Nanny Piggins and the Pursuit of Justice (4 page)

‘That’s just it,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘He does nothing! All my sisters, even the evil ones, have a considerable work ethic and dedication to principles. Wendy may be a villainous international super-spy but she has worked hard and she is a very talented villainous super-spy. Anthea may be an incurable jewel thief but her dedication to apricot danishes rivals Mother Theresa’s dedication to the poor. And even Katerina, with her insatiable love of vegetables, even
she
has an admirable work ethic, getting up at 4 am every day to water her zucchinis. But Bramwell – he does nothing. He gloms from one job to the next, being fired for incompetence, gluttony and oversleeping. And to make matters worse, when he is between jobs he goes around claiming to be a . . . a . . . I can’t say it, it’s too mortifying.’

‘A terrorist?’ asked Derrick.

‘Worse,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘A used car salesman?’ guessed Michael.

‘Much worse,’ said Nanny Piggins, hiding her face in shame.

‘A truancy officer?’ guessed Samantha.

‘No,’ whispered Nanny Piggins, dabbing away tears of shame. ‘He tells people he is a . . . poet.’

‘No!’ exclaimed all three horrified children.

Nanny Piggins nodded her head and closed her eyes tight, trying to block out the disgrace. ‘He even tries to read his poetry to you if you can’t run away from him because you’ve broken your ankle or got your foot caught in a giant clam.’

‘No wonder you try so hard to disown him,’ said Samantha, giving her nanny a supportive hug.

Just then a long limousine pulled up outside the shop.

‘He’s here!’ exclaimed Derrick.

An anxious publicist rushed over to open the passenger door. The children were shocked to see Bramwell for the first time. They had assumed he would look like his sisters, but he did not. True, his facial features were similar, but there was one shocking dissimilarity. Bramwell was enormously fat. All Nanny Piggins’ sisters were extremely lean and athletic. But Bramwell was as round as he was tall. Admittedly, like his sisters he was only four foot tall, but still it was unusual to see someone who was
also four foot wide.

‘Oh yes, I forgot to mention,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That is the other shameful thing about Bramwell – he has a slight weight problem. Now, as you know, I am not normally one to judge a person for that. Eating is such a priority. But in Bramwell’s case, he is a pig, and it is such a cliché for a pig to be as fat as a pig.’

Bramwell waddled across the store, smiling smugly and posing for photographs as he was waylaid by fans. Eventually he made his way to the front, and with the help of a good hard shove from his publicist, he managed to climb up onto the podium.

‘Good morning,’ said Bramwell, smiling down at his audience. ‘It is wonderful to see your adoring faces.’

The audience clapped.

‘And ladies, no marriage proposals please,’ smirked Bramwell. ‘At least not until after my speech.’

The women in the audience giggled.

Bramwell took out his notes, winked at the audience, cleared his throat and began his speech. ‘People are always asking me, Bramwell Piggins, how did you come to be so wonderful at everything? Adventurer, inventor, medical breakthrougher,
heroic rescuer, pastry chef extraordinaire . . . Does your talent know no bounds? And I’m afraid the simple answer is “no”. Even as a young piglet, my little sisters would sit and watch in awe as I explained particle physics, demonstrated jujitsu or whipped up a delicious batch of authentic Lebanese baklava. Obviously it was too much for them to ever emulate. But in their own simple way they enjoyed watching me be brilliant.’

Nanny Piggins could bear it no longer. ‘Stop it!’ she shrieked. ‘Stop it at once before I am sick all over this cheap synthetic carpet.’

Bramwell peered over the edge of his podium. He was too fat to see the front row, so he could not see who was yelling at him.

‘You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself!’ denounced Nanny Piggins. ‘If Mother were alive today she would sit on you to teach you a lesson about stealing better people’s identities.’

‘Mother?’ yelped Bramwell. ‘She’s not here, is she?’ He looked about in a panic.

‘Of course not, you twit,’ condemned Nanny Piggins. ‘She’s been dead for years.’

Bramwell heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Oh yes, of course, thank goodness.’

Nanny Piggins was now shaking with rage.
‘Leaving aside your pleasure in our mother’s death – I shall bite you for that later – first things first, how dare you steal my identity and the accomplishments of all our sisters just to flatter your own ego and sell books!’

