Nanny Piggins and the Rival Ringmaster (18 page)

When they arrived it was a sorry sight. It was as though someone somewhere was giving away free chocolate and everybody who worked at the circus had abandoned their job, leaving everything exactly as it was but nothing cared for. The circus tents flapped in the breeze, the concession stands still had hot dogs sitting in the now cold water and the popcorn was slowly going stale in its buckets.

‘This is depressing,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Are you sure this isn’t just some large elaborate surprise party?’ asked Boris. ‘It doesn’t seem natural for the circus to be so completely empty.’

They soon discovered that they were not alone.

‘Yoo-hoo,’ came a voice from behind them.

They turned to see Esmeralda lumbering towards them.

‘Hello,’ said Esmeralda. ‘Have you come to see the circus? The show starts at seven o’clock. I’m afraid several of the acts will not be appearing tonight. It will mainly be me doing a little soft shoe routine, then sitting down and telling anecdotes about my life.’

‘Esmeralda, it’s me,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Sarah Piggins.’

Esmeralda took out her glasses and had a closer look. ‘Oh Sarah, how good to see you. I didn’t
recognise you at first. I think it’s because I wasn’t expecting to see you. It’s much harder to recognise someone you’re not expecting to see.’

‘Where’s everyone gone?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘I’m not entirely sure,’ said Esmeralda. ‘They did tell me. But you know what my memory is like. Rosalind was keeping a list so that when the Ringmaster got out of jail he could hunt them down and tell them off himself. But then she ran away and took the list with her.’

‘Why didn’t you run away?’ asked Samantha kindly.

‘I meant to,’ admitted Esmeralda. ‘I even got offered a job. But by the time I had packed my trunk I’d forgotten who’d offered it to me.’

‘Was it Madame Saváge from the Cirque de Soul?’ asked Michael.

‘Oh yes, that’s right,’ said Esmeralda. ‘How did you know?’

‘You’ve got it written on your hoof,’ explained Michael.

‘Oh really?’ said Esmeralda. ‘How clever of me. Well I do hope her offer still stands, although I know nothing about cirques and I don’t care for soul music. I still think it will be for the best if I go. She offered me a nice job as an usher.’

‘She is going to use an African elephant to show people to their seats?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Oh yes,’ said Esmeralda. ‘Madame Saváge said she is going to have the aisles widened especially to accommodate me.’

‘Well, you can’t go and join the Cirque de Soul,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Why not?’ asked Esmeralda.

‘Because I am the new Ringmaster and I’m not letting you,’ declared Nanny Piggins.

‘Oooooh,’ said Esmeralda.

The children all held their breaths waiting to see if Esmeralda would lose her temper and sit on Nanny Piggins.

‘It’s nice to have someone forceful in charge again,’ said Esmeralda, giving Nanny Piggins a big hug (which is not easy when you are a 4500-kilogram elephant and you are trying to hug a 40-kilogram pig. If you do not believe me, try hugging an ant and see how much the ant enjoys it). ‘What do you want me to do first? Do you want me to go and sit in my cage and stop bothering you? That’s what the Ringmaster always used to ask me to do.’

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I want you to remember where Rosalind got her job as a receptionist.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Esmeralda. ‘Remembering things is not my strength. Are you sure you wouldn’t like
me to sit on someone naughty? Or give the children a ride around the showground?’

‘I’m sure the children would be delighted if you gave them a ride later,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But right now we’ve got work to do. Children, search Esmeralda’s hoofs to see if there are any more notes that will help us.’

The children and Boris each inspected a hoof.

‘Mine says
buy bread
,’ read Boris.

‘Mine has a gold star on it,’ said Michael.

‘Rosalind gave me that before she left,’ explained Esmeralda, ‘for remembering to make my bed seven days in a row.’

‘Mine says
left
,’ said Derrick.

‘Oh yes, I often write left and right on my feet to help me learn my dance steps,’ explained Esmeralda.

‘But you’ve written
left
on your right hoof,’ said Derrick.

‘Oh dear,’ said Esmeralda. ‘That would explain why I fell on Alistair during the tango.’

‘I’ve got something!’ exclaimed Samantha.

‘A note?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘No, there’s a business card cellotaped to this hoof,’ said Samantha. ‘It’s a card for Synerlar Pharmaceutical Services.’

‘
Pharmaceutical Services –
that means drug trials. Has someone been trying to do drug trials on you?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Rosalind!’ exclaimed Esmeralda.

‘She’s been testing drugs on you?’ asked Boris.

‘No, that’s where she got the job as a receptionist,’ remembered Esmeralda proudly.

‘Right,’ said Nanny Piggins, inspecting the business card. ‘Boris, find a large sack. We’ve got a bearded lady to kidnap.’

One hour later they all strode into the entrance lobby of Synerlar Pharmaceutical Services. (Except Esmeralda. She had to wait in the car. Nanny Piggins did not want to draw unnecessary attention to themselves by smashing a huge hole in the front of the building.) They looked around to see what to do next. It was a large, immaculately decorated lobby, with marble trim and thick wool carpet. At the far end was a long marble reception desk. And behind the desk sat a petite blonde woman efficiently answering calls and putting them through to the relevant people.

‘Is that the receptionist?’ asked Boris.

‘Rosalind must have stepped away to use the bathroom or something,’ said Nanny Piggins.

