Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion (20 page)

Things did not start well for Derrick, Samantha and Michael. Headmistress Butterstrode (for that was the large woman's name) marched them off the bus, forced them to put on horrible uniforms and then made them line up in the lobby.

'There will be no more crying,' she announced. 'Self-indulgent extremes of emotion are strictly for bidden under article 156 of Dampworthington's school rules. And while crying over lost pigs is not specifically covered by the rules, it is, nonetheless, pitiful and shameful and if I catch any of you doing it again, you will be punished.'

'How?' asked Derrick. He personally did not think he could make it through twenty-four hours without shedding a tear for Nanny Piggins, so he was curious to know what would happen.

'Silence!' said Headmistress Butterstrode. 'The asking of questions is strictly forbidden under article 212 of Dampworthington's school rules.'

Samantha sobbed.

'No sobbing,' said Headmistress Butterstrode. 'Sobbing falls under the definition of crying, according to clarifying clause 6 of article 156. There are 1304 school rules, a copy of which you will find on your pillows. And I expect you to have them all memorised by 9 am tomorrow morning. Do I make myself clear?'

'Y –' began the children.

'Shhh!' said Headmistress Butterstrode. 'The answering of rhetorical questions is forbidden, under rule 803. Do you understand?'

The children did not want to do the wrong thing, but they did not know how to respond when asked a question, then told not to answer it. So they glanced at each other.

'A-a-a!' scolded Headmistress Butterstrode. 'Looking at each other when a teacher is talking is not allowed. Rule 3.'

The Green children, not knowing what else to do, stared straight forward with blank expressions on their faces.

'That's better,' smiled Headmistress Butterstrode. 'Now. The student body is gathered for lunch. Follow me.'

She pushed open a double door and led the Greens into an enormous room full of two hundred children eating in total silence. It really was extraordinary. It was one thing to see a group of two hundred children not talking, but to see them all eating without making any noise – no chewing sounds, no clinking of cutlery, no sipping of drinks. It was eerie to behold.

Headmistress Butterstrode led Derrick, Samantha and Michael to a platform at the head of the room. 'You will now introduce yourselves to the school. You, girl, go first.' She gave Samantha a small shove in the back.

Now, as you know, Samantha was a girl who worried a lot. And of all the things in the world she worried about, being forced to do public speaking was one of the worst. In her mind public speaking was right up there with wrestling tigers or swimming with sharks as one of the most horrifically frightening things you could possibly do.

With Nanny Piggins' loving encouragement Samantha had done many daring things she never imagined herself capable of. But right at this moment, Nanny Piggins was not there, so Samantha did not feel loved or safe. She felt awful. She had a great big lump in her throat the size of a grapefruit, and a bucketload of tears welled up behind each eye ready to burst out. Samantha did not think she could say something as simple as 'please pass the salt' without falling on the floor, wailing loudly and beating the ground with her fists. So the idea of being forced to make an impromptu speech was horrifying.

'What should I say?' whispered Samantha hoarsely.

'Your name and a little bit about yourself,' said the headmistress.

Samantha stepped forward. All the children in the hall silently put down their cutlery and turned to face her. Samantha considered running from the room but her legs felt like jelly and she did not think she would get very far. 'My name . . .' she croaked.

'Louder,' said Headmistress Butterstrode.

'My name is Samantha Green,' said Samantha, 'and I . . .' Samantha paused. She did not know how to describe herself. She had no hobbies. She had no talents. The only thing she had in her life was the world's most glamorous and amazing nanny who led them all on the most astounding adventures on a daily basis (which surely was more than enough for any child). But Samantha instinctively knew the headmistress would not want her to mention that. 'I –' continued Samantha. Then she spat out the first thing that came into her mind – 'really like chocolate.'

Everyone in the dining room laughed.

'No laughing!' snapped Headmistress Butterstrode. 'You are all violating the strict "no mirth" rule of the Dampworthington Code. As punishment there will be no more food today.'

The children all hung their heads and looked at the plates that they had just been forbidden to eat from. But some of them still smiled. Just the thought of chocolate had been enough to cheer them up in such a bleak place.

The rest of the day did not go well for the Green children. Before he was allowed to attend any class Derrick was marched off to see the school barber and forced to have a haircut. Derrick tried explaining that he just wanted a little off the sides, not realising that the school barber was stone deaf and only capable of one type of haircut. (His main job was trimming the school hedges, and they were viciously over-pruned.) Derrick emerged from the room with his head completely shaved around the sides and back, and nothing but a short spiky strip of hair along the top of his head. And he had lots of tiny pieces of toilet paper stuck to his scalp where the barber had nicked him with what he was sure were a pair of secateurs.

Michael fared even worse. A no-food diet did not agree with him at all. When he could not indulge in his favourite hobby – eating treats under a bush in the garden – he became delirious. And in his case, delirium caused him to start telling the truth. He staggered from class to class muttering things like: 'This school is simply dreadful', 'I really, really hate it here,' and 'I do miss my nanny, Nanny Piggins.' So it was only a matter of time before he found out what the official school punishment was. He was marched out into the school playground, sticky-taped to the flagpole in the centre of the quadrangle and left there in the rain.

Derrick longed to go and rescue his brother but he was being punished by his science teacher, who had locked him in the fume excluder for not knowing the atomic weight of Rutherfordium.

