The Toymakers

by Robert Dinsdale

  He spoke, too, of the days spent digging the line, reshaping the land. Robert Kesey had struck up a romance with a local girl. They had no language in common, but Kesey delighted her with a patchwork mouse he had secreted in his packs.

  Two days after the first frost in Flanders came a declaration from Papa Jack.

  This year we have a new friend to work the shopfloor. Perhaps you will not remember Wolfram Siskind, who until this summer worked his chocolatiers’ in a little Bond Street mews – but I can assure you, your ten-year-old self thought his shop an extravaganza to set our Emporium to shame. You will recall the scenes outside the German embassy, how they threw rocks and lay the little red door to siege? I am afraid Wolfram suffered a similar fate and, since the summer, his shop has been lain to waste too many times. So, for this winter only, he will sell his concoctions of chocolate and honey and spun sugar from a grotto here on our own shopfloor. The truth is, Wolfram has struggled in his work for some time. He is an artiste in his chosen form, but across time his spun sugar mice, his chocolate hawks, his bears sculpted from toffee and nuts have grown so that they feel too real – and not even the most merciless child could bring themselves to eat them. Instead, they take them home and make them beds from cotton wool, or keep them in their doll’s houses as toys. For Wolfram it is a triumph, but one suspects his creditors take a different approach. Whatever we can do to help him, we will. You would find him a man after your own heart.

  Your loving Papa.

  The next page was filled with a scrawl so fierce that Cathy was taken aback. There was violence in that hand. Beneath it there had once been words, but Kaspar had scoured them out so deeply not even their impressions remained, only a spiralling chaos of black ink.

  On the next page, the words could be read, but the hand still unsteady:

  On patrol this night Robert Kesey dropped dead by my side. His body will be laid to rest come the dawn. We returned fire into the pitch of night and, Papa, I have killed my first men. Do not tell me a German could ever be after my own heart.

  To which Papa Jack had simply replied:

  Never forget – once upon a time, those men played with toys too.

  And it put Kaspar Godman to such shame that he had not written since, not even when his father begged and begged and begged.

  It was late when Cathy closed the journal. The clock on the wall, with its manifold faces, told her it was after three. Frost had grown in fractures across the window glass, winter starting to harden. It would, at least, bring custom to the shopfloor.

  She ventured out, and into the rest of the Godmans’ quarters. In the workshop the fire had burnt down to embers, and Papa Jack was asleep in his chair. It was so rare that he retired to his bed, not in these long months of winter. She was about to replace the journal on his lap, when his inkpot and pen caught her eye. And, damn it, why shouldn’t she? She was his wife. She picked up the quill and pressed it to the page.

  Kaspar, she wrote, I know.

  Beneath it she signed her name. Then, because her anger had faded with the night, she forced in the words ‘my love’, cramped up so that he might still think it an afterthought.

  In her dreams that night were patchwork dogs and razor wire. Kaspar Godman had a contraption in his back and Robert Kesey had to wind it up so that Kaspar could march. She woke in a cold sweat, and another Emporium day began.

  The gall of the white feather was nothing compared to the gall Emil felt on seeing its giver again – and yet, the next day, as he stood god-like over more battles of the Long War, there she was, watching him from an alcove between the aisles. It was most distracting. It had taken only a day for the rumours of the new Long War game to spread across the schoolyards of London town. Boys had dragged their mothers to the Emporium directly after their school days finished. Others, Emil knew, would be planning trips from Gloucester and Cirencester, Edinburgh and the Yorkshire Wolds. Pilgrimages from far and wide, all to see his soldiers, and there she was, like a ghost at his feast.

  One boy had tugged on his hand and told him how he wanted a troop of soldiers just like my daddy, and this had given Emil the biggest thrill of his life.

  When Emil could stand it no more, he stepped from his pedestal, called the boys battling away to a parley, and told them he would be back soon.

  For a time it was enough not to be in her line of sight. He worked at the register, wrapping presents, and in the work found his composure – except, when he looked up, there she was again, lined up in the queue with all the other shoppers. By the time she got to the front the blood was roiling in his veins.

