Chapter 3: In which we go UP to tea
A/N: Yes, it has been a very, very long time since I updated this fic! But I had not forgotten Mary P (impossible, in case you ever try it) and am now trying to get it finished, or at least a lot further, for this year's NaNoWriMo. More should therefore be coming. In the meantime, enjoy!
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"Are you quite sure he will be at home?" said Jane as we got off the Bus.
I will confess that it was with no little irritation that I looked down at her. It was not the question in itself; simply that it was the fifth time Jane had asked it since we had left Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane and the fifteenth time I had been asked it that day. While I knew that, in the way of muggles, there was no particular malice in their vacant-minded questioning (especially that of Ellen the Troll-like housemaid who achieved the remarkable feat of making house-elves look intelligent), that does not prevent repetition becoming galling, particularly when it cast an unintentional slur upon one's family. It was nearly as bad as the parrot!
"Would my Uncle ask me to bring you to tea if he intended to go out, I'd like to know?" I retorted sharply.
Perhaps it was, really, a little more sharp than the situation justified. But on top of my irritation, I too was beginning to question the wisdom of this entire outing. It had begun before breakfast two weeks earlier; or perhaps you could say it had begun many years before I was born, when one of my more distant cousins had married a wizard of no particular family by the name of Wigg. I do not think at the time that there was any suggestion of his being muggle-born, or the wedding would surely have been prevented as making a bad mark upon the family name. As it was, people merely commented on how third-cousin-Cygnia, who had such very little to commend her in matrimonial terms, had finally made a match. Suspicion arose afterwards. They had one son, Albert, some few years older than myself, although the generations put he and I at the ranks of uncle and niece. I may safely give you his true name, for you will not find Albert Wigg within the pages of 'Nature's Nobility' or any such work. If the same publishers produced a black-list of those disinherited by their families, he would feature rather prominently.
American muggles have, I believe, an expression which runs "Three strikes and you're out" – something relating to that strange ball game they play in buildings resembling a quarter Quidditch pitch. But the origin of the expression is not really important. Simply, the same concept applied to Uncle Albert. He was sorted into Hufflepuff, while we all belong in Slytherin. He refused to get married at all, no matter what the duty owed to the ancient and most noble family name. And he appeared so many times before the DMLE on charges of Using Magic in the Presence of Muggles they took to treating him somewhat benevolently and laying on cream-cakes to celebrate his visits.
It was not that Uncle Albert ever took any kind of interest in muggles. Rather, he displayed a catastrophic laxity in regard to them, to the point where the rest of our extended family began to first whisper and then comment openly that anyone of proper wizarding descent and discretion would not, nay, could not behave like that. Discretion and Uncle Albert were not well acquainted. He saw no harm in apparating into the middle of a crowded street, nor in going into a muggle public house and trying to pay with Galleons. As he said so many times to the Ministry, 'he forgot.' The only conclusion a Noble and Most Ancient House could draw was that of impure ancestry. Third-cousin Cygnia could not be faulted. But was not 'Wigg' the name of a muggle organisation in some way connected with their mysterious government?
By the time I left Hogwarts, the case against Uncle Albert was quite final, and everybody had settled down to studiously disbelieving any association of he with us. The one spider in the potion for this approach was, of course, Uncle Albert himself. Just as he forgot Ministry warnings about appropriate behaviour around muggles, he forgot snubs and cold shoulders and doors shut in his face. To his last days, Uncle Albert remained a sort of family ghost, capable of materialising where and when he was least wanted, and all too likely to do so.
From my own position of eccentricity, I grew up uncertain that Uncle Albert was quite as terrible as everyone said he was. It was true that he made his frequent visits to the Ministry, but if they did not consider him criminal in doing so, was it really a never to be spoken of shame upon the family? Did we not have many other cousins and acquaintances who made frequent visits to various Ministry departments, which were not always so pleased to see them?
On a less logical and more personal level, Uncle Albert's blithe forays into the muggle world provided me with plenty of information to fuel my early curiosity. When he discovered my interest, he was in his own absent minded way an enthusiastic supporter. Indeed, I was on a number of occasions obliged to snub him as firmly as my family would have wished me to, in order to avoid becoming embroiled in a trip to the Ministry myself.
But all this does not quite explain what I was doing with Jane and Michael, descending from a muggle motor-omnibus in the middle of a Friday afternoon. The sight would probably have caused every ancestor I ever had to turn in their graves, and elicited exclamations of horror from every living relative, but since the entire of my Great Adventure would also have done so, I confess the fact did not weigh heavily upon me. Perhaps, if I had thought of it and not merely been thinking about ensuring that Michael descended properly rather than jumping down, I would have been least concerned in those particular circumstances. Travelling on a motor-omnibus was, and has remained, an exceptional pleasure of mine.
You may be surprised; certainly most of those from our world would have been so at the time. Or perhaps you may not be, since, of course, our world has now adopted this mode of transport in the form of the Knight Bus. Yet somehow, we have never achieved the smoothness and reliability of service of which a good conductor and motor-omnibus were capable, despite the fact that muggles are unable to employ charms to assist with heavy traffic.
The opposite is true, of course, in the magical side of that excellent system of railways which we have not been shy about adopting for our own use. Our own trains, as you will know from your years of travelling to Hogwarts, run without a hitch; muggle trains are frequently behind schedule, and have always suffered a great deal from poor connections, even in the days before they illogically closed many of the lines. It was, I have always thought, one of the greatest occasions for, and most missed opportunity of, integration between their world and ours,when muggles were left to their own devices to so devastate the railway network under the misguided advice of their Doctor Beeching. His title sometimes strikes me as ironic, in light of the admittedly juvenile but candid definition of 'doctor' given by some of my youngest relatives, viz: "those muggle nutters that cut things up."
