Cathy stared for a long time after he had gone. ‘When was the last time Emil left the Emporium, Mrs Hornung?’
‘More than out here, to sign for a tradesman? I should think it’s been half that boy’s life.’
Mrs Hornung had not broken her rhythm. She was still scouring the flagstones into submission. But, after that, and though she kept on scrubbing, Cathy’s mind was not on the task at hand, nor even on the pig’s head that stared at her with such derision. She could still picture Emil’s face, seen as if from below. She was not mistaken: Emil had been crying.
Emil did not appear when the gong sounded for dinner that night. Martha (whose tutor Mr Atlee had just departed, leaving her with a composition on the works of Charles Perrault) was the last to the table. After that, Papa Jack recited some words of thanks in that language Cathy still could not understand, and then Mrs Hornung served up her rich chicken broth. When Emil had still not appeared by the time she wheeled out her suet pudding and plum sauce, Cathy teased Sirius’s ears and sent him down to the workshop on the shopfloor. Who knew how Emil understood the patchwork dog, but before the plates were clean, there he was, forearms raw with scratches from the workshop lathe. He made a muted hello, took his place at his father’s right hand, and set about devouring what was left.
‘This thing isn’t going away,’ Papa Jack began. Ordinarily newspapers were good for only one thing in the Emporium – every gazette that came through the door was shredded up for papier mâché, or used to line the workshop floors – but he had a collection at his feet and, brushing aside one of the patchwork cats who had escaped from its packing, he lifted up the first. Liège had been broken, Alsace and Lorraine were overrun, but so too were islands in the South Pacific rearing up. French and British soldiers had marched into Togo and taken it from its German governors, and into the fray marched legions from that vastness Jekabs Godman had once called home. The Russians were in East Prussia and marching west. ‘I think we have to accept that. Two hundred thousand English boys already in France. That changes everything. Cathy?’
Cathy had wanted to usher Martha out of the room, but the girl would only listen with an ear at the wall. Standing up, she held forth a leaf of paper. The letter had arrived with the day’s second post. She had known it was Lizzy by the florid script on the front (her father sometimes sent cards, but his was a simple, workmanlike hand), but she had not known what its contents would be. ‘She’s going too. They’re taking nurses out of Homerton and sending them out, with the British Red Cross. My little sister, going to war.’
It seemed scarcely credible, even as Cathy gave it voice. Lizzy Wray, destined to marry rich and live a spoilt life, was off to save lives while the world frayed apart all around her. Something had changed in Lizzy the year Cathy ran away. Cathy had thought she might come to the Emporium, spend seasons with her and Martha in the aisles, but instead Lizzy had landed in Homerton to train as a nurse. Cathy had often wondered: was she looking for her own Emporium? Well, now she had found it, in the makeshift barracks and tents of some French field.
Cathy trembled as she read out the letter. It was so inordinately foolish, so incredibly brave. Lizzy Wray, who wouldn’t get dirt beneath her nails without causing a fuss …
‘Well,’ said Mrs Hornung, because somebody had to fill the silence, ‘we must all do our part.’
By the head of the table, Emil sat bolt upright, spraying suet pudding. ‘Just what do you mean by that?’
All eyes turned on him. His face was purpling with rage. When nobody answered him, he was on his feet. When they kept staring, his fists were up. Beneath the table, Sirius yapped.
‘I’m the one who tried, aren’t I? I’m the one who went out and tried to do my part, while you all sat here just talking about it. And now you dare to stare at me like this, like I’m some … some coward? Is that it? Well, I’m sick and tired of being the odd one out in this Emporium! I’m sick and tired of being overlooked. I tried and—’
His anger had carried him so far but now his words were failing him. Another tortuous silence threatened, until Cathy – who had never liked seeing Emil squirm – ventured, ‘Oh, Emil. You tried to sign up.’
So that was why he had come storming back into the Emporium this morning, unable to look her in the eye.
