Nanny Piggins and the Daring Rescue 7 (10 page)

True, she was very short, and her face was half-obscured by an enormous pair of sunglasses and a long black fringe. And on anyone else, the grey trench coach and a huge faux fur hat might look silly, as if her head had been encased in a furry UFO. But somehow Olga carried it off. There was something alluring, almost familiar, about her strikingly beautiful face.

‘Aaah, Boris,' said Olga in a thick Russian accent. ‘We meet again.'

‘Olga, either you've been given a brain transplant or you have somehow fooled the chess establishment into making you a grandmaster,' said Boris.

‘Boris,' scolded Samantha. ‘It's not like you to be so rude.'

‘I'm not being rude,' said Boris. ‘Only truthful.'

‘Hah,' shrugged Olga dismissively. (Russians like this type of guttural gesture.) ‘Perhaps I have done both. Shall we play chess?' asked Olga, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

‘Of course,' said Boris, ‘unless you'd rather play Twister. I like that too.'

They sat down at the chess table and the whole room, including Nanny Piggins, the children and 254 anorak-wearing men, fell silent. It was an engrossing battle. Even Nanny Piggins paid attention, aided by Michael handing her a constant stream of lollies so she could stay awake.

It turned out that Boris and Olga were very evenly matched. Boris would try a bold Sicilian defence, and she would respond with a brilliant Siberian Trap. She would try to trick him with a Budapest gambit and he would respond with an Adler variation. The match wore on until they each only had four pieces left and there were only twenty minutes left on the clock – four for Olga and sixteen for Boris.

‘Do you think Boris will be able to win in time?' whispered Derrick.

‘He would if he was allowed to put her in a headlock,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘Really, it is ridiculous forcing a ten-foot-tall bear to play a war game with a four-foot-tall woman. Obviously he'd win in real life.'

‘I don't know,' said Samantha. ‘He is prone to crying.'

Olga looked up from the board. She was clearly frustrated. She angrily rubbed her ear. ‘Umpire,' she called to the clipboard-carrying man. ‘I want to make an official complaint about audience members whispering. I want that pig thrown out.' She glared at Nanny Piggins.

Everyone gasped.

‘What did you say?' asked Nanny Piggins, glaring at Olga as if seeing her for the first time.

‘Here we go,' said Michael, bracing himself for Nanny Piggins' response.

‘Um . . . er . . . Miss,' said the clipboard-carrying man. He was terrified of Nanny Piggins and he did not even realise she was an eighth dan blackbelt in taekwondo. He was just terrified of women generally. Even if they were pigs. ‘Um, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave.'

‘Ask me to leave?' said Nanny Piggins. ‘Hah!' (She enjoyed being dramatic too.) ‘I'm not the one you should be asking to leave. You should be throwing
her
out!' Nanny Piggins pointed dramatically at Olga Svinya.

‘Grandmaster Svinya?' asked the clipboard man.

‘No, because Olga Svinya is not her real name,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘She is an imposter!'

Everyone gasped again. This was quickly becoming the world's second most exciting chess tournament (nothing would ever equal the St Petersburg Chess Final of 1913 where the Bolsheviks tried to overthrow the chess elite by using poisoned chess pieces).

‘Her real name is Sue Piggins and she is my identical twin sister,' declared Nanny Piggins, ‘and I can prove it!' Nanny Piggins leapt forward and grabbed Olga's hair, yanking it hard. It didn't move.

‘Ow!' screamed Olga.

‘Why isn't your wig coming off?' asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Have you superglued it on there?'

‘It's not a wig, you twit,' said Olga.

‘Nanny Piggins!' cried the children as they rushed forward to try to prevent her from escalating common assault to grievous bodily harm.

‘Well, I bet you haven't had these stapled to your face,' said Nanny Piggins as she instead whipped off Olga's sunglasses.

Again everyone gasped, but this time from shock to find themselves staring at an exact clone of Nanny Piggins.

‘It
is
one of your identical twin sisters!' exclaimed Samantha.

‘I think I recognise my genetic replica when I see her,' said Nanny Piggins.

‘It did take you three hours and you've been staring right at her,' said Derrick.

‘I was distracted by that ridiculous hat,' said Nanny Piggins.

‘So what?' demanded Olga (Sue). ‘There's no crime against changing my name and speaking in a fake Russian accent.'

‘Oh there's no crime in that,' agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘no matter how peculiar it may be. But I suspect there is a crime here. For my sister Sue is not a chess genius.'

‘She's not?' asked Michael. ‘But your sisters are always brilliant at something.'

‘And she is,' agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but it is not chess. She has a genius for grifting.'

‘What's grifting?' asked Michael.

‘She's a con-pig!' said Boris.

‘Exactly,' pronounced Nanny Piggins. ‘She has a genius for fooling others and taking advantage of the weak-minded.'

‘Then why would she target chess players?' asked the organiser. ‘We're all very clever.'

‘You may be clever,' said Nanny Piggins, ‘but your minds are as weak as a weak blancmange. Put your hand up if you've ever heard of deodorant!'

Not one man put his hand up.

‘You see,' said Nanny Piggins.

‘Then how did she get to be a grandmaster?' asked Derrick. ‘You have to play a lot of tournaments to qualify.'

‘That's what I'd like to know,' said Nanny Piggins, ‘and I think I have the answer.' Nanny Piggins peered closely at her sister.

‘You're bluffing,' said Sue as she backed away.

