Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (16 page)

Mr Spolding went white. He took Mrs Docherty’s hand and together they watched as Phil came up to Mrs Green and the waiting children.

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I can’t be sure quite when Mrs Green and the children realised that the thing Phil was holding was yellow. It was one of those moments when something you don’t want to happen happens and everything slows down. To Vincent, and Megsie, and Norman, it certainly seemed to take Phil a long, long time to reach them. When he did, finally, Vincent just said, very quietly, ‘That’s not for us, is it?’

Phil didn’t speak. He looked awful. He handed Mrs Green the telegram without a word. Mrs Green looked at all the stricken faces and said, ‘It’s not always bad news, my darlings. He might have got a medal!’

But she knew she had to open it. So she did. Almost immediately everyone knew that Mr Green hadn’t won a medal and that it was the worst news ever. Mrs Green didn’t cry or scream or anything. She just said, ‘Oh,’ and sank to her knees. Vincent dropped his ginger beer on the ground and rushed to bury his head in her lap. Norman picked up the telegram, read it and then put it down, walking away from everyone towards the farm. Megsie picked it up and read the words: ‘RORY GREEN. KILLED IN ACTION. DEEPEST CONDOLENCES’. She wrapped herself silently around her mother. Phil bent his head and leant by Mrs Green’s side, tears in his eyes. Very slowly, Mrs Docherty, Mr Spolding and Nanny McPhee started to clear up the picnic things. Celia helped, hardly daring to look at the family. Cyril, having finally found a very good reason to stop sulking, watched it all with a heavy heart and finally decided to follow Norman.

The Diary 20

We’re on location at Wormsley! The barley field! Thirty acres of it! We’re not allowed to walk on it. Once again, the call-sheet is covered with huge supplications like ‘PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON’T WALK ON THE BARLEY!!’ and ‘IT TOOK US EIGHT MONTHS TO GROW THE BARLEY. IF YOU STEP ON IT WE CANNOT REPAIR THE DAMAGE!!’ and so forth. It is the most beautiful location I have ever seen – a great rippling field of stalks that change colour as they move and make the most wonderful susurrations. Sometimes it even sounds like it’s sighing to itself. Right in the middle is the pretend bomb, which is huge. Since we all have to go and act in and around the bomb, they have built a walkway to it – so if you stand on the edge of the field and look across it looks as if people are floating over the top of the barley. Magical. The Art Department are going to hand-harvest this crop on Saturday in readiness for the harvest sequences. Eric is on set today, and he and I are trying to persuade them to make beer out of the barley. It seems they are going to sell it on the open market – people make things out of unprocessed barley and it’s used in thatching as well. They think the field is worth about £8,000!! Any money they get will go back into the production. Lindsay thinks beer is a bad idea, but she’s American and I’m sure not how attractive the prospect of home-brew is for her . . .

The children and Maggie Smith, who is playing Mrs Docherty, are running through the barley and it looks wonderful, but is full of sharp FLINTS, and they’ve all got sore knees from falling. It is a wonderful location, but you can’t get in and out of it very easily. So we get to our positions and then have to stay there for most of the day. We do have little boxes to sit on, but Maggie is not in the first flush of youth and nor am I and it’s not easy to sit in a blinking field all day. The ADs yell instructions at us from over the top of yards of unspoilt barley. They’re all getting hoarse. We hide our water bottles among the barley stalks, and if I get too hot I take off my boots and stand on them. No one can see my feet, after all.

Oooh. Just seen the bomb shuddering and letting off steam. It’s very impressive and really quite scary. This is a very difficult bit to shoot. We have to do all the scenes out of order so that we only squash the right bits of the barley at the right time and in the right order. Eeek. It’s taken them the entire week off to work out the shot lists, so all I can say is thank God Rhys broke his foot.

Gaia is now on set and working as a Runner. She’s very efficient. Last night we went back to the hotel and had room service and watched penguins on the telly.

The Story 20

Cyril was feeling perfectly dreadful. Now his sulk was over, he was able to think about his own behaviour in relation to this nice family who had taken him in, and he wasn’t enjoying it at all. Why had he been so awful on that first day? He’d been feeling very sick because of the journey and all the chocolate he’d eaten – and come to that, why had he eaten all the chocolate? He decided it was because it made him feel better while it was in his mouth but worse when it reached his tummy. And then he’d broken the jam they’d made for their father, and now he was dead, and Cyril’s conscience was giving Cyril a very hard time of it. He knew he had to do something, he just didn’t know what. He’d followed Norman instinctively, but had no idea what he would do when he found him. He searched the house but Norman wasn’t there. Then Cyril realised where he’d be. He walked into the barn and sure enough, there was Norman, sitting on the Scratch-O-Matic with his back to him. Cyril stopped and thought. What do you say when someone’s just found out that their dad isn’t going to come home ever? What if he was crying? Then Cyril remembered what Prongwithers Minor had come up with when Cyril’s grandmother had died last term.

‘Rotten luck,’ he said.

Norman turned and looked at him briefly, then turned back, not rudely but as if he were concentrating on something.

Cyril saw that he wasn’t crying and also that he wasn’t angry with Cyril – so he decided to try something more difficult. He tried to apologise.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘about the way I’ve been – I don’t know why I . . . anyway, I’m sorry.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Forget it,’ said Norman, and Cyril knew he meant it.

Cyril felt a bit better and walked around to look at the levers of the wonderful machine Mr Green had invented. Tactfully he concentrated on the machine and not on Norman.

‘This is a great idea,’ he said. ‘He’s . . . He must’ve been a brilliant designer, your dad –’

Norman interrupted him. ‘He’s not dead,’ he said.

