“Ethelred the Unready!” Mr Banks was astonished. “But he was around ten hundred and something!” She’s dotty, poor thing, he thought to himself, I must humour her. “And what about Alfred the Great?” he asked. “Was he a friend of yours too?”
“Ha! He was worse than Ethelred. Promised to watch my cakes, he did. ‘No need to move them’ I said to him. ‘Just keep the fire going – and watch!’And what did he do? Piled up the logs and then forgot. Just sat there, brooding over his kingdom, while my gingerbread stars were cooked to a crisp.”
“Gingerbread stars!” Whatever next? Really, Mr Banks told himself, Mary Poppins certainly had a gift for making peculiar friends!
“Well, never mind,” he said soothingly. “You’ve still got the real stars, haven’t you? They can’t get cooked or move from their places.”
He ignored her scream of mocking laughter as he glanced up at the sky.
“Ah, there’s the first one! Wish on it, children. And another! They’re coming thick and fast. Good Lord, they are so bright tonight!” His voice was soft with rapture.
“Star light, star bright,” he murmured. “It’s as though they were having a party up there. Polaris! Sirius! The Heavenly Twins! And where is – ah, yes, there he is! I can always tell him by his belt with its three great stars in a row. Great Heavens!” He gave a start of surprise. “There are four in a row, or my eyesight’s failing. Jane! Michael! Can you see it? An extra star beside the others?”
Their eyes followed his pointing finger. And, sure enough, faint and small, there was a something – not, perhaps, to be claimed as a star – and yet, and yet, a something!
They blinked at it, half-afraid to believe but, even so, half-believing.
“I think I see it,” they both whispered. They did not dare to be sure.
Mr Banks threw his hat into the air. He was beside himself with joy.
“A new star! Clap your hands, world! And I, George Banks, of Number Seventeen, Cherry Tree Lane, have been the first to spot it. But let me be calm, yes, calm’s the word – let me be cool, composed and placid.”
But, far from being any of these, he was feverish with excitement. “I must go at once to the Admiral and ask for the use of his telescope. Verify it. Tell the Astronomer Royal. You’ll find your way, won’t you, Mary Poppins? This is important, you understand. Goodnight, Mrs Smith!” He bowed to the Bird Woman. “And goodnight to you, madam – er hum—”
“Corry,” said Mrs Corry, grinning.
Mr Banks, already streaking away, stopped dead in his tracks.
When had he heard that name before? He stared at the oddity before him and turned, for some reason, to Mary Poppins.
The two women were regarding him gravely, silent and motionless as pictured figures in a book, looking out from the page.
Suddenly, Mr Banks was flooded with a sense of being somewhere else. And, also, of being someone else who was, at the same time, himself.
White-collared and velvet-suited, he was standing on tiptoe in button-up boots, his nose just reaching a glass-topped counter, over which he was handing to someone he could hardly see, a precious threepenny bit. The place smelt richly of gingerbread; an ancient woman was slyly asking, “What will you do with the gold paper?” and a voice that seemed to be his own was saying, “I keep them under my pillow.”
“Sensible boy,” the old creature croaked, exchanging a nod with someone behind him, someone wearing a straw hat with a flower or two springing from it.
“George, where are you?”
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.