Belated individual intervention did, it is true, save some routes. Even today it is possible to travel by rail into the South-West as far as Okehampton. But of the lines that ran on into Cornwall? Or to the once popular magical holiday destinations along the mid-Wales coast? The muggles have a saying which is, I think, most apt: 'Of all the words of tongue or pen, the saddest are – it might have been!' The misguided choice of the Minister for Magic of the day, in refusing to even raise the matter with the muggle Prime Minister, has permanently lost to us the majority of what was our most important method of transport.
But repining is vain, and so I must turn my recollections back to the origins of my outing with Jane and Michael that now long-ago Friday afternoon. It had started with a tap on the nursery window before breakfast, two weeks earlier. You will now appreciate my point about Uncle Albert and discretion. It was an owl, in broad daylight, sent to a muggle household.
The children were, fortunately, still asleep, or sufficiently near to it to believe they must have been dreaming, for no comment was passed. The same fortune continued to smile when, with Uncle Albert's letter burning for an explanation in my pocket, I went downstairs to fetch the jug of hot water Ellen had failed to bring up, and was obliged to answer the front door to the postman. That, of course, should have been done by either Ellen or Robertson Aye, not a more respectable member of the household like myself. But, as I have indicated before, neither of them seemed to have any concept of being employed to a purpose, and Mrs Banks equally did not seem to have any inkling that she should instil this in them, let alone the capacity to do it. I concede, she was at a disadvantage with being unable to place a wakening hex on the permanently somnolent Robertson Aye.
However, answering that particular knock on that particular morning had turned out to be most convenient. I had received a letter, as I was quite entitled to do, and who was to say how it had come to me? The suggestion within the letter, I thought about deeply for much of the morning, before deciding that it was, according to all I had read, also within the bounds of legitimate and acceptable behaviour for a muggle nanny – quite disregarding the signal honour for two young muggles to be asked out to tea by a member of our Noble and Most Ancient House, even if it was one whom most of the members pretended didn't exist.
Therefore, I had sought out Mrs Banks with the most correct phrase for the situation: "May I speak to you, ma'am?" I am still unsure whether it was the fear I was about to give notice, for in such words did muggle servants in those days announce their imminent departure, or simply a fear of myself, that caused Mrs Banks to look so anxious during all our interviews. Whatever its origin, this anxiety had the advantage that, apart from the slight friction I have recorded in the previous chapter about the dates and times of my Days Out, Mrs Banks invariably acceded almost at once to any of my requests.
They were, I need not assure you, always reasonable. In this particular case, an Uncle of mine living in respectable bachelor lodgings in a slightly better part of town than Cherry Tree Lane, had invited me and my two older charges to Tea. What could have been more acceptable, reasonable or convenient than that?
It was particularly so because the date he had proposed was that of both Mrs Brill's day off and an important bridge party given by one of the 'better people' in Mrs Banks' social circle, two occasions for which the absence of Jane and Michael was not only tolerable but desirable. How Uncle Albert had managed to divine these dates I did not wish to know. I still believe that I was wisest in choosing to adopt the muggle attitude of pretending it was a coincidence.
Mrs Banks had agreed at once, and so two weeks later, on the afternoon I am recounting, I had left John and Barbara in the care of Ellen, seen both Mrs Brill and Mrs Banks safely off the premises, and walked with Jane and Michael to the corner of Cherry Tree Lane, where we had hailed an omnibus. I had left the parrot at home as well. The possibility of his remaining silent during an afternoon visiting was very slim; the possibility of Uncle Albert not commenting upon the parrot and its ways was non-existent. If it said anything to the twins, they were of an age unable to repeat it and unlikely to remember it. I felt the latter rule was likely to apply to Ellen as well, particularly as she was taking advantage of Mrs Banks being out to read The People's Friend – a lower-class muggle magazine full of supposedly thrilling romantic stories, which Ellen worked through one word at a time, occasionally having to spell longer ones out loud. An earthquake might have attracted Ellen's attention when she was reading; a talking parrot umbrella would not.
It was not as I recall, a very long 'bus ride between Cherry Tree Lane and Robertson Road, and we did not need to change. I will confess, I had been a little surprised on reading Uncle Albert's letter to discover just how close he lived. If I had known beforehand, this proximity might have made me hesitate over accepting my post in the Banks' household. You may be thinking it a little strange that I was not acquainted with my uncle's address as a matter of course, but Uncle Albert tended to move quite often, especially when his visits to the DMLE had been connected with his various muggle landladies, and Forwarding Addresses were something else he excelled at forgetting.
Had I known, I would have been concerned that Uncle Albert would also have been quite capable of forgetting that I was 'in service' and therefore not open to entertaining random visitors, or that the family I was living with were muggles and therefore not open to visits by Floo, or really any other such indiscretion. Recollections of such tendencies on Uncle Albert's part had, in a nagging way, concerned me for the proceeding fortnight, and in the face of the ceaseless questioning on the day itself, had bloomed into serious doubts about the whole visit altogether.
Michael, with his simpler muggle mind, had an entirely different concern. "Why is he called Mr Wigg – does he wear one?"
"He is called Mr Wigg because Mr Wigg is his name. And he doesn't wear one. He is bald," I said sharply. It has never been the misfortune of our family to go bald! That Uncle Albert had done so was further evidence that third-cousin Cygnia had made an unfortunate match, but there was no need for muggles to pry into it! I sniffed. "And if I have any more questions, we will just go Back Home."
This threat had the desired effect upon both children, for they fell silent, although as we approached the junction into Robertson Road, in the long reflective windows of the Tobacconist Shop on the corner I could see Jane and Michael frowning at one another. I forbore to comment. As I have indicated in earlier pages of these memoirs, I have never been a very enthusiastic subscriber to the many maxims on emotions and appearance. My mother would doubtless have said that well-bred witches, even small ones, never show their feelings by word or deed, most especially in a muggle street. But I am not sure that she or anyone else was happier for this iron self control – and the two small creatures in question were only muggles. I concentrated instead on my appearance in the triple reflections of the Tobacconist Shop window.
