CHAPTER 8

Balloons and Balloons

“I WONDER, MARY Poppins,” said Mrs. Banks, hurrying into the Nursery one morning, “if you will have time to do some shopping for me?”

And she gave Mary Poppins a sweet, nervous smile as though she were uncertain what the answer would be.

Mary Poppins turned from the fire where she was airing Annabel’s clothes.

“I might,” she remarked, not very encouragingly.

“Oh, I see——” said Mrs. Banks, and she looked more nervous than ever.

“Or again—I might not,” continued Mary Poppins, busily shaking out a woollen jacket and hanging it over the fire-guard.

“Well—in case you did have time, here is the List and here is a Pound Note. And if there is any change left over you may spend it!”

Mrs. Banks put the money on the chest of drawers.

Mary Poppins said nothing. She just sniffed.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Banks, suddenly remembering something. “And the Twins must walk to-day, Mary Poppins. Robertson Ay sat down on the perambulator this morning. He mistook it for an arm-chair. So it will have to be mended. Can you manage without it—and carry Annabel?”

Mary Poppins opened her mouth and closed it again with a snap.

“I,” she remarked tartly, “can manage anything—and more, if I choose.”

“I—I know!” said Mrs. Banks, edging towards the door. “You are a Treasure—a perfect Treasure—an absolutely wonderful and altogether suitable Treas——” Her voice died away as she hurried down the stairs.

“And yet—and yet—I sometimes wish she wasn’t!” Mrs. Banks remarked to her great-grandmother’s portrait as she dusted the Drawing-room. “She makes me feel small and silly, as though I were a little girl again. And I’m not!” Mrs. Banks tossed her head and flicked a speck of dust from the spotted cow on the mantel-piece. “I’m a very important person and the Mother of five children. She forgets that!” And she went on with her work thinking out all the things she would like to say to Mary Poppins but knowing all the time that she would never dare.

Mary Poppins put the list and the Pound Note into her bag and in no time she had pinned on her hat and was hurrying out of the house with Annabel in her arms and Jane and Michael, each holding the hand of a Twin, following as quickly as they could.

“Best foot forward, please!” she remarked, turning sternly upon them.

They quickened their pace, dragging the poor Twins with a shuffling sound along the pavement. They forgot that John’s arm and Barbara’s were being pulled nearly out of their sockets. Their only thought was to keep up with Mary Poppins and see what she did with the change from the Pound Note.

“Two packets of candles, four pounds of rice, three of brown sugar and six of castor; two tins of tomato soup and a hearth-brush, a pair of housemaid’s gloves, half-a-stick of sealing-wax, one bag of flour, one fire-lighter, two boxes of matches, two cauliflowers and a bundle of rhubarb!”

Mary Poppins, hurrying into the first shop beyond the Park, read out the list.

The Grocer, who was fat and bald and rather short of breath, took down the order as quickly as he could.

“One bag of housemaid’s gloves——” he wrote, nervously licking the wrong end of his blunt little pencil.

“Flour, I said!” Mary Poppins reminded him tartly.

The Grocer blushed as red as a mulberry.

“Oh, I’m sorry. No offense meant, I’m sure. Lovely day, isn’t it? Yes. My mistake. One bag of house—er—flour.”

He hurriedly scribbled it down and added——

“Two boxes of hearth-brushes——”

“Matches!” snapped Mary Poppins.

The Grocer’s hands trembled on his pad.

“Oh, of course. It must be the pencil—it seems to write all the wrong things. I must get a new one. Matches, of course! And then you said——?” He looked up nervously and then down again at his little stub of pencil.

Mary Poppins, unfolded the list, read it out again in an angry, impatient voice.

“Sorry,” said the Grocer, as she came to the end. “But rhubarb’s off. Would damsons do?”

“Certainly not. A packet of tapioca.”

“Oh, no, Mary Poppins—not Tapioca. We had that last week,” Michael reminded her.

