‘We haven’t been thinking straight, little thing. Running away was never just running. It was keeping running, even when you’re standing still. It’s all your fault, you know. When I’m not nauseous I’m dog-tired, and when I’m not dog-tired I’ve moods you wouldn’t believe. I’m up one minute and rock bottom the next, and it’s all your doing.’
Cathy had found her way through the lower storerooms, where the toys of past Christmases waited patiently to revisit the shopfloor. Now she stood outside what seemed a forgotten wardrobe, its door half-hanging from its hinge. Sally-Anne had tried to tempt her here on more than one occasion, but this time, it was a little voice inside her head tempting her on.
‘People with secrets hide away. People with nothing to hide? They make friends. They laugh and they dance and they … live life. Nobody ever came to the Emporium to bury themselves. So … in plain sight,’ she whispered, and was thrilled to feel the flutters of her baby’s response, ‘that’s the only place worth hiding.’
With those words, she opened the wardrobe door.
They called this place the Palace, because that was what Kaspar and Emil had called it when they were just boys and this place one of their secret dens. Now the long hall on to which the wardrobe door opened, decked out like the lodge of some medieval Viking jarl – with thrones carved out of the trunks of great oaks and a dais upon which three of the shop hands were playing fiddles (or more properly being played by those fiddles, for it was the instruments leading the way) – was a retreat for exhausted shop hands to drink and eat and make merry. Cathy stepped through a fug of smoke to find the evening’s banquet already half-devoured. Shop hands were lounging around the long table, or in the corners playing at cards. Some had opened up copies of other Emporium games. Little Douglas Flood was playing a game of backgammon, himself against the board. The West Country boy named Kesey was battling through a game of chess; black had already beaten him to a retreat, the pieces gliding of their own volition across the chequerboard squares.
Cathy might have let her nerves get the better of her and fled there and then, if only Sally-Anne – tall, with flaming red hair and fiery eyes to match – hadn’t appeared out of the haze and thrown her arms around her shoulder. ‘Rapunzel is out of her tower!’ she announced. ‘Make room!’
Sally-Anne’s laughter was infectious. Soon Cathy was being swept across the room and deposited in a seat, where Joe Horner (who worked the production line, replicating Emil’s toy soldiers) and Ted Jacobs (who once trained hounds for the shooting at Sandringham, but now put patchwork dogs through their paces before they could be sold) provided her with food and wine and meringues of the most intricate design. Too used to a diet of toast and stewed apple, the baby inside her started to turn cartwheels of delight. Cathy had to take her first bite just to barter its silence, for she was certain the shop hands would notice the way her body squirmed in response.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been so … locked up. You’ll know how it is. First season nerves.’
‘No apology needed,’ Sally-Anne declared, ‘but you have catching up to do. This,’ she declared, urging an older man, comprised almost entirely of beard, to the table, ‘is Pat Field. He’s one of Papa Jack’s first woodworkers. He prunes and prepares all of the logs from the Forestry Commission. And this is Vera Larkin. She’s a seamstress, touching up the ragdolls. And this – well, this is Ted. He’s with the patchwork dogs.’
‘Blithering things they are as well,’ Ted said as, around him, the rest made their hellos. ‘It’s as well you weren’t here last Christmas. Papa Jack, he can make almost anything with his hands, but you just can’t get loyalty in a patchwork dog.’
‘There were complaints,’ Sally-Anne butted in, as if laying a taunt at Ted.
‘Little boys upset their new toy would only play with their sister. A patchwork Dalmatian, of all things, who took a shining to some old fella’s next-door neighbour and wouldn’t stop howling at the walls. Why, three Christmases ago, I was up and roaming Battersea on Christmas Eve itself – one of his hounds had gone feral, started running with a pack of street dogs down there.’
‘Ted,’ Sally-Anne interjected once more, ‘isn’t good enough at his job, you see.’
Ted looked as if he might summon up a spirited reply, but instead he slumped into a seat, pulled the stopper from a decanter of what Cathy took for brandy, and poured himself a generous measure. Moments later, as he stared into the fire, a bundle of velvet and rags unfolded itself from a basket and scrabbled to get into his lap. ‘And these cats aren’t up to much either!’
