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?