Nanny Piggins and the Pursuit of Justice Page 12

  ‘Oh,’ said Samantha.

  ‘She yelled at me and told me to whitewash over it,’ continued Nanny Piggins, ‘but when I started, passers-by protested because my painting was so pretty. It almost started a riot. So I was sent home.’

  ‘You do seem to have a knack for getting early marks from community service,’ said Michael.

  ‘I know,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t think the system is set up to deal with someone of my creative genius. Which makes it very difficult for me to log up my hours.’

  Just then Boris returned.

  ‘How was your first day at law school?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Very refreshing,’ said Boris happily.

  ‘Really?’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I thought it would be stodgy and boring, with lots of tedious, hard-to-understand things being explained badly by men with bad breath.’

  ‘That’s exactly what it was like,’ agreed Boris happily. ‘Each lecture I walked into put me to sleep in seconds. I had four of the loveliest naps I’ve ever had.’

  ‘But did you learn anything?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Boris. ‘I learnt it is not a good idea to do ballet in the quadrangle at lunchtime. Not when the theatre students are holding their fire-breathing workshop.’

  ‘They set you on fire?’ asked an alarmed Samantha.

  ‘Only my bottom,’ said Boris. ‘Luckily there was a fish pond nearby so I was able to grand jeté into it immediately. Which made a spectacular end to my performance.’

  ‘Anyway, I’d better go and take my new law books out to the shed,’ said Boris. ‘They don’t have very pretty covers, so I thought I’d cut the covers off more exciting books and glue them over. I don’t want people on the bus to think I’m boring, otherwise they may not gossip with me.’

  ‘Very wise,’ approved Nanny Piggins as her brother left the room. ‘Boris seems to be adjusting to law school very well.’

  The children were not so sure. Nanny Piggins had no formal education herself, so she did not really understand that people like teachers and law professors were usually not open-minded enough to appreciate the benefits of a student sleeping through everything they said.

  Boris continued to go to law school for another two weeks, and he had never been so refreshed in his life. He had even started taking a pillow with him so he could get extra comfortable for his naps. But halfway through his third week, trouble struck.

  Nanny Piggins and the children were at home hiding in the cellar (trying to evade the probation officer who wanted her to go down to the docks and help clean up an oil spill) when the phone rang.

  ‘If we answer it the probation officer will know we’re here,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘He already knows we’re here because he saw you in the front garden,’ Derrick pointed out.

  ‘And he heard you yell, “Quick, hide in the cellar. I don’t want to clean up an oil spill, I’ve got a lovely frock on,’’ ’ said Samantha.

  ‘I’ll answer the phone,’ volunteered Michael. ‘If the probation officer sees me through the window I’ll tell him you’re really one of your own identical twin sisters.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They’re always stealing my identity. It won’t do any harm if I borrow one of theirs for half an hour.’

  A few moments later, Michael ran back down the cellar steps carrying the phone. ‘It’s an emergency,’ he cried. ‘Boris has fallen into one of his super deep hibernation sleeps in the doorway of a lecture theatre and none of the other students can get out.’

  ‘Aren’t there windows they can climb through?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘It’s a five-storey building,’ explained Michael. ‘They’d fall to their deaths.’

  ‘Oh well, I suppose we had better go and sort him out,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘What about the probation officer?’ asked Samantha. ‘If you leave he’ll grab you.’

  ‘Luckily I had the foresight to anticipate this sort of situation,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve rigged up a flying fox on the roof. We’ll be able to whiz past over his head without him even knowing.’

  When Nanny Piggins and the children arrived at the lecture hall there was quite a crowd gathered. University students enjoy any excuse to stand around and gawp rather than go to their lectures, and there were lots of very concerned university staff and two fire trucks in attendance as well.

  ‘Hello Fire Chief!’ called Nanny Piggins to her old friend. He had been called out many times to deal with fires caused by her frequent kitchen- or cannon-related explosions.