  ‘Hello,’ she ventured. ‘Sir?’

  There was only so long Emil could keep his head down.

  ‘You haven’t asked me my name.’

  Emil snapped, ‘I’m aware of it. I hadn’t planned to. I’d planned to order you out of my Emporium, but we don’t turn a soul away. It’s one of our dictums.’

  ‘Dictums,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Emil Godman, you have the quaintest turn of phrase.’

  This only infuriated him more. He had so few words.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve come to tender an apology. I have a cousin on the Board. I verified your record. You’re no coward, Emil Godman.’

  This caught Emil almost wholly off-guard. He fumbled with wrapping paper, tied his hands to a box of the Long War with ribbon.

  ‘My name is Nina Dean. I’m afraid I was … too eager. I would like to make restitution.’

  Restitution, thought Emil. You have such a formal turn of phrase.

  ‘What kind of restitution?’

  ‘I was thinking of a home-cooked dinner, from one supporter of King and Country to another.’

  ‘If you hadn’t guessed, this is my busiest time of year. A home-cooked dinner indeed!’

  Emil snorted, imitating disgust, yet even now he was thinking of roast potatoes on a plate, gravy thick with dripping, bread and butter and …

  ‘Then I might cook for you here.’

  ‘I think Mrs Hornung may have a moment at the thought of a stranger rifling in her larder.’

  Miss Nina Dean returned Emil’s snort, turned on her heel, and marched away. Still flushing red, Emil returned to his wrapping. Only now did he realise how his heart was pounding. He was glad she was gone, he was sorry he was gone, and the two were curdling into the most unholy grumble in his stomach. A shadow fell across him. ‘Yes?’ he snapped – and, on looking up, saw that it was none other than Miss Nina Dean, her arms laden down with dozens of boxes of soldiers.

  She deposited them on the counter with a crash.

  ‘I shall take them all, these and a hundred more. My aunts and I shall deliver them to the boys’ homes, for they’re bound to swell this year when fathers stop coming home. And I shall want a dozen boxes of ballerinas as well. Dainty ones, who can spin en pointe and hold perfect arabesques. And then – then, after you’re done with your wrapping, done with your harrumphing and general discontent, then you can accept my apology, consent for me to cook for you, and look me in the eye.’

  Emil’s gaze shot up. His whole body was quaking.

  ‘Does that sound like a thing you might do for me?’

  And Emil said, ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it does.’

  My papa is a scoundrel, wrote Kaspar. I had sworn him to secrecy and took it as a pledge. But there you are, dear Cathy, dancing across the page. As fortune had it, I was awake and staring at the page as the words appeared. I followed you with every etch of the pen. And I know you were angry, Cathy. It was there, in the rush of ink. So, first of all, let me say now how sorry I am. I wanted to spin you a yarn, a tale of adventure, but that is not what life is, and I should have known that from the first. So, now that you are here, every unvarnished thing …

  She could not remain bitter, not for long. Bitterness was a kind of privilege afforded to those in better times – and how could she be bitter, when at least he was still alive, and Robert Kesey cold in the ground.

  I have mis
sed you Kaspar. That is all. And I want nothing but the truth. I want to know you.

  The truth.

  And nothing but the truth.

  The truth, Mrs Godman. But my truth is dull these past days. We are sent down and behind the line, leaving others in the 7th to their patrols. To be a soldier, it appears, one must stomach long bouts of nothings and short bursts of every thing in the world. Tell me news of the Emporium, Cathy. Tell me something I can tell the boys. We have already missed opening night …

  So much to tell, thought Cathy, but where to begin? She watched as Kaspar’s words materialised and thought: he needs some levity, he needs some hope. And what better hope than this?

  Emil, she wrote, and hesitated on the word, is falling in love.