The nature of their reflective surfaces was something I grew to deeply appreciate during my Great Adventure with the muggles; to such an extent that, I confess, in later years I went as far as to purchase a muggle-made triple mirror of my own. Muggle mirrors reflect just as well as those made in our own world, and if you chose a reputable furniture store in the better parts of London or the nicer Home Counties towns, you can still have a teak or mahogany frame. In contradiction to what the geography books for young witches and wizards available in my youth said, the supply of such woods is not restricted only to our own world. It is true that muggles have, in more recent years, grown cautious about using them, preferring to use pine or other cheaper woods which are supposed to be more resilient to this 'Global Warming' they are afraid of. I fail to understand the slightest vestige of even muggle logic behind this. Any wood is inherently inflammable; the choice of one type or another makes very little difference. Given that they do not have fire-retardant charms, it seems strange they should choose to use more of a particularly combustible timber when faced with this increased fire risk or whatever it is.
But muggle oddities and choices of wood are quite beside the point, as even are mirror frames. The greatest and most enduring attraction of any muggle reflective surface, be it a window or a mirror, is that it does not pass comment. This is probably just as well, particularly in these days. When one sees the parade of skimpily, poorly clad muggles on a typical modern high street, endangering their own health by exposure to cold air, to say nothing of violating every tenet of Good Taste, one cannot help feeling that the large reflective windows of the shops, if given sentience, would be either raising ceaseless clamour or cracking in mortification.
The Tobacconist Shop's triple window on the day of our visit to Mr Wigg's was in no such danger. It reflected, in satisfying triplicate, a most respectable appearance. Miss Malkin, I felt, had done herself and my designs particularly proud in producing this full length blue coat with its silver buttons and matching blue hat.
I will admit, I lingered for a moment, turning slightly this way and that to admire it – and also, lest you think I was too vain, to see that all was as it should be. Commendable as a method of transport though muggle omnibuses may have been, that did not mean they did not occasionally leave one's attire a little rumpled, particularly when you had two small children to sit between. There is also the risk that some previous occupant of the seat may have left dirt of some kind upon it. Muggle gentlemen were especial offenders this way in those days, as they often continued to smoke while on board, leaving ash upon the seats.
My father always told my brothers, as he himself had been told by his father, and doubtless his father in turn, that all pipes must be extinguished before travelling, unless you wished to swallow a spark and be mistaken for a dragon. If I am not mistaken by the many and prominent signs now displayed in the muggle world, they have finally come to recognise the wisdom of this rule, and in a bid to atone for their earlier slackness, have forbidden smoking of any kind in almost all public places. It is not a rule I necessarily wish the magical world could adopt, but I do wish sometimes that more of an effort could be made to make our own people aware of the muggle rule and the necessity to abide by it in places where muggles are. It is of no use to dress like a muggle in order to not attract attention, if you then loudly advertise yourself by a cloud of purple tobacco smoke.
"Come along," I said sternly, catching sight of yet another long face of Michael's in the glass. He might be only a muggle, but any boy, muggle or magical, old enough to walk is quite old enough to behave like a gentleman and wait patiently while a lady is putting her hat straight! We went briskly round the corner and I pulled the bell at Number Three.
"If he's in, of course," Jane whispered to Michael behind me.
Both grammar and sentiment in that sentence were wrong, of course, but I did not have time to correct her before the door flew open and a thin, watery looking lady appeared. Given the events which followed, I use the word 'lady' reluctantly, but at that moment I had not yet made any acquaintance with the character of Uncle Albert's landlady, so it was only polite to think of her in the most charitable terms, however little confidence her general appearance inspired in me.
I had barely opened my mouth to address her when Michael butted in, in a most ill-bred manner. "Is he in?"
Alas, one cannot correct a misplaced 'he' in the way that 'she' is said to be the house-elf's mother, without mentioning subjects into which small children should not be encouraged to speculate. All I could do was to glance sternly down at Michael.
"I'll thank you to let me do the talking."
I do not think Jane meant to be deliberately disobedient to this command. Irritatingly careless and inattentive as she was, on occasion she did make efforts to be as thoughtful and polite as at least the will of the wisp example of her mother had impressed upon her muggle intellect. In light of this, I could not really fault her misplaced intrusion at that moment.
"How do you do, Mrs Wigg?"
A well-bred person, even a muggle, would have appreciated the innocent motive and had the grace to overlook the tactlessness. But my suspicion that the weedy creature before us was about as jumped up and ill-bred a muggle as could be found while still in a relatively respectable neighbourhood was instantly confirmed. "Mrs Wigg!" she exclaimed, in a thin, weedy voice which made her figure look plump by comparison. "I'm plain Miss Persimmon and proud of it! Mrs Wigg indeed!"
'Indeed' was perhaps the most appropriate word, although I refrained from passing any such low-mannered remark. No matter what one might think of the rest of Uncle Albert's choices in life, it was quite beyond question that anyone from our family would ever have dreamed of taking this woman into a state of matrimony. Indeed, to repeat the word again, if one took, as I did and always have, a benevolent view of Uncle Albert's eccentricities as covering a kind heart and essentially if perhaps overly good nature, he of all of us was least likely to have done so. Money, beauty or social status, if she had had any of these, might have tempted some of my cousins; Uncle Albert would have been attracted only by someone with a heart as large as his own.
Perhaps fortunately, as her poor manners and my reflections upon them might have drawn out some inappropriate tone on my part, I was at that moment spared the necessity of addressing the woman. She paused in her indignant squeaks, cast half a glance at me and said "Straight up and first door on the landing!"
That, apparently, was all the explanation or introduction she considered necessary. Without further ado, she hurried off down the passage, still exclaiming "Mrs Wigg indeed!" in that silly little mouse-like voice.
