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.
“She can’t be,” Michael protested. “There’s no wall of thorns around it.”
“There’s nettles. They are just as good. Mary Poppins!” Jane turned to the motionless figure. “Who do you think lives in Number Eighteen?”
Mary Poppins sniffed. “Five, nice, quiet, well-behaved children – not like some people I could mention.”
Her blue eyes were sternly blue but in their depths was the glint of a twinkle.
“Well, if they’re so perfect they don’t need a Mary Poppins. It’s we who need you,” Michael teased her. “Perhaps you’ll make us perfect.”
“Humph,” she retorted. “That’s not very likely.”
“Everyone needs her.” Jane patted her hand, hoping to tease her into a smile.
“Humph,” said Mary Poppins again. But the smile appeared as she met her reflection in the glass. Of course, each seemed to be telling the other, everyone needed Mary Poppins. How could it be otherwise?
Then the two mirrored faces resumed their sternness.
“Now, no more argle-bargling. Spit-spot and into bed with you!”
And, for once, without argle-bargling, they did as they were told.
Much had happened. They needed to think it over, and were glad when their cheeks met the softness of their pillows, glad of the comforting warmth of the blankets.
Michael was thinking of Gobbo, Jane of the Sleeping Beauty. Their shadowy shapes would disappear from Number Eighteen and the solid figure of Miss Andrew would haunt the house instead.
“I wonder,” said Jane thoughtfully, “exactly what a Luti is?” She had never heard the word before.
“Perhaps it’s an animal,” said Michael. “Maybe a kangaroo.”
“Or a monkey – a Luti monkey. I would like that,” said Jane.
And they fell asleep dreaming of a kangaroo, or perhaps a monkey, gambolling happily about the Lane among the Cherry Trees.
But it was neither a kangaroo, nor a monkey, as they were to learn next day.
It was Saturday. Number Eighteen looked naked and a little lonely without its surrounding hedge of nettles. A workman had come in the early hours, cut them down and carted them off.
The Banks family spent a nervous morning, and as the afternoon drew on, Mr Banks, like an anxious general, marshalled his troops at the front gate.
“We must be there to greet her,” he said. “One has to be polite.”
“Don’t keep fussing, dear,” said Mrs Banks. “Perhaps she won’t stay long.”
Jane and Michael looked at each other remembering how, on her last visit, Miss Andrew had come and gone so quickly, and the curious part Mary Poppins had played in that curious departure.
They glanced at her as she stood beside them, rocking the Twins and Annabel in the perambulator, her face rosy and serene. What was she thinking? They would never know.
“There she is!” cried Mr Banks, as a hansom cab, hung about with Gladstone bags, turned from the main road into the Lane. “She always travels with mountains of luggage. Goodness knows what is in it.”
They all watched, holding their breaths, as the cabhorse wearily clopped along, dragging its heavy load – past Miss Lark’s house, past the little group anxiously waiting outside Number Seventeen.
“Whoa, there,” said the cabman, tugging at the reins, and the curious conveyance came to a stop at the gate of the empty house. He clambered down from his high seat and removed several Gladstone bags that hung from the roof of the cab. Then he opened the door and hauled out a large black leather trunk.
“Carefully, please, there are breakables in it,” cried a haughty, familiar voice from within. A black-booted foot appeared on the step, then slowly, the rest of Miss Andrew, a large, ungainly, cumbersome figure, lumbered out on to the pavement.
She glanced around, and spied the family group.