‘I think the answer lies in that hat,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘No Piggins would wear a winter hat today, three days into spring, not unless they had something to conceal in among all that faux fur.'

Nanny and Sue Piggins stared each other down. Sue Piggins weighed up her options. Not being as brainy as a chess genius, this took her a few moments. Then suddenly Sue Piggins (apparently deciding to abandon her claim to the year's supply of cheesecake) made a dash for the door.

Unfortunately the years of sitting at a chess table pretending to know how to play had taken their toll. She was no match for the superior athleticism of Nanny Piggins, who soon tackled her to the ground where a wrestling match ensued. The sisters were evenly matched, being equally talented at hair pulling and biting. But the large faux fur hat was not up to it. It tumbled off Sue's head revealing a tangle of multicoloured wires, a transistor receiver and a tiny pink electronic device.

‘Look!' cried Derrick. ‘An earpiece.'

‘That's how you did it,' accused Nanny Piggins. ‘Someone has been telling you what moves to make. But who?'

She looked around the crowd of anoraked men. ‘Clearly not one of them,' decided Nanny Piggins. ‘But who else could see what was going on?'

Nanny Piggins walked over to the window, whipped a collapsible telescope out of her handbag (she carried one in case she should find herself on the high seas being attacked by pirates) and peered out into the distance.

‘There!' exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘On the tenth floor. Someone is watching us. Quick, we have to get over there before they make their escape!'

Nanny Piggins threw open the window, leapt out, did a commando roll through the rhododendron bushes and took off at a sprint for the neighbouring building (making no concession for the honks and screeching tyres of the traffic on the busy road).

Boris, the children, Sue Piggins (she came against her will because Boris carried her) and the more athletic of the chess players (about six of them) chased after her. But because they used the door and waited for the traffic to clear, by the time they got to the lobby of the other building Nanny Piggins already had her victim trapped in a painful leg lock, as she sat on top of her on the floor. Computers, communications equipment and a large powerful telescope lay strewn around them (there had evidently been a wrestling match).

‘I've caught the real evil villain behind this wicked scheme to defraud the chess community,' said Nanny Piggins proudly.

‘Who is it?' asked Derrick.

‘A Russian spy?' guessed Boris.

‘A disgruntled chess genius?' guessed Samantha.

‘A lover of cheesecake?' guessed Michael.

‘Yes!' exclaimed Nanny Piggins, ‘and who loves cheesecake more than a normal person.'

‘Um . . .' said everyone. This pop quiz was getting hard.

‘My identical twin sister, Deidre Piggins!' declared Nanny Piggins as she got up to reveal the crushed person she had been sitting on. Deidre stood up and brushed herself off. She looked exactly the same as Nanny Piggins and Sue Piggins (indeed, all of the Piggins fourteenuplets) except that she had mousey brown hair and thick-lensed glasses.

‘Aaa-hhhaaa,' said the children.

‘So the mousey hair and thick-framed glasses are a disguise?' guessed Samantha.

‘No,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘You see, Deidre is a computer genius so she is the only Piggins who actually needs to wear glasses, having wrecked her eyesight from years of staring at a screen. And the hair, that is just a sad fashion choice. Not all Pigginses have been blessed with my sense of style.'

‘She's right,' declared Deidre.

‘That your hair is an unfortunate colour?' asked Boris.

‘No, that I am a genius,' said Deidre. ‘I knew I could program a computer brilliant enough to beat the greatest chess players. But no-one would let me enter a machine in a tournament, so I enlisted the help of my morally bankrupt sister, Sue.'

‘So you did all this to prove you are a master computer programmer?' said the clipboard man.

‘Yes, but also for the cheesecake,' said Deidre.

‘Obviously,' agreed Nanny and Sue Piggins.

And so Olga Svinya was disqualified from the chess competition, partly because she was not Olga Svinya but mainly because she was a huge cheat. She and Deidre were banned from ever entering a chess tournament again (which all three sisters agreed would be no hardship), and Boris won by default. He gave Deidre the money to help repair the equipment that got damaged when Nanny Piggins sat on her. Then they all went to the cheesecake factory to claim the other (better) part of his prize. And finally, they had a lovely party back at the Green house, eating an entire year's supply of cheesecake in one night.

‘Well, the chess tournament ended up being more exciting than we were expecting,' said Michael.

‘Yes,' agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but don't give chess the credit. Chess itself is definitely boring. But my sisters do have a knack for turning even the most tedious situation into a shocking international debacle.'

Hurry!' cried Nanny Piggins as she and the Green children sprinted down the street towards their home. Unfortunately it is not easy to hurry when your arms are full of chocolate, cake and a ten-litre tub of ice-cream.

Their morning had been running meticulously to schedule, but just as they were leaving the sweetshop, Nanny Piggins had spotted a new jar of sherbet-filled flying saucers (a delicious culinary delight that has to be tasted to be believed), and since Nanny Piggins had not had a sherbet flying saucer for a whole six days, she naturally had to go back to the register and buy the entire shop's supply.

This took longer than they expected because a small child in the shop was also trying to buy the flying saucers, so Nanny Piggins had to play a prolonged game of paper, rock, scissors with him to win the rights to the lollies. Eventually they left, the small child having been compensated with a horde of chocolate-covered caramels that Nanny Piggins just happened to have in her handbag. By which time they were running very late. They had just three minutes to get back to the house in time for the most important thing on their daily schedule (even more important than brushing their teeth or going to school as far as Nanny Piggins was concerned) – sitting down in front of the television to watch
The Young and the Irritable
.