More about Mary Poppins / И снова о Мэри Поппинз

“Golly!” said the Match-Man. And that was his particular phrase.

“Won’t you sit down, Moddom*?” enquired a voice, and they turned to find a tall man in a black coat coming out of the wood with a table-napkin over his arm.

Mary Poppins, thoroughly surprised, sat down with a plop* upon one of the little green chairs that stood round the table. The Match-Man, staring, collapsed on to another.

“I’m the Waiter, you know!” explained the man in the black coat.

“Oh! But I didn’t see you in the picture,” said Mary Poppins.

“Ah, I was behind the tree,” explained the Waiter.

“Won’t you sit down?” said Mary Poppins politely.

“Waiters never sit down, Moddom,” said the man, but he seemed pleased at being asked.

“Your whelks, Mister!” he said, pushing a plate of them over to the Match-Man. “And your Pin!” He dusted the pin on his napkin and handed it to the Match-Man.

They began upon the afternoon-tea, and the Waiter stood beside them to see they had everything they needed.

“We’re having them after all,” said Mary Poppins in a loud whisper, as she began on the heap of raspberry-jam-cakes.

“Golly!” agreed the Match-Man, helping himself to two of the largest.

“Tea?” said the Waiter, filling a large cup for each of them from the urn.

They drank it and had two cups more each, and then, for luck, they finished the pile of raspberry-jam-cakes. After that they got up and brushed the crumbs off.

“There is Nothing to Pay,” said the Waiter, before they had time to ask for the bill. “It is a Pleasure. You will find the Merry-go-Round just over there!” And he waved his hand to a little gap in the trees, where Mary Poppins and the Match-Man could see several wooden horses whirling round on a stand.

“That’s funny,” said she. “I don’t remember seeing that in the picture, either.”

“Ah,” said the Match-Man, who hadn’t remembered it himself, “it was in the Background, you see!”

The Merry-go-Round was just slowing down as they approached it. They leapt upon it, Mary Poppins on a black horse and the Match-Man on a grey. And when the music started again and they began to move, they rode all the way to Yarmouth* and back, because that was the place they both wanted most to see.

When they returned it was nearly dark and the Waiter was watching for them.

“I’m very sorry, Moddom and Mister,*” he said politely, “but we close at Seven. Rules, you know. May I show you the Way Out?”

They nodded as he flourished his table-napkin and walked on in front of them through the wood.

“It’s a wonderful picture you’ve drawn this time, Bert,” said Mary Poppins, putting her hand through the Match-Man’s arm and drawing her cloak about her.

“Well, I did my best, Mary,” said the Match-Man modestly. But you could see he was really very pleased with himself indeed.

Just then the Waiter stopped in front of them, beside a large white doorway that looked as though it were made of thick chalk lines.

“Here you are!” he said. “This is the Way Out.”

“Goodbye, and thank you,” said Mary Poppins, shaking his hand.

“Moddom, goodbye!” said the Waiter, bowing so low that his head knocked against his knees.

He nodded to the Match-Man, who cocked his head on one side and closed one eye at the Waiter, which was his way of bidding him farewell. Then Mary Poppins stepped through the white doorway and the Match-Man followed her.

And as they went, the feather dropped from her hat and the silk cloak from her shoulders and the diamonds from her shoes. The bright clothes of the Match-Man faded, and his straw hat turned into his old ragged cap again. Mary Poppins turned and looked at him, and she knew at once what had happened. Standing on the pavement she gazed at him for a long minute, and then her glance explored the wood behind him for the Waiter. But the Waiter was nowhere to be seen. There was nobody in the picture. Nothing moved there. Even the Merry-go-Round had disappeared. Only the still trees and the grass and the unmoving little patch of sea remained.

But Mary Poppins and the Match-Man smiled at one another. They knew, you see, what lay behind the trees…

* * *

When she came back from her Day Out, Jane and Michael came running to meet her.

“Where have you been?” they asked her.

“In Fairyland,” said Mary Poppins.

“Did you see Cinderella?” said Jane.

“Huh, Cinderella? Not me,” said Mary Poppins, contemptuously. “Cinderella, indeed!”

“Or Robinson Crusoe?” asked Michael.

“Robinson Crusoe – pooh!” said Mary Poppins rudely.

“Then how could you have been there? It couldn’t have been our Fairyland!”

Mary Poppins gave a superior sniff.

“Don’t you know,” she said pityingly, “that everybody’s got a Fairyland of their own?”

