Awwww,' said the children. 'We wanted to find out if your mother ever perfected her recipe for baklava.'

'Of course she did,' said Nanny Piggins. 'She was a Piggins, wasn't she?'

'I don't suppose you have her recipe book?' asked Jo. 'If you did, we could publish the recipes throughout the biography. It would be a lovely tribute to such a great chef, whose cooking career was so tragically cut short.'

'Oh I could never publish Mother's recipes,' said Nanny Piggins. 'That would be dangerous. Humans have enough problems with obesity already. If recipes that delicious were openly available the entire population would weigh twenty kilograms more by the end of the month.'

'But you do have the recipes?' asked Jo.

'Tut tut,' said Nanny Piggins. 'You wouldn't ask a magician about how he did his tricks.'

'Yes I would,' said Jo.

'Why don't you stay the night?' suggested Nanny Piggins. 'And we can pick up tomorrow with the story of how I was recruited by the circus.'

And so they all went to bed. The children dreamed of an internationally renowned chef. Nanny Piggins dreamed of being a little piglet again playing with her mother. And Boris dreamed he was dancing with a giant stick of honeycomb, like he always did.

The next morning when the children came down for breakfast, they found Nanny Piggins sitting at the breakfast table, eating cake and scribbling down notes.

'I've had lots of ideas for stories I can tell Jo,' explained Nanny Piggins.

'Brilliant!' said the children. It was still raining outside, so they would enjoy another day of listening to thrilling tales and eating the relevant snacks. (Nanny Piggins believed in fixing snacks to coordinate with stories; cake to celebrate happy stories, cake to cheer you up when you heard sad stories and cake to spit everywhere when you heard a really good joke in a funny story.)

'Where's Jo?' asked Nanny Piggins.

'I saw her go into the bathroom,' said Samantha. 'She said she would be down in a minute.'

'Excellent,' said Nanny Piggins. And so they all tucked in to breakfast, knowing they would need the energy for a full day of listening. But by the time they had finished their sixth helpings of chocolate-covered waffles the author had still not emerged.

'That's odd,' said Nanny Piggins. 'She's been in the bathroom for forty-five minutes.

'Perhaps she is particular about her appearance and it takes her a long time to get ready,' said Samantha.

'You'd never think so to look at her,' snorted Nanny Piggins. 'No, it's much more likely she's reading a novel in the bath and she's got to a very good bit so she can't get out because she doesn't want to stop reading. We had better go and rescue her, in case the bath water gets cold and she develops hypothermia.'

So as soon as they had finished their seventh helpings, Nanny Piggins and the children trooped upstairs to check on Jo.

Nanny Piggins called through the door, 'Are you all right in there?' Then she lifted her trotter to knock, but the door swung open.

'That's odd,' said Nanny Piggins. She peeked around the edge of the door. There was no sign of the author. 'She's gone!'

The children came in to see for themselves.

'What has happened?' asked Derrick.

'You don't suppose she got sucked down the plughole,' asked Nanny Piggins, as she eyed the bathtub. She was secretly afraid of plugholes and always made sure she was out of the bath before she drained the water.

Samantha lay her hand on the side of the tub. 'It's not wet. So she never even had a bath.'

'Tut-tut,' said Nanny Piggins 'Someone really should take these authors in hand. It is bad enough they have terrible haircuts and awful dress sense. But they should at least be made to wash.'

'Perhaps something happened to her before she had a chance to bathe,' said Derrick. 'Look, the window is open.'

The curtains were flapping in the breeze.

'What are you suggesting?' asked Nanny Piggins. 'Who would dream of climbing up the outside of a house, in through the bathroom window and kidnapping a dirty author –?' Before Nanny Piggins had even finished her sentence they all knew the answer.

'The Ringmaster!' they gasped in unison.

They rushed to the window and looked out. And sure enough, there, snagged on the downpipe, was one of the lurid, fake-gold buttons the Ringmaster wore on his jacket.

'That poor woman,' said Nanny Piggins. 'As we speak she is probably being forced to write books in front of crowds of circus-goers.'

'That doesn't sound very entertaining,' said Derrick.

'The Ringmaster will think of some way to jazz it up,' said Nanny Piggins, 'by making her write upside down on an elephant or something.'

'What are we going to do?' asked Samantha.

'We'll just have to rescue her,' said Nanny Piggins. 'I seem to be rescuing a lot of people this week.'

