Mary Poppins Comes Back

by P. L. Travers

  Another and younger voice cried his name. “George! George!”

  And the spell was broken.

  With a start, Mr Banks returned to the Herb Garden and all familiar things. It had been nothing, he told himself, a moment’s madness, a slip of the mind.

  “Impossible!” He laughed nervously, as he met Mary Poppins’ glance.

  “All things are possible,” she said primly.

  His eyebrows went up. Was she mocking him?

  “Even the impossible?” he asked, mocking her in return.

  “Even that,” she assured him.

  “George!” The calling voice held a note of panic.

  “I’m here,” he answered. “Safe and sound!” He turned away from the moonstruck moment, the trance, the dream, whatever it was.

  “After all,” he thought, “it’s Midsummer’s Eve. One expects to be bewitched.”

  “Oh, George,” cried Mrs Banks, wringing her hands, “the children are off on a supper picnic. And I can’t find them. I’m afraid they are lost!”

  He strode towards the fluttering shape that was crossing the lawn towards him.

  “How could they be lost? They’re with Mary Poppins. We can trust her to bring them home. For you’re coming with me, my True Love. Wonderful news! Guess what it is! I think I’ve discovered a new star and I want to look at it through a spy-glass. If it’s true, I’ll be made Star-Gazer-in-Chief and you shall be Queen of the May.”

  “Don’t be silly, George,” she giggled. “You and your stars! You’re always making fun of me.” But she didn’t mind him being silly and she liked being called his True Love.

  “Admiral! Admiral! Wait for us! We want to look through your tel-es-co-pe!”

  Mr Banks’ voice, a fading echo, came floating back to the Herb Garden. And, at the same moment, the chorus of singers by the Lake came to the end of their song.

  “Two, two are the lily-white boys,

  A-clothed all in green-o

  One is one and all alone

  And ever more shall be so!”

  “Ever more,” the Bird Woman murmured, glancing up at the sky. “Well, I must be getting along. I’ve a dish of Irish stew on the hob and he’ll be hungry when he gets home.”

  She nodded in the direction of the Park Keeper who was still tossing twigs and branches and crying their names to the air.

  “Good King Henry! Mistletoe! Lovage! All you want, Sir and lads!”

  And none of them came down.

  “Come, Arthur,” said Mrs Turvy. “It’s time we were going home.”

  “If we have a home,” grumbled Mr Turvy, still very down in the dumps. “What about fires and earthquakes, Topsy? Anything could have happened.”

  “Nothing has happened to it – you’ll see. Come to tea on Thursday, Mary. Things will be better then.” Mrs Turvy led her husband away, guiding him through the shadows.

  “Wait for me, Mrs Smith, my dear!” Mrs Corry gave her bird-like shriek. The threepenny bits on her coat were a-twinkle and the spot on her collar where the Bear had touched it now shone like a glowing button. “I have to get my beauty sleep or what will Prince Charming say – tee-hee?” She grinned at her two large daughters.

  “Stir your stumps, Fannie and Annie,” she said. “Come home and stuff some herbs under your pillows – Sowbread and Cuckoo’s Meat might do the trick! – and perhaps I’ll get you off my hands. Handsome husbands and ten thousand a year. Shake a leg, you galumphing giraffes! Pull up your socks! Skedaddle!”

  She made a curtsey to Mary Poppins who received it with a gracious bow. Then away she went, prancing in her elastic boots between her plodding daughters, with the Bird Woman sailing along beside them, like a full-rigged ship, on the grass.

  The Herb Garden, so lately full of light and movement, was still now, a pool of darkness.

  “Jane, take your top,” said Mary Poppins. “It is time we too were going home.” And the many-coloured tin planet that hummed and spun so harmoniously was stowed away with the picnic things, silent and motionless, as Jane swung the basket from her hand.

  Michael looked round for his string bag and suddenly remembered.

  “I’ve nothing to carry, Mary Poppins,” he complained.

  “Carry yourself,” she told him briskly, as she turned to the perambulator and gave it a vigorous push. “Step along, please, and best foot forward.”

  “Which is the best foot, Mary Poppins?”

  “The one that’s in front, of course!”