She glanced at him and then at the Grocer, and by the look in her eye they both knew that there was no hope. Tapioca it would be. The Grocer, blushing redder than ever, went away to get it.

“There won’t be any change left if she goes on like this,” said Jane, watching the pile of groceries being heaped upon the counter.

“She might have enough left over for a bag of acid-drops—but that’s all,” Michael said mournfully, as Mary Poppins took the Pound Note out of her bag.

“Thank you,” she said, as the Grocer handed her the change.

“Thank you!” he remarked politely, leaning his arms on the counter. He smiled at her in a manner that was meant to be pleasant and continued, “Keeps nice and fine, doesn’t it?” He spoke proudly as though he, himself, had complete charge of the weather and had made it fine for her on purpose.

“We want rain!” said Mary Poppins, snapping her mouth and her hand-bag at the same time.

“That’s right,” said the Grocer hurriedly, trying not to offend her. “Rain’s always pleasant.”

“Never!” retorted Mary Poppins, tossing Annabel into a more comfortable position on her arm.

The Grocer’s face fell. Nothing he said was right.

“I hope,” he remarked, opening the door courteously for Mary Poppins, “that we shall be favoured with your further custom, Madam.”

“Good-day!” Mary Poppins swept out.

The Grocer sighed.

“Here,” he said, scrabbling hurriedly in a box near the door. “Take these. I meant no harm, truly I didn’t. I only wanted to oblige.”

Jane and Michael held out their hands. The Grocer slipped three chocolate drops into Michael’s and two into Jane’s.

“One for each of you, one for the two little ones and one for——” he nodded towards Mary Poppins’ retreating figure—“her!”

They thanked the Grocer and hurried after Mary Poppins, munching their chocolate drops.

“What’s that you’re eating?” she demanded, looking at the dark rim round Michael’s mouth.

“Chocolates. The Grocer gave us one each. And one for you.” He held out the last drop. It was very sticky.

“Like his impudence!” said Mary Poppins, but she took the chocolate drop and ate it in two bites as though she thoroughly enjoyed it.

“Is there much change left?” enquired Michael anxiously.

“That’s as may be.”

She swept into the Chemist’s and came out with a cake of soap, a mustard plaster and a tube of toothpaste.

Jane and Michael, waiting with the Twins at the door, sighed heavily.

The Pound Note, they knew, was disappearing fast.

“She’ll hardly have enough left over for a stamp and, even if she has, that won’t be very interesting,” said Jane.

“Now to Mr. Tip’s!” snapped Mary Poppins, swinging the Chemist’s packages and her bag from one hand and holding Annabel tightly with the other.

“But what can we buy there?” said Michael in despair. For there was not much jingle in Mary Poppins’ purse.

“Coal—two tons and a half,” she said, hurrying ahead.

“How much is coal?”

“Two pounds a ton.”

“But—Mary Poppins! We can’t buy that!” Michael stared at her, appalled.

“It will go on the bill.”

This was such a relief to Jane and Michael that they bounded beside her, dragging John and Barbara behind them at a trot.

“Well, is that all?” Michael asked, when Mr. Tip and his coals had been left safely behind.

“Cake shop!” said Mary Poppins, examining her list and darting in at a dark door. Through the window they could see her pointing to a pile of macaroons. The assistant handed her a large bag.

“She’s bought a dozen at least,” said Jane sadly. Usually the sight of anybody buying a macaroon filled them with delight, but to-day they wished and wished that there wasn’t a macaroon in the world.

“Now where?” demanded Michael, hopping from one leg to the other in his anxiety to know if there was any of the Pound Note left. He felt sure there couldn’t be and yet—he hoped.

“Home,” said Mary Poppins.

Their faces fell. There was no change, after all, not even a penny or Mary Poppins would surely have spent it. But Mary Poppins, as she dumped the bag of macaroons up on Annabel’s chest and strode ahead, had such a look on her face that they did not dare to make any remark. They only knew that, for once, she had disappointed them and they felt they could not forgive her.

