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

The next morning the men were awoken by Nanny Piggins standing in the middle of the barracks, banging a ladle on a saucepan. ‘Wake up, wake up,’ she ordered.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Thor.

‘Today you are going to learn rope climbing,’ declared Nanny Piggins.

‘Stuff that, I’m going back to bed,’ said Vincello.

‘Very well,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but first you might like to have a look at this. Samantha, show them today’s cake.’

Samantha opened a cake box to reveal a beautiful caramel glacé angel cake. A cake so good it smelt like it had descended from heaven. It was fresh out of the oven, and the only thing that smells better than cake is warm cake. And the only thing that smells better than warm cake is warm cake covered in runny caramel glacé.

The men all got out of bed and some even started lunging for the cake (for which we must not judge them too harshly. They had missed their dinner the night before and were yet to have their breakfast. So they were practically delirious with cake longing). Luckily Boris was on hand to act as bodyguard to the cake.

‘A-a-ah,’ warned Boris, standing between the men and the cake. ‘Now, unlike my sister I do not believe in violence. But I do believe in sitting on people who don’t do as they are told, and I am a little bigger-boned than the average human –’ This was Boris’ way of saying he weighed 700 kilograms – ‘so if I sat on you, you might not find it comfortable.’

‘The only way you’re getting that cake,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘is by doing as you’re told.’

The men were soon out on the training ground, standing beneath a 15 metre rope.

‘We can’t climb that, it’s too high,’ complained Peregrine.

‘You don’t have to climb it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You are welcome to stay here on the ground if you like. But I have stationed Derrick and the cake on the platform at the top.’

Derrick leaned over the edge of the platform and waved a slice of cake.

‘So if you want some cake you’d better get up there,’ said Nanny Piggins.

The men all rushed forward and fought over who was going to get first go, which actually gave them all a good, practical, half-hour lesson in hand-to-hand combat training before the first soldier even had a go.

Eventually, Peregrine, who had a particular knack for noogies, won out, took hold of the rope and started climbing. Now, climbing a rope is very difficult under the best of conditions. The rope wiggles, your arms get achy and the skin on your fingers gets terribly roughed up. It’s hard to hold on, let alone climb upwards. But it just so happens that Nanny Piggins had made it especially difficult by smearing golden syrup all over the rope. True, the syrup did make the rope sticky, which helped a little. But it also made the rope slimy, which did not help at all. Plus, the syrup made the rope very attractive to bees. So Peregrine was only a metre off the ground when a bee started buzzing around his head. He panicked, let go and landed on his bottom.

The other men surged forward to have a try, and try they did, all morning, but not one of them got further than a couple of metres off the ground.

‘This is ridiculous,’ complained Vincello. ‘It’s impossible. No-one can climb that.’

‘Really?’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Then watch this.’

Nanny Piggins grabbed the rope and climbed up it so quickly it was as though she had a jet pack installed under her dress. (She did not, she was just good at climbing rope.) Soon she was standing on the platform looking down at the soldiers.

‘And now,’ announced Nanny Piggins, ‘I am going to eat the cake.’

‘But you promised that to us,’ complained Thor.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I shall eat it very slowly. If you get up here quickly enough, I shall share it with you.’

The men launched into action.

‘We’ll never get up there individually,’ said Vincello. ‘Our hands are all too sore. And Crevasse’s head has swollen up from being stung by a bee. The only way we’ll get up there is if we work as a team and form a human pyramid.’

And that is what they did. They organised themselves into rows, climbed up on each other’s shoulders, building a higher and higher structure with their own bodies until Thunder (the smallest and lightest soldier) was able to grab hold of the platform and pull himself up by his fingertips, just in time to see Nanny Piggins pop the last slice of cake in her mouth.

‘Well done,’ she said with a muffled voice because her mouth was so full of cake. ‘Excellent teamwork. You’re improving.’