  “But it’s sometimes the left and sometimes the right. They can’t both be the best,” he protested.

  “Michael Banks!” She gave him one of her savage looks. “If you are determined to argle-bargle, you can stay here and do it all by yourself. We are going home.”

  He did, indeed, want to argle-bargle and, if he could, get the better of her. But he knew that she always won in the end. And, anyway, it would be no fun to argue with the empty air since it could not answer back.

  He decided he would carry himself. But how did one do that, he wondered. He could do it more easily, he thought, with something in his hand. So he seized on the handle of the perambulator and, to his surprise, became a boy who was carrying himself.

  Jane came to the other side so that, with Mary Poppins between, all three were pushing together. They were suddenly glad to feel her nearness in the wide unfamiliar darkness.

  For this was no longer their daytime Park, their intimate ordinary playground. They had never before been up so late nor understood that night changes the world and makes the known unknown. The trees that, by daylight, were merely trees – something to shade you from the sun or swing on when the Park Keeper was not looking – were now strange beings with a life of their own, full of secrets never disclosed, holding their breath till you went past.

  Camellias, Rhododendrons, Lilacs, that by day were clustering shapes of green, were now nameless creatures full of menace, lying in wait, ready to spring.

  The night itself was a whole new country, unmapped and unexplored, where the only thing that could not be doubted was the steady moving shape between them; flesh and bone under its cotton dress, the well-worn handbag and parrot umbrella aswing from the crook of its arm. They felt it rather than saw it, for they dared not lift their eyes. Nor could they be sure, in this crowding darkness, of the brightness they had seen. Or had they really seen it at all? Might they not have dreamed it?

  To the right of them a bush moved. It muttered and mumbled to itself. Was it about to pounce?

  They huddled closer to the cotton dress.

  “It must be somewhere,” the bush was saying. “I had to take it off, I remember, in order to find the letter.”

  With an effort the children lifted their heads and nervously peered through the dark. They had come, they saw, to the Rose Garden. And the bush, edging forward as if to spring, became, by magic, a man. Ceremoniously clad, in top hat, black jacket and striped trousers, he was crawling about on hands and knees, clearly looking for something.

  “I’ve lost my cricket cap,” he told them. “Here, by the fountain or under the roses. I don’t suppose any of you have seen it?”

  “It’s in the Herb Garden,” said Mary Poppins.

  The Prime Minister sat back on his heels. “In the Herb Garden! But that’s at the other end of the Park! However could it have got there? Cricket caps can’t fly. Or maybe. . .” He glanced around uneasily. “Maybe they can on a night like this. Strange things happen, you know, on Midsummer’s Eve.” He scrambled to his feet.

  “Well, I’ve just got time,” he looked at his watch, “to fetch it and get to the Palace.” He doffed his hat to Mary Poppins, stumbled away into the darkness and bumped into a clump of bushes that was stealthily moving towards him.

  “Really!” The Prime Minister uttered the exclamation as he hurriedly jumped aside. “You shouldn’t go creeping about like that – as though you were tracking tigers or something. It gave me quite a start.”

  “Hssssst!” hissed a
bush. “Where’s the Park Keeper?”

  “My dear fellow, how should I know? I don’t keep Park Keepers in my pocket. Nothing’s in its right place tonight. He could be anywhere. Why do you want him?”

  The clump shuffled a little nearer and became the Lord Mayor and two Aldermen. Their robes were looped up round their waists and their bare legs shone whitely in the dark.

  “That’s just it. I don’t want him. We need to get safely out of the Park without him getting his eyes on these.” The Lord Mayor drew back a fold of his cloak and revealed a large glass jam-jar.

  “Tiddlers! You’ll catch it if he finds you. The Lord Mayor breaking his own Bye-laws! Ask that lady over there.” The Prime Minister nodded at Mary Poppins. “She told me where to find my cap. And I must be off to get it. Goodnight!”

  The Lord Mayor turned. “Why it’s you, Miss Poppins. How fortunate!” He glanced around warily and tiptoed over the grass.

  “I wonder,” he whispered into her ear, “if by any chance you’ve come across—”

  “The Park Keeper?” Mary Poppins enquired.

