“Fizzo? Miss Andrew? I can’t believe it.” It was Mrs Banks’ turn to be flabbergasted.
Mr Banks was almost dancing with joy. He was thinking that now his astronomer would soon be in his old haunts again, his telescope turned to the sky. He did not yet know that Next Door’s invisible dwellers were already back in their places – the Grandmother, the chess companions, Admiral Boom’s brave sea captain, Mrs Boom’s quiet child, Mrs Banks’ friendly friend, the Sleeping Beauty, Gobbo. Nor did he realise that even the nettles had begun to sprout in the garden again.
“Think of it!” he cried with delight. “Number Eighteen empty again and with luck we’ll keep it so!”
“But, George, shouldn’t we think of Miss Andrew? Will she be able to endure such a life?”
“No, my dear, I’m sure she won’t. It’s my belief that Binnacle will wake up one morning and find himself deserted – no one to read aloud to him. Miss Andrew, as we know, has a mind of her own. She’s a learnt woman and a born teacher. She’ll skip off somewhere, I’ll be bound. Last time it was to the South. Perhaps she’ll make her way Northwards and find an Eskimo, heaven help him! You mark my words, the Lane will have seen the last of her sooner than you think.”
“Well, I hope so,” murmured Mrs Banks. “We have had enough of that terrible snoring. Michael!” She broke off at the sight of a figure in pyjamas perched on the banisters. “You ought to be in bed!”
“And what do you think you’re doing?” asked his father. “Trying to climb up the banisters?”
“I’m being a pirate,” Michael panted, attempting to pull himself higher.
“Well, no one, not even a pirate, can climb up banisters. It’s against the laws of nature. And by the way – I’m sorry to have to tell you this – Luti has gone away. We won’t be seeing him again, I’m afraid.”
“I know,” said Michael – knowing too, though he did not say so, that Someone had climbed the banisters. Someone, in fact, who was not far away.
“Really!” said Mr Banks testily. “I can’t think how it so often happens that my children seem to know what’s afoot before I get a hint of it. Be off with you, on your two feet, like any civilised being.”
Michael went unwillingly. He did not like being civilised.
At the top of the stairs Mary Poppins was waiting, a blue-clad statue with an arm outstretched that pointed to his bed.
“Oh, not again, please, Mary Poppins. I’m tired of going to bed every night.”
“The night is for sleeping,” she said primly. “So, in with you, spit-spot. And you too, if you please, Jane.”
For Jane, holding Luti’s coconut, was kneeling on the window-seat watching the full moon sailing the sky low down on the horizon. There was somebody there, though she could not see him, for whom no night was for sleeping.
“And I’ll take care of that. Thank you!” Mary Poppins took the coconut and glanced at the carved smiling face that seemed to repeat, though wordlessly, Luti’s phrase of, “Peace and blessings!”.
She placed it on the mantelpiece and as she did so her image looked at her from the mirror and the two exchanged a nod of approval.
“But I wanted to watch and wake,” grumbled Michael.
To his surprise Mary Poppins said nothing. She merely placed a chair by his bed and with a wide dramatic gesture invited him to sit down.
He did so, full of determination. He too would see Luti on his way.
But soon his eyes began to close. He propped them open with his fingers. But then he yawned, an enormous yawn that seemed to swallow him up.
“I’d better do it tomorrow,” he said, and rolled sideways into the bed that Mary Poppins, with a look that said more than words, was turning down for him.
“Tomorrow never comes,” said Jane. “When you wake up it’s always today.” And she too climbed into bed.
They lay there, watching Mary Poppins making her usual whirlwind round, tucking in Annabel and the Twins, pushing the rocking-horse into his corner, taking things out of pockets, folding up the clothes. As she came to Michael’s sailor blouse, she tossed the mouth organ to him.
He decided to give it another try, blowing in and blowing out, but again the mouth organ was silent.
“It still won’t work for me,” he said, “and it wouldn’t for the Man-in-the-Moon. I wonder, Mary Poppins, why it worked for you when you played the Sailor’s Hornpipe?”
She favoured him with a quick blue glance. “I wonder!” she said mockingly, and went on being a whirlwind.
Jane too would have liked to watch and wake, but she knew that she could not do it. So she lay still, thinking of Luti – picturing the singing, leaping figure, wrapped in the scarf of woollen roses, careering across the sky. For Luti too, the night was not for sleeping. And suddenly, she was anxious.
“Suppose, Mary Poppins,” she burst out. “Suppose there are not enough clouds up there to take him all the way!” She remembered many a clear, bright night when from corner to corner of the world, there was nothing but dark blue sky. “What if he came to an empty space? How could he go further?”
“There’s always a cloud about somewhere,” said Mary Poppins comfortably. And she set a match to the wick of the night-light where it stood on the mantelpiece, a small and glowing likeness of the big lamp on the table. As usual, it would watch all night. And the two lamps filled the room with shadows that were themselves like clouds.
Jane felt reassured. “When the morning comes he will be at home, under the coconut palms. And we too will be at home, but under the Cherry Trees. It’s different, but somehow the same.”
“East. West. Home’s Best,” said Mary Poppins cheerfully, as she hung the parrot-headed umbrella on its accustomed hook.
“And you, Mary Poppins,” Jane demanded, knowing that it was a daring question. “Where is your home – East or West? Where do you go when you’re not here?”
“Everyone needs his own home – that’s what you said today, remember?” Michael too was daring.
Mary Poppins stood by the table, a whirlwind no longer, her day’s work over.
The glow from the big lamp lit up her face, the pink cheeks, the blue eyes, the turned-up nose.
She looked at them both reflectively while they waited, hardly breathing. Where did she come from – woodland or field, cottage or castle, mountain or sea? Would she or wouldn’t she tell them?
Oh, she would! they thought, for her face was so vivid, so brimful of things that remained to be told.
Then a sparkle leapt to the blue eyes and the old, familiar secret smile greeted their eager faces.
“I’m at home,” she said, “wherever I am!”
And with that, she turned out the lamp.
A. M.G. D.
Postscript by Brian Sibley
“If you are looking for autobiographical facts,” P.L. Travers once wrote, “Mary Poppins is the story of my life.” This seems rather unlikely when you consider that Mary Poppins goes inside a chalk pavement picture, slides up banisters, arranges tea-parties on the ceiling and has a carpet-bag which is both empty and – at the same time – contains many strange but useful objects. And yet memories of people and events from her life did find their way into the Mary Poppins stories – not that most people were aware of that. Even those of us who were her friends knew little about her private life.