And with another sniff she went upstairs to take off her white gloves and put the umbrella away.

Laughing Gas*

“Are you quite sure he will be at home?” said Jane, as they got off the Bus, she and Michael and Mary Poppins.

“Would my Uncle ask me to bring you to tea if he intended to go out, I’d like to know?” said Mary Poppins, who was evidently very offended by the question. She was wearing her blue coat with the silver buttons and the blue hat to match, and on the days when she wore these it was the easiest thing in the world to offend her.

All three of them were on the way to pay a visit to Mary Poppins’s uncle, Mr Wigg,* and Jane and Michael had looked forward to the trip for so long that they were more than half afraid that Mr Wigg might not be in, after all.

“Why is he called Mr Wigg – does he wear one?” asked Michael, hurrying along beside Mary Poppins.

“He is called Mr Wigg because Mr Wigg is his name. And he doesn’t wear one. He is bald,” said Mary Poppins. “And if I have any more questions we will just go Back Home.” And she sniffed her usual sniff of displeasure.

Jane and Michael looked at each other and frowned. And the frown meant: “Don’t let’s ask her anything else or we’ll never get there.”

Mary Poppins put her hat straight at the Tobacconist’s Shop at the corner. It had one of those curious windows where there seem to be three of you instead of one, so that if you look long enough at them you begin to feel you are not yourself but a whole crowd of somebody else. Mary Poppins sighed with pleasure, however, when she saw three of herself, each wearing a blue coat with silver buttons and a blue hat to match. She thought it was such a lovely sight that she wished there had been a dozen of her or even thirty. The more Mary Poppins the better.

“Come along,” she said sternly, as though they had kept her waiting. Then they turned the corner and pulled the bell of Number Three, Robertson Road. Jane and Michael could hear it faintly echoing from a long way away and they knew that in one minute, or two at the most, they would be having tea with Mary Poppins’s uncle, Mr Wigg, for the first time ever.

“If he’s in, of course,” Jane said to Michael in a whisper.

At that moment the door flew open and a thin, watery-looking lady appeared.

“Is he in?” said Michael quickly.

“I’ll thank you,” said Mary Poppins, giving him a terrible glance, “to let me do the talking.”

“How do you do, Mrs Wigg,” said Jane politely.

“Mrs Wigg!” said the thin lady, in a voice even thinner that herself. “How dare you call me Mrs Wigg? No, thank you! I’m plain Miss Persimmon and proud of it. Mrs Wigg indeed!” She seemed to be quite upset, and they thought Mr Wigg must be a very odd person if Miss Persimmon was so glad not to be Mrs Wigg.

“Straight up and first door on the landing,” said Miss Persimmon, and she went hurrying away down the passage saying: “Mrs Wigg indeed!” to herself in a high, thin, outraged voice.

Jane and Michael followed Mary Poppins upstairs. Mary Poppins knocked at the door.

“Come in! Come in! And welcome!” called a loud, cheery voice from inside. Jane’s heart was pitter-pattering* with excitement.

“He is in!” she signalled to Michael with a look.

Mary Poppins opened the door and pushed them in front of her. A large cheerful room lay before them. At one end of it a fire was burning brightly and in the centre stood an enormous table laid for tea – four cups and saucers, piles of bread and butter, crumpets*, coconut cakes* and a large plum cake* with pink icing*.

“Well, this is indeed a Pleasure,” a huge voice greeted them, and Jane and Michael looked round for its owner. He was nowhere to be seen. The room appeared to be quite empty. Then they heard Mary Poppins saying crossly,

“Oh, Uncle Albert – not again? It’s not your birthday, is it?”

And as she spoke she looked up at the ceiling. Jane and Michael looked up too and to their surprise saw a round, fat, bald man who was hanging in the air without holding on to anything. Indeed, he appeared to be sitting on the air, for his legs were crossed and he had just put down the newspaper which he had been reading when they came in.

“My dear,” said Mr Wigg, smiling down at the children, and looking apologetically at Mary Poppins, “I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid it is my birthday.”

“Tch, tch, tch!” said Mary Poppins.

“I only remembered last night and there was no time then to send you a postcard asking you to come another day. Very distressing, isn’t it?” he said, looking down at Jane and Michael.

“I can see you’re rather surprised,” said Mr Wigg. And, indeed, their mouths were so wide open with astonishment that Mr Wigg, if he had been a little smaller, might almost have fallen into one of them.