‘I did,’ Emil breathed – and, now that his valiant feat was acknowledged, he sank back into his seat. ‘But what would you know? They wouldn’t have me. Asthma, they told me. A weak heart. They’ve said I should find a physician. Well, I’ve more heart than any of you. I tried, didn’t I?’
Sadly, he spooned in the last of his pudding.
‘This morning, pig’s blood sprayed all up the shopfront. You might have thought they’d brought that pig, kicking and squealing, and cut its throat there and then.’ Rage was infectious; now Mrs Hornung seemed to be purpling herself. Cathy touched her forearm, as if to soak up some of the anger, but instead she started to feel it too. ‘It’s a shame you didn’t make it, young Emil. Somebody ought to give those bastards – there, I said it! – filled with their fear and hate something to think about. Show them all foreign born aren’t to be reviled. Why, they’ll come here and play with your toys one winter, then come to vandalise the next. Well, we ought to be showing them, we’ll stand up to be counted – and not because we’re English, because we’ve no need to be. Because we’re people.’
Emil had finished his suet pudding but continued to scratch at the bowl.
‘Mealtimes are not for fighting,’ Papa Jack began. ‘There is enough warring outside these walls to make war among ourselves. Emil, you are my son and I love you. Today you surrendered a part of yourself. That they sent you back here does not diminish the trying.’ He paused, clasping Emil with one of his mammoth hands. ‘But you are right, dear Mrs Hornung. I have longed to make the Emporium apart from the world – but we are, and will always be, a part of the world. This morning proves we are not forgotten. And they will come again.’
‘We need to do our part,’ said Mrs Hornung, repeating it like a petition.
‘We must,’ said Papa Jack.
There was silence. For a time, nobody could look at Emil. They kept their faces buried in their bowls. Then, when it was not enough to ignore his anguish any longer, their eyes seemed repelled, moving as one along the length of the table, past Papa Jack, past Cathy, past Mrs Hornung, to its other end. There sat Kaspar, engaged in a suppertime skirmish with Martha (his salt cellar was advancing on her fortress of interlocked knives and spoons). Until now he had pointedly been ignoring his brother’s disgrace, for a look from Kaspar could have turned Emil’s rage incandescent. Now he looked up, to see his family staring back at him. His face opened wide, in dumb realisation.
Cathy curled up, Kaspar around her. Small as she was, she fit perfectly inside the arc of his body.
‘How are we going to tell her?’
‘We’ll tell her her father is a brave, brave man.’
‘She’ll miss you.’ Cathy paused. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘Don’t think I haven’t thought the same. I’ve spent almost every day with you since I shuttered you up in my Wendy House, Cathy. It isn’t the Emporium that’s my universe. It’s you. Of course, they may not take me yet. They may find a weak heart …’
‘Oh,’ Cathy sighed, ‘please.’ Then, more seriously now, ‘You don’t have to do this.’
But I do, thought Kaspar – and, as soon as he thought it, the idea solidified around him. Kesey and Dunmore, Douglas Flood and John Horwood, they were already part of a battalion, the Artisans Rifles, and they were in training, or they were over the water, out in the world. Those last words, out in the world, transformed the way he was thinking. ‘Do you know,’ he whispered into Cathy’s ear, touching it with his lips, ‘I always wanted an adventure. It used to be that sneaking out of the Emporium in summer was enough. But I think back on that journey we made with our papa, over the oceans with a man we barely knew, and – for all the wonders in the Emporium aisles,
was anything as adventurous as this? I’ll be gone mere months. I wouldn’t even miss first frost. I could be out there, with those Emporium boys, and back by opening night. Perhaps – perhaps this is the adventure for now?’
Cathy turned in his arms, to face his naked chest. ‘You’ll write.’
‘I’ll write. The most florid, extravagant letters a wife ever received.’
She held his hand, searched for the simple wedding band there.
‘And keep it on you always, no matter where you are or whatever you do.’
‘Until I die,’ he whispered.
Sirius was at the foot of the bed. He let out a disenchanted moan.