‘Sarah? Is that you?’ asked Bramwell. While his fourteen sisters were physically identical, from much experience Bramwell was able to identify them by their own unique way of yelling at him.

‘It certainly is,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And how dare you come to my home town claiming to be “The World’s Greatest Flying Pig”.’

‘I didn’t know you lived here,’ protested Bramwell.

‘Balderdash!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘When you drive into town there is a great big sign saying “Welcome to Dullsford. Population 66,782. Home of Nanny Piggins, World’s Greatest Flying Pig.”’

‘In his defence,’ whispered Derrick, ‘the last bit is hard to read because it is in Boris’ handwriting.’

‘There is no excuse!’ yelled Nanny Piggins. ‘How dare you, who have achieved so little, take the credit for we who have done so much.’

Bramwell winked at his audience. ‘You’ll have to excuse my little sister. Her imagination runs away
with her from time to time.’

‘What?!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.

‘Don’t judge her,’ continued Bramwell (while surreptitiously trying to shove copies of his own books into his socks for protection). ‘It is hard for a tiny sapling to grow in the shadow of a great oak.’

‘Did he just patronise me?’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Right, that’s it. I’m taking my frock off. It’s shin-biting time.’

‘Sarah, my dear,’ said Bramwell, clutching the podium tightly and keeping it between him and his sister. ‘There is no need for that.’

‘Then immediately admit that your whole book is just a pack of lies,’ demanded Nanny Piggins.

Bramwell paused. He thought about how much he liked getting great big royalty cheques from his publisher, and then he thought about how a few shin bites would soon heal and go away. ‘No I won’t,’ said Bramwell. ‘Every single word is true and you can’t prove otherwise.’

The audience cheered. Bramwell looked proud of his cleverness.

But Nanny Piggins was baffled by his stupidity. ‘Of course I can prove you’re a fraud, you great big idiot. Nothing would be easier. For a start I can show that I am the world’s greatest flying pig by challeng
ing you to a dual. Right here tomorrow morning, let’s both get blasted out of cannons and see who flies further. That’ll soon settle that.’

‘What a brilliant idea!’ exclaimed the publicist, who got out her mobile phone so she could tell all her journalist friends.

‘Now hang on,’ protested Bramwell. ‘I am an author now. Um . . . it would be unseemly and . . . er . . . besides, I don’t have a cannon.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the publicist. ‘I’ll arrange it all. Publicity like this is unbeatable. Your books will fly off the shelves.’

‘Good, it’s settled then,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Prepare to be belittled right here tomorrow morning at 9 am.’

Nanny Piggins then grabbed hold of her brother, gave him a noogie, a wedgie, a wet willy and several other physically unpleasant things siblings do to each other, before storming out of the bookshop with the children. The audience again clapped. They had expected a rather dull book reading, but instead they had apparently been treated to a dramatic morning of improvised theatre.

During the night Nanny Piggins and Boris went down to the local war museum and borrowed the largest Howitzer. (The war museum had become
used to this and in fact had given Nanny Piggins her own key so she would not disturb the security guard’s nap schedule.)

Nanny Piggins then had a brief but thorough training workout, eating 50 pounds of chocolate-covered caramels to increase her density and therefore velocity through the air.

At nine o’clock the next morning she arrived at the bookshop in her favourite suede lemon-coloured body suit (with black and red stripes), as Boris pulled her 25-tonne cannon into position. There was a huge crowd already gathered to watch the display.

‘We’re here!’ announced Nanny Piggins. ‘Now where is that good-for-nothing Bramwell so we can get started?’

‘He’s right here,’ said the publicist, turning round to point at . . . an empty space.

‘Where?’ asked Samantha.

‘But he was right here a second ago,’ protested the publicist.

Nanny Piggins looked at Derrick’s watch. It ticked over from 9.00 to 9.01. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘he’s not coming back.’

‘But surely not,’ panicked the publicist. ‘Look at the crowd. He can’t let them down. Some of
them have pre-bought books, expecting him to sign them.’

‘Well, I must confess I have underestimated my brother,’ admitted Nanny Piggins. ‘In my haste to condemn him for stealing credit for the talents of his sisters, I had forgotten his one great talent.’

‘He has a great talent?’ asked Derrick.

‘He is a Piggins,’ Nanny Piggins reminded them. ‘So yes, he does have one extraordinary ability.’