  ‘Hello Nanny Piggins,’ said the Fire Chief. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve brought any . . .’ he paused and looked at Nanny Piggins optimistically. (Technically, as Fire Chief, he wasn’t allowed to ask for bribes.)

  ‘Any cake?’ prompted Nanny Piggins. ‘Why yes, of course, I never leave home without supplies. Would you and your men like some chocolate cake?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ chorused the firefighters.

  ‘Um, Ms Piggins,’ said a nervous elderly man, ‘I’m the Vice Chancellor of the university.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve got a friend who runs a bakery. Do you want me to ask him if he’ll give you a proper job?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said the Vice Chancellor. ‘I was just wondering if you would be so kind as to do something about your brother. The head of the university’s veterinary school is frightened to wake him up because he has no practical experience with tired Kodiak bears.’

  ‘There’s no need to worry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘My brother would never hurt anyone under any circumstances, unless you tried to eat one of his honey sandwiches. Then he would snap you in two like a dry twig. But that doesn’t happen very often. Who would eat a bear’s honey sandwich?’

  Nanny Piggins went over to where of Boris’ back entirely blocked the exit.

  ‘How did he manage to fall asleep right in the doorway?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Apparently the lecture had started just before he arrived,’ explained the Vice Chancellor, ‘so as soon as he entered the room the sound of the professor’s voice sent him into an immediate sleep.’

  ‘Hmm, yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The exact same thing happens to me whenever I hear people talk about cricket. It’s such a shame. Cricket bats are so useful for whacking things. Why must people insist on using them for actual cricket?’

  ‘Um, your brother?’ reminded the Vice Chancellor.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Nanny Piggins, turning to look at Boris’ back.

  ‘How are you going to wake him up?’ asked Derrick. ‘Are you going to ask the Fire Chief to lend you one of his super high-powered hoses?’

  ‘That would work,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but we better not. We wouldn’t want to ruin the carpet. It is a hideous brown–green colour as it is. Making it waterlogged would only make it worse. No, I have another idea.’

  Nanny Piggins went right up to Boris, took a deep breath and yelled clearly, ‘Rudolph Nureyev was the world’s best ballet dancer!’ Then she hurriedly took several steps back.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘What good was that supposed to do?’ asked the bewildered Vice Chancellor.

  ‘Just wait,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  Suddenly Boris leapt to his feet. ‘Rudolph Nureyev was a great big show-off!’ he yelled. ‘He wouldn’t know how to plié properly if he broke his foot and had it reset at a right angle.’

  ‘Oh Boris, I’m so dreadfully sorry to have to say such a hateful thing,’ apologised Nanny Piggins. ‘I only did it to wake you up.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, Sarah,’ said Boris kindly, clutching his heart as he recovered from the shock. ‘I was just terrified for a moment that I had fallen asleep and woken up in a parallel unive
rse where people really thought Rudolph Nureyev was better than me.’

  ‘No-one could possibly think that,’ Nanny Piggins assured him, ‘except all those ballet critics and aficionados. But what would they know? I think blood clots have gone to their brains from all the time they spend sitting in cramped theatre seats.’

  ‘Right, that’s it!’ screamed a voice from inside the lecture theatre.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Boris. ‘It sounds like my Constitutional Law professor is upset about something.’

  And indeed he was.

  ‘I am not putting up with this for another day!’ yelled the Constitutional Law professor as he pushed past Boris and confronted the Vice Chancellor. ‘I don’t care about your minority quotas. I absolutely refuse to put up with this bear snoring his way through another one of my lectures.’

  ‘I don’t snore!’ protested Boris. ‘Do I?’ He turned to look at his fellow students now filing out of the lecture theatre. The students nodded sheepishly.

  ‘But only a little bit,’ a nice young student assured him. ‘And we don’t mind, because it often drowns out the more boring bits of the lecture.’