“But—this isn’t the way home,” complained Michael, dragging his feet so that his toes scraped along the pavement.

“Isn’t the Park on the way home, I’d like to know?” she demanded, turning fiercely upon him.

“Yes—but——”

“There are more ways than one of going through a Park,” she remarked and led them round to a side of it they had never seen before.

The sun shone warmly down. The tall trees bowed over the railings and rustled their leaves. Up in the branches two sparrows were fighting over a piece of straw. A squirrel hopped along the stone balustrade and sat up on his hindquarters, asking for nuts.

But to-day these things did not matter. Jane and Michael were not interested. All they could think of was the fact that Mary Poppins had spent the whole Pound Note on unimportant things and had kept nothing over.

Tired and disappointed, they trailed after her towards the Gates.

Over the entrance, a new one they had never seen before, spread a tall stone arch, splendidly carved with a Lion and a Unicorn. And beneath the arch sat an old, old woman, her face as grey as the stone itself and as withered and wrinkled as a walnut. On her little old knees she held a tray piled up with what looked like small coloured strips of rubber and above her head, tied firmly to the Park railings, a cluster of bright balloons bobbed and bounced and bounded.

“Balloons! Balloons!” shouted Jane. And, loosening her hand from John’s sticky fingers, she ran towards the old woman. Michael bounded after her, leaving Barbara alone and lost in the middle of the pavement.

“Well, my deary-ducks!” said the Balloon Woman in an old cracked voice. “Which will you have? Take your choice! And take your time!” She leant forward and shook her tray in front of them.

“We only came to look,” Jane explained. “We’ve got no money.”

“Tch, tch, tch! What’s the good of looking at a balloon? You’ve got to feel a balloon, you’ve got to hold a balloon, you’ve got to know a balloon! Coming to look! What good will that do you?”

The old woman’s voice crackled like a little flame. She rocked herself on her stool.

Jane and Michael stared at her helplessly. They knew she was speaking the truth. But what could they do?

“When I was a girl,” the old woman went on, “people really understood balloons. They didn’t just come and look! They took—yes, they took! There wasn’t a child that went through these gates without one. They wouldn’t have insulted the Balloon Woman in those days by just looking and passing by!”

She bent her head back and gazed up at the bouncing balloons above her.

“Ah, my loves and doves!” she cried. “They don’t understand you any more—nobody but the old woman understands. You’re old-fashioned now. Nobody wants you!”

“We do want one,” said Michael stoutly. “But we haven’t any money. She spent the whole Pound Note on——”

“And who is ‘she’?” enquired a voice close behind him.

He turned and his face went pink.

“I meant—er—that you—er——” he began nervously.

“Speak politely of your betters!” remarked Mary Poppins and, stretching her arm over his shoulder, she put half-a-crown on the Balloon Woman’s tray.

Michael stared at it, shining there among the limp un-blown balloons.

“Then there was some change over!” said Jane, wishing she had not thought so crossly of Mary Poppins.

The Balloon Woman her old eyes sparkling, picked up the coin, and gazed at it for a long moment.

“Shiny, shiny, King-and-Crown!” she cried. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was a girl.” She cocked her head at Mary Poppins. “Do you want a balloon, my lass?”

“If you please!” said Mary Poppins with haughty politeness.

“How many, my deary-duck, how many?”

“Four!”

Jane and Michael, almost jumping out of their skins, turned and flung their arms round her.

“Oh, Mary Poppins, do you mean it? One each? Really-really?”

“I hope I always say what I mean,” she said primly, looking very conceited.

They sprang towards the tray and began to turn over the coloured balloon-cases.

The Balloon Woman slipped the silver coin into a pocket in her skirt. “There, my shiny!” she said, giving the pocket a loving pat. Then, with excited trembling hands, she helped the children turn over the cases.

“Go carefully, my deary-ducks!” she warned them. “Remember, there’s balloons and balloons, and one for everybody! Take your choice and take your time. There’s many a child got the wrong balloon and his life was never the same after.”