‘How are you finding our little Emporium, Cathy?’
‘Little?’ she exclaimed. Her eyes had already taken in the extent of the Palace; perhaps she was mistaken, but it seemed another trick of perspective, or whatever it was that opened up the Wendy House down in the paper trees. ‘Why, I don’t think I’ve seen a fraction of it …’
‘And you won’t,’ Ted chipped in, ‘not this season at any rate. Midwinter’s barely a week away and how long will we have after that?’
‘How long?’
‘Until the thaw,’ Sally-Anne explained.
‘Then it’s drawbridge up and us shop hands out on our ears.’
Cathy froze; even the baby had stopped tumbling inside her. ‘You don’t mean to say …’
‘What is it Papa Jack always says? A toy shop’s trade is in the dark winter months … Yes,’ Sally-Anne went on, ‘it’ll be back to the boring life soon. Reckon I’ll find myself cleaning dishes in Bethnal Green. Douglas Flood can go back to – what is it, Douglas? Understudying at the Old Vic?’
Up on the dais, the boy named Douglas set down his fiddle (though it played on without him) and said, ‘Vaudeville. I’ve a mind I’ll chance my arm in the music halls.’
‘Well you’d best be taking that fiddle with you. I’ve heard you try and play a—’ Sally-Anne stopped, for a shocking paleness had spread across Cathy’s face. ‘Cathy, are you … Is it the food?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘not the food,’ though the way her stomach was revolting made her certain she was going to be side. ‘If I may … Might I be excused?’
‘Excused?’ somebody baulked. ‘Lor’, girl, you’re not at mama’s table any more!’
Just as well, thought Cathy, and reeled as she got to her feet.
‘Oh Cathy, come on, you’ve hardly eaten …’
She was unsteady. She caught herself as she made for the wardrobe door. Sally-Anne was at her side, but Cathy pulled herself through alone. Halfway through the storerooms she stopped to catch her breath, looking back to see Sally-Anne standing, a question given form, in the wardrobe door.
Lives turn on an instant, just as they are made. There was no going back. There never had been, not since the moment she set foot out of the back door. But if there was no staying – if there was no long summer in the Emporium, no place for a mother and child, well, what then?
The approach of Christmas only intensified Cathy’s terror of what might happen when the Emporium closed, but the invitation that came on Midwinter’s Eve pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. It had been lying in an envelope slipped beneath the attic door when she returned at the end of the day, and Sally-Anne – who had followed her up from the Palace, soliloquising on the Herculean good looks of Jon Mosby, brought in this winter to wrangle the runnerless rocking horses – was already perched on the end of the bed, pontificating over its contents. There was so little privacy to the room that Cathy could not stop her from seeing. The envelope was sealed with scarlet wax, imprinted with the emblem of Papa Jack’s Emporium – a single tin soldier of unquantifiable rank – and inside was a piece of golden card:
~
An Invitation to a Midwinter’s Supper
Your confidant, Kaspar
9pm
~
Sally-Anne was either disgusted or beset with jealousy. Cathy could not tell which. She tossed her hair and leapt to her feet, brandishing one of those romantic penny
novels she so loved. ‘He just wants to know what’s under your skirts.’ Well, thought Cathy, that was probably true – but not in the way Sally-Anne was thinking. And what was this about confidant? Cathy felt quite certain Kaspar Godman was not the kind of man who could keep any sort of secret, let alone one as revelatory as this.
The clock on the wall was inching towards eight. Cathy folded the invitation and slipped it beneath her pillow. Then, ‘Sally-Anne, have you any clothes I can borrow?’ she asked.
