Nanny Piggins and the Pursuit of Justice (11 page)

‘We do?’ asked Samantha.

‘Getting hit in the head gave me a tremendous idea,’ explained Nanny Piggins.

‘It did?’ asked Michael.

‘Let’s have a bonfire!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And burn things on it.’

‘Like what?’ asked Derrick.

‘For a start we’ll have to burn your father’s Persian rug,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We’ll never get the smell of zucchini out.’

‘Then can we burn those clothes Nanny Anne gave you?’ asked Boris.

‘Definitely,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And the cake, although we’ll all have to be careful to wear water-soaked rags over our noses so we don’t breathe in any zucchini fumes.’

‘That sounds like fun,’ enthused Derrick.

‘That’s just the start of it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘After we’ve burnt your father’s laundry, we’ll have to stay up half the night toasting marshmallows and making up rude songs about Nanny Anne’s dress sense.’

‘It’s good to have you back, Nanny Piggins,’ said Samantha.

‘It’s good to be back,’ said Nanny Piggins, embracing all three children. ‘You’ve no idea how unspeakably dreadful it is not remembering the important things in life: the taste of a chocolate cake, the smell of a freshly blasted cannon and the sweet satisfaction of throwing Nanny Anne out of the house.’

Sixty small noses were pressed up against the windowpanes of the school canteen, as a crowd of children breathlessly – they dared not breathe in case their breath fogged the windows – watched Nanny Piggins perform an act of sheer magic.

And this is no exaggeration. Throughout history, the world’s greatest minds, people such as Leonardo da Vinci and Nicholas Flamel, have attempted alchemy – the transformation of lead into gold.
But Nanny Piggins could do something much more impressive than that. She could transform eggs, flour and butter into cake, which is much more delicious than gold, and equally pretty in Nanny Piggins’ opinion.

On this particular occasion the children were waiting to see Nanny Piggins take her marble cake out of the oven. It was a mixture of white chocolate cake, milk chocolate cake and dark chocolate cake carefully swirled together. The smell coming from the oven was divine. The children could not wait to see if it looked as good as it smelt, because if it looked good and it smelt good, the chances of it tasting good were very, very high indeed.

The oven pinged. Nanny Piggins put down her romance novel (which she had been pretending to read so that the children would think she was relaxed, but really she was just as anxious to have a piece of cake as they were) and cautiously approached the oven. She sniffed the oven door.

‘Definitely smells cakey,’ reported Nanny Piggins.

Boris and the other canteen volunteers huddled quietly in the far corner. They knew, from experience, not to interrupt Nanny Piggins with idle chatter at such a delicate stage. Talking to Nanny Piggins as
she took a cake out of the oven was like talking to a bomb disposal expert as they defused a landmine.

Nanny Piggins put on her oven gloves and carefully opened the oven door. A great waft of delicious cake smell flooded out into the kitchen and seeped through the cracks in the windowpanes. The children gasped with pleasure. (They were supposed to be in PE doing cross-country training. But when the PE teacher sent them off on a 5-kilometre run, then went back into his office to read a Dick Francis novel, he did not notice that all 60 children hid behind the girls’ toilet block and then snuck around the back of the school to the canteen.)

‘Hmmm,’ said Nanny Piggins as she leaned forward to gently pat the top of the cake. It sprang back. ‘Perfection!’ she announced.

The other canteen volunteers breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Congratulations Nanny Piggins, another masterpiece!’ said Mrs Branston, the canteen manager.

‘We mustn’t speak too soon,’ chided Nanny Piggins. ‘It hasn’t been tasted yet.’

‘But you have never ever made anything less than a mouth-wateringly delicious cake,’ protested Mrs Branston.

‘Only because I maintain my standards,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I cannot possibly allow you to sell this cake unless it has been tasted.’

Mrs Branston sighed. They had this conversation every Tuesday when, as part of her community service, Nanny Piggins was forced to ‘volunteer’ in the canteen. Nanny Piggins was not always an easy pig to work with. The other mothers never threw out all the food from the freezer declaring it to be processed, chemically saturated rubbish (even though it was). The other mothers did not insist on flying in the finest ingredients from Paris. And the other mothers never chased the meat supplier off the premises just for turning up with a 10-kilogram bag of bacon.