“I’ll have this one!” said Michael, choosing a yellow one with red markings.

“Well, let me blow it up and you can see if it’s the right one!” said the Balloon Woman.

She took it from him and with one gigantic puff blew it up. Zip! There it was! You would hardly think such a tiny person could have so much breath in her body. The yellow balloon, neatly marked with red, bobbed at the end of its string.

“But, I say!” said Michael staring. “It’s got my name on it!”

And, sure enough, the red markings on the balloon were letters spelling out the two words—“MICHAEL BANKS.”

“Aha!” cackled the Balloon Woman. “What did I tell you? You took your time and the choice was right!”

“See if mine is!” said Jane, handing the Balloon Woman a limp blue balloon.

She puffed and blew it up and there appeared across the fat blue globe the words “JANE CAROLINE BANKS” in large white letters.

“Is that your name, my deary-duck?” said the Balloon Woman.

Jane nodded.

The Balloon Woman laughed to herself, a thin, old cackling laugh, as Jane took the balloon from her and bounced it on the air.

“Me! Me!” cried John and Barbara, plunging fat hands among the balloon-cases. John drew out a pink one and, as she blew it up, the Balloon Woman smiled. There, round the balloon, the words could clearly be seen. “JOHN AND BARBARA BANKS-ONE BETWEEN THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE TWINS.”

“But,” said Jane, “I don’t understand. How did you know? You never saw us before.”

“Ah, my deary-duck, didn’t I tell you there were balloons and balloons and that these were extra-special?”

“But did you put the names on them?” said Michael.

“I?” the old woman chuckled. “Nary I!”

“Then who did?”

“Ask me another, my deary-duck! All I know is that the names are there! And there’s a balloon for everybody in the world if only they choose properly.”

“One for Mary Poppins, too?”

The Balloon Woman cocked her head and looked at Mary Poppins with a curious smile.

“Let her try!” She rocked herself on her little stool. “Take your choice and take your time! Choose and see!”

Mary Poppins sniffed importantly. Her hand hovered for a moment over the empty balloons and then pounced on a red one. She held it out at arm’s length and, to their astonishment, the children saw it slowly filling with air of it’s own accord. Larger and larger it grew till it became the size of Michael’s. But still it swelled until it was three times as large as any other balloon. And across it appeared in letters of gold the two words “MARY POPPINS.”

The red balloon bounced through the air and the old woman tied a string to it and with a little cackling laugh, handed it back to Mary Poppins.

Up into the dancing air danced the four balloons. They tugged at their strings as though they wanted to be free of their moorings. The wind caught them and flung them backwards and forwards, to the North, to the South, to the East, to the West.

“Balloons and balloons, my deary-ducks! One for everybody if only they knew it!” cried the Balloon Woman, happily.

At that moment an elderly gentleman in a top hat, turning in at the Park Gates, looked across and saw the balloons. The children saw him give a little start. Then he hurried up to the Balloon Woman.

“How much?” he said, jingling his money in his pocket.

“Sevenpence halfpenny. Take your choice and take your time!”

He took a brown one and the Balloon Woman blew it up. The words “The Honourable WILLIAM WETHERILL WILKINS” appeared on it in green letters.

“Good Gracious!” said the elderly gentleman. “Good gracious, that’s my name!”

“You choose well, my deary-duck. Balloons and balloons!” said the old woman.

The elderly gentleman stared at his balloon as it tugged at it’s string.

“Extraordinary!” he said, and blew his nose with a trumpeting sound. “Forty years ago, when I was a boy, I tried to buy a balloon here. But they wouldn’t let me. Said they couldn’t afford it. Forty years— and it’s been waiting for me all this time. Most extraordinary!”

And he hurried away, bumping into the arch because his eyes were fixed on the balloon. The children saw him giving little excited leaps in the air as he went.

“Look at him!” cried Michael as the Elderly Gentleman bobbed higher and higher. But at that moment his own balloon began pulling at the string and he felt himself lifted off his feet.