  “Sh! Not so loud. He might hear you.”

  “No, he won’t.” She favoured him with a Sphinx-like look. “He’s far away at the end of the Park.”

  Gooseberry bush or no gooseberry bush, she was not going to disclose the fact that the Park Keeper, if only for tonight, was letting Bye-laws be.

  “Splendid!” The Lord Mayor beckoned the Aldermen to him. “We can nip off home along the Lane and help ourselves. . .” he winked at them, “to a cherry or two as we go!”

  “I think you will find they have all been picked,” Mary Poppins informed them.

  “What – all?” The three were scandalised. “Vandalism! We must speak to the King. What can the world be coming to?” They spoke to each other in outraged whispers as they scurried off with the jam-jar.

  The perambulator creaked on its way. Tall, ghostly shapes loomed up before it and turned into swings as it came nearer. A thick black shadow went past sneezing and then revealed itself as Ellen who, wrapped in the Policeman’s jacket, was being escorted home. Another moved out from among the trees and was seen to be a solid mass comprising Miss Lark and the Professor, with the two dogs huddling against them, as though anxious not to be seen.

  “Goodnight, all!” chirruped Miss Lark, as she spied the little group. “And what a good night!” She waved at the sky. “Did you ever see such a sparkle, Professor?”

  The Professor tilted back his head. “Dear me! someone seems to be setting off fireworks. Can this be the Fifth of November?”

  “Goodnight,” called Jane and Michael shrilly, and looked, for the first time, upwards. They had been so intent on the darkness around them and the changes the night had wrought in the earth, that they had forgotten the sky. But the blaze above them, of stars that bent so bright and near – the party evidently in full swing – that too was the work of the night. True, the night had created the frightening shapes but then, as though to make amends, had changed them into familiar figures. And what but the night was bringing them, with each turn of the perambulator’s wheel, each best foot – left or right – thrust forward, to the place from which they had started?

  Ahead of them, beyond the line of cherry trees, lights began to appear – not so bright as the ones above but, for all that, bright enough. It seemed as though each house in the Lane, leaning so closely to the next, had lit itself from its neighbour. There were constellations both below and above, the earth and the sky were next door to each other.

  “Now, no more day-dreaming, Professor. We want our supper. So do the dogs.” Miss Lark seized the arm of her friend, who was raptly gazing into the darkness.

  “My dear Miss Wren, I am not day-dreaming. I am looking at a fallen star. See! Over there, on that lady’s hat.” He swept the newspaper from his head and bowed to Mary Poppins.

  Miss Lark put on her lorgnette.

  “Nonsense, Professor! Falling stars just fizzle out. They never reach the earth. That’s just a common pigeon feather – covered with luminous paint, or something. Magicians use things like that for their tricks.”

  And she whisked him through the Lane Gate.

  “Is that you, Professor?” called Mr Banks, racing full tilt along the Lane, with Mrs Banks at his heels.

  The Professor looked uncertain. “I suppose it is. People tell me so. I’m never quite sure myself.”

  “Well, I’ve glorious news. I’ve found a new star!”

  “You mean the one on that hat? I’ve seen it.”

  “No, no! On the Belt, my dear chap. Up till now it has had just three – a trio of shiners in a row. But, tonight, I’ve distinctly seen a fourth.”

  “Miss Partridge says it’s just luminous paint.”

  “Paint? Absurd! You can’t put paint on the sky, man! It’s there, as large as life – and solid. I’ve verified it. So has Admiral Boom. We’ve looked at it through his telescope. And who’s Miss Partridge, anyway?”

  “Lark!” said Miss Lark. “Do remember, Professor!”

  “No, no, it’s not just a lark! He means it. He’s seen it through a telescope and telescopes don’t lie.”

  “Of course they don’t. They reveal facts. So, we’re off to the Planetarium. The news must be spread abroad.”

  “But, George, the children!” Mrs Banks broke in.

  “Don’t worry. They’re all right, I tell you. Put on a hat and I’ll change my tie.” Mr Banks was panting with excitement. “Perhaps they’ll call it after me. Imagine it! Fame at last! A heavenly body by the name of Banks!”

