Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8 (17 page)

A short time later, Nanny Piggins and the children were at home, under the kitchen table and eating cake while Nanny Piggins tried to come up with a plan.

‘Why are we under the table?’ asked Samantha, taking a bite of delicious Victoria sponge.

‘In case any Russian agents look in the window to try to see us, of course,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘But why did we come home?’ asked Derrick. ‘Surely this is the first place they will look.’

‘But they don’t know our address,’ argued Nanny Piggins. ‘And I made very sure that we weren’t followed. That is why we took such a circuitous route home, through every bakery in the district.’

‘I thought you were just hungry for cake,’ said Michael.

‘Of course I was,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Running away always builds up my appetite.’

‘There is one slight problem,’ said Boris through a mouthful of honey cake. (He had escaped and walked straight home while the guards were busy being told off by the Russian Head of Security for letting a wanted criminal get away.)

‘What?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Have you eaten all the honey cake again?’

‘No,’ said Boris. ‘The cubic metre of cake you made me is the perfect-sized snack for a growing bear. No, the snag is, they will probably be able to figure out our address.’

‘How?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘From the passport application I left lying on the counter,’ said Boris.

‘You left that behind?!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.

‘I really want a passport,’ protested Boris.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ said Nanny Piggins, her mind racing. ‘I’m just going to have to initiate emergency evacuation plan D.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Derrick.

‘I’ll have to run away and join the French Foreign Legion,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Do they still have that?’ asked Michael.

‘And do they take women?’ asked Samantha.

‘And do they take pigs?’ asked Derrick.

‘What right-minded military institution would turn me away?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘A pig with my artillery experience is invaluable. And I quite fancy moving to Algeria. They make very good sweet biscuits there called
Halwat Eeba
, which are filled with dates.’

‘But what about us?’ asked Michael.

‘I’m sure the Foreign Legion will take you,’ said Nanny Piggins, giving him a hug. ‘Legionnaires lie about their real names and ages even more than actresses.’

‘I won’t do it!’ declared Samantha.

‘What?!’ said everyone else. It was unlike Samantha to be so bold.

‘I won’t do it!’ declared Samantha again. ‘I don’t want to join the military, I don’t want to learn to speak French, I don’t want to lie about my age and I don’t want to move to Algeria.’

‘You say that now,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but only because you’ve never tried
Halwat Eeba
. It’s very good.’

‘There must be some other way you can avoid deportation to Russia,’ said Samantha.

‘Perhaps if you explained to us exactly what you did to get in trouble in the first place,’ suggested Derrick.

‘You know how much I hate going to museums,’ began Nanny Piggins. ‘Well, it was a rainy day in St Petersburg and I was wearing the most darling suede slingback shoes. Obviously I couldn’t keep walking about outside and risk stepping in a puddle.’

‘It would be a crime against footwear,’ agreed Boris.

‘I had no choice,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I had to take shelter indoors, but the nearest building was the Hermitage Museum.’

‘You poor thing!’ exclaimed Boris.

‘What’s the Hermitage Museum?’ asked Michael.

‘It is the largest and most impressive art gallery in the world,’ explained Boris. ‘It is full of all the great Russian masterpieces as well as important works by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and all the other super famous artists.’

‘In short,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘it is a dreadfully tedious place. And I was stuck inside being forced to wander past one miserable painting after another until it stopped raining outside.’

‘So what did you do to get in trouble?’ asked Derrick. ‘Did you bump into something?’

‘Or accidentally smash something?’ asked Samantha.

‘Or purposefully smash something?’ asked Michael.

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins, with a note of shame in her voice. ‘I ate something.’

‘What?’ asked Derrick suspiciously.

‘One of the exhibits,’ confessed Nanny Piggins.

‘You ate a priceless artwork?!’ exclaimed Derrick.

‘I’m afraid so,’ admitted Nanny Piggins. ‘It was not my proudest moment.’

‘What did you eat?’ asked Samantha. ‘Not a Leonardo da Vinci painting? There’s no way we could come up with a money-making scheme to replace that.’

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I ate a Greta Pleveski.’

‘A who what?’ asked Derrick.