And so the training regimen continued. Every morning Nanny Piggins would force the soldiers out of bed with another brutal training exercise, fuelled by the promise of cake if they succeeded. She got them crawling underneath barbed wire by dragging cupcakes on strings in front of them; scaling cliff faces by throwing Madeira cake off first; and she got them running the obstacle course in record time by sticky-taping an exploding coffee cake to the top of the last obstacle.

But on Friday morning things did not go so smoothly. Nanny Piggins entered the barracks banging her saucepan at 4 am, but none of the men got out of bed. They did not even look up.

‘Go away,’ said Vincello.

‘Perhaps you’ve overtired them,’ worried Boris.

‘Perhaps,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but we’ll soon fix that. Today I’m strapping a sticky date pudding to the underside of a remote control aeroplane to see if you can catch it. I thought we could go and do it in the forest, so you get lots of practice climbing trees, hiding behind branches, and leaping out at things that are flying past.’

‘We’re not interested,’ said Peregrine.

‘Really?’ said Nanny Piggins. She turned to the children and Boris. ‘I’m not losing my touch, am I? This sticky date pudding smells seriously good to me.’

Boris sniffed it. ‘It’s definitely seriously good. It’s taking all my willpower not to lick it.’

‘I saw you lick it on the walk over here,’ said Michael.

‘I know,’ said Boris, ‘which makes it even harder to resist licking it again.’

‘We don’t need your sticky date pudding or your cake or your desserts,’ said Thor. ‘We’ve got our own.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Have you learnt to be bakers? If so I must congratulate you. I will happily help you run away from the army so you can pursue a much more important career in baked goods.’

‘No, we just rang a bakery and got them to deliver all the types of cakes you’ve been tormenting us with,’ said Vincello, ‘then we sat up all night eating. We couldn’t eat another thing if we wanted to.’

‘But where did you get the cake from?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘A local place,’ said Thunder. ‘What was it called?’

‘I’ve got their business card,’ said Vincello. ‘It was Hans’ Bakery.’

Nanny Piggins gasped. ‘The treachery! How could Hans do that to me?’

‘To be fair,’ said Samantha, ‘Hans didn’t know that you were secretly training an elite military unit in the woods.’

‘No, but he could have guessed,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Remind me to have a stern word with him when I see him next.’

‘Can you go now?’ asked Crevasse. ‘We’d like to have a lie-in.’

‘But the war games are in five days and you’re not ready!’ protested Nanny Piggins.

‘Are you kidding?!’ complained Vincello. ‘In the last week you’ve had us climb ropes, hike mountains, master taekwondo, crawl through mud, swim through a swamp and learn all the words and harmonies to
HMS Pinafore
. We’re the most thoroughly trained soldiers in the country.’

‘Yes, you know all the military techniques and the Gilbert and Sullivan harmonies,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but you don’t have the killer instincts.’

‘The Drill Sergeant said you’re not actually allowed to kill anybody,’ warned Derrick.

‘No, I mean the absolute determination to succeed at any cost,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Training is good, but an untrained enemy who is truly determined will beat skilled soldiers every time.’

‘You’re talking rubbish,’ said Peregrine.

‘I’ll prove it to you,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘with one more training exercise.’

All the men groaned.

‘It will be a simple one,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You will just have to defend the sweet shop in town.’

‘From who?’ asked Thunder.

‘All the neighbourhood children,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘and one or two sweet-loving adults.’

The men laughed.

‘Sounds like a piece of cake,’ said Bridge.

‘That expression has always baffled me,’ said Nanny Piggins, shaking her head. ‘There is nothing easy about a piece of cake. It certainly isn’t easy to make one properly. People are forever making terrible mistakes such as putting carrot in it or using low fat spread instead of butter.’

‘What happens if we do this?’ asked Vincello.

‘If you succeed,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘and defend the sweet shop so not one sweet, lolly or chocolate is eaten between six and twelve on Saturday morning, I will go away and leave you all alone.’

‘Hurray!’ cheered the men.

‘But,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘if I win, you have to do fifty push-ups, compose an opera about me and how I’m always right, bake me an enormous chocolate cake and always do everything the Drill Sergeant says from now on.’