But as they walked over to the desk the pretty blonde looked up, and from the way she flinched in fear and uttered several very ugly words that a lady can only pick up if she lives in a travelling circus, they knew immediately that this was Rosalind. She tried to make a run for it, but her telephone headset was still attached to her head, so she was soon jerked backwards by the very short cord and ended up lying flat on her back.

‘Rosalind! What are you doing?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘I’m just trying to live a normal life,’ said Rosalind.

‘But why?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘You have an extraordinary talent. Not many diminutive blonde bombshells can grow a full beard. But anybody can answer the telephone.’

‘They pay me every single week and into my own bank account, to which no-one else has the pass code,’ protested Rosalind. ‘And I get holiday pay and sick pay.’

‘Is that any way to live?’ asked Nanny Piggins, shaking her head. ‘Grateful that you can stay home sick? Where is the fun in staying home watching
daytime television if you don’t have to sneak out the window and hide in someone else’s house first?’

Rosalind burst into tears. ‘You’re right,’ she wept. ‘I hate it. All anyone ever talks about is how close their parking space is to the building. And once a month we have an employment review where we have to tell our ‘team leader’ how we
feel
about everything.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We’re here to rescue you. Come with us now. We’re getting everyone back and resurrecting the circus.’

‘I can’t come with you now,’ said Rosalind. ‘I have to give two weeks’ notice in a letter explaining my reasons for leaving.’

‘Rosalind, listen to yourself,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You’re circus folk. You know better than that.’

Rosalind shook herself. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s got into me. I think they put brainwashing powder in the coffee.’ She leapt to her feet and vaulted over the desk. ‘Oh, I suppose I’d better say goodbye.’ She leaned back over the desk, pressed the intercom button on her phone and made a building-wide announcement: ‘Hasta la vista, worker bees. Enjoy a lifetime stuck in a dehumanising cubicle!’ Rosalind turned to face Nanny Piggins. ‘Okay, now I’m ready to go.’

‘Oh, just let me make an announcement too,’ said Nanny Piggins. She pressed the intercom button and said, ‘And if you would like a little break from your dehumanising cubicle then please do come along to the circus this Saturday night where you will be astounded by the most amazing feats of athleticism and freakery ever performed. Have a nice day.’

Having rescued Rosalind, the next few circus performers were easy to track down, because Rosalind had a comprehensive list of where they had gone and what they were doing.

The Flying Lee Brothers were working as window cleaners, much to the horror of the high-rise workers they scared the living daylights out of each time they flew past a window with no safety equipment (except the wet squeegees in their hands). Min and Ki-Hoon did not want to come down at first, but Nanny Piggins managed to persuade them by going up to the top of the building and sawing through their trapeze cables. Then once they were standing on the ground it was easy to convince them to come back to the circus. Boris simply put them both in large sacks and told them off for being naughty boys.

Kevin the camel was glad to be rescued. He had found a job at a petting zoo giving children rides. Of course, he had always given children rides at the
circus, but children at the circus never pulled his ears or purposefully stuck lollipops to his fur, because the Ringmaster would whack them with his riding crop if they tried it. (Whacking small children is actually the reason the Ringmaster carried the riding crop.)

Giving children rides in an unpoliced environment was no fun for Kevin at all. Yes, he could still spit on their mothers and try to make the children fall off by suddenly sitting down. But even that was not as much fun as it used to be at the circus, where there was always a nice big pile of elephant dung you could drop a particularly unpleasant child into. So as soon as Kevin saw Nanny Piggins and Boris coming towards him with a very large sack, he ran to them and leapt into it. It then took some time to get the children he had been carrying out of the sack, but Kevin himself did not come out for six hours until he was entirely sure he had really been rescued.

The strongman was harder to re-recruit because he had found a very nice job. He had set up his own business as a 24-hour emergency jam jar opener. Housewives, elderly people and anyone with weak wrists could ring him up when they could not open a jam jar. He would jump on a motorbike, race over and open it for them. The job had a lot of perks.
The old ladies were always making him cups of tea and baking him cakes. In fact some of them would purposefully go to the supermarket and buy the very hardest jars to open (pre-sliced olives) just so they could call on him to pay a visit.

Fortunately Nanny Piggins knew all about reverse psychology, so she simply told the strongman she did not want him back. She was going to be the circus’ new strongman, since she was much stronger. The strongman scoffed at this. Then Nanny Piggins dared him to prove her wrong by throwing a refrigerator further than her.

They went out in the backyard and the strongman did throw the refrigerator one centimetre further than Nanny Piggins (the children suspected their nanny of letting him win). And in doing so he realised that he was a strongman, and that no amount of jam jar opening could compare to the gasps of admiration from a crowd when they saw him rip a telephone book in half with his bare hands.

By the end of three days Nanny Piggins had half the circus performers back. The problem was the other
half – the ones who had gone to work for Madame Saváge.

‘How are you going to get them?’ asked Rosalind. ‘Are you going to sneak into the Cirque de Soul in the middle of the night and blast them out with your cannon?’

‘Oh no,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Madame Saváge is a businesswoman. I’m sure I can negotiate with her without resorting to crude tricks and subterfuge.’

‘But she’s wicked and heartless,’ protested Rosalind.

‘There must be some way we can appeal to her kinder instincts,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We just need to find out more about her. She seems to have appeared from nowhere. She must have a past, a weakness we can use.’

‘Do you want me to put a lampshade on my head, then go over there and spy for you?’ asked Boris.