But Mrs Branston could hardly turn Nanny Piggins away, when it was thanks to her that their school canteen had become the only school canteen in the entire world to be awarded a Michelin star. This was a recognition of culinary brilliance normally only given to the finest (and most expensive) restaurants. And the canteen only held the Michelin star on Tuesdays when it was Nanny Piggins’ morning to volunteer.

It was true that having a Michelin star had caused some problems for the canteen. Food lovers
and restaurant critics kept trying to get a taste of one of Nanny Piggins’ creations. They would dress up as school children and sneak into line. But Nanny Piggins was very good at spotting them (usually the goatee beards and pretentious overuse of adjectives gave them away) and they all got a smack on the back of the hand with a ruler before they were sent packing.

‘All right,’ conceded Mrs Branston. ‘Test the cake.’

Nanny Piggins turned to the children excitedly staring in through the windows. ‘Are any of you children willing to be a test subject?’

‘Me me me me me!!!!!!!’ screamed all the children, as they did every week when Nanny Piggins would turn, with her latest creation in her trotters, and ask the same question.

Nanny Piggins began deftly slicing up the cakes (for there were 18 more in the oven) and passing them out to the children so they could give her ‘constructive feedback’. The feedback was always the same. There were lots of ‘Mmmm-mm-mmm’ noises, and ‘aaaahh-mmm-yummmm’ sounds, as well as some weeping from delight.

‘We’re never going to make any money if you keep giving all the cake away,’ said Mrs Branston.

‘Who needs money when you’ve got cake?’ argued Nanny Piggins as she shoved a large wedge into her own mouth.

Mrs Branston, who now had cake in her mouth too, had to agree that this argument did have a lot of merit. Unfortunately their cakey bliss was soon interrupted.

‘What is going on here?’ bellowed a very angry voice.

‘It’s Headmaster Pimplestock!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.

‘Quick children, run!’ urged Boris.

‘And take this slice of cake for your teacher,’ added Nanny Piggins, ‘to bribe him to concoct a cover story for you.’

The children took to their heels at lightning pace, running through an oleander hedge, along a muddy ditch, up and over the wall behind the science block and back to the oval. (So they got in their cross-country run after all.)

Headmaster Pimplestock did not chase after them because he was a rotund man who had not done anything athletic for three decades. (It is funny how adults unthinkingly inflict things on school children that they would never dream of doing themselves – like cross-country running and algebra.) Headmaster
Pimplestock glared at Nanny Piggins, which was a mistake because she was much better at it, and it always frightened him when she glared back.

‘What are you doing here anyway?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘It’s my school, I’m the headmaster!’ exclaimed Headmaster Pimplestock.

Nanny Piggins snorted (which, as a pig, she was very good at). ‘Technically I suppose,’ she muttered.

Headmaster Pimplestock remembered why he was on the canteen verandah, because that was where the school noticeboard hung. (They had found that putting the notices next to that day’s cake list dramatically increased the chance of the students actually reading them.) Headmaster Pimplestock walked over and pinned up a new notice.

‘What does that say?’ demanded Nanny Piggins.

‘I don’t have to answer to you,’ snapped Headmaster Pimplestock.

‘Really?’ said Nanny Piggins, glowering so hard she actually made Headmaster Pimplestock flinch and stumble into the flowerbed.

The ladies who volunteered in the canteen (and Boris) sniggered.

Headmaster Pimplestock recovered his balance and tried to march away with dignity, but his feet would not take him. Because, after all, he was just a man, with normal human weaknesses and a sense of smell. Headmaster Pimplestock turned back. ‘Umm . . . er . . . before I go . . . I was wondering, Nanny Piggins . . .’

‘Tsk tsk, tsk, Headmaster,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You gave Michael lines for umming and ahhing last week, and here you are doing it yourself. Would you like me to punish you?’

‘No, I would like to buy a slice of cake,’ said Headmaster Pimplestock. No matter how much he desperately wanted to thwart Nanny Piggins in every way, and never see her set trotter on his school grounds again, he could not deny that her marble cake smelt like heaven in a baking tin.