The men conferred, mumbling among themselves.

‘What equipment can we use to defend this sweet shop?’ asked Vincello.

‘Any military equipment you like,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Just no guns or explosives. The mothers wouldn’t like that. They are reluctant enough to let their children come over to our house for a play date as it is.’

The soldiers looked at each other and nodded. They were in agreement.

‘You’re on,’ said Vincello.

The morning of what in future years would be known as
The Battle of the Dulsford Sweet Shop
dawned. The soldiers had set up a large reinforced barricade on one side of the sweet shop, and to defend the other side (because it was a corner shop and therefore vulnerable on two fronts), they had parked an enormous tank.

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ said Nanny Piggins.

She, Boris and the children were hiding in the bushes of a garden opposite, using binoculars to watch everything the soldiers did. ‘Those naughty boys. I told them no guns.’

‘I guess they think a tank is okay if they don’t actually fire it, they just use it as a blockade,’ said Derrick.

‘I’m impressed by their deviousness,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Perhaps they learnt more from me than I realised.’

‘Do you still think we can win?’ asked Samantha.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I have plenty of tricks up my sleeve.’ Nanny Piggins glanced at her watch. ‘In fact, it’s time to deploy our first weapon.’ Nanny Piggins took out a walkie-talkie and spoke into it. ‘Cue the first assault.’

‘Are you going to use a cannon?’ asked Michael hopefully.

‘No, something much more dangerous,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Here she comes.’

The children peered through the bushes and saw the distinctive perfect blonde curls of seven-year-old Margaret Wallace as she rode her tricycle down the street. She looked so sweet and innocent in her perfectly ironed pink frilly dress and pigtails. Margaret stopped right by the barricade.

‘Go away, little girl,’ hissed Vincello from behind the barricade. ‘This is a military training exercise.’

Then Margaret Wallace did the unthinkable. She burst into tears. ‘I want my mummy!’ wailed Margaret, with startling volume for such a diminutive child.

‘Shhhh, shush,’ pleaded the soldiers. ‘We can’t help you, we’re busy.’

‘I want my mummmmmy!’ wailed Margaret, even louder.

Nanny and the children could hear the soldiers arguing among themselves. Eventually Vincello stuck his head out from behind the barricade, looked both ways to see if the coast was clear, then ran out to Margaret Wallace and gave her a hug.

Nanny Piggins nodded approvingly. ‘I knew Vincello was leadership material.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Vincello. ‘If you come in the shop we can call your mummy from there.’

As he picked Margaret up and turned back to the shop, Margaret’s face was turned to where Nanny Piggins was hiding. Margaret gave a big wink.

‘She’s in,’ said Nanny Piggins triumphantly.

They watched Vincello carry Margaret back to the shop, and as soon as he unlocked the front door, Nanny Piggins stood up, whipped a bugle out of her handbag and blasted a resounding signal.

Two hundred neighbourhood children simultaneously jumped out from their hiding spots all around the sweet shop. Unlike the unimaginative soldiers, the children had thought to attack on all six sides (left, right, front, back, the rooftops and below, through the cellar via the green grocer next door). They all ran, leapt and launched themselves at the sweet shop among the deafening sound of cheers, whoops and shrieks of delight.

‘That’s awesome,’ said Derrick, ‘but surely the soldiers will be able to hold them off. They’re just children.’

‘I have another secret weapon,’ said Nanny Piggins. She took out the walkie-talkie again. ‘Melanie, you’re up.’

In an instant Melanie, the fat lady from the circus, burst out of her hiding place – the telephone booth across the street. (It is amazing that she ever fit in there, but at the circus she had learnt a thing or two from the clowns who jam themselves into the tiny car.) When the children had last seen her, Melanie weighed an impressive 400 kilograms, but she had been working at her craft since then and now easily weighed 450 kilograms. As she ran at the barricade at full speed, wobbling and screaming ‘CHOCOLATE!’, she was an astonishing sight.