“I’d better explain, I think,” Mr Wigg went on calmly. “You see, it’s this way. I’m a cheerful sort of man and very disposed to laughter. You wouldn’t believe, either of you, the number of things that strike me as being funny. I can laugh at pretty nearly everything, I can.”

And with that Mr Wigg began to bob up and down, shaking with laughter at the thought of his own cheerfulness.

“Uncle Albert!” said Mary Poppins, and Mr Wigg stopped laughing with a jerk.

“Oh, beg pardon, my dear. Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, the funny thing about me is – all right, Mary, I won’t laugh if I can help it*! – that whenever my birthday falls on a Friday, well, it’s all up with me. Absolutely U.P.,*” said Mr Wigg.

“But why —?” began Jane.

“But how —?” began Michael.

“Well, you see, if I laugh on that particular day I become so filled with Laughing Gas that I simply can’t keep on the ground. Even if I smile it happens. The first funny thought, and I’m up like a balloon. And until I can think of something serious I can’t get down again.” Mr Wigg began to chuckle at that, but he caught sight of Mary Poppins’s face and stopped the chuckle, and continued, “It’s awkward, of course, but not unpleasant. Never happens to either of you, I suppose?”

Jane and Michael shook their heads.

“No, I thought not. It seems to be my own special habit. Once, after I’d been to the Circus the night before, I laughed so much that – would you believe it? – I was up here for a whole twelve hours, and couldn’t get down till the last stroke of midnight. Then, of course, I came down with a flop because it was Saturday and not my birthday any more. It’s rather odd, isn’t it? Not to say funny?

“And now here it is Friday again and my birthday, and you two and Mary P.* to visit me. Oh, Lordy, Lordy,* don’t make me laugh, I beg of you – ” But although Jane and Michael had done nothing very amusing, except to stare at him in astonishment, Mr Wigg began to laugh again loudly, and as he laughed he went bouncing and bobbing about in the air, with the newspaper rattling in his hand and his spectacles half on and half off his nose.

He looked so comic, floundering in the air like a great human bubble, clutching at the ceiling sometimes and sometimes at the gas-bracket* as he passed it, that Jane and Michael, though they were trying hard to be polite, just couldn’t help doing what they did. They laughed. And they laughed. They shut their mouths tight to prevent the laughter escaping, but that didn’t do any good. And presently they were rolling over and over on the floor, squealing and shrieking with laughter.

“Really!” said Mary Poppins. “Really, such behaviour!”

“I can’t help it, I can’t help it!” shrieked Michael as he rolled into the fender. “It’s so terribly funny. Oh, Jane, isn’t it funny?”

Jane did not reply, for a curious thing was happening to her. As she laughed she felt herself growing lighter and lighter, just as though she were being pumped full of air. It was a curious and delicious feeling and it made her want to laugh all the more. And then suddenly, with a bouncing bound, she felt herself jumping through the air. Michael, to his astonishment, saw her go soaring up through the room. With a little bump her head touched the ceiling and then she went bouncing along it till she reached Mr Wigg.

“Well!” said Mr Wigg, looking very surprised indeed. “Don’t tell me it’s your birthday, too?” Jane shook her head.

“It’s not? Then this Laughing Gas must be catching*! Hi* – whoa* there, look out for* the mantelpiece!” This was to Michael, who had suddenly risen from the floor and was swooping through the air, roaring with laughter, and just grazing the china ornaments on the mantelpiece as he passed. He landed with a bounce right on Mr Wigg’s knee.

“How do you do,” said Mr Wigg, heartily shaking Michael by the hand. “I call this really friendly of you – bless my soul, I do! To come up to me since I couldn’t come down to you – eh?” And then he and Michael looked at each other and flung back their heads and simply howled with laughter.

“I say,” said Mr Wigg to Jane, as he wiped his eyes. “You’ll be thinking I have the worst manners in the world. You’re standing and you ought to be sitting – a nice young lady like you. I’m afraid I can’t offer you a chair up here, but I think you’ll find the air quite comfortable to sit on. I do.”

Jane tried it and found she could sit down quite comfortably on the air. She took off her hat and laid it down beside her and it hung there in space without any support at all.

“That’s right,” said Mr Wigg. Then he turned and looked down at Mary Poppins.

“Well, Mary, we’re fixed. And now I can enquire about you, my dear. I must say, I am very glad to welcome you and my two young friends here today – why, Mary, you’re frowning. I’m afraid you don’t approve of – er – all this.”