Daybreak found Emil in his workshop. If he had cared to look in the mirror this morning (he did not, for fear of the man who would be glowering back), he would have seen his eyes bloodshot and red. If Papa Jack, Cathy or any of the rest had pressed him on it, he would have told them it was exhaustion, and the evidence of that would have been piled up around him – for last night toy soldiers had sprung out of his lathe like a plague, and the red on his fingertips was the residue of the paint he had used to dress them in their finery. But he would have been lying. For last night, Emil had ventured into the Emporium attics, those great antechambers where whole childhoods are stored away, and unearthed the first games he and Kaspar used to play. Crude toy soldiers and their three-legged mules; maps they had painted across which they fought the first battles of the Long War; a spinning top that Kaspar had given to Emil that first Christmas they were English boys, its edges grooved so perfectly it hummed a lullaby as it spun. It was spinning now, up on the shelf above his worktop, spinning beside the Imperial Kapitan. It had been spinning all night and, though there was no magic in it, not like the toys Kaspar now made, still Emil kept seeing memories manifesting themselves in the edges of his vision: he and Kaspar gambolling through the empty Emporium, the first morning their papa took the lease on the place; he and Kaspar, kindling a fire together, that night they got lost in the shifting aisles and couldn’t find their way back.
The spinning top stopped, skittering up against the Imperial Kapitan.
Emil was about to set it spinning again when he realised he was no longer alone. In his workshop door, Mrs Hornung was waiting. ‘Emil, it’s time.’
‘I’ll be out presently.’
‘Young man, your brother is leaving now.’
Emil ground his teeth. Why was it Mrs Hornung always made him feel like this? He was a little boy again, clinging on to her apron tail. He remembered, starkly, the time he had mistakenly called her mother and the look of consternation that had flickered across her face. That night, Papa Jack had come to smooth his bedsheets around him, while Mrs Hornung took a day’s leave. Some boys, all they wanted was a mama.
‘I can’t.’
‘You must.’
He spun around. ‘But I mustn’t, don’t you see? He’s going off and it … it should have been me. I should be the one. If it weren’t for my heart, I would be. And now it will be …’ He stopped. Seemingly he had changed what he was going to say, because when he spoke again it was with a new, forced lightness. ‘Kaspar has a daughter.’ She should have been mine too was the terrible thought that entered his mind. ‘He has a wife.’ And Cathy, Cathy should have been … ‘He shouldn’t have to leave them, and all on my account.’
‘This isn’t on your account, Emil. There are thousands of men like Kaspar crossing over the water.’ She touched him like a mother might touch him, and that only made Emil hate himself more. ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
Kaspar was in the half-moon hall when Mrs Hornung and Emil made their way up the aisle. He was crouching down, his arms wrapped around Martha and, when he stood up, the girl would not let go; she was dangling from his neck. It took Cathy to prise her away, and then she herself needed prising. Papa Jack clasped Kaspar by the hand, drawing him into a mountainous embrace. And Emil, Emil lingered on the edges of it all.
‘Back by first frost,’ Kaspar declared. He took each of them in until, finally, his eyes landed on his brother. ‘You’ll look after them for me, of course.’
Emil tumbled forwards, betrayed by his own feet. He wrapped himself in his brother’s arms, fumbling a fist into the pocket of his greatcoat. Then, he unfurled his fingers.
There were words being whispered into Emil’s ear. ‘Look after our Emporium well, little brother.’ And, ‘I love you, Emil.’
Emil did not say it in return – but, as Kaspar reached the end of Iron Duke Mews, he knew it all the same. A little spinning top had been tucked into his pocket and, as he walked, it was humming a tune he had never forgotten.
The Emporium was empty that day, more empty than the most barren of summer days. Cathy busied herself fixing the braids of Papa Jack’s ragdolls. Martha’s tutor, Mr Atlee – whose own sons had already gone where Kaspar had followed – arrived to teach her the simple precepts of trigonometry (and to bore her senseless to boot). Mrs Hornung lost herself in a maelstrom of cookery, filling the kitchens with the scents of Kaspar’s favourite foods, of kasha and dumplings, as if that might keep a little part of him here, where he belonged. And Emil waited nervously outside his papa’s workshop door, watching through the crack as his father stitched more flaming feathers into his phoenix’s hide.