I would have liked to point out to the children, as my mother would have done to me when I was a child if we had been dealing with a witch, just how very upset their inappropriate behaviour had made their hostess. But in the view of her own inappropriate behaviour, it was really impossible to point any moral at all, so I simply led the way up the stairs. Both the children crowded practically onto my heels, sufficiently close that when I knocked on the door and Uncle Albert's loud and cheery voice called out "Come in! Come in! And welcome!" I heard Jane whisper to Michael:
"He is in!"
I attribute to my momentary irritation, caused by this reminder of the immense doubt an invitation to Afternoon Tea from a member of my family had been held at Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, the fact that I did not register from outside the door that Uncle Albert's voice did not sound quite normal.
That all was not as it should have been, at least where muggles were involved, became instantly apparent when I opened the door and Jane and Michael stepped inside ahead of me. An ample muggle High Tea was set upon the table by the fire, with piles of bread and butter, crumpets, coconut cakes and a plum cake with pink icing any house-elf would have been proud of. The rest of the furniture was in good taste and order. Not a trace of magical possessions was to be seen. But neither was the occupant of the room.
I did not need to look down to see the children's eyes popping from their heads even further than they had done on the day of my arrival at Number 17.
"Well this is indeed a Pleasure!" boomed Uncle Albert's voice, and I turned sharply to look up at the ceiling from where it came. You had probably been imagining an invisibility cloak, but Uncle Albert's means would never have run to such an expensive item, not to mention that he would probably have lost it or given it away to a chilly looking muggle without a waterproof coat within about three days of purchasing it. Such an incident, although involving an enchanted fur cloak which purred, rather than an invisibility one, had been responsible for one of Uncle Albert's trips to have cream-cakes with the DMLE in the past. But for the most part, Uncle Albert's magic tended to the far less subtle – as was the case now. I would not have described it as a Pleasure, but the word was one he always used to refer to his continued idle researches into levitation. Seventeen times that I knew of-!
The suppression of emotion was impossible. "Oh, Uncle Albert," I said crossly. "Not again! It's not your birthday, is it?"
The latter question, I fully realise now, as indeed I did a moment after uttering it, was completely ridiculous. But I ask you, before judging too harshly, to imagine yourselves when in the sole charge of two curious and impressionable young muggles, being suddenly faced with an older relative floating cross-legged in the air and reading no less than that morning's Daily Prophet. Eccentricity among adult muggles is no more tolerable than in those of age in our own world, except, or so I had gathered during my research, on their birthdays. And while it was a hope slimmer than a demiguise hair that this – situation – might be passed off as a nativital eccentricity, I trust that you will understand it was a single strand of hope worth grasping.
Whatever the elder Mr Wigg's ancestry may or may not have been, there is no doubt Uncle Albert inherited at least some characteristics of our own Noble House from third-cousin Cygnia, for he rose to the occasion and my inane suggestion with a grace and aplomb the most respectable, Order-of-Merlin holding, wizard could barely have rivalled. "My dear, I'm very sorry but I'm afraid it is my birthday."
He smiled graciously down upon the children, and then turned an apologetic face to me. As I could not, in the circumstances and company we were in, say even a fraction of what I wished to, I was obliged to content myself with tutting. "Tch, tch, tch!"
"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?" Uncle Albert was, I am glad to be able to record, unable to look me in the face while telling this string of shocking falsehoods. He looked instead at Jane and Michael, who fortunately being unaware of such things as post owls and levitation charms, were also unaware of the terrible example of corrupt morals being set them.
"I can see you're rather surprised," he continued, which was a very mild way to put it, given that both the children were staring upwards with their mouths so wide open in astonishment they might easily have been taken for a pair of those mythical Gulping Plimpies, so often featured in a certain magical magazine, waiting for Uncle Albert to drop down into them.
"I'd better explain, I think," said Uncle Albert, with every outward appearance of perfect calm, although he still did not meet my indignant gaze. I presume it was with this sort of innocent aplomb and bonhomie that he conducted himself at all those Ministry hearings, to so ingratiate himself with them to the point of cream cakes. "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."
Given that he was addressing two muggles, the last statement was at least true: they would not have; neither should they have!
"I can laugh at pretty nearly everything, I can," Uncle Albert chuckled. Whether it was from some memory of the things he had laughed at in the past, or from sheer hilarity at the outrageous situation then extant in that room, I still do not know, nor do I wish too, but what I did know was that Uncle Albert went from chuckling to absolute fits of laughter, to such a degree he began to bob up and down in the air.
"Uncle Albert!" I exclaimed sharply. I could not really say much more, but fortunately that seemed to suffice to restore a fraction of common sense. He stopped laughing with a jerk.
"Oh, beg pardon, my dear. Where was I? Oh yes. Well, the funny thing about me is–"
At this point I gave him the sternest and most fierce look I think I have ever given anybody. Uncle Albert told me in after years that I looked then like an exact three-way cross between young Cousin Walburga, a Hungarian Horntail and a Basilisk, only worse. The memory of it, like so many other things, made him laugh, so I do not think any lasting damage was done to our relationship, but at the time I would not have cared if I had literally petrified him. I was not going to spend the rest of that afternoon having Jane and Michael's memories modified at the Ministry, to say nothing of having my Great Adventure end in utter and ignominious disaster!
My look, I think, succeeded, in as far as Uncle Albert returned to telling his string of reproachable falsehoods, in place of what had sounded as if it was going to be the even more reproachable truth. "All right, Mary, I won't laugh if I can help it!" – as if, of all things, it was his laughter I was objecting to! – "Whenever my birthday falls on a Friday, it's all up with me. Absolutely U.P."
"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."