When the children trudged to their dormitory that night they were exhausted – physically from all the punishment and emotionally from missing their nanny.

'Should we try to run away?' asked Samantha.

'I can't. I don't have the energy,' said Michael, flopping on the floor beside his bed. (Students were not allowed to sleep on their beds because that made the sheets untidy. They had to sleep on the cold floorboards next to their beds, because according to the late Mr Dampworthington, 'shivering was good for the brain'.)

'And I don't know where we could run to,' added Derrick. 'If we went home, Father would only force us to come back. We could run away to sea to become pirates, but I don't know where you go to apply for a position.'

'I can't believe I've got to spend nine years here until I turn eighteen. And poor Michael will have to be here for eleven years,' said Samantha.

'Oh I won't be here that long,' whimpered Michael. 'I'll probably die of starvation before the end of the week.'

'Let's sleep on it. Perhaps we'll think of something in the morning,' said Derrick.

So they all went to bed, although none of them slept (not even Michael) because the floor was uncomfortable and their thoughts of life without Nanny Piggins were more uncomfortable still.

The next morning at breakfast, Derrick, Samantha and Michael were feeling very dispirited as they ate their porridge (the most dispiriting of all breakfast foods), when the meal was interrupted by the main doors from the lobby swinging open. The Green children did not turn to look. They had read the school rules the night before, so they knew that to do so would violate rule 612 – the strict 'no looking' rule of the Dampworthington Code. But they heard Headmistress Butterstrode striding towards the stage and a lighter pair of footsteps behind her.

'Children,' addressed Headmistress Butterstrode. 'We have another new pupil.'

The Green children along with the rest of the school body were now allowed to turn and look. Headmistress Butterstrode stepped back and a girl wearing the Dampworthington school uniform came forward.

'Tell everyone your name and a little bit about yourself,' ordered Headmistress Butterstrode.

The girl stepped to the front of the stage. She was not very tall, no more than four feet. She had long fire-engine red hair and thick black-framed glasses. But, unlike the rest of the school population, she managed to make the uniform look somehow elegant. She scanned the room and fixed her gaze on Derrick, Samantha and Michael. Then, amazingly, she raised her heavy glasses and winked at them.

The Green children gasped. It was no girl! It was Nanny Piggins!

'Good morning,' said Nanny Piggins to the entire school. 'My name is Matahari Curruthers-Dingleberry, and I look forward to my time here at Dampworthington's.'

She then winked at the Greens again and allowed herself to be led away by Headmistress Butterstrode.

'Nanny Piggins has come to rescue us!' whispered Derrick.

'But how?' whispered Samantha.

'She'll think of something,' said Michael.

When Derrick arrived at his French class Nanny Piggins was already sitting in the front row.

'Bonjour, Derrick,' said Nanny Piggins with a smile.

'Bonjour Madamoiselle Matahari Curruthers-Dingleberry,' replied Derrick. He wanted to say, 'We've missed you so much', 'How are you going to rescue us?', 'Are we going to dig an escape tunnel?', 'Do you know anyone who can forge passports?' and 'Do you have any chocolate?' but he could not, because Derrick was not very good at French so he did not know the words for 'missed', 'rescue', 'escape', 'tunnel', 'forge' or 'chocolate', which is a shame because they are some of the most important words to know in any language.

Nanny Piggins, on the other hand, spoke fluent French. Indeed her vocabulary was much more extensive than the teacher's, because she knew the type of salty words that would make a sailor blush, and she proceeded to teach them to the whole class.

By exactly copying Nanny Piggins' intonation, the students were soon telling their teacher, with perfect Parisian accents, that his 'hair looked like a baboon's toothbrush' and his 'breath smelled like a three-week-old camembert cheese'.

The French teacher was deeply off ended. (He thought his aftershave, Eau de Cheese, smelled nice.) So Nanny Piggins was soon thrown out of his class and demoted down to Samantha's grade, where she joined their home economics lesson.

When Nanny Piggins saw the spinach quiche the students were being taught how to make, she was horrified.

'Quick, throw them out the window,' Nanny Piggins urged her fellow students when the teacher turned her back.

'But what about our marks?' worried Samantha.

'Forget the marks,' said Nanny Piggins. 'There are much worse things than getting zero for an assignment, like being forced to eat a spinach quiche.'

The students saw the wisdom in Nanny Piggins' words and hurled their classwork out the second storey window (much to the chagrin of the sports class doing sit-ups immediately below).

And so, even before lunchtime, Nanny Piggins was demoted down to Michael's class, where they were studying art.

'Today we will be studying the Flemish masters,' said the art teacher as he set up an overhead projector (always a sure sign that a very boring lesson is about to follow).

'I'd rather study Jackson Pollock,' declared Nanny Piggins.

'Who?' asked Michael.

'He was a brilliant artist who discovered that idiots would pay millions of dollars if he spattered paint about and generally made as much mess as possible,' explained Nanny Piggins.

'Abstract expressionism is not about making as much mess as possible,' contradicted the art teacher.

'Really? So if I picked up this five-litre bottle of red paint and splashed it all around the room like this . . .' said Nanny Piggins as she squirted huge splatters of paint across the walls, floor and ceiling, 'that's not abstract expressionism?'