He waved his hand at Jane and Michael, and said hurriedly:

“I apologise, Mary, my dear. But you know how it is with me. Still, I must say I never thought my two young friends here would catch it, really I didn’t, Mary! I suppose I should have asked them for another day or tried to think of something sad or something – ”

“Well, I must say,” said Mary Poppins primly, “that I have never in my life seen such a sight. And at your age, Uncle – ”

“Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, do come up!” interrupted Michael. “Think of something funny and you’ll find it’s quite easy.*”

“Ah, now do, Mary!” said Mr Wigg persuasively.

“We’re lonely up here without you!” said Jane, and held out her arms towards Mary Poppins. “Do think of something funny!”

“Ah, she doesn’t need to,” said Mr Wigg sighing. “She can come up if she wants to, even without laughing – and she knows it.” And he looked mysteriously and secretly at Mary Poppins as she stood down there on the hearth-rug.

“Well,” said Mary Poppins, “it’s all very silly and undignified, but, since you’re all up there and don’t seem able to get down, I suppose I’d better come up, too.”

With that, to the surprise of Jane and Michael, she put her hands down at her sides and without a laugh, without even the faintest glimmer of a smile, she shot up through the air and sat down beside Jane.

“How many times, I should like to know,” she said snappily, “have I told you to take off your coat when you come into a hot room?” And she unbuttoned Jane’s coat and laid it neatly on the air beside the hat.

“That’s right, Mary, that’s right,” said Mr Wigg contentedly, as he leant down and put his spectacles on the mantelpiece. “Now we’re all comfortable – ”

“There’s comfort and comfort,*” sniffed Mary Poppins.

“And we can have tea,” Mr Wigg went on, apparently not noticing her remark. And then a startled look came over his face.

“My goodness!” he said. “How dreadful! I’ve just realised – that table’s down there and we’re up here. What are we going to do? We’re here and it’s there. It’s an awful tragedy – awful! But oh, it’s terribly comic!” And he hid his face in his handkerchief and laughed loudly into it. Jane and Michael, though they did not want to miss the crumpets and the cakes, couldn’t help laughing too, because Mr Wigg’s mirth* was so infectious.

Mr Wigg dried his eyes.

“There’s only one thing for it,” he said. “We must think of something serious. Something sad, very sad. And then we shall be able to get down. Now – one, two, three! Something very sad, mind you!”

They thought and thought, with their chins on their hands.

Michael thought of school, and that one day he would have to go there. But even that seemed funny today and he had to laugh.

Jane thought: “I shall be grown up in another fourteen years*!” But that didn’t sound sad at all but quite nice and rather funny. She could not help smiling at the thought of herself grown up, with long skirts and a hand-bag.

“There was my poor old Aunt Emily,” thought Mr Wigg out loud. “She was run over by an omnibus. Sad. Very sad. Unbearably sad. Poor Aunt Emily. But they saved her umbrella. That was funny, wasn’t it?” And before he knew where he was, he was heaving and trembling and bursting with laughter at the thought of Aunt Emily’s umbrella.

“It’s no good,” he said, blowing his nose. “I give it up. And my young friends here seem to be no better at sadness than I am. Mary, can’t you do something?* We want our tea.”

To this day Jane and Michael cannot be sure of what happened then. All they know for certain is that, as soon as Mr Wigg had appealed to Mary Poppins, the table below began to wriggle on its legs. Presently it was swaying dangerously, and then with a rattle of china and with cakes lurching off their plates on to the cloth, the table came soaring through the room, gave one graceful turn, and landed beside them so that Mr Wigg was at its head.

“Good girl!” said Mr Wigg, smiling proudly upon her. “I knew you’d fix* something. Now, will you take the foot of the table and pour out, Mary? And the guests on either side of me. That’s the idea,” he said, as Michael ran bobbing through the air and sat down on Mr Wigg’s right. Jane was at his left hand. There they were, all together, up in the air and the table between them. Not a single piece of bread-and-butter or a lump of sugar had been left behind.

Mr Wigg smiled contentedly.

“It is usual, I think, to begin with bread-and-butter,” he said to Jane and Michael, “but as it’s my birthday we will begin the wrong way – which I always think is the right way – with the Cake!”

And he cut a large slice for everybody.

“More tea?” he said to Jane. But before she had time to reply there was a quick, sharp knock at the door.

“Come in!” called Mr Wigg.

The door opened, and there stood Miss Persimmon with a jug of hot water on a tray.