At the ingenious mention of Laughing Gas, a well-known muggle substance they were in earlier ages wont to sample in public, I had just been beginning to think it was a shame that Uncle Albert had managed to waste his life idly experimenting with levitation in rooms rented from ill-mannered muggle landladies, instead of bringing respectable credit to the family name by becoming head of the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee. But I should have suspected worse of him, should have known that he would not be so sensible as to take the chance to pass the unfortunate position we had found him in off as a ill-timed chemical experiment, and come back to ground level and respectability. On the contrary, he proposed to pretend he was stuck up there indefinitely! And began to chuckle once more at the sheer humour of the idea!
I gave him another very stern look, in the hopes that might suffice as sufficiently serious to bring him down. It stopped the chuckle, but further than that failed. He continued in the same merry attitude:
"It's awkward, of course, but not unpleasant. Never happens to either of you, I suppose?"
Jane and Michael both shook their heads. Certainly, as muggles they had never been levitated six feet up into the air; neither had they been trained it was impolite to answer an older person's question only with their heads – an lapse in manners which sadly seems to have spread to the youngest generation of our own world as well.
"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."
I sniffed, though I doubt either Uncle Albert or the children registered it. The entire of that tale could not have been true, given as you know, that the idea of levitation brought on by birthdays had been voiced by myself less than five minutes before, but I had no doubt that Uncle Albert could have, probably on many occasions, enchanted himself to levitate a little too well and ended up stuck in the air for hours. Frankly, it was all he deserved, going at his age to such a low form of entertainment as a muggle circus!
"It's rather odd, isn't it? Not to say funny?" Uncle Albert ploughed merrily on above me. "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––"
At this particular injunction, both Jane and Michael looked a little startled, not comprehending what could be quite so funny as to set Uncle Albert into such loud laughter he began to bounce and bob through the air, flapping the Daily Prophet recklessly about in one hand and making his glasses slide to a precarious position half on and half off his nose.
I pursed my mouth further, for there was nothing so funny in telling such shocking falsehoods about his birthday – a respectable date in June, as both he and I knew perfectly well – and there was certainly nothing at all so funny in the name I had assumed for my Great Adventure! I could also see, from the way he floundered through the air like a giant human bubble, clutching at the ceiling and the gas-bracket as he passed them rather as the patrons of the Dragon & Warlock pub on the corner of Knockturn and Diagon Alleys clutch at lamp-posts and door-frames when they are ejected at closing time, that there had obviously been some sort of Cheering Charm muddled in with that day's particular experiments in levitation.
It was, all in all, a most scandalous exhibition, and even more so for a member, even a distant and rather undesirable member, of a Noble and Most Ancient wizarding family before a pair of young muggles! The disgraceful influence of it became apparent a moment later, when first Jane and then Michael abandoned their manners and began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
I deeply regret to record it, but that was all the excuse Uncle Albert needed. He had only ever been accused of using magic in the presence of muggles, never on them, or the Ministry would not have been so lenient. But the children very quickly passed beyond the realms of normal, though improper, laughter, into the kind of abandonment brought on only by a vigorous Cheering Charm. They squealed with laughter, they shrieked with laughter, and quite disregarding their best coats, they fell down and rolled over and over on the floor.
"Really!" I said. "Really! Such behaviour!" It was not aimed at the children, but Michael seemed to think it was.
"I can't help it! I can't help it!" he shrieked in quite unnecessary explanation, rolling into the fender. "It's so terribly funny! Oh Jane, isn't it funny?"
Alas, Jane did not reply. From rolling across the floor, her coat totally rumpled and the toes of her freshly polished shoes doubtless getting scuffed, she suddenly took a sort of bouncing bound through the air until her head bumped on the ceiling. She bounced along it until she came to Uncle Albert.
That most reproachable person had the effrontery to act as if this was all a surprise. "Well!" he said, in tones of utter astonishment. "Don't tell me it's your birthday, too?" He must have lifted the worst excesses of the Cheering Charm, for Jane was able to shake her head, although not speak.
Uncle Albert answered his own question. "It's not? Then this Laughing Gas must be catching! Hi – whoa there, look out for the mantelpiece!" The latter remark was addressed to Michael, who on being levitated too, swooped rather exuberantly through the air and almost cleared the mantelpiece of its clutter of china ornaments.
I longed acutely to point out that it was hardly Michael's fault if Uncle Albert had failed to place sticking charms on the contents of his mantelpiece as all sensible people do, and also that he might be a little more careful with my charge, given that heads are much harder to mend than china! But perhaps he detected this, for the end of Michael's wild flight was right on Uncle Albert's knee.
"How do you do?" said Uncle Albert, shaking him heartily 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 at the sheer amusement of this, both of them flung back their heads and simply howled with laughter. It was a most scandalous exhibition, one which I hesitate to write about even now. And yet–
And that was always the problem with Uncle Albert. No matter how outrageous his deeds, there was always a good nature and kind heart behind them, with which it was impossible to be truly angry. He demonstrated this further by wiping his eyes and turning to Jane. "I say," he said, wiping 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."
Whatever sort of charms Uncle Albert had applied, they certainly worked, for if my memory serves me correctly, Jane was not only able to sit down, but also to lay down her hat beside her.
That's right," said Uncle Albert blandly, and then turned to look down at me. "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."
It was, I think looking back on it, about the first true word he had said in the entire visit. But at the sheer effrontery of it, I confess I was left regrettably speechless. Uncle Albert, however, seemed to take my silence as something rather worrying, for he went on 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 themf or another day or tried to think of something sad or something––"
I suppose it was a vain effort, given that the two children were at that moment, under the influence of cheering and levitating charms, sitting six feet up in the air, but I endeavoured to find words that trod the delicate path between truth and reproach on one hand, and the duty of concealing our magic from muggles on the other. "Well, I must say," I began primly, "that never in my life have I seen such a sight. And at your age, Uncle–"
"Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, do come up!" Michael interrupted before I got any further. "Think of something funny and you'll find it's quite easy."
