Nanny McPhee Returns (9 page)

The Diary 16

Not in costume today! Hooray! Just in the perfect hell of trying to shoot the jam-smashing sequence in one day, which we have all rightly come to the conclusion is impossible. Susanna’s hair is almost standing up on end. Luckily, Irene is there to calm her down. Irene Chawko is our Continuity Lady, or Script Supervisor (see Glossary). She is also an athlete – she does cross-country skiing and is remarkably fit. No matter how hot or how cold it is, Irene always wears the same kind of clothes – Susanna and she once worked together in the desert and apparently Irene still wore cotton polo-necks, even though it was 40 degrees in the shade. What we have shot is very good, but we are behind now and that always makes people look depressed and concerned. Any minute now Eric will turn up and glower at us. I don’t care. I am not in my costume. I am wearing leggings and a T-shirt. I am completely happy.

Next day: In early – I mean not ordinary early, which is 6.30-ish, but actually early, which is 6 (having got into the car at 5). We are shooting the bit where the animals walk into the kitchen. On another stage, the animal wranglers are working with Beryl (there’s no mud so she’s happy), and on this set, I am pretending to be Beryl. It would take too long to try to shoot Beryl on the real set because it takes ages to get her up the stairs. It’s no problem to get her
in
, the difficulty is getting her
out
. Gary, who is working with her, says she has a great sense of timing. She always looks towards where Mrs Green would be if she were there at exactly the right moment. How amazing. A
humorous
cow.

We have had some really sad news though. One of the main reasons I wrote this script was so that I would have the chance to work with a baby elephant. Everyone was excited, and early this year the search began. We found the most wonderful baby called Riddle at Whipsnade. He was the perfect age and he had already been trained by a fantastic team. He could do all sorts of things and I was waiting with bated breath for the day we could all go off to Whipsnade and shoot his section of the story. Alas, we heard this morning that a virus that attacks only elephants had got to him and killed him. They are all devastated in the office. Can’t imagine how the team at Whipsnade are feeling. Baby elephants are quite vulnerable to infection, apparently. David Brown actually met Riddle and is in a state of grief. So now we have no live elephant and will have to have a pretend one that the special effects team will produce. It will be brilliant, of course it will, but it’s very upsetting altogether. In fact, I’m so depressed I’m going back to the story.

The Story 16

Cyril woke the next morning to find no goat in the bed but two feet on the pillow next to him.

‘Argh!!! My feet!’ he cried, grabbing them. A very cross Norman yanked them away.

‘Oh. They’re yours,’ said Cyril, with relief, and suddenly a very loud tooting on a trumpet woke all the others up too.

Everyone sat up and looked around. All the animals were gone, and everyone was exceptionally glad about that except Vincent, who was already missing his elephant.

‘Rise and shine,’ said Nanny McPhee briskly. She was in an enormous smart black uniform, also trimmed with jet, with black pointy boots which were rather little when you considered what they had to carry about.

‘Beds made – hospital corners, if you please – and downstairs for breakfast at the double!’ And with that she turned smartly on her heel and left the room. There was a short, subdued silence.

Then Megsie spoke: ‘Who
is
she? And how did she do all those things?’

Cyril puffed out his chest. ‘I have a theory,’ he said.

‘Oh, here we go,’ muttered Norman, getting under his pillow. But he listened all the same.

‘I think she’s a secret weapon. My father’s very high up in the War Office and I know about these things. I think that stick of hers releases some sort of gas that makes people and animals do strange things. I’m going to write to Father and report her. He’ll have her called off.’

Cyril sounded so sure of himself that for a moment all the Greens thought, Yes, that must be it. She’s a secret weapon. Lord Gray will have her called off.

But then Celia piped up. ‘Don’t be silly, Cyril. Father never even replies to your letters, you know that.’

Cyril coloured. Norman, interested, came out from under his pillow to look at him. Cyril stared angrily back as Vincent said, ‘That’s like our dad. He hasn’t replied to our letters for years and years.’