‘Greta Pleveski was the greatest Russian artist of the early twentieth century,’ continued Nanny Piggins. ‘I was wandering through a particularly gaudy gallery of baroque portraiture when I smelled her masterpiece.’

‘You smelled it?’ queried Samantha.

‘My trotters were drawn to the enticing aroma,’ continued Nanny Piggins. ‘I walked down the corridor into a small and dimly lit gallery featuring one artwork, displayed on a central plinth, beneath a lone spotlight.’

‘What was it?’ asked Michael. ‘A sculpture?’

‘A painting?’

‘An antique?’

‘It was the last cake of the Romanovs!’ declared Nanny Piggins.

The children sat silently for a moment as their brains processed this . . . until they realised that none of them had any idea what their nanny was talking about.

‘You’re going to have to explain,’ said Derrick.

‘The Romanovs were the last emperors of Russia,’ said Boris. ‘They enjoyed untold wealth and the most lavish luxury ever seen, and all while the Russian people suffered poverty, hunger and even slavery.’

‘So what happened?’ asked Michael.

‘Well, the people got sick of the poverty, hunger and slavery,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘They rose up and overthrew the Romanovs.’

‘Where does the cake come in?’ asked Derrick.

‘On the day they were overthrown, the Romanov family were just sitting down to have morning tea – and the Romanovs did not do things by half measures. They had the finest cake maker in the world, Greta Pleveski, make them a chocolate cake. And not just an ordinary chocolate cake either. A fifteen-tier chocolate cake with exquisite handmade sugar decorations depicting an exact replica of the Winter Palace in winter. It was the most beautiful cake ever made.’

‘Then why didn’t the Romanovs eat it?’ asked Michael.

‘The Bolsheviks started bombing the palace and they had to flee by train before they could even take the first bite,’ explained Nanny Piggins.

Boris burst into tears.

‘Why are you crying?’ asked Samantha.

‘I know the Romanovs were dreadfully mean to all the poor people,’ said Boris, ‘but it just seems so cruel not to let them eat their cake.’

‘When the Bolsheviks raided the palace the cake was still sitting on the coffee table,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It was put in the Hermitage Museum as a monument to the selfish extravagance of the aristocracy.’

‘So why on earth did you eat it?’ asked Derrick.

‘Because it smelled so good!’ wailed Nanny Piggins. ‘You know how good my sense of smell is! How could I be in the same room and resist such a wonderful chocolate cake?’

‘But the Russian Revolution took place in 1917,’ said Derrick. ‘The cake must have been 90 years old!’

‘It was still delicious!’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘The icing was so thick it created a vacuum inside, so it was very well preserved.’

‘But Nanny Piggins,’ said Samantha, ‘what you did was terrible. You destroyed a great work of art and a historically significant artefact.’

‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The greater crime was letting the cake go uneaten! Cake is not like a painting you hang on a wall to get dusty and faded. A cake is to be tasted, chewed, swallowed and enjoyed. That is its purpose. The greatest purpose of all. To deny such a fine cake to yield to its higher destiny is a crime. It’s a desecration of a great artist’s masterpiece. If Greta Pleveski were alive today she would have begged me to eat it. She would have picked up a cake fork and eaten it herself.’

‘So you just reached over and took a bite?’ asked Michael, in even greater awe of his nanny’s audacity than he had ever been.

‘Not quite,’ admitted Nanny Piggins. ‘I had to jump over a red velvet rope, smash through two-inch thick bulletproof glass and disable a state-of-the-art alarm system by bashing it with my shoe.’

‘So the slingbacks got ruined anyway?’ asked Boris.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘What happened next?’ asked Samantha.

‘I’ve been running from the KGBCD ever since,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘What’s the KGBCD?’ asked Derrick.

‘Well you know what the KGB is?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘The Russian secret police?’ asked Derrick.

‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘and the KGBCD is their cake division.’

‘I thought the KGB was disbanded after the collapse of the Soviet government,’ said Derrick.

‘They kept up their cake division,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They take their desserts seriously in Russia. They reserve the most ruthless tactics for dealing with cake-related crime.’

Suddenly there was a loud pounding at the door.

‘Piggins, we know you’re in there!’ the Russian Head of Security boomed from outside. ‘We have the house surrounded. Come out now, before we are forced to do structural damage to your home.’