Teach your grandmother to keep flobberworms, as my grandmother would have said! I realise now that it was most unreasonable of me, for he did not know any better, and was, in fact, striving to make sense of a startling experience he as a muggle had never even dreamt of, but at the time I was distinctly annoyed. That a young muggle should give me advice about charm-work! I had been levitating objects before his parents were even thought of, let alone himself!
"Ah, do now, Mary!" Uncle Albert added.
"We're lonely up here without you!" Jane put in kindly if untruthfully, and stretched her arms rather touchingly towards me. "Do think of something funny!"
The earnestness with which they had believed his absurd tale of Laughing Gas was, as I recall, too much for Uncle Albert's very limited ability to behave as a member of our Noble and Most Ancient family ought, for he sighed in a manner expressive of more trouble ahead rather than any regret. "Ah, she doesn't need to. She can come up if she wants to, even without laughing – and she knows it." He cast the most ridiculous look, which I presume he intended to be teasing or mysterious or some such, down at me standing on the hearth-rug.
There comes a point in some difficulties when making the best of things, as anyone from a respectable family ought to do, involves choosing the least of two or more evils, deciding as the saying goes, which head of the runespore you will argue with. I trust that you will understand this, and not criticise my decision that it would be best to attempt to treat the situation at Uncle Albert's as if it was perfectly ordinary.
"Well," I said, "it's all very silly and undignified, but, since you're all up there and don't seem able to get down" – I could not resist this slight dig at Uncle Albert's charm-work: if he was going to pretend he was stuck, I would to this day defy anyone in the same circumstances not to pretend to believe he was stuck – "I suppose I'd better come up, too."
With that, I cast a quelling glare at Uncle Albert, lest he attempt to place the same Cheering and levitating charms on me as he had on Jane and Michael, put my arms neatly to my sides so my wand was safely hidden in the folds of my blue coat, and rose up through the air to sit down beside Jane. I regret that I was obliged, as it were, to accept the hospitality of Uncle Albert's charm-work in order to sit down, but I did not wish to further compound the situation by summoning myself a chair from floor-level, let along conjuring one in mid-air. The important thing was to behave as if all was normal – so I turned sharply to Jane.
"How many times, I should like to know, have I told you to take off your coat when you come into a hot room?" I unbuttoned the offending garment, and laid it neatly on the air beside her hat, then removed my own and laid it down as well.
"That's right, Mary, that's right," said Uncle Albert contentedly, and he laid down his paper, for once managing not to forget to fold it so only text columns, rather than the pictures, were visible and then leaned down and placed his glasses on the mantelpiece as if nothing could be more right than to sit in mid-air with two muggles. "Now we're all comfortable-"
"There's comfort and comfort," I sniffed.
Apparently Uncle Albert did not notice this remark, for he continued complacently: "And now we can have tea-" At which point, it pleases me to be able to record, he did notice that something was amiss. "My goodness! How dreadful! I've just realised – the 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.
I pause here to note that Uncle Albert was quite correct, in one sense, in referring to it as a tragedy. Tragedies, as opposed to merely tragic events, are those disasters which are precipitated by the stubborn actions of the protagonist following his own path to destruction, despite repeated warnings by wiser persons. I think you will agree that a more thorough description of that afternoon's events could hardly be wished for, although they did not, fortunately, end in the bloodbath typical of so many tragedies. He was incorrect, I believe, in also referring to it as terribly comic. The children did not think so, or at least under the lingering influence of their Cheering Charms the thought of going without their tea did not strike them, for they too laughed uproariously.
At this sight, Uncle Albert dried his eyes. From the way he was continually flourishing that handkerchief, I suspect he had his wand concealed in it – a rather obvious short-cut used by those who are less able in the ways of magic and have never fully mastered silent, wand-less spell casting.
"There's only one thing for it. We must think of something serious," he said, much to my relief for I had been more than expecting him to 'forget' and summon the tea-table up to us without a thought. "Something sad. Very sad." Jane and Michael promptly propped their chins on their hands as if in deep thought, but whatever they managed to think of was obviously far from sad or even serious, at least while still under a Cheering charm, for after a moment Jane smiled and Michael laughed out loud.
"There was my poor old Aunt Emily," mused Uncle Albert, alluding presumably to a Wigg relative, for no-one in our connection has ever had such a name. "She was run over by an omnibus. Sad. Very sad. Unbearably sad. But they saved her umbrella. That was funny, wasn't it?"
And as you are doubtless expecting, he began to tremble and heave and then burst with laughter at this idea of the rescued umbrella – if, of course, the entire tale was not a fabrication. I sniffed with disapproval again, for true or not, behaviour so unbecoming to a nephew should not have been exhibited before two young children. This time, Uncle Albert seemed to hear me.
"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."
I can only presume it was the same woebegone face, like a sad-eyed krup, which he turned on the DMLE and that was why they laid on the cream-cakes. But while it was perfect nonsense, the ridiculous situation into which Uncle Albert's tale had got us had left me with a choice only between letting my two young charges go without their tea until I could find an adequate combination of excuse and reason to get Uncle Albert to remove the levitation charms from them, or doing as he was cryptically suggesting. It would have been a poor reflection upon our family, not to mention myself, if they had gone home to report there had been no Tea. Little as I desired to perform yet more magic in the presence of muggles, I had even less desire to be upbraided for failing in my basic responsibilities by Mrs Banks. I did not trouble to answer or even look at Uncle Albert. I looked down at the table.
Levitation charms had not been my line of research as they had been Uncle Albert's, but I must say that even today I am still pleased with the memory of how that slightly rickety muggle table, after a few moments wriggling and swaying, rose and soared through the room to take a graceful turn and land beside us, with Uncle Albert, as the host, at the head. The china cups may have rattled at little, a few cakes slipped from their precariously high stacks onto the cloth, but nothing had been left behind. As I noted a little wryly to myself at the time, it had not even endangered the mantelpiece ornaments in the way Uncle Albert's demonstrations in levitation that afternoon had done.