The Godmans had quarters on the highest gallery above the shopfloor, up a servants’ stair that spiralled out of their workshops. Winter staff only rarely ventured up here, no matter how long their standing, and, like so many corners of the Emporium, this was virgin ground to Cathy. As it was, the great oaken door that led to Papa Jack’s workshop was barricaded shut (Cathy had heard tales of one assistant who had gained a position here only so that he could deliver secrets back to his overseers at Hamley’s; the workshop had been a fortress ever since) but the stairs grew out of a narrow passageway just beyond. Cathy was halfway up before she saw the movement on the top step and watched as something unfolded, sniffed the air and stood up. The dog she had first seen among the paper trees lumbered forward on patchwork paws, its stuffing bulging where it had been pressed out of shape while it slept. Its fur was of velvet, cut up by seams as if somebody had taken it apart and stitched it back together. In patches it was grey, in others purple and blue. The insides of its ears were pieces of tartan, and the tongue that lolled from its snout had a heel in it, like a dangling sock. Its nose was nothing more than a crosshatch of black thread.
When it realised Cathy was near, it set up a bark. For a moment, Cathy was stilled. Then, judging that what teeth it had were only scraps of felt, she knelt down to pet it. Soon, the creature – if creature it could be called – rolled over, imploring her to knead it back into shape. Unable to refuse the doleful look in its black button eyes, Cathy sank to her haunches and began. Her fingers found the little wind-up mechanism buried in its tummy and she turned it once, giving the dog even more vigour. After that it lolled in ecstasy, its contented noises like the swishing of cotton against cotton.
Finally, Cathy gathered herself and knocked at the door.
She was expecting Kaspar, or Emil, or Papa Jack himself, but instead Mrs Hornung opened the door and battled back the patchwork dog with a broom. ‘Sirius!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve a set of shears in here just right for a pest like you …’
The dog’s whimper was the sound of wet laundry being slapped.
Mrs Hornung had never seemed as sour as she had on the night Cathy arrived at the Emporium doors. The way she looked now, Cathy might even describe her as genial. Her official position was Emporium Mistress, a title that made her seem more matronly than it ought. Sally-Anne said she used to be the nursemaid, a job that had predominantly comprised of tracking Kaspar and Emil down to whatever hiding place they had made on the Emporium floor and delivering a series of improbable punishments for their cheek. She had even been the one to teach them the King’s English, but whatever they had done had aged her prematurely; their misadventures could be read in the wrinkles latticing her face. Now that the Godman brothers were grown, her role had transformed: a better title might have been Emporium Housekeeper, responsible for making sure the shop assistants were watered and fed.
‘I’ll help you off with those. These carpets are a nightmare to clean.’
Cathy had to brace herself as Mrs Hornung levered off her shoes. Then she was ushered onwards, into a palatial hall where glass capsules set between the rafters revealed snow clouds strewn across the London sky. Steps couched in thick burgundy dropped into a living room bedecked in Emporium Instant Trees, colourful streamers hanging around each. A huge hearth dominated half of the room, flames licking high into the chimney, and on a raised level close to the door a table was already laid for supper. Somewhere, a piano was playing a concerto to itself, ebony and ivory rippling up and down without the touch of human hands.
Mrs Hornung meant to whisk her on, but the carpeted expanse in the middle of the room was occupied by a hundred toy soldiers. Some of them were in static regiments on the fringes of the carpet, but others were either marching at each other with rifles raised, or lying prostrate on the ground. On one side of the room, Emil was hunched over a regiment, winding them up madly; on the opposite side, Kaspar was mirroring the action, but spreading his soldiers along a much vaster front.
As Mrs Hornung hopped through, her foot caught one of the marching soldiers, knocking him back into his brethren. ‘Forfeit!’ Emil piped up, leaping to his feet. ‘I call it null and void!’
‘Act of God,’ Kaspar announced. ‘We’ve accounted for them before.’
‘Act of God? It’s outside the rules of the game.’
‘It’s warfare, little brother. There are no rules.’
‘That’s demonstrably untrue! Don’t you remember your Deuteronomy?’
Kaspar grinned, ‘You’d do better to remember your Sun Tzu.’