‘What is it?’ asked the publicist optimistically. ‘I hope it sells books.’

‘He has a unique and unparalleled talent for running away from angry people,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Is that a talent?’ asked Samantha.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Think about it. If you were so inadequate and your sisters were so brilliant and you had a tendency to claim credit for their accomplishments, you’d learn to be good at running away too.’

‘But Nanny Piggins, how can he run when he’s so . . .’ Derrick did not like to say the word.

‘Fat?’ supplied Nanny Piggins. ‘Yes, I know. But he is still a pig and therefore a gifted athlete compared to a mere human. Plus he somehow manages to use his greater weight to his advantage by doing lots of
plunging, plummeting and sinking when he is on the run.’

‘So that’s it?’ asked Samantha. ‘It’s all over?’

‘Not at all,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Now we have to find him and punish him.’

‘But how?’ asked Derrick.

‘Luckily I had the foresight to bake a GPS tracking device into a shortbread cookie that I slipped into my brother’s pocket yesterday while I was giving him a noogie,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Could you bake me a whole batch of those cookies so I can keep track of all my authors?’ asked the publicist.

Nanny Piggins retrieved a handheld radar device from the pocket of her dress. (She had broken the heart of many a European designer by insisting they include pockets in their couture frocks.) She switched it on and a green blip appeared on the screen. ‘That’s him!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Bramwell is the green blip. Follow me.’

And so Nanny Piggins followed the blip, the children and the publicist followed Nanny Piggins and the crowd of Bramwell fans followed them all, determined to get their books signed.

They tracked Bramwell down the road, over a fence (or more accurately through a fence, which had
collapsed when Bramwell tried to climb it), along a wall, under shrubbery, out onto another road, into a cake shop (with particularly delicious lamingtons) and down an alley, where they reached a dead end.

‘Do you think he climbed one of these buildings?’ asked Samantha, looking up at the six-storey walls surrounding them on three sides.

Nanny Piggins looked at her monitor and the blip clearly moving away from them. ‘No,’ she said. ‘When you have the physique of my brother you never go up when you could go down.’

They all looked at Nanny Piggins’ feet. She was standing on a manhole.

‘Into the sewers?’ asked Derrick. ‘But that’s disgusting.’

‘As is my brother,’ said Nanny Piggins sadly.

‘It’s so unhygienic,’ said Samantha.

‘And stinky,’ added Michael.

‘My brother is no stranger to stink,’ revealed Nanny Piggins. ‘He once went an entire calendar year without taking a bath.’

‘What happened?’ asked Derrick. (He had long wondered what would happen if he never took a bath, aside from having much more time to read comics.)

‘The stench became so unbearable that my sister Wendy waited until he was asleep, taped a high-powered hose to the inside of his trouser leg, then turned the hose on,’ remembered Nanny Piggins. ‘He was blasted with water from the inside out. Eventually his clothes swelled up with the pressurised water until they exploded off and he was left clean as a whistle.’

‘I bet that taught him a lesson,’ said Samantha.

‘No, actually it taught Wendy a lesson. Because then Bramwell didn’t go and buy new clothes for three weeks,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘and the only thing worse than a stinky brother is a naked brother.’

‘So are you going to let him disappear into the sewers?’ asked Michael.

‘Of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I brought a bag of marshmallows in anticipation of precisely this eventuality.’

‘How will eating marshmallows help?’ asked Derrick.

‘I’m not going to eat them,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m going to shove them up my nose, and I suggest you do the same if you are coming with me.’ And with that Nanny Piggins shoved two pink marsh
mallows into her snout and heaved the manhole cover aside. As the first wave of stench wafted up, the children and Boris hastily shoved marshmallows into their own noses. The crowd of Bramwell fans backed away, realising they did not want their books signed by someone who would willingly climb down into that odour. Only the publicist lunged forward, catching Nanny Piggins by the sleeve.

‘Before you go,’ said the publicist, ‘is there any chance I could sign you to a multi-book deal? Because if your brother does prove to be a huge fraud and we have to pulp all his books for legal reasons, we will be looking to sign a new pig adventurer.’

‘Me write books!’ scoffed Nanny Piggins. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I’m far too busy having adventures to waste my time writing about them.’

‘But we could get you a ghost writer,’ argued the publicist.