"Good girl!" said Uncle Albert, which was a very poor way of commending exceptional wand-less charm work, but at least he had noticed it. "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."
I am still uncertain whether this last remark of Uncle Albert's was simply a commonplace reassurance to Jane and Michael, who had hurried bobbing through the air to sit down on either side of him, or that it meant all this had been his grand plan from the moment he sent the post-owl to me with the invitation. One could never be sure with Uncle Albert; and what he thought at one moment could be not at all what he thought the next – a regrettable casual-mindedness he sadly inherited from his mother. My mother used to say it was a great pity the one thing third-cousin Cygnia had managed to stay in the same mind over was marrying "that Wigg."
Whatever his state of mind, as I recall Uncle Albert at that moment was smiling contentedly. "It is usual, I think, to begin with bread-and-butter," he said, nodding to Michael whose eyes were fixed on the cake. It must, though, be recorded to Michael's credit that at this hint from his host, he promptly shifted his gaze to the large plate of bread-and-butter. I trust you will not begrudge me a small glow of satisfaction, for he would certainly not have done such a thing at the first nursery tea I supervised! A little firm training, even over such a short time span, had done them a world of good. As I recall, Michael had also washed behind his ears that morning after only one reminder!
This leaves me somewhat uncertain as to in what light I should record Uncle Albert's next comment. Certainly, bread-and-butter should have been had; but it could be argued that Michael's behaviour did deserve some reward. At any rate, whether to the benefit or ruination of his manners and digestion, Uncle Albert provided it: "As it's my birthday, I think we will begin the wrong way – which I always think is the right way – with the Cake!"
Upon which pronouncement, he cut a large slice for everybody. Uncle Albert was, if nothing else, always generous to a fault. There was, for a while, nothing of note but the sound of the children eating. Uncle Albert and I probably exchanged polite small talk about the weather or the omnibus journey, but I do not recall it. On the whole, Uncle Albert seemed content to watch the children, rather than converse, and after the hectic events of the past ten minutes – for that was really all the time we had spent in the room – I confess that I was a little at a loss for extensive conversation. The fact remained, too, that while Uncle Albert might be acting as if all was well, a great deal of magic had been used both in the presence of and on, not one but two, young muggles, even if they in their innocence did not comprehend it. With this preoccupying my mind, I think you will understand that I did not keep track of my role in pouring out quite as well as I might have done, and it was Uncle Albert who noticed that Jane had drained her cup.
"More tea?" he asked. A trivial question, but before Jane had time to answer, before I even had time to reach for the tea-pot lest Uncle Albert summon it to pour out himself, there was a quick, sharp knock at the door. "Come in!" Uncle Albert called.
You have, I am sure, frozen in something of the same horror that I did at that moment. For there was only one person who ought to have been knocking on the door – unless Uncle Albert was expecting more, as yet unmentioned, visitors – and in neither case should they have seen two muggle children, to say nothing of myself, having tea while floating in mid-air!
The door opened. Miss Persimmon stood there, with a jug of hot water on a tray. Given that Uncle Albert had a kettle at the side of the fireplace, to say nothing of instant boiling charms, it was quite obvious she was only coming up in order to pry! "I thought, Mr Wigg," she began, looking beadily about, "you'd be wanting some more hot–" At that moment she looked up.
"Well, I never! I simply never!" she gasped out. "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, I'm astonished at you! It's that undignified – and for a gentleman of your age – I never did –"
I should, I know, have been concerned that she might rush outside and fetch a muggle policeman, just as a witch at the same sight would have been sending post haste for the DMLE. But honesty compels me to admit that I did not even think of it; had even forgotten my annoyance at Uncle Albert's own forgetfulness in calling the woman to come in. Perhaps Cousin Elladora was not really as far removed as I hoped she was, much less than I wish she was. For I can still remember, nay, even feel, the sharp tingle of anger which rushed through me at her words. That little, weedy, common muggle! Berating one of our own Noble and Most Ancient House with a comparison to her own miserly self-righteousness and accusing him of having the only one merit of paying his rent reliably! And to term it 'such goings on'! It was true that she was looking at four people and a tea table floating in the air, but it was not as if anything so very terrible was happening!
Michael's voice broke into my thoughts and Miss Persimmon's continuing stream of reproach. "But perhaps you will, Miss Persimmon!"
She looked at him haughtily – a haughtiness which gave me yet another stab of irritation, for Michael might have been a muggle, but he was still a muggle from a respectable family whose head of household was a banker, not some penny-pinching landlady! "Will what?" she demanded – most ungrammatically.
"Catch the Laughing Gas, as we did." Michael said it with such innocent sincerity, Uncle Albert ought to have been stricken with remorse for the shocking deceptions he had practised on two small children, though I fear he will have merely taken it as evidence that he had got away with his scandalous behaviour yet again. Though, it is true, I am not in a position to be able to criticise, in terms of using magic upon muggles. As Miss Persimmon flung back her head scornfully, Michael's suggestion, my own irritation, and something of the whole 'forgetfulness' which existed like an aura around Uncle Albert came, regrettably, together.
"I hope, young man, 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!"
There are, in my view, times and places for a little corrective magic, even on muggles. It was only the mildest and gentlest of levitation charms, but like the foolish muggle she was, Uncle Albert's landlady shrieked and stumbled and generally threw herself about as she rose gently, carefully, up through the air to the tea-table. There was, as I recall,very little of that hot water left in the jug by the time she reached us, and that was not to do with my charm work. Her state of tearful distress was such that she said not a word in reply to my calm and polite thanks, but turned at once and began to stumble downwards again, murmuring in her silly little voice as she went something about "undignified," " a well-behaved, steady-going woman," and "must see a doctor." When she reached the ground, she hurried away and shut the door without a backward glance, still wringing her hands and moaning about "so undignified."