‘Papa,’ he said, finally pushing through. How many times had he come to this workshop as a boy, sat cross-legged on the floor and watched as his father brought some new fantasia to life? ‘Papa, are you well?’
It was not often that this man as old as mountains looked bereft, but he looked bereft now.
‘Don’t be sad, Papa.’
‘There are times when it is good and right to feel sad,’ Papa Jack whispered.
It was only now that Emil noticed that the wind-up mechanism from the trunk beneath the shelves, the one with the little figurines and a barren snowscape, had been set on the mantel. Papa Jack had been playing with it, then, visiting that place in the tundra where he had first learned the magic in toys. In that moment, Emil understood the weight of his father’s sadness – for wasn’t Kaspar going where Papa Jack had gone before, marched off into the world with a pack on his shoulder and no certainty he was ever coming home? A new, terrible feeling rose into Emil’s gorge: I want it to be me, he thought; I want it to be me, so that I can be close to my papa.
‘Kaspar will be home soon.’
‘We can hope, at least.’
For a time there was silence. Emil found a felt sack, filled with tiny leather balls, and sank into it; a chair sprang up around him, moulding to the shape of his body. ‘It’s going to be strange without my brother, but we can do it, can’t we, Papa? The Emporium is still going to open. There’s still going to be first frost. And … the people will still come. Kaspar or not, Iron Duke Mews will be filled with them – and, and … they’ll be expecting miracles. They’ll want them, this year more than any. Opening night can still be a spectacle. I know I have my’ – he had to rush the word, because he barely wanted to say it at all – ‘limitations, Papa, but I can do it. I … promise I can.’
Papa Jack threw himself to his feet, the phoenix tumbling to the floor (where it picked itself up and looked disdainfully on). In two great strides he had crossed the workshop and smothered Emil in his arms. It had been an aeon since Emil felt his father up close, smelt the powder gathered in his beard, the heady scent of wood chippings, axle grease and glue.
‘I don’t want to hear you say those things again, Emil. You’re my son, just as Kaspar is. Your toys belong in these aisles just as much as mine, just as much as your brother’s. We have a ship to sail, boy. Let’s do it together.’
Out on the balcony, Emil stared into the shell of the half-finished cloud castle and listened to his father’s words reverberating in his skull. One of his papa’s patchwork pegasi had wound down by the castle portcullis. Kaspar had planted instant trees along the moat, so that the unfinished walls were hidden in tumbling foliage and paper vines. Emil
could build neither of those things. He could not replace the magic that had marched off to war with his brother. And yet … a new idea was forming. Not an idea for a toy, nor an idea about opening night – but an idea about himself. His father’s words had opened up something inside him. There were, he decided with something approaching confidence, a dozen different ways to be spectacular. Magic might have been one of them, but there were others. And, if Kaspar was not here this year, if opening night was not to be his, well, perhaps there was something he, Emil, could do. Perhaps this was his moment to stand up, to be noticed, to get the recognition he and his toy soldiers had always deserved.
As he stood on the balcony, he imagined the aisles below thronged with customers. He imagined boys pouring into the dells he had made between the stands, where epic battles were being fought, the air alive with cries of exhilaration and delight. His winter, he thought. His Emporium.
This would be the winter of the Long War. With that in mind, he made haste for his workshop. There was much work to do, and mere months to go.
Kaspar wrote every day, as he promised he would. Days passed without letters, then arrived in a flurry: four, five, six of them landing on the mat, or ferried up to the quarters between Sirius’s soft, felt jaws. Each night Cathy sat at the end of Martha’s bed, Sirius lounging between them (asking either for his tummy to be tickled or for his gears to be wound tighter, that he might beat his tail with even more loyalty for his missing master), and read them aloud. After that, she retired to the empty bed and savoured each sentence alone.
The Toymakers Page 18