  It was the dawn of December, two weeks since she invaded the Emporium kitchens to make good her apology to Emil, and Cathy thought she had seen Miss Nina Dean every day since. If she was not there when the doors first opened to wish Emil a good day, she was there in the afternoon, on her hands and knees in the Long War glade, first learning the rules of the game and then directing others. On the second of the month, when London hunkered under its first real snowfall of the season, Cathy gazed out from one of the galleries and saw her leading one army, a gaggle of boys around her, while Emil led the opposing force. Emil’s cries of celebration at routing one of her units flurried up into the Emporium dome.

  ‘I haven’t seen him as elated, not even when he used to play with Kaspar.’

  Mrs Hornung was at her side, her face screwed up in concentration. ‘Do you trust her?’

  The question gave Cathy pause.

  At first I was uncertain, she wrote to Kaspar that night.

  To waltz in here as she did and call Emil a coward, right there in front of his customers – well, that is a slight from which it must be hard to recover. And yet recover from it he has! It helps that she is forthright, it helps that she brooks no nonsense, it helps that she is more sure of herself than almost any other lady I have met. In truth, she can seem more like mother to Emil than she does admirer. Her affiliation with the Order of the White Feather, Emil explains, was at the insistence of her aunts, that coven who marched in here on opening night and witnessed Emil’s humiliation. When quizzed upon it, Emil insists that it took more courage to return to the Emporium and make amends than it did to come in with an accusing finger – and on that he is correct. And yet Mrs Hornung’s words have stayed with me today and they linger still. Miss Nina Dean has a cold exterior, but sometimes the light shines through. Certainly, had she no genuine affection for Emil, she would not have spent today on her hands and knees battling with toy soldiers. It cannot be her interest, so she must do it solely for him. And when I catch myself asking why, I must stop and scold myself. For why shouldn’t a woman look at Emil and feel the same things I first felt that summer you helped me stowaway in the Wendy House walls? Do I think so little of Emil to deny him even that? What kind of a friend, of a sister, would that make me? So, yes, I do trust Miss Nina Dean. I choose to trust her because Emil chooses to trust her. That should be enough.

  In the morning, when she checked the journal again, Kaspar had made just three marks. ‘!!!’ he had scribbled – and, in his next missive, told her of the moment he broke the news to the Emporium boys.

  First they roared with surprise, and then they roared with delight. Please convey our best wishes to my brother and tell him: if there is no band on her finger, nor new children to roam our Emporium halls, by the time the Peace has arrived, he must forfeit his birthright and cede me every last aisle!

  They wrote more sporadically as Christmas approached. Perhaps Kaspar’s days were too exhausting, for Cathy’s certainly were. The new shop hands, inexperienced as they were, ran her ragged, and when she sank into bed at the end of each night, it was all she could do to write the words ‘I love you’ in the journal, then fall asleep with its pages pressed up against her face.

  The snowdrops came late on the Emporium terrace that year, January already gone by the time the shoots opened up into perfect white jewels. Emil, who held them in the palm of his hand, stepped back through the plate glass doors, crossed the Godmans’ quarters and went out on to the gallery beyond. Every season ended with this same plummeting feeling in the pit of Emil’s stomach, but this year it was more terrible than most – for there, in the glade of the Long War, Miss Nina Dean was laying out soldiers for a battle of epic proportions and boys (and girls; Miss Nina Dean was drawing more and more girls into the glade) were choosing sides.

  He lifted the Imperial Kapitan out of his pocket and set him to marching on the balcony rail.

  ‘I’ll have to talk to you,’ he said. ‘There isn’t anyone else.’

  The Imperial Kapitan lifted his arm, as if in salute.

  ‘If she goes away now, she might not come back next winter. It’ll be off to Society and those harridan aunts of hers and … next year, who’s to say she’ll even think of our Emporium at all?’