‘Agh, please don’t let them take you, Sarah. What will I do without you?!’ wailed Boris. ‘Who will explain the bits I miss in
The Young and the Irritable
when I cry too loudly to hear what’s going on?’

‘No-one is taking me anywhere,’ declared Nanny Piggins, ‘because I had the foresight to install an ejection system!’

‘You did?’ asked the children.

‘Yes, one night when I snuck down to the kitchen for a little midnight cake, I had the brilliant idea of using the fireman’s pole in reverse, as the trajectory controller for a massive rocket launcher.’

‘Really?’ said the children.

‘It was a simple matter really,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘All I had to do was install a remote-controlled trap door in the roof, get a custom-made harness, and a massive rocket powerful enough to blast me up into the sky.’

As she spoke, Nanny Piggins opened the secret compartment in the laundry floor (the one where she stored honey). She brought out the rocket backpack and harness, which she went over and clipped to the fireman’s pole.

‘We’re coming in!’ yelled the Russian Head of Security as he kicked in the door.

‘Goodbye!’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll write to you when I get to Algeria.’

With that, she fired up the rockets on her backpack and, in an explosive burst, shot up through the house.

The Russian agents, the children and Boris peered up through the ceiling and out through the trapdoor in the roof where they could see Nanny Piggins hurtling ever upwards into the far blue sky.

‘She escaped!’ said Samantha.

‘We are going to be in so much trouble when the Kremlin finds out about this,’ said the Russian Head of Security.

‘Hmm,’ said Boris. ‘I’m not so sure.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Derrick. ‘Look at her. She’s miles away.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Boris, ‘but she has gone miles directly upwards. My sister has very few failings but one of them is not thinking two moves ahead. True, she has brilliantly escaped the house and these cunning Russian agents.’

‘You think we’re cunning?’ said the Russian Head of Security. ‘That’s very kind. I don’t suppose you could write an endorsement for our website?’

‘But I suspect that she has not put as much thought into what she would do next,’ continued Boris.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Michael.

‘Nanny Piggins has blasted several miles directly upwards,’ explained Boris, ‘but gravity working as it does, surely she is going to come straight back down.’

They all peered back up through the hole in the roof again. Nanny Piggins was a tiny dot way up in the sky. But slowly the dot started to get larger, and larger.

‘Boris is right!’ exclaimed Michael. ‘She’s coming straight back down.’

‘Quick,’ called the Russian Head of Security. ‘Fetch a net!’

‘Quick!’ called Boris, ‘Fetch some sponge cake!’

‘Why?’ asked Samantha. ‘If she falls ten miles out of the sky she’s not going to be hungry.’

‘I bet she will be,’ said Michael.

‘The cake is not to eat,’ said Boris. ‘She needs something soft to land on.’

The children ran outside with armfuls of cake. The agents rushed out with a giant net. But Nanny Piggins was one step ahead of them all. Realising her strategic error and dangerous predicament, Nanny Piggins had used the prevailing winds to push her towards a safe landing. (Her years of experience in plummeting made her very good at this.) So as they all rushed out into the street hoping to stop Nanny Piggins from hitting the bitumen, she saved herself by neatly landing in Mrs Lau’s fish pond with a huge KERSPLASH!

‘She isn’t dead!’ yelled the children with delight.

‘Pah-pah-pah!’ said Nanny Piggins as she spat out pond water. ‘My hair does smell of fish poo, which is almost as bad.’

At that moment the Russian agents threw a huge net over Nanny Piggins.

‘Piggins, you are under arrest,’ announced the Russian Head of Security. ‘We will be extraditing you to Russia to face trial for your crimes against national security.’

‘Very well,’ said Nanny Piggins resignedly, holding out her wrists to be handcuffed. ‘Hang on a minute. What did you say I’d done?’

‘You published top-secret photographs that compromised national security,’ said the Russian Head of Security.

Nanny Piggins rubbed her snout. ‘I don’t remember ever doing that. Admittedly I have suffered amnesia on more than one occasion due to my tendency to get unpleasant head injuries, but usually when I snap out of the stupor I find I have just spent the time eating cake or perhaps chocolate. I don’t usually become a photographer and expose state secrets. What state secret did I expose exactly?’