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2. To-ings, Fro-ings and the Four Strong Winds

Perry and Nell were not wishing for anything. They were outside having lessons. Nell was relaxing in her deckchair on the raft wearing a large, black, three-cornered hat. Zeus, her one-eyed pet crow, was perched on the mast. Blue lay on the very edge of the raft with a patch over one eye and his nose between his paws. He was supervising Perry, who was doing the doggie paddle in the dam wearing red rubber water-wings, green goggles and a large and extremely realistic fake tattoo of an anchor on his left shoulder.

When Layla and Griffin arrived at the dam, they realised at once Nell had used her Grandmother Magic to transform the Kingdom of Silk. It was now a place where galleons laden with treasure sailed the seven seas and pirates carried wicked-looking cutlasses clamped between their teeth. But even pirates have to go to school and what better place to learn than Nasty Nellie’s Floating Academy for Pirates and Plunderers?

It was because of Miss Cherry, from Saint Benedict’s School, that Perry had pirate lessons. It was she who had first noticed Perry’s different way of learning. Miss Cherry knew that children with a different way of learning needed teachers with a different way of teaching. She also knew that Nell and Annie Silk were experts in different ways of teaching. And so, on Tuesdays and on Thursdays, Perry Angel had lessons at home with Nell or with Annie and sometimes with them both.

Nell and Annie didn’t take any days off for conferences because they could speak to each other about the curriculum whenever they felt like it. They could also change the timetable at short notice. For instance, on a misty, mushroomy morning Nell might say to Perry, ‘Let’s have Nature Study this morning instead of Arithmetic’.

Then she and Perry would put on their yellow raincoats and black gumboots and splash through the puddles to Mr Canning’s orchard to look for fairy rings in the rain-spangled grass. Or if a storm threatened while they were watching the robin redbreast build her nest in the Cox’s Orange Pippin, Nell might schedule a cookery lesson instead.

Perry liked cooking classes but was not so keen on history. When Nell discovered this, she introduced a new topic called The History of Classic Australian Cuisine and included some excellent lessons including: How a Singer Named Melba Turned into a Pudding, Why Ballerinas Prefer Pavlova Without Strawberries on Top and Lord Lamington’s Contribution to Australian Cooking.

Nell always began these lessons with the words, once upon a time, and usually ended them with a cooking demonstration. Soon Perry began to look forward to Nell’s historical cooking classes. As well as finding out about some very interesting people who lived in the olden days, Perry learned to cook and count, to measure and mix, sift and stir and sprinkle.

On in-between days Perry had lessons in Miss Cherry’s classroom. He liked Miss Cherry, who had cheeks like her name. He also liked his grown-up friend and classroom helper, Mr Jenkins, and Mr Davis, the bus driver who called him Buddy. So as much as Perry loved learning with his grandmother and his mother, he didn’t mind going to school.

Layla and Griffin went to Saint Benedict’s every day except weekends but would much rather have gone to Nasty Nellie’s Academy. They had been there before and knew the ropes. Knowing the ropes is pirate language for knowing how things work.

Everyone had their own piratey name, including the raft. She was christened Sweet Suzy with a bottle of Nell’s home-made ginger beer tipped over her bow. Nell was Nasty Nellie the Pirate Queen. Layla was Sinbad the Sailor, Griffin was Jack Tar and Perry was Davey Jones. Even Blue played along. He was Long John Silver and Zeus was Jolly Roger, keeping a look-out from the mast and squawking a warning when he saw an enemy on the horizon. If Ben joined in, he was Barnacle Ben and when Annie came, she was Lorelei, the beautiful maiden who tried to lure the pirate ship onto the rocks with her songs.

When she saw Griffin and Layla, Nasty Nellie raised a lunch-wrap tube telescope to her eye. ‘Shiver me timbers, there be trouble on the horizon! Ahoy there. State your business, land lubbers!’

Sinbad giggled, then cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘We want to board, Captain.’ For the moment she forgot all about the wish and stripped down to the swimming costume she wore under her clothes.

‘Surrender your weapons you scoundrels!’ shouted the Pirate Queen.

‘We haven’t got any weapons, Nasty Nellie,’ said Jack Tar, peeling off his T-shirt.

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‘No weapons! What sort of pirate has no weapons? Come aboard this instant and I’ll find you some swords,’ said Nasty Nellie.

Sinbad tossed her journal on the pile of discarded clothes. Then she and Jack Tar raced into the water and swam to Sweet Suzy. As they hauled themselves on board, the pirate vessel bobbed and dipped dangerously low in the water. But the Pirate Queen was perfectly safe, because Barnacle Ben was a carpenter in his spare time and had nailed the legs of her chair to the deck in case of stormy seas.

‘Welcome to the Academy,’ said Nasty Nellie clutching the armrests of her seat until Sweet Suzy steadied. Then she picked up a black pillowcase decorated with a white skull and crossbones and emptied out its contents. There were two enormous black felt moustaches, an assortment of eye patches, a pair of large golden hoop earrings, several spotted scarves and a stuffed shoulder-parrot. Last of all, two magnificent plywood cutlasses with plastic jewels stuck on the handles and wickedly curved gold-painted blades clattered onto the deck.