Just as the battle seemed about to escalate from the minions on the carpet to the deities above it, Mrs Hornung returned – and beside her, Papa Jack. Cathy had only rarely seen him since that first night. The toymaker, Sally-Anne said, stayed in his natural habitat, and that was his workshop. He was holding himself on two wooden canes, their bulbs carved into the visages of bears, and looked even more mountainous like this than he had in his workshop chair. His hair was a waterfall frozen over the crags of his body.
‘Let there be an armistice,’ he announced, with a voice full of whispers. ‘Boys, your guest has arrived.’
Kaspar’s eyes had already found her, but it took some time before Emil could tear himself away from the calamity on the battlefield. Whatever had happened here was so unjust he had tears pricking in his eyes – him, an eighteen-year-old man, crying over toy soldiers. ‘This doesn’t count, Kaspar.’
‘We’ll talk it through later, little brother.’
‘I tell you, it doesn’t count.’
Kaspar met Cathy on the step. ‘You came,’ he said, taking her hand.
‘I did.’
‘I wondered whether you might have another engagement.’
He was needling at her, but with what purpose Cathy was not sure. ‘When your employers invite you to dinner,’ she began, ‘it’s customary to accept.’
‘I’m glad that you did. When two people have been in true danger, as we have, it engenders a bond.’ He paused. ‘Hungry, are you?’
Perhaps that was it, Cathy thought. Perhaps he was trying to catch her out somehow, trying to trick her into revealing her secret. His eyes had not lingered on her bump yet, but the night was young. And why was he still holding on to her hand?
‘Dinner is served,’ came Papa Jack’s fraying voice, and at once Kaspar took her to the table.
It was not food Cathy had ever imagined before, though she was no less grateful for that. Mrs Hornung had spent years perfecting the dishes of the Old Country, Kaspar explained, putting a particular emphasis on the words so that it seemed to Cathy to be some faerie kingdom, not quite real. The dumplings were called vareniki. The gingerbreads had a warmth she was not expecting; the soup was of beetroot and to be eaten cold, alongside slabs of dark rye bread. She started tentatively, but soon the baby was demanding more.
‘So,’ said Kaspar, ‘you are hungry, after all …’
At the head of the table, Papa Jack lay down his spoon. ‘I think what my firstborn means to say, Miss Wray, is that he apologises earnestly for jeopardising your safety as he did the other day. Kaspar, have you anything to add?’
‘Papa, I’ve explained – Miss Wray was positively thrilled to see the paper forest. And so were the customers. Do you know how many EMPORIUM INSTANT TREES we sold last week?’
Papa Jack returned to his food.
‘All of them …’
It was true; Cathy had sold many of them herself, in her first afternoons working the register. K
aspar had put two of the Emporium’s most trusted shop hands on to night shifts so that more could be made, but no sooner did they go on to the shop floor than they were taken again. Somebody, some duchess or minor baronet, was reputed to have lain a forest of them in her hall for the village children to explore. Somebody else had thought to line the trails of Regent’s Park.
‘Nevertheless,’ said Papa Jack, and for the first time his eyes fell entirely on Cathy, ‘you came to this shop not only as our assistant, but as our guest. There are laws of hospitality we would be fools to overlook. We are supposed to honour those responsibilities. Aren’t we, boy?’
Kaspar lifted his eyes to meet hers. ‘My apologies given, Miss Wray.’
‘And accepted,’ said Cathy, though the whole thing seemed preposterous.
‘I hope it has not diminished what you think of us. Tell me – what do you make of our little Emporium?’
There were too many traps in this conversation, and it was too difficult to know which ones were being knowingly laid. So, honesty being the best policy, Cathy said, ‘I don’t want to leave.’
‘There are some weeks yet before winter’s end. You may think differently before then …’
He was making a joke, of sorts, and Cathy found that she didn’t have to force a smile. Papa Jack’s voice was as placid as the snowfall she could now see plastering itself against the window panes beyond the paper trees. High above London, the clouds were giving up their gifts, decorating the rooftops in white. What would it be like to be tramping those streets now, a baby swaddled up against her breast? ‘Do you really open at first frost and close when the snowdrops flower?’
The Toymakers Page 6