  So what are you waiting for? he thought, unable to voice it even to the Imperial Kapitan. Down below, Miss Nina Dean had started up the battle. She shrieked with glee that soared up and reached Emil, even standing so high above. He could, he supposed, march down there right now and say: I should like it, if you were to stay. We need help this year more than any, and you have already proven yourself so adept …

  His eyes revolved to find the Wendy House, where it still sat between the paper trees. He could see its steepled roof between the branches. Only Kaspar knew how the branches sprouted fresh leaves each summer – but in winter they were skeletal as trees in the wild, revealing the Wendy House beneath. Kaspar had never got much further in learning how their father stretched out the space inside (that summer his toyboxes were abandoned, because he had a baby to care for, and babies eclipsed everything else, even toys …), but the Wendy House remained the most magical of all places on the shopfloor. Not just, Emil thought, for the way it staggered and amazed when you stooped through its door. There was a different sort of magic attached to the Wendy House now, one from which no one could escape. What a perfect story: Kaspar and Cathy and the Wendy House where they used to live.

  Sometimes thinking of her just spirited her into being – and, as if by magic, Cathy appeared far below. On seeing her, Emil had to tighten his hold on the balcony rail. He tried to force himself to look back into the glade, but his eyes (such treacherous things!) kept drifting back to Cathy. He remembered visiting her in that Wendy House as well. The books he had read, when he thought he might be the only one holding her hand as she—

  His knuckles whitened. He thought he heard the Imperial Kapitan cry out – Stop being a fool, Emil! – but it was only the sound of his own conscience, drumming against his skull, trying to get out.

  Because – what do you really think is going to happen, Emil? That this winter, this winter you rule the Emporium floor, she’ll see what she didn’t back then? That she’ll come knocking late at night and tell you she was wrong, that it should have been you, you to help her push Martha out into the world, you to curl around her in bed at night, you to take her hand and marry her, down there in the paper trees? Or (and he hated himself, even as he thought it), are you really thinking … what if he didn’t come home? What if Kaspar stays out there, just like Robert Kesey, and she needs you – needs somebody, but it just happens to be you – to fill the place where he used to lie, a faux-Kaspar, a shadow, something to cling on to, something to fill the void … Is that really what you think?

  She wouldn’t even have to change her name.

  It was an effort, but he stared at Nina until he was certain Cathy had passed from sight. And he realised, then, what he had never realised before. This jealousy had started out for Cathy, but the feeling had blossomed and changed. He was jealous of it all now, of Kaspar being a father, of the games he played with Martha, of … I never had a mama, thought Emil, but I’ve always wanted to be a father. Even as a boy I would think of one day having boys o
f my own, and playing with them on the carpets as my papa played with me.

  So, yes, he thought, perhaps there is a different way of looking at life … and, in the same moment he thought that, Miss Nina Dean looked up from the shopfloor. She had the look of a sculpture and she had caught his eye.

  The Emporium (Cathy wrote) is closed for another winter, but there remains great excitement. Emil is to be married.

  Perhaps you are not surprised, given all the stories I have brought to you, but to us in the Emporium it remains a great shock. On the day the snowdrops flowered, Emil cornered me in the storerooms and – can you believe this? – asked my permission. I believe it was only his nerves manifesting. Dear, sweet Emil will never conquer those nerves! He needed my emboldening to give him courage and, duly bolstered, he arrested Miss Dean before she left by the Emporium doors, and led her to the gallery above the Emporium dome. Then, at his signal, Mrs Hornung – who was in place in the aisles below – pulled a cord that wound up a hundred soldiers at once. High above, Nina saw them march out – and there, according to Emil’s design (what geometries it must have taken to make it happen!), they wound to a halt in such a way to spell out his proposal, Will You Marry Me?, in letters across the Emporium floor. I am pleased to say that Nina wept openly, there and then. Through her tears, she agreed to be Emil’s wife.

  There is secret history to this. Nina’s brother, Emil tells us, perished at the defence of Muscat. Their grandfather has interests in Arabia and had been tutoring his grandson there when hostilities were declared. He served bravely as an officer, at only twenty-one years of age, and lost his life in that service. The tragedy has hardened Nina to what she wants from life. This, she knows now, is our brother Emil. She has spent the last weeks in cleverly disguised misery that the end of the season might be the end of their relations. Now she will stay with us all summer long and be welcomed to our Emporium famille.