‘If you want to join our classes, you’d better make yourselves look respectable with some of these. You’ve already missed out on adding-ups and taking-aways,’ said the Pirate Queen, filling her hand with copper coins and letting them trickle through her fingers back into the bucket beside her. ‘Most important for pirates to know their adding-ups for when they find treasure, and their taking-aways for when other pirates steal it.’

Then she pointed to Davey Jones with a pair of barbecue tongs sticking out from the end of her sleeve, the result of a terrible battle she’d fought with a shark.

‘Jones be learning to stay afloat in rough weather now, and growing strong muscles for digging holes and burying treasures. You can join him if you like.’

Jack Tar lowered himself carefully off the edge of Sweet Suzy so as not to dislodge his moustache. But Sinbad forgot about hers and did a belly-whacker that sent up a water spout higher than a blue whale’s. The sea grew choppy and Long John Silver jumped in next to Davey Jones and doggie paddled beside him for encouragement.

After a while the Pirate Queen leaned down from her deckchair. With her one good hand and the barbecue tongs, she pulled a rope attached to Sweet Suzy at one end and looped around Davey Jones’s middle at the other. Then she hauled him towards the raft, like a net of sardines.

‘Your lips be as blue as the briny, Jones,’ she said.

Pirates usually call the sea ‘the briny’ and people by their last name and get their ‘bes’ and their ‘ares’ mixed up, like this: ‘Be you cold?’

Davey Jones clung to the edge of the raft, shivering so much he could barely speak. But as brave as could be and in proper pirate talk he said, ‘Nnnnnnno, I be nnnnnnot ccccccold.’

Nasty Nellie was not convinced. She put the cardboard telescope to her eye and did an up-close inspection of Jones’s lips. ‘You’d better come aboard and dry off, me hearty.’

Sinbad and Jack Tar helped Jones and his mate, Long John Silver, scramble aboard. They untied the rope from around Jones’s middle because his fingers wouldn’t work properly and the Pirate Queen towelled his hair dry and then the rest of him.

‘Nnnnnnot that bbbit,’ he said, pointing to the very realistic fake tattoo on his shoulder. Then, because even pirate grandmothers have a soft spot in their hearts, especially for small, blue-lipped pirates with fake tattoos, the Pirate Queen cuddled Davey Jones on her lap.

When his bones at last stopped rattling she said, ‘Gather round crew, while we study the charts and plot a course to our next destination.’ She rummaged around in her piratey pillowcase, pulled out something which looked like a large deflated beach ball and handed it to Jack Tar. ‘Blow a stiff southerly into that for me, Tar.’

Jack Tar blew till he was giddy and green and the ball had expanded into a globe of indigo and amethyst, crimson, emerald and sunflower yellow. A plastic world of sapphire seas, dusty deserts and juicy jungles, of archipelagos and isthmuses. A paradise for pirates.

Sweet Suzy and her captain and crew sailed by the Galapagos Islands, the Rock of Gibraltar and Arctic icebergs. They charted a course along latitudes, down longitudes, over the Tropic of Capricorn, under the Tropic of Cancer and across the exotic equator. They sailed north and south and east and west. And when they stepped ashore, they saw wonders such as lily pickers, fire eaters, chimney sweepers, and tigers’ teeth and tails and toes.

But by lunchtime, the Pirate Queen and her crew decided that of all the islands, continents and countries, home was best and they set sail for the Kingdom of Silk, at Cameron’s Creek, Australia.

‘When are we doing the dancing and singing, Nasty Nellie?’ Sinbad reminded the Pirate Queen.

‘When Barnacle Ben returns from his voyage to the unknown.’

‘I thought he was coming back early today,’ said Jack Tar, shading his eyes with his hand, straining to see Barnacle Ben’s Bedford sailing over the horizon.

‘So he was, so he was. But a pirate’s life be ruled by the to-ings and fro-ings of the tides and by the four strong winds. And not even the Queen of Pirates has power over them, me hearties. Now, weigh anchor, trim the sails and steer us through the heads.’

Jack Tar and Sinbad took an oar each. Dodging man-eating sharks and monstrous squid, they rowed to the rickety jetty and moored Sweet Suzy in the safe harbour of the Kingdom of Silk.

Once their feet touched land, Perry and Blue went to fetch Annie from her studio and Nell waited while Layla and Griffin dressed themselves. When Layla picked up her journal she remembered the rewritten wish and opened the page to show Nell.

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‘Look, Nell,’ she said. ‘Look what I wrote in my journal. Griff and me thought it up this morning.’

Nell read everything Layla had written, the large print and the fine. Here and there she smiled and at the end she sighed a little.

‘It’s a lovely wish,’ she said, ‘but you know none of us can stay forever, no matter how much we want to.’

Then, before anyone had time to feel too sad, she said in her best buccaneer’s voice, ‘Right, now I be going to the galley to sample a sardine or two. Who be coming with me?’