Read Nanny McPhee Returns Online
Authors: Emma Thompson
Nanny McPhee Returns (5 page)
The goat is busy eating the set. Even the nettles are courtesy of the Art Department. The Call-Sheet (see Glossary) is plastered with increasingly plaintive sentences in capitals that read: ‘PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON’T STAND ON THE GRASS OR NETTLES OR FLOWERS OR ANY OF THE GREENERY. IT’S ALL ART DEPARTMENT’ and ‘ART DEPARTMENT HAVE GROWN ALL GREENERY FROM SCRATCH SO PLEASE DON’T SPOIL IT!! PLEASE!!! WE BEG YOU!!!!’ The goat can’t read, or, if it can, has not been given a call-sheet, or, if it has, has eaten it. Today we have the worst possible shooting conditions of all: rain and sun in succession so the light is always changing. Also, we are in the mud and we have all the children, most of the animals and a Rolls-Royce that keeps sliding about. Everyone is pretty cheerful under the circumstances, except me.
I can’t write in this WIND. Bloody weather (excuse my French). Damn and blast it all.
As I was saying, Mrs Green was worrying. Worrying about the cousins and about her darling Rory, worrying about the harvest and about not having any money to pay for the tractor hire, worrying about all sorts of things, none of them pleasant, when all of a sudden a man holding a big brown envelope jumped out in front of her, giving her a fright.
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that, Phil!’ she said.
Phil was Mrs Green’s brother-in-law, Rory’s brother and the children’s uncle.
‘Sorry, Izzy,’ he said, unctuously. ‘Sorry. How’s my gorgeous sister-in-law, then, eh? Eh?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Green, walking past him.
‘No? No what?’ said Phil, falling into step beside her.
‘You know perfectly well what, Phil, so leave it.’
Mrs Green picked up her pace irritably. Phil picked up his pace too and waggled the envelope at her.
‘Izzy, listen; listen, Izzy. We need to sell the farm.
You
need to. You don’t have the money to pay the tractor hire and without the tractor you’ll lose the harvest, and if you lose the harvest the farm will fail, and if the farm fails you and the children will be out on the street –’
This litany of impending doom was cut off by Mrs Green stopping very suddenly, whipping the envelope out of Phil’s hands and smacking him with it.
‘Stop it, Phil. I won’t have this. I’ve enough on my plate without you making everything sound worse. We
have
got enough to pay for the tractor. Norman’s going to sell the piglets to Farmer Macreadie and that’ll tide us over till the harvest. If Rory’s still not back then, we’ll all have to work very,
very
hard, Phil, and that includes you!’
Phil edged away. He’d been edging away from the word ‘work’ all his life and so far it seemed to have done the trick. He’d never lifted a finger.
‘So take your blooming contract and push it up your chimney. I’m not selling.’
‘Izzy – have a heart – the farm
is
half mine –’
Oh dear. I suppose I should’ve told you about that. Yes. The farm belonged equally to Rory and to Phil even though Phil didn’t like farming or animals or barley and had never once helped out, even when Rory was called up to serve in the army. (Phil hadn’t been called up because he had flat feet, a fact that only served to prove to him that he must be the luckiest man alive.) Phil had been trying for weeks to get Mrs Green to sell the farm. He was desperate. To explain why I’m going to have to let you in on a secret that not a single other person in the story knows.
Phil was a gambler.
He liked nothing more than to dress in a smart suit and walk into a casino as though he were a very rich man with a lot of money to spend. In fact, he only had one suit, which, unbeknownst to him, had stopped being smart quite a number of years previously. Added to which he was very, very bad at gambling and nearly always lost every penny he had. Like a lot of bad gamblers he always went back, always believed that he would one day win millions and purchase the sky-blue Bentley he had once seen in an advertisement and never stopped desiring.
If Phil had kept his gambling habit to small places in little towns he would probably not be in the mess he was in. But he’d taken the plunge and gone to London one night and only walked into one of the East End’s most notorious gambling establishments, a velvet-clad dive called Ruby’s, which belonged to a congenitally vicious gangster named Mr Biggles. Mr Biggles had been very successful at evading the law but hadn’t entirely managed to evade the army yet. When the call to fight had come, he made a big exit, orchestrating a heroic departure in full uniform at St Pancras railway station, waved off by his weeping family and dozens of fellow gangsters (all secretly thrilled he was going somewhere dangerous), got on to the train and then promptly slipped off it just before Folkestone, where a small plane was waiting to take him to Switzerland. There he spent the rest of the war investing his money in chocolate rabbits and getting unreasonably fat. This was all very unfair on Ruby Biggles, who, astonished by her husband’s bravery (which had not heretofore been apparent), genuinely believed he was off fighting the enemy. But she took to gangsterhood like a fish to water and firmly upheld her husband’s core principles. They were as follows:
1. Never try to reason with people. Threaten them instead.
2. Never make a threat you don’t intend to follow through.
3. Try to make your threats as creative and original as possible. Then they’ll really stick in people’s minds.
4. Only trust Mr Topsey and Mr Turvey.
This last rule referred to Mr Biggles’s henchmen, Vaughn Topsey and Shaun Turvey. They were both
actually
fighting in the war and their places in the organisation had been filled by their daughters, Deirdre and Evelyn. Deirdre Topsey and Evelyn Turvey were both charming in every respect except one: they both really,
really
liked hurting people. They were the perfect sidekicks for Ruby Biggles, who always liked to have everything pleasant about her and insisted that any violence be conducted in locations as far from her person as possible. It wasn’t that she was kind or anything; she just didn’t like mess.
