Mary Poppins Comes Back

by P. L. Travers

  Then Michael made a discovery.

  “Well, bed’s somewhere!” he exclaimed, surprised at his own cleverness. Plain, ordinary bed was Somewhere. He had never thought of that before! Everything had to be somewhere.

  “And so will you be, Mary Poppins, with your carpet-bag and parrot umbrella, sniffing and being important!”

  He gave her a mischievous, questioning glance, daring her to deny it.

  “And well-brought-up and respectable too!” Jane added her teasing to his.

  “Impudence!”

  She swung her handbag at them, and missed.

  For already they were darting away to what was waiting for them.

  Wherever she was, she would not be lost. That was answer enough.

  “Somewhere! Somewhere! Somewhere!” they cried.

  And, leaving the dark Park behind, they ran, laughing, across the Lane, through the gate and up the path and into the lighted house. . .

  A.M.G.D.

  THE HERBS IN THE STORY

  and their botanical, local and Latin names

  SOUTHERNWOOD Old man, Lad’s love Artemisia abrotanum

  LAVENDER Lavandula vera

  MONEYWORT Creeping Jenny, Herb twopence

  Lysimachia nummularia

  SWEET BASIL Ocimum basilicum

  DANDELION Dens leonis, Swine’s snout Taraxacum officinale

  CHAMOMILE Anthemis nobilis

  HONEYSUCKLE Woodbind Lonicera caprifolium

  FOXGLOVE Folk’s glove, Fairy thimbles Digitalis purpurea

  PARSLEY Petroselinum crispum

  FENNEL Foeniculum vulgare

  SOLOMON’S SEAL Lady’s seals Polygonatum multiflorum

  COLTSFOOT Ass’s foot, Coughwort Tussilago farfara

  GOOSEBERRY Feverberry, Goosegogs Ribes grossularia

  RAMPION Campanula rapunculus

  CUCUMBER Cowcumber Cucumis sativus

  HEARTSEASE Love in idleness, Herb constancy Viola tricolor

  LEMON BALM Herb livelong Melissa officinalis

  ELDER Pipe tree, Black elder Sambucus nigra

  ROSEMARY Polar plant, Compass-weed Rosmarinus officinalis

  FORGET-ME-NOT Myosotis symphytifolia

  ST JOHN’S WORT All heal Hypericum perforatum

  MARIGOLD Ruddes, Mary Gowles, Oculis Christi

  Calendula officinalis

  CORIANDER Coriandrum sativum

  CORNFLOWER Bluebow, Bluebottle, Hurtsickle Centaurea cyanis

  MARJORAM Knotted Margery Origanum majorana

  RUE Herb of grace, Herbygrass Ruta graveolens

  GOOD KING HENRY Goosefoot, Fat hen Chenopodium Bonus Henricus

  SWEET CICELY Chervil, Sweet fern Myrrhis odorata

  ROCKET Dame’s violet, Vesper flower Hesperis matronalis

  BRACKEN Brake fern, Female fern Pteris aquilana

  MISTLETOE Birdlime mistletoe, Herbe de la Croix Viscum album

  LOVAGE Levisticum officinale

  CYCLAMEN Sowbread Cyclamen hederaefolium

  SORREL Cuckoo’s meat, Sour suds Rumex acetosa

  To Bruno

  CRACK! WENT THE teacup against the bowl of soapsuds. Mrs Brill, washing the china, scrabbled among the sparkling bubbles and fished it up in two pieces.

  “Ah well,” she said, as she tried, and failed, to fit them together. “It’s needed somewhere else, I suppose.” And she flung the two halves, with their twined roses and forget-me-nots, into the dustbin.

  “Where?” demanded Michael. “Where will it be needed?” Who would need a broken cup? he wondered. It seemed a silly idea.

  “How should I know?” fussed Mrs Brill. “It’s an old saying, that’s all. Now, you get along with your bit of work, and sit yourself down while you do it so that nothing else gets broken.”

  Michael settled himself on the floor and took the dishes as she handed them to him, drying them with the tea-towel and sighing as he did so.

  Ellen had one of her dreadful colds, Robertson Ay was asleep on the lawn and Mrs Banks was taking an afternoon rest on the sofa in the drawing-room.

  “As usual,” Mrs Brill had complained, “no one to give me a helping hand.”

