Nanny Piggins and the Daring Rescue 7 (2 page)

‘I think Father's had a stroke,' Derrick whispered to Samantha. ‘Should we call an ambulance?'

‘We're friends after all, aren't we?' said Mr Green, before twisting his face awkwardly, first on one side and then the other. It took a moment before the children realised what he was doing. He was smiling.

Nanny Piggins and the children lurched away from him. If there had not been a brick wall behind them and iron bars on the other three sides, they would have made a run for it, so unnatural was the sight of Mr Green trying to be pleasant.

Nanny Piggins promptly broke her vow. She leapt forward and stamped hard on Mr Green's foot. ‘Who are you and what have you done with the real Mr Green?' she demanded.

‘Ow!' wailed Mr Green. ‘I am the real Mr Green, you ridiculous pig!'

‘That certainly sounded more like him,' agreed Nanny Piggins.

‘I was just trying to be nice because I want a favour,' said Mr Green, rubbing his possibly broken toes.

‘Aha!' cried Nanny Piggins. ‘Now we're getting to the nub of it!'

‘I want you to teach me to tap dance,' said Mr Green.

And so the children had to call an ambulance after all – but not for their father, for Nanny Piggins, because when she fainted from the shock of such an unexpected request, she hit her head on the toilet bowl (which is why it really is very unsafe for jail cells to have toilet facilities right there in the room).

A short time later, Nanny Piggins was lying in her hospital bed, having a rather nasty bruise tended to by an intern while Mr Green explained himself.

‘You see, there is a new job opening at work,' began Mr Green.

‘But you've already got a job, Father,' said Samantha, ‘and you love it.'

‘Yes, I'm a tax lawyer,' agreed Mr Green, ‘but this new job is for a
senior
tax lawyer. So it would be a promotion.'

‘Would there be more money?' asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Or at least more cake?'

‘I don't know,' said Mr Green. ‘All I know is that it would be one in the eye for Thorp if I got it. And Peterson in criminal law would be green with envy.'

‘I thought he was being worshipped as a god by a tribe in Papua New Guinea?' said Derrick.

‘The natives sent him home when his derivatives tips went south,' explained Mr Green.

‘But what's all this got to do with tap dancing?' asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Even without a concussion, it doesn't make any sense to me.'

‘All the candidates have similar experience and background to me. So there's nothing to distinguish between us,' explained Mr Green.

‘You mean they're just as boring as you?' said Nanny Piggins.

‘Exactly,' said Mr Green. ‘Normally there is no higher qualification for a tax lawyer than to be boring. It makes people feel comfortable with you. But in a job interview situation I need a subtle way to make it clear that I am better than everybody else. And as you know, our senior partner, Isabella Dunkhurst, is a great enthusiast of tap dancing.' (Nanny Piggins had taught Ms Dunkhurst to tap dance shortly after arriving at the Green house – see
The Adventures of Nanny Piggins
, Chapter 5 for more details.)

‘Ah, I see,' said Nanny Piggins, beginning to catch on in spite of her serious head injury. ‘You want to win Isabella over with her own great passion – the dance!'

‘Exactly!' said Mr Green.

‘But to impress her you would have to be good, seriously good,' said Nanny Piggins.

‘I'll practise hard, I promise,' said Mr Green.

‘Oh, I know you'll do that because I'll make you,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘What I'm wondering is how I will ever find the energy to spend the hours and hours necessary to familiarise you with even the most basic rudimentals of the dance. It sounds exhausting. Very hungry work indeed.' She waggled her eyebrows meaningfully at Mr Green.

‘What did she say?' Mr Green asked his children. He always had a great deal of trouble following Nanny Piggins' thought processes.

‘I think she wants you to buy her a cake,' said Derrick.

Nanny Piggins coughed.

‘More than one cake?' Derrick asked.

Nanny Piggins coughed fifteen times.

‘Fifteen cakes,' deduced Derrick.

Nanny Piggins let out a huge cough.

‘Fifteen extremely large cakes,' concluded Derrick.

‘I'll call the bakery right now,' said Mr Green, delighted to finally have a deal.

Nanny Piggins took the phone out of his hand. ‘I'll put the order in,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘Knowing you, you'll forget to ask for extra chocolate in the chocolate icing.'

And so that afternoon Nanny Piggins gave Mr Green his first dance lesson. She always enjoyed teaching people to dance because it gave her an excuse to wear a leotard, tutu and leg warmers, as well as carrying a large stick (supposedly for beating out the time on the floor, but Nanny Piggins found it was also useful for poking Mr Green in the bottom when he did the wrong thing).

Mr Green was a terrible student. He had no natural rhythm, athleticism or grace. He did not even know his left foot from his right foot without stopping to think about it. And there is absolutely no time to stop and think in dance, or some other dancer may very well dance all over you.

At the end of their first six-hour lesson, Nanny Piggins was exhausted. She lay collapsed in a kitchen chair while the children scooped chocolate mud cake into her mouth to revive her.

‘I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew,' said Nanny Piggins.

‘I'm sorry,' said Michael. ‘I didn't mean to put such a large piece of cake in your mouth.'

‘I'm not talking about cake,' said Nanny Piggins. ‘You can never have too much cake in your mouth. I'm talking about teaching your father to dance. I am a brilliant natural dancer and an inspirational instructor. But teaching someone as clumsy as your father to tap may well be beyond me. He's as obstinate as a mule, more so in fact. I once taught a mule to salsa and he picked it up much quicker than your father has.'