Cyril was so surprised that he turned to look straight at Norman.

‘What?’ he said.

‘He’s not dead. I know it. For sure.’ And Norman did look very sure.

‘Norman, how do you know?’ said Cyril, worried that Norman might have gone temporarily insane, like his Aunt Jemima when she’d found a weevil in the pistachios.

Norman looked at Cyril for a long time, rather intensely, as though trying to make a decision. It was starting to make Cyril feel very uncomfortable when suddenly Norman spoke again, as if he’d decided to trust Cyril somehow.

‘My dad’s more than just a farmer. My dad’s what they call a natural. That means that he knows when things are going to happen – he knows when the cow’s going to calve or when a lamb’s in trouble on the hill. He says it’s because he feels things in his bones. And he’s always right. Always. Well, I can feel it in my bones that he’s alive. I just know it.’

Cyril was silent for a bit. He was thinking furiously. Norman seemed utterly certain of what he’d just said. Cyril could see from the firm, clear gaze in Norman’s eyes that he was sure his father was alive. What did one do in such a situation? Nothing in cadet school had prepared him for this.

Very gently, he started to speak, ‘Norman, are you sure you don’t feel like this because – well – because you’ve just heard and –’

Cyril was about to suggest that Norman couldn’t face the truth, but Norman cut him off again, forcefully but kindly.

‘No, no. I know that’s what it looks like, but no. I just know.’

‘But the telegram –’ said Cyril.

‘They’ve got it wrong,’ said Norman.

Cyril was appalled. He swallowed before he spoke.

‘Norman, the War Office doesn’t get that kind of thing wrong.’

‘They’ve got it wrong,’ repeated Norman.

It was very hard for Cyril to accept that the War Office, the place where his father worked, would ever get anything wrong, but Norman was so clear and so certain that Cyril found even his faith wavering. He sat down on a bale of straw.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do about it?’

Norman looked at Cyril and smiled.

‘I need some tactics, Cyril.’

Now Cyril grinned.

‘I need to get to the War Office and find out what’s happened to my father.’

‘Why don’t you just tell your mother about all this?’ asked Cyril.

‘Because she won’t believe me. She’ll believe the telegram. It’s not her fault; she just doesn’t feel things in the same way. And this is too big – I’ve got to bring her proof. And I’ve got to do it fast, otherwise she’ll sell the farm to Uncle Phil, I know she will. She’ll think we can’t manage it on our own.’

Cyril saw the wisdom of this immediately. In his experience, grown-ups never believed anything a child said ever, and so he started to work out how on earth Norman was going to achieve what he needed to achieve.

‘Trouble is,’ continued Norman, ‘I can’t very well go off looking for him, can I? We don’t even know what country he’s in!’

‘There might be a way,’ said Cyril doubtfully.

Norman looked at him sharply. ‘What?’

‘Well . . . my father – he’s very high up in the War Office . . .’

‘So you’ve said,’ said Norman wryly.

‘Thing is, I think he’d be able to find out.’

‘Of course!’ said Norman excitedly. ‘Where’s the War Office exactly?’

‘London,’ said Cyril.

‘How are we going to get in touch with him? Could we send him a letter?’

‘He doesn’t respond to letters. At least, not to mine,’ said Cyril.

‘Think!’

‘Norman, I don’t know. We wouldn’t be allowed to travel on a train without tickets, and I don’t have any money and nor do you.’

‘We’re going to need help.’

‘Who can help us?’

‘Who?’

Then the boys heard a very strange thing – it was as though they were in a tunnel and their voices were echoing back at them. All they could hear was ‘Help us, help us, help us . . .’ whispered back at them over and over. There was a sharp bang and the noises stopped. The boys whirled in the direction of the bang, and there was Nanny McPhee, looking in at them from the barn door.

‘You called?’ she said.

The boys looked at one another in amazement. Then they ran over to Nanny McPhee.

‘Nanny McPhee, Dad’s alive – I can feel it in my bones, but I’ve got to bring Mum proof before she’ll believe it. Can you help us?’

It didn’t occur to Norman or to Cyril that this statement would not be believed. But Nanny McPhee was not like other grown-ups. Not at all.

‘Help you in what way?’ said Nanny McPhee.

‘We need to reach Cyril’s father!’ said Norman.

‘Yes!’ said Cyril. ‘My father’s Lord Gray – he’s very high up in –’

‘I know who he is,’ said Nanny McPhee politely.

‘Yes, well, anyway, he can help us find out about Uncle Rory – could you help us to contact him?’

‘I fear that would be difficult. Lord Gray is a very important man, and I am of little consequence to him.’

Norman and Cyril looked at each other in consternation.

‘Then can you help us to get to him in London?’ said Norman.

‘Help two unaccompanied children to travel to London?’ said Nanny McPhee, looking grave. ‘I fear that would be very much against army regulations.’ And she turned and started to walk away.

Norman looked defeated. ‘Then how will we get there? What can we do?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cyril, helplessly.

Nanny McPhee reached the door and turned back to them. ‘I said “unaccompanied”,’ she remarked lightly. ‘You two, however, will be with me. I shall need you to be dressed warmly and ready at the duck pond just before dawn. We shall be in London by ten o’clock. Try to get the dirt out from under your nails.’

‘Oh, thank you, Nanny McPhee,’ breathed Norman.

‘Yes, thank you!’ said Cyril, feeling almost as grateful as Norman, even though it wasn’t his father who might or might not be dead.

Nanny McPhee bowed graciously and led the boys back to the house.