“I thought, Mr Wigg,” she began, looking searchingly round the room, “you’d be wanting some more hot – Well, I never!* I simply never!” she said, as she caught sight of them all seated on the air round the table. “Such goings on I never did see.* In all my born days I never saw such. I’m sure, Mr Wigg, I always knew you were a bit odd. But I’ve closed my eyes to it – being as how* you paid your rent regular. But such behaviour as this – having tea in the air with your guests – Mr Wigg, sir, I’m astonished at you! It’s that undignified, and for a gentleman of your age – I never did – ”

“But perhaps you will, Miss Persimmon!” said Michael.

“Will what?” said Miss Persimmon haughtily.

“Catch the Laughing Gas, as we did,” said Michael.

Miss Persimmon flung back her head scornfully.

“I hope, young man,” she retorted, “I have more respect for myself than to go bouncing about in the air like a rubber ball on the end of a bat. I’ll stay on my own feet, thank you, or my name’s not Amy Persimmon, and – oh dear, oh dear, my goodness, oh DEAR – what is the matter? I can’t walk, I’m going, I – oh, help, HELP!”

For Miss Persimmon, quite against her will, was off the ground and was stumbling through the air, rolling from side to side like a very thin barrel, balancing the tray in her hand. She was almost weeping with distress as she arrived at the table and put down her jug of hot water.

“Thank you,” said Mary Poppins in a calm, very polite voice.

Then Miss Persimmon turned and went wafting* down again, murmuring as she went: “So undignified – and me a well-behaved, steady-going woman. I must see a doctor – ”

When she touched the floor she ran hurriedly out of the room, wringing her hands, and not giving a single glance backwards.

“So undignified!” they heard her moaning as she shut the door behind her.

“Her name can’t be Amy Persimmon, because she didn’t stay on her own feet!” whispered Jane to Michael.

But Mr Wigg was looking at Mary Poppins – a curious look, half-amused, half-accusing.

“Mary, Mary, you shouldn’t – bless my soul, you shouldn’t, Mary. The poor old body will never get over it. But, oh, my Goodness, didn’t she look funny waddling* through the air – my Gracious Goodness, but didn’t she?”

And he and Jane and Michael were off again, rolling about the air, clutching their sides and gasping with laughter at the thought of how funny Miss Persimmon had looked.

“Oh dear!” said Michael. “Don’t make me laugh any more. I can’t stand it! I shall break!”

“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Jane, as she gasped for breath, with her hand over her heart. “Oh, my Gracious, Glorious, Galumphing Goodness!*” roared Mr Wigg, dabbing his eyes with the tail of his coat because he couldn’t find his handkerchief.

“IT IS TIME TO GO HOME.” Mary Poppins’s voice sounded above the roars of laughter like a trumpet.

And suddenly, with a rush, Jane and Michael and Mr Wigg came down. They landed on the floor with a huge bump, all together. The thought that they would have to go home was the first sad thought of the afternoon, and the moment it was in their minds the Laughing Gas went out of them.

Jane and Michael sighed as they watched Mary Poppins come slowly down the air, carrying Jane’s coat and hat.

Mr Wigg sighed, too. A great, long, heavy sigh.

“Well, isn’t that a pity?” he said soberly. “It’s very sad that you’ve got to go home. I never enjoyed an afternoon so much – did you?”

“Never,” said Michael sadly, feeling how dull it was to be down on the earth again with no Laughing Gas inside him.

“Never, never,” said Jane, as she stood on tiptoe and kissed Mr Wigg’s withered-apple cheeks. “Never, never, never, never…!”

* * *

They sat on either side of Mary Poppins going home in the Bus. They were both very quiet, thinking over the lovely afternoon. Presently Michael said sleepily to Mary Poppins,

“How often does your Uncle get like that?”

“Like what?” said Mary Poppins sharply, as though Michael had deliberately said something to offend her.

“Well – all bouncy and boundy and laughing and going up in the air.”

“Up in the air?” Mary Poppins’s voice was high and angry. “What do you mean, pray, up in the air?”

Jane tried to explain.

“Michael means – is your Uncle often full of Laughing Gas, and does he often go rolling and bobbing about on the ceiling when – ”

“Rolling and bobbing! What an idea! Rolling and bobbing on the ceiling! You’ll be telling me next he’s a balloon!” Mary Poppins gave an offended sniff.

“But he did!” said Michael. “We saw him.”

“What, roll and bob? How dare you! I’ll have you know that my uncle is a sober, honest, hardworking man, and you’ll be kind enough to speak of him respectfully. And don’t bite your Bus ticket! Roll and bob, indeed – the idea!”