‘Very well,’ said Nanny Piggins, cutting him a large slice and holding it out. ‘That will be five hundred dollars.’

‘What?’ protested Headmaster Pimplestock.

‘And I want to be paid in cash,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know what you teachers are like with your rubber cheque books.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ spluttered Headmaster Pimplestock.

‘From the very rude letter you sent Mrs Branston last week, we all know how vitally important it is that the school canteen runs at a profit,’ said Nanny Piggins, pointing to a letter that was pinned to the wall (and skewered with several butter knives that Nanny Piggins had thrown at it).

‘But five hundred dollars for one slice?’ questioned Headmaster Pimplestock.

‘You don’t have to buy the cake,’ said Nanny Piggins, withdrawing the outstretched plate and putting it back on the countertop.

A dollop of drool actually fell from Headmaster Pimplestock’s mouth as he watched his cake get taken away. ‘All right all right, no need to be hasty.’ He took his wallet out of his pocket, counted out ten fifty-dollar notes and handed them to Nanny Piggins.

She handed over the cake. ‘And I’d better not find out that this is the cash for the children’s new axolotl tank,’ warned Nanny Piggins as she put the money in the canteen till.

Headmaster Pimplestock made a mental note to put back the money for the school’s axolotl tank before Nanny Piggins found out he had been using it to buy cappuccinos.

The annoying thing about Nanny Piggins was that as soon as Headmaster Pimplestock took his first
bite, he had to concede that five hundred dollars was a bargain. Five
thousand
dollars would not have been too much to ask for such a delicious slice of cake. He walked away, ‘Mmm-mm-mmmmm’ing and ‘Aaah-mm-yummmm’ing quietly but just as fervently as the children.

Nanny Piggins, Boris and the other volunteers leaned out the window and watched him go. As soon as he was out of sight Nanny Piggins leapt out of the window and hurried over to read the sign on the noticeboard.

‘What does it say?’ asked Mrs Branston.

‘The school wants to hire a new bus driver!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Fancy that. According to this, not only will they let the bus driver drive the bus, they will also pay them to do it. And in money.’ (Nanny Piggins never had much money because Mr Green only paid her ten cents an hour. And her previous employer, the Ringmaster, had never paid her at all. So after those two it always amazed her when an employer was prepared to follow the minimum-wage laws.)

‘You couldn’t pay me enough to drive a bus full of kids,’ said Mrs Kim, another of the volunteers. ‘It’s bad enough driving around my own two children, what with all the fighting and wanting snacks, and
the government not letting you leave them in a car on a hot day.’

‘Yes, but think of all the things you could do with a bus,’ said Nanny Piggins wistfully. ‘They’re just so big. There is so much potential.’

‘But Sarah,’ said Boris, ‘you can’t apply. You already have a job looking after Derrick, Samantha and Michael.’

‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I can do both. I’m very good at multi-tasking. I eat cake and bake cake simultaneously all the time.’

So that afternoon Nanny Piggins went home and wrote out her job application. It was a note written in lipstick saying:

Dear School,

Please give me the job of bus driver. I know I will be better than anyone else, because I usually am at most things.

Fond Regards,

Nanny Piggins F.P. (Flying Pig)

Luckily for Nanny Piggins, Headmaster Pimplestock was not in charge of hiring the new bus driver.
There was a P&C hiring committee whose job it was to draw up a shortlist of candidates. Headmaster Pimplestock used to have full responsibility for hiring staff, but that was taken away from him when, over a 17-year period, he had only hired men (and very boring men who did not use enough deodorant).

Headmaster Pimplestock did go to the committee and beg them not to put Nanny Piggins on their shortlist, on the grounds that she was a raving psychopath who had burnt the school canteen down, blasted a hole in the library roof and bitten him on the shins several times.

But Nanny Piggins was a woman, and there were too few of them on staff. (Also, she annoyed Headmaster Pimplestock, which secretly delighted the committee.) So they overruled Headmaster Pimplestock and put Nanny Piggins on the list.