Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8 (2 page)

‘Can’t a father give his children the gift of hard work, travel and all the bananas you can eat?’ asked Mr Green.

Nanny Piggins lurched towards him.

‘You’d better tell the truth, Father,’ urged Samantha. ‘You know how talk of fruit enrages Nanny Piggins. We can’t hold her back for much longer.’

‘It’s none of your business!’ snapped Mr Green. ‘You’re not the boss of me! I don’t have to tell you anything!’ Mr Green desperately lunged for the door.

‘Not one of those three statements is correct!’ retorted Nanny Piggins as she athletically lunged for Mr Green.

Unfortunately Mr Green misjudged the width of his own hips (something that often happens to people who eat too many stolen yoghurts from the office refrigerator). He banged the table and the whole profiterole leaning tower of Pisa collapsed on Nanny Piggins and the children before they had a chance to stop him. So Mr Green made good his escape. If lying under a collapsed tower of profiteroles had not been exactly how Nanny Piggins wanted to spend the morning, she would have been quite cross.

Eating a ten-foot-tall profiterole tower is, of course, a process that cannot be rushed. And cleaning all the chocolate stains off your school uniform afterwards is even more time consuming. So, naturally, by the time the children set out for school, the bus was long gone and they had to walk.

‘I’m not sure about this,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t like letting you go to school when your father is clearly up to something.’

‘Don’t worry,’ urged Derrick. ‘Knowing Father, it is probably something trivial.’

‘Like he’s trying to change his identity to get out of paying a library fine,’ guessed Michael.

‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t know. Your father always looks a little weaselish. But this morning he looked extra specially weaselish. I think he’s up to something.’

As they were talking they had made slow progress down the road. They had not gone too far because feet seem heavier when you’re walking to school than when you’re walking home, particularly if you’ve got maths first up. Then your feet practically seem to stick to the pavement. Plus, they were all lost in thought as they tried to imagine what devilish tricks Mr Green was up to. So they did not immediately notice that many of the houses in their street had large colour placards in their front gardens, featuring a big photograph of a smiling man.

‘Hey, who is that?’ asked Michael. ‘He looks familiar.’

Nanny Piggins, Derrick and Samantha looked about and noticed the placards as well.

‘He does look familiar,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘That ugly grey suit, the thinning greased-back hair and the unsightly untrimmed eyebrows are all strangely reminiscent of somebody . . .’

They peered closer. Then suddenly Nanny Piggins leapt back, screaming, ‘Waaah!’

‘What is it?’ asked Derrick.

‘It’s your father!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.

‘Where?’ asked Samantha.

‘On the poster!’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘No!’ said all three Green children as they stared at the poster again.

‘He looks different because he’s smiling,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but if I cover his mouth –’ Nanny Piggins put her trotter over the mouth on the poster.

‘Aaaggghhh!’ screamed all three Green children.

‘It
is
him!’ exclaimed Derrick.

‘What’s he doing smiling in a photograph?’ asked Samantha.

‘I didn’t know he could smile,’ said Michael. ‘I always thought he had some sort of paralysis of the face.’

‘But this poster says he’s running for mayor!’ exclaimed Derrick.

At this point all four of them sat down on the pavement and started eating profiteroles. Fortunately Nanny Piggins had the foresight to stuff her pockets full before they left the house. Nanny Piggins believed it was very important to consume sticky desserts if you had just received a nasty shock.

‘But it doesn’t make any sense,’ said Samantha. ‘Father doesn’t like doing things.’

‘Or drawing attention to himself,’ added Derrick.

‘Or talking to people,’ added Michael.

‘And smiling is so unlike him,’ said Samantha.

‘Does your father have an identical twin brother?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘I often find that is the explanation if I see a horrifying, publicly displayed picture of myself.’

‘No,’ said Derrick. ‘At least I don’t think so.’

‘But until today I didn’t know that Father could smile,’ said Samantha, ‘so who knows what other dark secrets he has.’

‘Well, there’s nothing for it,’ said Nanny Piggins as she got to her feet and dusted off her designer dress. ‘There’s no way you can go to school now.’

‘Why not?’ asked Samantha. (Not that she wanted to go. She just liked to be briefed on whatever complicated excuse Nanny Piggins was going to tell the school secretary.)

‘Education may be important, although I’m not one hundred per cent convinced that’s true, no matter how much Headmaster Pimplestock yells at me,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But it is much more important to stamp out political disaster.’

‘It is?’ asked Michael.

‘If only Karl Marx’s nanny had the good sense to tell him off and make him get a proper job,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘A good deal of trouble could have been avoided in the twentieth century.’

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Derrick.

‘According to this poster there is a public meeting at lunchtime today where all the candidates will announce their plans,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘So we’re going straight to that?’ asked Samantha.

‘Goodness no,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We’ve got to go to the bakery first. If I’m going to wrestle your father to the ground, wrench a microphone out of his hands and give him a good telling off, I will need to have a little snack first to give me energy. I’m just glad I had the foresight to put my hot-pink wrestling leotard on under my dress when I got up this morning.’

‘Don’t you put that on most mornings?’ asked Michael.

‘Yes, it’s uncanny how I always know when I am going to have to wrestle someone that day,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.

So after a couple of dozen lemon tarts at Hans’ Bakery, Nanny Piggins and the children made their way to the public meeting.