And so Nanny Piggins packed the children into Mr Green's Rolls Royce (after making Mr Green walk to work) and they set off for the circus. Nanny Piggins had never taken the children to the circus before because she believed that coming within a five-hundred-metre radius of the Ringmaster was dangerous. Also, Nanny Piggins did not believe in looking back, and on some level she knew that going to the circus would make her sad. For while she did not miss the cold tents, the endless workload or the Ringmaster's tyrannical ways, somewhere deep down she did sometimes secretly miss the roar of the crowd. And Nanny Piggins feared that setting one foot inside the big top would make her want to go back.

But in this instance Nanny Piggins was prepared to face her demons, because there was something more important at stake. She could not allow the Ringmaster to go around kidnapping authors. True, Jo was not an important author (she did not write romance novels), but it was the principle of the matter. Without authors there would be no books. And without books, everyone would be forced to talk to the person sitting next to them on the train, and she just could not let that happen.

As soon as they caught their first glimpse of the big top through the windscreen of the car, Derrick and Michael became excited. The huge coloured tents and bright circus posters are designed to enthrall the imaginations of children. Only Samantha was concerned.

'It seems terribly cruel that the animals are forced to live in those cages,' she worried.

'Don't worry, the doors aren't locked,' said Boris

'They're not?' yelped Samantha. This made her worry even more.

'Oh no, the Ringmaster is a tyrant but he isn't rude,' said Boris. 'The cages are just for show to make the public feel safe. We only had to go and sit in them when the occupational health and safety man came around.'

'But the circus animals never bite people, do they?' asked Samantha.

'Oh no,' said Boris. 'Not unless you get your fairy floss stuck in their fur. They don't like that.'

'Okay,' said Nanny Piggins. 'I'll hide your father's Rolls Royce behind that pile of elephant poo, or in front of it, it doesn't matter because they are the same colour. Then we'll sneak over to the Ringmaster's caravan to see if the author is inside.'

When they got to the Ringmaster's caravan all the windows were covered with curtains, so Boris lifted Michael up onto the roof so he could peek in through the skylight.

'What can you see?' asked Nanny Piggins.

'The Ringmaster's got a really impressive tea spoon collection,' marvelled Michael.

'Yes, it's his favourite hobby. He buys one for every town the circus goes to. But can you see the author?' asked Nanny Piggins.

'Hang on, I'll just twist around . . . Yes! She's in there. He's tied her to a chair,' said Michael.

'And what's the Ringmaster doing?' asked Nanny Piggins.

'He's standing in front of a mirror and twirling his moustache,' said Michael.

'Of course, that's his second favourite hobby,' said Nanny Piggins.

'Do you want us to provide a diversion while you sneak the author out?' asked Derrick.

Nanny Piggins looked at her watch. 'I don't think so. I'm hungry and it's time for elevensies, so I don't want to mess about. Boris, would you mind terribly punching a huge hole in the wall?'

'Not at all,' said Boris. He was always happy to help his sister. So he punched his fists through the wall of the Ringmaster's caravan, grabbed hold of the thin metal sheeting and tore a huge piece off , allowing Nanny Piggins and the children to walk straight inside.

'Sarah Piggins, how wonderful to see you!' lied the Ringmaster, ignoring the irreparable damage done to his home.

The Ringmaster kissed Nanny Piggins loudly, first on one cheek and then the other, to which Nanny Piggins responded by stomping hard on his foot. This is the way they always greeted each other.

'You are a very naughty man!' condemned Nanny Piggins.

'And that's what you love about me,' said the Ringmaster with no shame.

Nanny Piggins just rolled her eyes. 'I cannot allow you to go around kidnapping authors. What were you thinking?'

'Yes, it's one thing to go around kidnapping circus performers,' said Boris as he and the children untied the author. 'We're professionals in the field, so we expect it. But you can't kidnap normal people. They have families and jobs and they just don't like it.'

'But Sarah Piggins, you've only got yourself to blame,' said the Ringmaster, wagging his finger at Nanny Piggins like she was a naughty schoolgirl. 'You were the one who let her start work on your biography. Now obviously I can't allow that.'

'Why not?' asked Derrick.

'I can't allow someone to write a book about what goes on in the circus,' said the Ringmaster. 'It would give away too many of our secrets.'

'You mean you would spend too many years in jail if the police found out,' said Boris.

'That too,' admitted the Ringmaster.

At this point Boris removed the gag from the author's mouth and the whole argument became redundant.

'You stupid man,' yelled the author.

Even the Ringmaster was taken aback. 'She's a fiery one, isn't she?'

'I was never going to write a book about her!' Jo said pointing at Nanny Piggins.

'You weren't?!' exclaimed everyone else.

'Of course not. I could barely stand listening to her never-ending stories,' said the author. 'I just wanted Mummy's recipe book.'

'Mummy?' said Nanny Piggins, with which she stepped forward and whipped the glasses off the author's face.