Now it was Cyril and Celia’s turn to look interested.

‘That’s not true, Vinnie,’ said Megsie crossly.

‘Three months, that’s all, since the last one,’ said Norman, not wanting the vile cousins to think that the wonderful Mr Green was anything like their father.

‘He’s in the army. They move them around a lot. Letters get lost.’

‘Does your dad move around a lot then too?’ asked Vincent, intrigued.

‘No,’ said Cyril shortly. ‘He’s always in the same office.’

There was a silence which no one quite knew how to break. Finally, Celia said, ‘Well, I’m jolly well staying in bed till Mummy comes.’

Now Norman hopped out. ‘No one stays in bed around here. There’s chores to do. Come on, you lot – time to feed the animals!’

‘Yes, I expect you’re all hungry by now,’ said Cyril, who was wearing purple silk pyjamas.

‘Oh, ha ha,’ said Norman, grabbing his clothes and leaving, followed by a very sulky Megsie and Vincent.

‘I suppose we’ll have to get up to get fed,’ said Cyril, who was used to a valet bringing him breakfast in bed every morning except Sundays, when everyone met for devilled kidneys in a very long and chilly dining room. He put on his monogrammed slippers, grabbed a little case from the bed-knob and headed out. ‘You coming?’ he asked Celia, none too gently.

‘Don’t be silly. I haven’t a thing to wear,’ said Celia crossly. Cyril had heard this many times before and never believed it, but this time it was manifestly true. All Celia’s precious new clothes were lying in the mud around the house.

Celia lay in bed in her slip. She was hungry. She had to find something to wear. Those horrible peasanty children had destroyed her clothes. They owed her new things. She decided to get up and explore. There must be something somewhere she could wear until her mother came for her.

Downstairs, Mrs Green was ready for work and had even managed to have a quiet breakfast on her own. Nanny McPhee was there, doling out porridge to a group of sullen faces. Cyril was sitting in the window seat wearing his gas mask. Mrs Green looked at him worriedly.

‘Cyril, dear, why are you wearing your gas mask?’ she enquired somewhat timidly, because she was feeling guilty about Celia’s clothes.

‘In case of a GAS ATTACK, Aunt Isabel,’ said Cyril, staring very pointedly at Nanny McPhee.

‘A gas attack? Cyril, I don’t think there’s going to be a gas attack here, we’re in the middle of nowhere – that’s why your mother sent you here, remember?’

Cyril rudely ignored her and took his porridge as far away from the others as he could.

Mrs Green stared at them all and wrung her hands. ‘Oh dear, Nanny McPhee. Sharing nicely doesn’t seem to have cheered them up much.’

‘One step at a time,’ said Nanny McPhee.

‘Yes. Yes, of course. I must run. There’s a delivery of mousetraps at the shop today and I simply must get to them before Mrs Docherty,’ and casting one more worried look at the moping children, she pulled on her coat and ran out of the door.

‘Right,’ said Norman. ‘Chores. Megs, you feed Geraldine, Vinnie, you collect the eggs, I’ll check the barley, and Cyril, you can sweep up the dung.’

‘I’d love to sweep up the dung,’ said Cyril silkily, ‘but alas, I appear to have left my dung-sweepers at home. Perhaps Celia could be of assistance?’

Norman just scowled. He was about to shoo everyone out to start work when Celia came downstairs wearing something white and pearly-looking. Megsie choked on her porridge.

‘What are you wearing?’ she said in a shocked whisper as soon as she’d caught her breath.

Celia looked down and fingered the pretty material.

‘Um – I think it’s mostly tulle,’ she said, pleased that Megsie, who wouldn’t know an item of haute couture if it bit her on the ankle, was taking an interest.

Megsie got up and pointed an accusing finger at Celia. ‘That’s our mother’s wedding dress!’ she said. ‘Take it off at once!’