‘Maybe you need some help,' suggested Michael.

‘What do you mean?' asked Nanny Piggins. ‘What sort of help? Do you think I should get a bigger stick so I can poke him harder?'

‘Yes, that probably is a good idea,' said Samantha, ‘but as well as that we thought you could get in some expert dancing help.'

‘But who?' asked Nanny Piggins.

‘We do have the world's greatest ballet dancing bear living in our garden shed,' Derrick reminded her.

‘Of course, Boris!' exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘But I couldn't do it to him. Boris is a sensitive soul. It would make him weep to watch Mr Green butcher a routine.'

‘It would be worth a try,' said Derrick. ‘You do want those chocolate cakes Father has promised you, don't you?'

And so the next day Nanny Piggins introduced Mr Green to Boris. They had never met before because Mr Green had never realised there was a ten-foot-tall dancing bear living in his garden shed. Nanny Piggins did not want him to find out now either. So she introduced Boris as her cousin Sergei from the Ukraine, who just happened to be visiting for a couple of weeks. And Boris wore a fake moustache so if, after this scheme was over, Mr Green should happen to bump into Boris in the street, he would never recognise him.

Boris gave Mr Green a dancing lesson. And this time he did make some progress. Mr Green was so terrified to be in the same room as a giant bear that he actually did as he was told. And Boris had a very good idea for helping Mr Green remember which one was his left foot. He put a big dab of honey on it. The honey did not help Mr Green's memory at all. But having a ten-foot-tall bear secretly sneaking licks off his foot when he least expected it emblazoned which foot was which in his brain forever.

Normally it takes a student years to become a maestro at tap dancing but, luckily for Mr Green, Nanny Piggins and Boris knew lots of short cuts to help him pick it up quicker. For example, to teach Mr Green to be light on his feet, Nanny Piggins had the brilliant idea of giving him an entire three-hour dance lesson on a bed of burning hot coals. Even when the lesson on the coals was over, Mr Green skipped about the house touching the floor as lightly as a feather, thanks to the third-degree burns on his feet.

Teaching Mr Green rhythm was a little harder. He had no natural aptitude for that at all, until Nanny Piggins had the brilliant idea of sneaking into his bedroom while he was sleeping and gaffer-taping a metronome to his head. After just two short weeks the unending tick-tock tick-tock became imprinted on his brain. (The people at work did think it was odd that Mr Green had a metronome attached to himself, but they did not like to say anything in case he explained it. Having something explained to you by Mr Green was always such a bore.)

At the end of three weeks Nanny Piggins and Boris had successfully forced the fundamentals of dance into Mr Green's brain with just one day to go before his big job interview with Isabella Dunkhurst.

‘Do you think Father is ready?' asked Derrick.

‘He knows the dance,' said Nanny Piggins, ‘but I don't think he's ready. He hasn't got any passion for it. Dance is all about emotion and expression. I can teach your father where to put his feet but I can't teach him to stop being as emotionally stunted as a lump of lichen.'

‘That's not fair,' said Boris. ‘Lichen isn't emotionally stunted. It is a harmonious symbiotic partnership of fungus and algae. Most of us could never aspire to such a happy and sustained relationship.'

‘Have you been reading Derrick's science text-books too?' asked Nanny Piggins.

‘I try not to,' admitted Boris, ‘but they're just so shocking.'

‘Maybe you're coming at it the wrong way,' said Derrick. ‘Instead of teaching Father to be passionate about dance, maybe you should teach him to dance about what he is passionate about.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Most dances are about love or despair, aren't they?' asked Derrick.

‘All the best ones are,' agreed Boris. ‘Although some of them are about sad swans and hallucinating nutcrackers as well.'

‘But, what if you choreographed a dance for Father about what he loves – the tax code! That's something he could really be passionate about,' said Derrick.

‘Do you think you could do it?' Nanny Piggins asked Boris. ‘You are a brilliant choreographer.'

‘I'm sure I can,' said Boris. ‘The only thing is, I don't know anything about tax.'

‘Don't ask Father to explain it to you,' Michael warned. ‘It will put you into one of your super deep hibernation sleeps.'

‘All you need to know is that Father hates paying tax,' said Samantha, ‘and that he spends all day finding loopholes and setting up schemes so that his clients don't have to pay the government.'

‘Hmmm,' said Boris. ‘I'm beginning to visualise something.'

Boris and Mr Green disappeared into the living room. (Nanny Piggins had turned it into a makeshift dance studio by gluing aluminium foil to an entire wall to act as a mirror.) They were in there all day and all night. The only sense the children had of their progress was from the noises they heard coming from behind the door. Occasionally Boris would yell
‘Niet
,
niet
,
niet
!' (He always broke into Russian when he was frustrated.) Sometimes they heard Mr Green sobbing. And all day long they heard Boris demand, ‘No, do it again.'

By eight o'clock in the morning the children were actually beginning to feel sorry for their father. They were wondering if their dear friend Boris had been replaced by a much meaner identical cyborg, when the living-room door opened and Boris and his student emerged.

Mr Green looked exhausted and dazed. But Boris' expression was much harder to read – he was almost proud.

‘How did you go?' asked Nanny Piggins.

‘It was –' began Mr Green.