In retrospect, I think you might say that the incident justified itself, as we must always be careful to do when displaying and using magic on muggles. It would not be at all proper to take a muggle to St Mungo's, except when they must go to have their memories modified. At this point, it matters not what they see, for any disturbance to their view of life will soon be corrected. In the case of Miss Persimmon, her brief flight through the air had clearly quite obscured her self-righteousness outrage over finding us having tea in the air, with concern about her own state of mind. Doubtless, she would have retired to the kitchen and had several cups of strong tea, probably in the end deciding it had all been a dream.
To the children, by contrast, it was all in the nature of the most exciting Afternoon Tea they had ever had, and a flying landlady seemed only to add to this. "Her name can't be Amy Persimmon, because she didn't stay on her own feet!" I heard Jane whispering to Michael, in a tone of definite glee.
What Michael said in return I missed, for at that moment I caught sight of Uncle Albert's quizzical gaze upon myself. Truly, he had absolutely no room to look at anyone over the matter, since this had all begun with his ill-advised levitation at the moment of our arrival, but looking he was. Half-amused, half-accusing, he shook his head at me. "Mary, Mary, you shouldn't – bless my soul, you shouldn't, Mary. The poor old body will never get over it." If Uncle Albert had meant to inspire remorse, I confess that he failed – probably because a burst of his usual, easily amused good humour came over him at that point. "But, oh, my goodness, didn't she look funny waddling through the air – my Goodness Gracious, but didn't she?"
I am to this day unsure if it was still the effects of the initial Cheering Charms, which can last a considerably long time, especially on a young and unaccustomed mind, or if Uncle Albert's solemn reproaches to me had been a cover to distract me while he placed fresh charms on my two charges. Whichever it was, Uncle Albert's last exclamation set not only himself but Jane and Michael back into uproarious laughter, all rolling about the air like a litter of krups on a floor, holding their sides and veritably gasping with amusement 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, equally abandoned to hysterical hilarity.
Louder than both of them roared Uncle Albert. "Oh, my Gracious, Glorious, Galumphing Goodness!" I was relieved he had not, even in his wild amusement, managed to forget to change the alliterative adjectives of his exclamation to those suitable for a muggle's ears. He had forgotten his handkerchief, and was dabbing at his eyes with his coat-tails – a place ill suited to the concealment of a wand, so perhaps I do him an injustice in suspecting further enchantments upon the children. Certainly, they had eaten enough sweet and sugary dainties at Tea to have led to no end of excitement and inappropriate behaviour without any aid of magic.
What did become quite certain was that unless I did something, we could well be here for hours, even days, before Uncle Albert would realise that he had, once more, forgotten himself. The problem of magic used on muggles was one I could see at the time I might have to address; the problem of not returning home in time for the nursery baths and bed was one I would certainly have to address, unless we descended at once. I could hardly have used yet more magic to delay the time of the last omnibus back to Cherry Tree Lane.
I raised my voice. "IT IS TIME TO GO HOME."
I fear that I startled Uncle Albert rather more than I intended to, for while I and the Tea Table descended gently from the air, Jane and Michael and Uncle Albert himself all came down with a hard and sudden bump.
Uncle Albert sighed as he stood up from the floor. "Well, isn't that a pity? It's very sad that you've got to go home. I never enjoyed an afternoon so much – did you?"
Owing, obviously, to the company we were in, I was unable to give him any sort of answer to that question, let alone a candid one, but I may assure you it may be inferred from the opposite of what the children had to say. It is always polite to thank your host at the end of a visit, but I do not think it was merely out a sense of duty and politeness that Michael shook his head in agreement and Jane stood on tip-toe to kiss Uncle Albert's withered-apple cheek.
"Never," they both said. "Never, never, never, never, never..."
For that, I suppose, I must be thankful. Thankful was not, however, quite what I felt as we sat on the omnibus on the way home. The children were both very quiet – a state of affair which never lasts long with the young, be they muggle or magical. Michael spoke up, picking of all moments a lull in the noise of the 'bus engine as it waited at a crossroads, so that any one of the random muggles aboard might have heard!
"How often does your Uncle get like that?"
One would have thought he drank, or something! "Like what?" I said sharply. It was intended to be a silencing reproof, but Michael in his usual way missed that point completely.
"Well – all bouncy and boundy and laughing and going up in the air."
There is a time and a place for letting muggles make their own explanations, but there is also a time and a place for a firm denial that anything at all has happened, in as far as this may be done without actually telling falsehoods. I trust you will understand that the middle of a muggle omnibus is the place for the latter. "Up in the air?" I demanded indignantly. "What do you mean, pray, up in the air?"
Jane seemed to think I needed some sort of explanation. "Michael means – is your Uncle often full of Laughing Gas, and does he often go rolling and bobbing about on the ceiling when–"
I cut her off before she got any further. I was having none of this sort of nonsense! "Rolling and bobbing! What an idea! Rolling and bobbing on the ceiling! You'll be telling me next he's a balloon!" I sniffed for good measure – in addition to mentally noting down a few sharp truths I planned to, and indeed did, say to Uncle Albert next time I met him.
"But he did," Michael protested sleepily. "We saw him."
I sat up straighter in pure indignation. "What, roll and bob? How dare you! I'll have you know my Uncle is a sober, honest, hard-working man-" (I know you are thinking this latter part of characterisation was a definite over-exaggeration, but at that moment it was as much for the conductor who was working his way towards us) "- and you'll be kind enough to speak of him respectfully. And don't bite your Bus tickets! Roll and bob – the idea!"
Thankfully, at that they said no more. The Bus roared on towards Cherry Tree Lane, doing a fair bit of rolling and bobbing of its own. And gradually, after such an exciting and energetic afternoon, the children gave up casting wondering looks at each other, and crept closer to my side, and slowly leaned against me and fell asleep, as if nothing had really happened at all.
Neither they nor I ever spoke of it again. But I remain thankful that I did not take the parrot.
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