Oh dear. This is what had happened. Unable, of course, to find anything suitable in the children’s bedroom, Celia had tiptoed into Mr and Mrs Green’s room and rifled through their wardrobe. She’d felt a little guilty but had justified her actions by remembering all her spoilt new things lying in the mud. There hadn’t been much in the wardrobe – a few frocks, darned and mended many times over, and a depressing pinafore or two, nothing she could possibly have countenanced wearing. But then she’d found a pretty box in one of the drawers. She’d opened it and found a lovely little floaty dress in pearly white with, of all things, a veil. She’d tried it on and it had fitted quite well and there she was, looking presentable, ready for when her mother arrived to take her home.

‘Wedding dress? What – this old thing?’ said Celia disbelievingly. ‘No, it can’t be. Look – it hasn’t even got a train.’ And she twirled round so that Megsie could see how wrong she’d been.

Now I
know
that what Celia had done was rather awful and rude, but you must remember she really didn’t have anything to wear and she came from a world where wedding dresses were kept either in their own special trunks in rooms set apart from the rest of the house or in the vaults of banks if they were encrusted with particularly precious gems. Her mother’s dress had had a train that was twenty feet long and covered in doves’ feathers and diamonds, so try to understand – the poor girl had no idea that other people were different. No one had ever thought to tell her. The puffball dress was the sort of thing her mother might have worn to a coffee morning, and not a very posh one at that. But Megsie wasn’t to know this and she lunged at Celia violently, yelling, ‘Take it OFF!! TAKE IT OFF!!!’

Celia shrieked and ran behind a chair as Nanny McPhee stood, watching the proceedings with her usual calm.

‘Help me get it off her!’ shouted Megsie but everyone except Cyril had already gone off to do their chores. Casting a defiant glance at Nanny McPhee, Megsie was just about to pull the dress off Celia by force when Norman rushed back into the kitchen, white to the teeth.

‘The piglets have escaped! They’ve all gone!!’

Vincent, behind him, was practically in tears. Norman was frantic.

‘Everyone – now – you’ve got to help us, quickly, we have to catch them, I need
all
of you – Cyril, Celia, come quickly –’

But Cyril and Celia had no intention of going anywhere. Norman went up to Cyril and faced him square on.

‘Listen, Cyril – these are prize piglets. The money we get from them will pay for the tractor hire and that will mean we can get the harvest in – if we don’t get the harvest in, we could lose the farm – we promised our dad we’d look after it.
Now
will you help us?’

For answer, Cyril calmly started to file his nails. Norman looked as if he wanted very much to hit Cyril but there was no time and, anyway, Nanny McPhee had made them promise and he had a nasty feeling that breaking that promise would not help him find the piglets. He turned, feeling hopeless, to Megsie and said, ‘Come on then. We’ll just have to try on our own.’ And out he ran, followed by Megsie and Vincent, who paused only to yell resentfully at Cyril, ‘You’d help if it was
your
dad’s farm, wouldn’t you?’

When they’d gone, the room was very quiet. Cyril sensed Nanny McPhee’s gaze on him and whirled to face her.

‘And you can’t make me, either!’ he shouted, ‘I’ve got my gas mask, and that stick of yours won’t work!’

Almost by way of an answer, Nanny McPhee quietly leant her stick against the table and stepped away from it. Cyril thought he had won, but there was a little voice inside his head that simply would not be quiet. It kept saying: ‘If it was
your
dad . . . if it was
your
dad . . . if it was
your
dad . . .’ over and over.

Finally, he couldn’t stand it any more. He flung away his gas mask, muttered, ‘Oh blast you all!’ and marched out of the door. Nanny McPhee gave a little smile, picked up her stick and turned to Celia, who had come out from behind the chair to see where Cyril had gone. She saw Nanny McPhee coming towards her and panicked.

‘No. Oh no, no, no, no, no. I simply can’t run in these heels,’ she said, backing up against the staircase and screwing up her eyes in fright. When she opened them again, Nanny McPhee was standing in front of her holding a pair of wellies.