  “Michael will,” Mary Poppins had said, seizing a tea-towel and thrusting it at him. “And the rest of us will go shopping and bring home the groceries. That will help.”

  “Why me?” Michael had grumbled, kicking a chair leg. He would like to have kicked Mary Poppins but that he would never have dared. For fetching the groceries was a special treat because, whenever the bill was paid, the grocer gave each of them – even Mary Poppins – a tasty liquorice stick.

  “Well, why not you?” said Mary Poppins, giving him one of her fierce blue looks. “Jane did it last time. And somebody has to help Mrs Brill.”

  He knew there was no answer to that. If he mentioned liquorice, he would only get a short, sharp sniff. And anyway, even the King, he supposed, had sometimes to dry a dish or two.

  So he kicked another leg of the chair, watching Mary Poppins as, with Jane carrying a string bag and the Twins and Annabel huddled into the perambulator, she went away down the garden path.

  “Don’t polish them. We haven’t time for that. Just dry them and put them in a pile,” Mrs Brill advised him.

  So there he sat by the heaped-up dishes, forced into doing a kindly act and not feeling kind at all.

  And after a time – it seemed like years to Michael – they all came back, laughing and shouting and, sure enough, sucking liquorice sticks. Jane gave him one, hot from her hand.

  “The grocer sent it specially to you. And somebody’s lost the tin of cocoa.”

  “Somebody?” Mary Poppins said tartly. “You, Jane, were carrying the bag! Who else could that somebody be?”

  “Well, perhaps it just dropped out in the Park. I could go and look for it, Mary Poppins.”

  “Not now. What’s done is done. Somebody loses, somebody finds. Besides, it’s time for tea.”

  And she gathered the little ones out of the perambulator and hurried them all up the stairs before her.

  In no time they were sitting round the Nursery table waiting for hot buttered toast and cake. Except for the liquorice sticks, everything was the same as usual. Mary Poppins’ parrot-headed umbrella, her hat, which today had a pink rose in it, her gloves and her handbag were neatly in their places. The children were all neatly in theirs. And Mary Poppins was going about her afternoon’s work like a neat and orderly whirlwind.

  “It’s just like any other day,” said Number Seventeen to itself, as it listened to the familiar sounds and felt the familiar movements.

  But Number Seventeen was wrong, for at that moment the doorbell rang and Mrs Brill came bustling into the drawing-room with a yellow envelope in her hand.

  “Telegram!” she announced excitedly to Mrs Banks. “Your Aunt Flossie’s broken her leg, maybe, or it could be something worse. I don’t trust telegrams.”

  Mrs Banks took it with a trembling hand. She didn’t trust telegrams either. They always seemed to bring bad news.

  She turned the envelope over and over.

  “Well, aren’t you going to open it?” Mrs Brill was eager to know the worst.

  “Oh, I don’t think I will,” said Mrs Banks. “I’d rather wait until my husband comes home. It is addressed to him, anyway. See – ‘George Banks, Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane’.”

  “Well, if it’s urgent, you’ll be sorry you waited. A telegram is everyone’s business.”

  Mrs Brill reluctantly left the room. She would have enjoyed hearing bad news.

  Mrs Banks eyed the yellow envelope, as it stood there on the mantelpiece, leaning against a photograph and coolly keeping its secret.

  “Perhaps,” she said hopefully to herself, “it’s good news, after all. Mrs Brill doesn’t know everything.”

  But she couldn’t help wishing that this might be one of the days when Mr Banks came home early.

  And, as it happened, it was.

  He had got off the bus at the end
of the Lane and was sauntering home past Number Twenty-one – Admiral Boom’s house that was built like a ship – past Twenty with its honeysuckle hedge, past Nineteen with the fish pond in the garden, until he came to Number Eighteen.

  And there he stopped, full of surprise, and not altogether pleased. Around the gate his neighbours were gathered, all talking earnestly together. The Admiral and Mrs Boom, Mr Twenty and Mrs Nineteen and Miss Lark from Number Sixteen. There was nothing odd in this, of course, a gathering of friends.

  But what stopped Mr Banks in his tracks was the sight of a red-and-white striped tent, the kind that is put over open drains and other holes in the road. And beside it stood a brawny workman deep in conversation with the little group of neighbours.

  “Ah, there you are, Banks, ship ahoy!” The Admiral’s loud voice hailed him. “You’re just the one to find out what this fellow thinks he’s doing.”