It was the usual dusty, poorly lit building you find in most municipalities. For some reason church halls and community halls always smell unhappy. Most adults have unhappy memories of being forced to participate in a nativity play, or ballet class, or karate lessons in such a hall. Even though the room usually has no furniture, they still somehow have the unpleasant faint aroma of mould, dust and cockroaches. For this occasion, there were a couple of hundred folding chairs set out, but only a few dozen people sitting among them. If you discounted the mayor’s staff, family members and vagrants who had come in for a nap and a free doughnut, there were very few people in the audience indeed.

And who could blame the voters of Dulsford? It was an unimpressive line-up. The incumbent, Mayor Bloomsbridge, had been in the position for eight years so everyone knew full well he was a big windbag. Running against him was a shopkeeper who did not like that the council had put a parking meter outside her shop, and finally there was Mr Green. Luckily for Nanny Piggins and the children they did not have to sit through the other two speakers because Mr Green was scheduled to speak first.

‘Good afternoon,’ said Mr Green. ‘My name is Lysander Green.’

The crowd sniggered. There is something about the name ‘Lysander’. Like someone burping unexpectedly, it makes even the most intelligent adult giggle.

‘I have been a leading tax lawyer in this town for many years.’ Mr Green looked over his glasses at the audience, expecting them to be impressed. They were not. As soon as he said the words ‘tax lawyer’ most people immediately started willing themselves to sleep.

‘And I am running for mayor because I want to see –’ continued Mr Green.

‘Stop right there!’ said Nanny Piggins, leaping to her trotters.

This caught the audience’s attention. Even the people who had fallen asleep in a doughnut-induced haze snapped awake at the prospect of a good yelling match.

‘First of all, before we allow you to continue I want to be clear – are you in fact you, or your own identical twin brother posing as Mr Green as part of some diabolical plot to subvert the natural order?’ demanded Nanny Piggins.

‘What are you doing here?’ responded Mr Green. ‘Why aren’t the children in school?’

‘Don’t change the subject!’ accused Nanny Piggins. ‘If you are an imposter it is a good job I kept the children out of school because the police will need to take a sample of their blood for DNA testing.’

‘Would you go home immediately!’ hissed Mr Green. ‘These are important political proceedings. No-one wants them to be interrupted by a pig!’

‘Yes we do!’ heckled a politics student in the back row, who was very happy that her essay on local government was going to be a lot more fun to write than she had imagined.

‘But if you are the real Mr Green, why on earth are you running for public office?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Because I have ideas to improve this city. I have lived here all my life and I want to serve the community,’ declared Mr Green.

The audience clapped. Usually people only ran for mayor because they were angry about parking meters or not being allowed to cut down the trees in their garden.

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You must have a secret despicable motive.’

‘How dare you!’ spluttered Mr Green.

‘If you just admitted you only wanted to be mayor because you’d figured out a way to siphon off council funds into an offshore bank account to fund your expensive Brylcreem habit,’ argued Nanny Piggins, ‘I might actually have respect for your initiative and give you my vote. After all, to have a despicable, morally bankrupt tax lawyer diverting public money would be marginally better than having to put up with this blathering windbag for another four years.’ Nanny Piggins pointed at Mayor Bloomsbridge.

This drew more applause and even cheers from the audience.

‘Hey!’ complained Mayor Bloomsbridge. He was not good at quick retorts.

‘I don’t expect a pig like you to understand,’ said Mr Green, ‘but I want to make this city better for my children and my children’s children.’

Nanny Piggins gasped. ‘Now that is just a big fat lie. If you care so much about your children, I challenge you to name any one of their favourite cakes.’

‘Um . . . er . . . this is ridiculous,’ blathered Mr Green.

‘You can’t, can you?’ denounced Nanny Piggins.

‘Chocolate cake. Their favourite is chocolate cake!’ yelled Mr Green desperately.

Nanny Piggins scowled at him for a moment. ‘That question was too easy. Everyone likes chocolate cake the best.’

At this point two burly security guards grabbed hold of Nanny Piggins and tried to drag her out. Fortunately she’d had the good sense to sew velcro into her designer ensemble, so she quickly whipped her dress off, revealing her hot-pink wrestling leotard underneath, then proceeded to give a 35-minute demonstration on mixed martial arts. Neither of the other two candidates got to speak, and before long the Police Sergeant arrived, lured Nanny Piggins into his squad car with a chocolate biscuit and drove her home.

‘I just don’t understand it,’ said Nanny Piggins as she shoved another profiterole in her mouth (she had made a Taj Mahal of profiteroles when she got home to overcome the ordeal). ‘Why on earth would your father run for mayor?’

‘Perhaps he does want to serve the community,’ suggested Samantha.

‘I doubt it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He’d have to have some sort of brain-altering stroke to have such a radical change of character. If that happened there would be other symptoms, like dribbling or slurred speech. And I haven’t noticed your father doing any more of that than usual.’

‘Perhaps he has a guilty conscience about all the wicked things he’s done,’ guessed Boris.

‘If he had a guilty conscience the first thing he would do,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘is stop being wicked. And I know he hasn’t done that because I saw him steal Mrs Simpson’s newspaper off her nature strip this morning.’

‘Perhaps he wants to be mayor so he can get loads more tax deductions,’ guessed Michael.