“Hello, hello! How funny! Mine’s doing it, too!”

“Balloons and balloons, my deary-duck!” said the Balloon Woman and broke into her cackling laugh, as the Twins, both holding their balloon by its single string, bounced off the ground.

“I’m going, I’m going!” shrieked Jane as she, too, was borne upwards.

“Home, please!” said Mary Poppins.

Immediately, the red balloon soared up, dragging Mary Poppins after it. Up and down she bounced, with Annabel and the parcels in her arms. Through the Gates and above the path the red balloon bore Mary Poppins, her hat very straight, her hair very tidy and her feet as trimly walking the air as they usually walked the earth. Jane and Michael and the Twins, tugged jerkily up and down by their balloons, followed her.

“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Jane as she was whirled past the branch of an elm tree, “What a delicious feeling!”

“I feel as if I were made of air!” said Michael, knocking into a Park seat and bouncing off it again. “What a lovely way to go home!”

“O-o-h! E-e-eh!” squeaked the Twins, tossing and bobbing together.

“Best foot forward, please, and don’t dawdle!” said Mary Poppins, looking fiercely over her shoulder, for all the world as if they were walking sedately on the ground instead of being tugged through the air.

Past the Park Keeper’s house they went and down the Lime Walk. The Elderly Gentleman was there bouncing along ahead of them.

Michael turned for a moment and looked behind him.

“Look, Jane, look! Everybody’s got one!”

She turned. In the distance a group of people, all carrying balloons, were being jerked up and down in the air.

“The Ice Cream Man has bought one!” she cried, staring and just missing a statue.

“Yes, and the Sweep! And there—do you see?—is Miss Lark!”

Across the lawn a familiar figure came bouncing, hatted and gloved, and holding a balloon bearing the name “LUCINDA EMILY LARK.” She bobbed across the Elm Walk, looking very pleased and dignified, and disappeared round the edge of a fountain.

By this time the Park was filling with people and every one of them had a balloon with a name on it and every one was bouncing in the air.

“Heave ho, there! Room for the Admiral! Where’s my port? Heave ho!” shouted a huge, nautical voice as Admiral and Mrs. Boom went rolling through the air. They held the string of a large white balloon with their names on it in blue letters.

“Masts and mizzens! Cockles and shrimps! Haul away, my hearties!” roared Admiral Boom, carefully avoiding a large oak tree.

The crowd of balloons and people grew thicker. There was hardly a patch of air in the Park that was not rainbowy with balloons. Jane and Michael could see Mary Poppins threading her way primly among them and they, too, hurried through the throng, with John and Barbara bobbing at their heels.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! My balloon won’t bounce me. I must have chosen the wrong one!” said a voice at Jane’s elbow.

An old-fashioned lady with a quill in her hat and a feather boa round her neck was standing on the path just below Jane. At her feet lay a purple balloon across which was written in letters of gold, “THE PRIME MINISTER.”

“What shall I do?” she cried. “The old woman at the Gates said ‘Take your choice and take your time, my deary-duck!’ And I did. But I’ve got the wrong one. I’m not the Prime Minister!”

“Excuse me, but I am!” said a voice at her side, as a tall man, very elegantly dressed and carrying a rolled umbrella, stepped up to her.

The lady turned. “Oh, then this is your balloon! Let me see if you’ve got mine!”

The Prime Minister, whose balloon was not bouncing him at all, showed it to her. Its name was “LADY MURIEL BRIGHTON-JONES.”

“Yes, you have! We’ve got mixed!” she cried, and handing the Prime Minister his balloon, she seized her own. Presently they were off the ground and flying among the trees, talking as they went.

“Are you married?” Jane and Michael heard Lady Muriel ask.

And the Prime Minister answered, “No. I can’t find the right sort of middle-aged lady—not too young and not too old and rather jolly because I’m so serious myself.”

“Would I do?” said Lady Muriel Brighton-Jones. “I enjoy myself quite a lot.”