Glory be. The piglets have triumphed. They’ve galloped down a dappled track, stopped by the apples, started to eat them and got covered by the veil, and they’ve done it FOUR times perfectly! Then they ran down a sun-drenched hill chased by the children. It’s a miracle, in short. David Brown, our Line Producer (see Glossary) is looking all pink he’s so happy. ‘I can’t believe it!’ he keeps saying. ‘They did it! They did it four times!’ Line producers are always very relieved when things go well because they tend to be the first person to get shouted at when things
aren’t
going well.
Later: I’m sitting in a field doing a bit of pig-calming. Turns out they’re exhausted by all that acting. Baby pig slept in my arms for a full half-hour. Bit whiffy. But very sweet. Anyway, back to Misses Topsey and Turvey and Phil.
So there was Phil, down in the posh casino pretending he’s got money. He took out his pretend pigskin wallet and slapped a five-pound note down on the table. The people around the club looked at him doubtfully. He seemed down at heel but there did appear to be a large wad of banknotes in his hand. This was in fact a chunk of toilet paper cleverly disguised as money. In those days, toilet paper wasn’t nice and soft and absorbent but crinkly and hard and shiny like real paper. (There was a cheap brand called Izal which was like wiping your bottom with your homework. I don’t want to go into it. It was most unpleasant. I don’t think they make it any more.) So Phil didn’t have any real money and only had the fiver because he’d nicked it out of Mrs Docherty’s till. The game began, and for the first time in his life, Phil won. He kept winning. The next game and the next and the one after that until he was sitting behind a huge pile of chips worth thousands of pounds. Of course they’d let him win. That’s what they do. They let you win and win and then they grab it all back at the end with whatever you’re wearing thrown in. But Phil didn’t know that. He just thought he was the best gambler in the world and that finally the world had found out.
Then another amazing thing happened. For the first time in his life, Phil decided to be sensible. He decided to gather up all his chips and cash them in. They were worth enough – enough to buy him that sky-blue Bentley and drive it about the place until he was sick of it. As he turned from the table, his pockets bulging, he came face to face with a very large woman in a print frock. This, of course, was Mrs Biggles.
‘Hello, Mr Green,’ she said, smiling at him with enormous and maternal warmth. ‘What good luck you’ve been having!’
Oh, she was smiling and smiling. Phil preened and winked and kissed Mrs Biggles’s hand. Then he made to get by her and head for the cashier’s desk.
‘Where are you going, Mr Green?’ said Mrs Biggles, sounding sad.
‘Just to cash in my chips,’ said Phil.
‘Why don’t you have one last throw?’ said Mrs Biggles encouragingly. And she smiled and smiled. Phil, ignoring the tiny note of alarm that had started to go off in his head, thought that he might as well oblige, since she was being so charming and smiling at him so sweetly. Accordingly, and with many winks and grimaces intended to convey his mystery and appeal, he returned to the table and set down a couple of the smaller chips on number nine.
Mrs Biggles’s voice cut in from behind.
‘Put all Mr Green’s chips on number twenty-one, Gervaise.’
Very suddenly, his pockets were roughly emptied and Phil saw the whole evening’s winnings being placed on number twenty-one.
‘But –’ He whirled back to face her. She was still smiling, but somehow Phil knew that she wasn’t smiling on the inside. He realised that outright refusal was not an option. So he attempted a compromise:
‘It’s just that twenty-one isn’t my lucky number, that’s all,’ he said.
‘Never mind, Phil,’ said Mrs Biggles. ‘It’s mine.’
Gervaise spun the wheel, the ball landed on number nine and all Phil’s winnings were swept away.
‘There, there, Phil,’ said Mrs Biggles. ‘You’re a rich man – have another go.’
Phil was about to explain that he had a bit of a headache and didn’t want another go, when more chips were brought over and Mrs Biggles handed them to him.
‘I know your word is good, Phil. You don’t have to show me your money,’ she said sweetly. ‘Just put all this on number twenty-one.’
And thus it was that Phil was forced to gamble away money he didn’t have. And thus it was that he pledged the family farm to Mrs Biggles and returned to the village with horror in his heart and death at his heels.
Goodness only knows what day it is, but I must just tell you about the shenanigans on set. We are dealing with the truncated hours that the children are allowed to work as well as a prosthetic pig diving into the pond and a diver in full scuba gear under the water moving the pig along so that visual effects can fiddle with the image later, a camera on a Luna crane, water that you can’t see in so the diver keeps going in the wrong direction and three children on the bank trying to react to something that isn’t there. The whole thing is a nightmare for Martin. I’ve offered him a cyanide pill. We may have to share it. I adore the results that visual effects give us, and they are a wondrous team, but I hate the methods we have to use to get there.
Ugh.
Later: I am wet through. This is how it happened.
It was very difficult for the children to act delight and astonishment with nothing to react
to
. So I made a little plot with Martin – the camera started to roll and Martin pulled me bodily off the set and pushed me into the water, where I did quite a lot of very silly things. The children were delighted and astonished, and now that it’s in ‘The Can’ (see Glossary) I am delighted and astonished too.