A/N: So I was watching Mary Poppins and then this sprung into my head. It works off the idea of the beggar woman that normally features in fairytales to test characters resolutions and morals. So Mary Poppin's tenderness towards the bird lady I think is a personal one.
Enjoy this strange little ficlet.
Mary Poppins' feelings about George Banks made her heart ache and harden all at once.
It was hardly news that Mary Poppins was a witch; Bert had known this for a long time in his life when the young Mary had pulled him out of a gutter and cared for him for six months while his life teetered on the edge. But Bert was not the only man who had come across Mary Poppins' magic before she blossomed into Michael and Jane's life.
A young George Banks had been watched by a young Mary.
She had been sent to London on a mission to test the kindness of its populace. Her favourite guise was that of the old bird feeder woman. Some of the passerbys had helped her, offering their money up, scattering the bird feed half heartedly, their money meant more for her charity than for the birds that flocked around her. But George Banks was a young gentleman that had stood out in her mind. She watched him on a daily basis as he made a hurried walk to and fro the bank. She had noted the sadness growing on his face as the days and months passed. He resolutely ignored her each day, her thin cries heard and swept away as his mind filled with figures and sums.
She had watched him with an achy heart, but it hardened as the man before her hardened. She knew the world was a harsh place, after all she counted Bert as a best friend and she seen him being dragged through the ringer of life. But George Banks had put himself into a rather bitter and awful shell.
He had made himself into a man that was rather despicable – a sycophant for those ninnies in the bank, who's vision tunnelled until they could see nothing but cold money. They barely saw anything past the end of their greedy noses.
That was why Mary Poppins jumped at the chance to be the nanny for his poor children. She had always said in her early years as the bird lady that she would soften George Banks life, but when the opportunity never arose. Now though, she was going to protect the young Banks' if her life depended on it.
Plus, it had been a while since she'd seen Bert.
She couldn't stop her animosity when the hard man challenged her, but that little shred of the past, when she longed so desperately to help him lodged in her heart.
But she knew that maybe by being the children's nanny, she might finally get her wish and help George Banks.