  “I don’t think, I know,” said the workman mildly. “I’m looking over this here house to see what repairs it needs.”

  “But it’s empty,” Mr Banks said quickly. “It’s been empty for years and years.”

  “Well, it won’t be empty for long,” said the man. “There’s tenants coming in.”

  “But that’s impossible.” Mr Banks was distressed. “We all like it just as it is. Every street should have its deserted house.”

  “What for?”

  “Well,” began Mr Banks, a trifle uneasily, “so that people can fill it with their own ideas, the kind of neighbours they would like to have. We don’t want just anyone, you know.”

  There was a murmur of assent from them all as they thought of the long-empty rooms of their dear Number Eighteen.

  For the Admiral they were inhabited by a sea captain who had sailed with Nelson and was ready at any moment, no matter what the weather, to heave up the anchor and put to sea.

  Mrs Boom saw it as the home of a little girl with straight brown hair, the kind of child she would like to have had, who wandered about it, soft as a moth, humming gently to herself.

  Mr Twenty, whose wife would never play chess with him, had friends there who were human chessmen – black and white kings and queens, bishops marching from corner to corner, knights riding up and down the stairs.

  Mrs Nineteen, who was rather romantic, believed that in the empty house lived the grandmother she had never seen, telling wonderful bedtime stories, knitting pretty garments for her and always wearing silver slippers, even in the morning.

  For Miss Lark, from Number Sixteen – the grandest dwelling in the Lane – it was the home of another dog exactly like Andrew, an aristocratic little dog who would never choose, as Andrew had done, a vulgar friend like Willoughby.

  As for Mr Banks, he liked to think that in the attic of Number Eighteen, lived an old wise man with a very special telescope which, when you looked through its round glass eye, could show you what the universe was up to.

  “Anyway,” he said to the workman, “it’s probably not fit to live in after being empty for so long. Have you examined the drains?”

  “All of them in perfect condition.”

  “Well, the chimneys. Full of starlings’ nests, I’ll be bound.”

  “Clean as a whistle,” said the man.

  “What about the furniture? Mice making tunnels in the beds. Cockroaches in the kitchen.”

  “Not a mouse, Not a ’roach.”

  “And the dust. It must be everywhere, inches thick.”

  “Whoever comes into this house,” said the man, “won’t even need a duster. Everything’s as good as new. And anyway,” he began to dismantle his red-and-white tent, “houses are for human beings, not harum-scarum fancies.”

  “Well, if it must be, it must be,” sighed Miss Lark. “Come, Andrew, come Willoughby, we will go home.” And she walked away dejectedly, the two dogs at her heels looking equally depressed.

  “You should have gone to sea,” said the Admiral, looking ferociously at the workman.

  “Why?”

  “A sailor would stay on the deck of his ship and not come making trouble for those who live on the land.”

  “Can’t bear the sea, it makes me seasick. And anyway, it’s no fault of mine. I have me orders, ‘to be carried out forthwith’, I was told. The tenants are coming in tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” everyone exclaimed. This was terrible.

  “Let us go home,” coaxed Mrs Boom. “Binnacle is making curry for supper. You’ll like that, won’t you, dear?”

  Binnacle was a retired pirate who daily kept everything shipshape in Admiral Boom’s ship-shaped house.

  “Well, heave up the anchor and sail away, shipmates. There’s nothing else to do.”

  The Admiral took Mrs Boom’s arm and slouched off along the Lane, followed by Mrs Nineteen and Mr Twenty, both looking forlorn.

  “A queer lot you are, I must say.” The workman gathered up tent and tools. “All this to-do over an empty house!”

  “You don’t understand,” said Mr Banks. “For us, it’s not empty, far from it.” And he turned towards his home.

  Across the Lane, he could hear the Park Keeper doing his rounds. “Observe the Rules. Remember the Bye-laws. “The starling on the top of Number Seventeen’s chimney was giving his usual starling shriek. Laughter and shouting came from the Nursery mingled with the comments of Mary Poppins. He could hear Ellen’s endless sneezing, the clatter of dishes in the kitchen, the sleepy snores of Robertson Ay – all the familiar sounds of home, everything the same as usual, comfortable, intimate.

  But now, he thought, everything would be different.