  And the happy astronomer dashed away, dragging Mrs Banks by the hand, to the door of his own house.

  “Why Banks, I wonder? I always thought his name was Cooper. And I could have sworn it was hat, not belt. But my memory is not what it was – if, indeed, it was ever what it was.” Vague and perplexed, yet still hopeful, the Professor looked round for his fallen star.

  But Miss Lark was having no more nonsense. She took her friend firmly by the arm and hurried him off to supper.

  The Professor, however, need not have worried. His memory was what it had been. His fallen star, even now, was making its way towards the Lane Gate. The feather glowed among the daisies and its light was reflected in the pairs of cherries that hung below the hat brim.

  Jane and Michael looked up at it and then from the feather to the sky. Half dazzled by the resplendent light, they searched for, and found, what they sought. Ah, there! They needed no telescope to tell them.

  Among the celestial ornaments, Orion’s Belt gleamed on its unseen wearer – three large stars in a slanting line, and beside them, small, modest, but bright as a glow-worm, a fourth piece of bric-a-brac!

  Neither the feather nor the extra star had been there when they set out. Their adventure had, indeed, been true. At last they could not believe it. And, meeting Mary Poppins’ eyes, they knew that she knew what they knew. All things, indeed, were possible – sky-light upon an earthy hat-brim, earth-light on a skyey girdle.

  They craned their necks as they straggled beside her, and gazed at the conflagration. How was the party going, they wondered. Was someone strutting in his new-found sparkle; another boasting of his elegant mittens; the other displaying their treasure-trove? And was there anyone up there to remind them, with a toss of the head, that handsome was as handsome did? No! There was only one such person and she was walking between them.

  Behind them, Mr Twigley’s bird burst into song again. Before them lay the Lane Gate. And as the perambulator creaked towards it they could see a necklace of shining windows beyond the cherry trees. The front door of Number Seventeen, left open by their excited parents, threw a long light down the garden path, as if to welcome them.

  “Mary Poppins,” said Jane, as they pushed their way on the last lap of the day’s excursion. “What will you do with your earrings?”

  “Eat them,” said Mary Poppins promptly. “Along with a cup of strong tea and a slice of buttered toa
st.” What else were cherries for, after all?

  “And what about my string bag?” Michael hugged her sleeve.

  “Kindly do not swing on my arm. I am not a garden gate, Michael!”

  “But where is it? Tell me!” he demanded. Was Pegasus, even now, he wondered, munching a meal of Coltsfoot?

  Her shoulders went up with their characteristic shrug.

  “String bags – pooh! – they’re two a penny. Lose one and you can get another.”

  “Ah! But perhaps it’s not lost!” He gave her a darting, sidelong glance. “And neither will you be, Mary Poppins, when you skedaddle off.”

  She drew herself up, insulted.

  “I’ll thank you, Michael Banks, to mind your manners. I am not in the habit of skedaddling.”

  “Oh, yes, you are, Mary Poppins,” said Jane. “One day here and the next day gone, without a Word of Warning.”

  “But she’s not nowhere, even so. And neither is my string bag,” said Michael. “But where? Where, Mary Poppins?” Every place, surely, had a name! “How shall we know how to find you?”

  They held their breaths, waiting for an answer. She looked at them for a long time and her blue eyes sparkled with it. They could see it dance on to her tongue, all agog to make its disclosure. And then – it danced away. Whatever the secret was, she would keep it.

  “Ah!” she said. And smiled.

  “Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!” repeated the Nightingale from its branch.

  And above, from every quarter of the sky, there came an echoing “Ah!” The whole world was ringing with the riddle. But nothing, and nobody, answered it.

  They might have known! She would not tell them. If she had never explained before, why should she do so now?

  Instead, she gave them her haughty glance.

  “I know where you two will be in a minute. And that’s into bed, spit-spot!”

  They laughed. The old phrase made them feel warm and secure. And even if there was no answer, there had been a reply. Earth and sky, like neighbours chatting over a fence, had exchanged the one same word. Nothing was far. All was near. And bed, they now realised, was exactly where they wanted to be, the safest place in the world.