  ‘It is disrespectful, disgraceful, disruptive and a complete waste of everyone’s time,’ yelled the Constitutional Law professor.

  ‘Just like studying Constitutional Law,’ whispered Nanny Piggins.

  ‘I heard that!’ screamed the Constitutional Law professor. ‘I want this bear thrown out. I refuse to teach him for another day.’

  ‘Um . . .’ said the Vice Chancellor. He did not like to make decisions at the best of times. But certainly not when there were a couple of hundred students, two dozen firefighters and a variety of his staff looking at him. ‘To expel a student who has not failed any exams or committed any crime is very difficult.’

  ‘He has slept through every single lecture,’ yelled the Constitutional Law professor. ‘He has been here two and a half weeks and hasn’t heard a single word I’ve said.’

  ‘Lucky Boris,’ whispered one of the students.

  ‘I heard that!’ yelled the professor.

  ‘Well, if you want him to be removed there will have to be a full academic hearing,’ said the Vice Chancellor.

  ‘Fine,’ snapped the law professor. ‘How soon can it be arranged?’

  ‘Um . . .’ said the Vice Chancellor, ‘perhaps next semester?’

  ‘Tomorrow, I insist tomorrow,’ yelled the law professor, the veins in his forehead starting to stick out most alarmingly.

  ‘Um, all right,’ said the Vice Chancellor. ‘After lunch.’

  ‘And a nap?’ asked Boris hopefully.

  And so the next day they all regathered at the university, but this time in the Great Hall. (A great big room with fancy stonework and stained glass, usually reserved for intimidating students at exam time or graduations.) Up on the stage was a long table where a line of senior academics sat, wearing their black gowns and silly flat hats.

  In front of the stage there was an unexpectedly large audience – partly because it was a rainy day, so a lot of students were looking for somewhere dry to eat their lunch. But as well as that, Boris actually did have a lot of supporters. Because he slept through every lecture he did not realise how many friends he’d made. Students who forgot to bring a jumper on cold days would snuggle up to him to stay warm; students who forgot to bring a pencil would borrow one of Boris’ as they lay untouched on his desk; and students who had not done the required reading would fight to sit behind Boris’ ten-foot-tall frame so that the lecturer would not see them and ask a difficult question.

  Even many of the professors had turned out to support Boris. They liked having a student who never asked awkward questions or complained about the due dates of assignments. He always greeted the assignment schedule as a welcome surprise when he woke up from a nap and found one of his fellow students had sticky-taped a copy to his forehead.

  ‘Now, are you sure you want to go through with this?’ Nanny Piggins whispered to her brother as they sat in the front row, waiting for the hearing to start. ‘Personally I’m looking forward to yelling at all these silly academics and perhaps biting a few shins. But I know how you hate confrontation, so if you’d rather run away and try to find a broom closet big enough for you to hide in, I’d totally understand.’

  ‘No, it’s all right, Sarah, I do want to do this,’ said Boris, steeling himself to be brave. ‘I like coming to law school. It makes a nice change from my shed. And I’ve only got three years and forty-nine weeks to go, so it would be a terrible shame to drop out now.’

  Just then, at the back of the hall, the Chancellor entered. A hush came over the crowd. (You have to understand that at a university it is the Vice Chancellor who really runs things. The Chancellor’s role is more like the Queen, largely ceremonial, but technically she does have ultimate power when something very important happens. So as the Chancellor entered the hall everybody, including the withered old academics, stood up as a mark of respect.)

  The Chancellor made her way up onto the stage and sat at the middle of the long table. The crowd waited for her to start proceedings, as she readjusted her academic gown and rustled about in her handbag for a cough drop. Finally she found one, popped it in her mouth, then looked up at the audience.

  ‘Before we begin,’ said the Chancellor with a quavery voice, ‘I would just like to say that I have been an academic for 63 years and as such, I resent anything that requires me to get out of bed before eleven.’