  “I have news for you,” he said glumly, as Mrs Banks met him at the door.

  “And I have news for you,” she said. “There’s a telegram on the mantelpiece.”

  He took the yellow envelope, ripped it open, read the message and was suddenly very still.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, George! Say something! Has anything happened to Aunt Flossie?” Mrs Banks was anxious.

  “It is not Aunt Flossie. Aunt Flossie doesn’t send telegrams. I will read it to you:

  “Coming to live at Number Eighteen.

  Arriving 4.30 tomorrow. Bringing Luti.

  No help required.”

  Mr Banks paused for a moment. “It is signed,” he said, “Euphemia Andrew.”

  Mrs Banks gave a little shriek.

  “Miss Andrew! Oh, I can’t believe it. Our dear Number Eighteen!” For Mrs Banks too had a friend in the house, a lady very much like herself who, when Mrs Brill took long days off to see her cousin’s niece’s baby or Ellen had one of her fearful colds or Robertson Ay fell asleep in the rosebed, would throw up her arms when she heard the news and say, “Oh, how dreadful! How will you manage?”

  This Mrs Banks found a great comfort. Now she must face her troubles alone.

  “And Luti!” she cried. “Who could that be?”

  “Probably not who but what. One of her medicines, perhaps.”

  Mr Banks sat down on a chair and put his head in his hands. Miss

  Andrew had been his governess when he was a little boy, a lady who, though strong as a camel, took medicines by the dozen; a lady so strict, so stern, so forbidding that everyone knew her as the Holy Terror. And now, she, of all people, was coming to live next door to him in a house that was full of his dreams.

  He looked at the telegram. “No help required. Well, that’s a blessing. I won’t have to light a fire in her bedroom as I did that time she came to stay and disappeared so suddenly and went off to the South Seas.”

  “I wish she had stayed there,” said Mrs Banks. “But come, dear, we must tell the children.”

  “I wish I were in the South Seas myself. Anywhere but here.”

  “Now, George, don’t be gloomy!”

  “Why not? If a man can’t be gloomy in his own house, where can he be gloomy, I’d like to know?” Mr Banks sighed heavily as he followed his wife up the front stairs looking like a man whose familiar world has fallen in
pieces around him.

  The Nursery was in an uproar. Annabel was banging her spoon on the table, John and Barbara, the Twins, were trying to push each other off their chairs, Jane and Michael were wrangling over the last piece of toast.

  “Is this a Nursery or a cageful of monkeys?” Mary Poppins was asking in her sternest voice.

  “A cageful of. . .” Michael was about to be daring when the door suddenly opened.

  “We have news for you all,” said Mrs Banks. “A telegram has come.”

  “Who from?” demanded Jane.

  “Miss Andrew. You remember Miss Andrew?”

  “The Holy Terror!” shouted Michael.

  “Hush! We must always be polite. She is coming to live at Number Eighteen.”

  “Oh, no!” protested both the children. For they did indeed remember Miss Andrew, and how she had once come to stay and had disappeared so strangely.

  “But it’s ours!” cried Michael. “Number Eighteen belongs to us. She can’t come and live there!” He was almost in tears.

  “I’m afraid she can,” said Mrs Banks. “Tomorrow. Bringing someone or something whose name is Luti. And,” she added coaxingly, “we must all be polite and kind, mustn’t we? Mary Poppins, you’ll see that they are neat and tidy and ready to greet her, won’t you?” She turned timidly to Mary Poppins who was standing as still as a doorpost. It would have been impossible to tell what she was thinking.

  “And when,” she said acidly, looking as haughty as a duchess,” were they anything but neat and tidy?”The idea was quite absurd.

  “Oh, never, never,” fluttered Mrs Banks, feeling as she always did with Mary Poppins as though she were a very small girl instead of the mother of five children. “But you know how fussy Miss Andrew is! George!” She turned anxiously to her husband. “Don’t you want to say something?”

  “No,” said Mr Banks fiercely. “I don’t want to say anything.”

  And Mrs Banks, having delivered the unfortunate news, took her husband’s hand and led him away.

  “But I’ve got a friend who lives there,” said Michael. “Gobbo, the clown we saw at the circus, who makes everybody laugh and looks so sad himself.”

  “I think the Sleeping Beauty’s there, lying under a lacy quilt with a spot of blood on her finger.” Jane too had her dreams of the house.