“Yes, I think you’d do very nicely,” said the Prime Minister and, hand in hand, they joined the tossing throng.

By this time the Park was really rather crowded. Jane and Michael, bobbing across the lawns after Mary Poppins, constantly bumped into other bouncing figures who had bought balloons from the Balloon Woman. A tall man, wearing a long moustache, a blue suit, and a helmet, was being tugged through the air by a balloon marked “POLICE INSPECTOR”; and another, bearing the words “LORD MAYOR,” dragged along a round, fat person in a three-cornered hat, a red overall and a large brass necklace.

“Move on, please! Don’t crowd the Park. Observe the Regulations! All litter to be Deposited in the Rubbish Baskets!”

The Park Keeper, roaring and ranting, and holding a small cherry-coloured balloon marked “F. SMITH,” threaded his way through the crowd. With a wave of his hand he moved on two dogs—a bulldog with the word “CU” written on his balloon and a fox-terrier whose name appeared to be “ALBERTINE.”

“Leave my dogs alone! Or I shall take your number and report you!” cried a lady whose balloon said she was “THE DUCHESS OF MAYFIELD.”

But the Park Keeper took no notice and went bobbing by, crying “All Dogs on a Lead! Don’t crowd the Park! No Smoking! Observe the Regulations!” till his voice was hoarse.

“Where’s Mary Poppins?” said Michael, whisking up to Jane.

“There! Just ahead of us!” she replied and pointed to the prim, tidy figure that bounced at the end of the largest balloon in the Park. They followed it homewards.

“Balloons and Balloons, my deary-ducks!” cried a cackling voice behind them.

And, turning, they saw the Balloon Woman. Her tray was empty and there was not a balloon anywhere near her, but in spite of that she was flying through the air as though a hundred invisible balloons were drawing her onwards.

“Every one sold!” she screamed as she sped by. “There’s a balloon for every one if only they knew it. They took their choice and they took their time! And I’ve sold the lot! Balloons and Balloons.”

Her pockets jingled richly as she flew by, and standing still in the air, Jane and Michael watched the small, withered figure shooting past the bobbing balloons, past the Prime Minister and the Lord Mayor, past Mary Poppins and Annabel, until the tiny shape grew tinier still and the Balloon Woman disappeared into the distance.

“Balloons and Balloons, my deary-ducks!” The faint echo came drifting back to them.

“Step along, please!” said Mary Poppins. They flocked round her, all four of them. Annabel, rocked by the movement of Mary Poppins’ balloon, nestled closer to her and went to sleep.

The gate of Number Seventeen stood open, the front door was ajar. Mary Poppins, leaping neatly and bouncing primly, passed through and up the stairs. The children followed, jumping and bobbing. And when they reached the nursery door, their four pairs of feet clattered noisily to the ground. Mary Poppins floated down and landed without a sound.

“Oh, what a lovely afternoon!” said Jane, rushing to fling her arms round Mary Poppins.

“Well, that’s more than you are, at this moment. Brush your hair, please. I don’t care for scarecrows,” Mary Poppins said tartly.

“I feel like a balloon myself,” said Michael joyfully, “All airy-fairy-free!”

“I’d be sorry for the fairy that looked like you!” said Mary Poppins. “Go and wash your hands. You’re no better than a sweep!”

When they came back, clean and tidy, the four balloons were resting against the ceiling, their strings firmly moored behind the picture over the mantel-piece.

Michael gazed up at them—his own yellow one, Jane’s blue, the Twins’ pink and Mary Poppins’ red. They were very still. No breath of wind moved them. Light and bright, steady and still, they leaned against the ceiling.

“I wonder!” said Michael softly, half to himself.

“You wonder what?” said Mary Poppins, sorting out her parcels.

“I wonder if it would all have happened if you hadn’t been with us.”

Mary Poppins sniffed.

“I shouldn’t wonder if you didn’t wonder much too much!” she replied.

And with that Michael had to be content.