  ‘I like this woman,’ said Nanny Piggins, nodding. ‘She is clearly very clever.’

  ‘I do not want to be here,’ continued the Chancellor. ‘After six decades of studying the molecular structure of quarks, I feel that I am entitled to sit in my study and watch The Young and the Irritable undisturbed.’

  ‘Here, here!’ yelled Nanny Piggins.

  The Chancellor paused. ‘Vice Chancellor, why is there a pig in the front row of the audience?’

  ‘Because her brother, the bear, is the one we are here about,’ explained the Vice Chancellor.

  The Chancellor put on her reading glasses and peered over the edge of the high table at Boris. She sighed. ‘Oh well, I suppose admission criteria have changed since my day.’

  ‘Perhaps we should start the proceedings?’ suggested the Vice Chancellor.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ agreed the Chancellor. ‘Who is going to be complaining today?’

  ‘I am,’ said the professor of Constitutional Law, leaping to his feet. ‘I want this bear expelled immediately. He has shown no interest in or aptitude for the law. In fact he has slept through every moment of every one of my lectures.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the Chancellor. ‘But aren’t we supposed to be encouraging diversity on campus? If we are meant to encourage minorities, why not encourage the very tired? I know I feel very tired all the time and I often feel like I’m a minority.’

  ‘But if he sleeps through every lecture,’ said the professor, ‘he will fail his exams, so why waste everyone’s time struggling through an entire semester of his incessant snoring. He should be expelled now.’

  ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ the Chancellor asked, peering over her glasses at Boris.

  Boris rose to his feet, opened his mouth, then promptly burst into tears and collapsed in his seat.

  Nanny Piggins leapt up as Samantha hugged Boris reassuringly.

  ‘You will have to excuse my brother,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He is Russian and a ballet dancer and therefore twice as in touch with his emotions as regular people.’

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ said the Chancellor. ‘I often feel like bursting into tears at university functions. Although in my case it is usually through sheer boredom from having to listen to the world’s most tedious speeches.’

  ‘In my brother’s defence, I would like to say
a few words,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Please go ahead,’ said the Chancellor.

  ‘Well, first of all I’d like to point out that that man –’ said Nanny Piggins as she pointed dramatically at the professor of Constitutional Law – ‘is a big poopy head. I’m sorry to have to resort to such colourful language but there is no other way to express the depths of my feelings. He is a meany. And a bully. And very ungenerous to my sweet and caring brother. Furthermore, if he does get Boris thrown out of university on some minor sleep-related technicality, then I shall be forced to give both his shins a good hard bite!’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ exclaimed the professor of Constitutional Law. ‘She threatened me with physical violence!’

  ‘I heard it,’ admitted the Chancellor, ‘and I must say it made a refreshing change. Although it does make me inclined to decide in your favour, because I’d like to see her bite you.’

  ‘This is an outrage, it’s preposterous –’ spluttered the professor.

  ‘Oh shut up,’ said the Chancellor.

  ‘You tell him!’ encouraged Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the Chancellor. ‘It seems to me a very simple matter. The bear wants to stay because he wants to study law. Is that right?’

  Boris dabbed his eyes, sniffed and nodded.

  ‘But you want to throw him out because he sleeps through every lecture and hasn’t learnt anything. Is that right?’ the Chancellor asked the professor.

  ‘Precisely. The notion of allowing a –’ began the professor.

  ‘Just say “yes” or “no”, or I’ll throw you out instead,’ warned the Chancellor.

  ‘Yes,’ said the professor (which was the shortest sentence he had uttered since he had turned two).

  ‘Well then, if you can prove that the bear knows nothing you have taught in the last three weeks, I will agree to expel him,’ said the Chancellor. ‘So fire away. Give the bear a pop quiz.’

  ‘All right,’ said the professor as he turned to Boris with a malicious gleam in his eye. ‘Define sub judice.’