The Toymakers

by Robert Dinsdale

  Cathy dropped at his side, helped him put his new soldiers back in their boxes. It was safe here, with Emil. And perhaps she might even have told him: this is where I’m from, and this is why I ran, and this, this is what my mother and father wanted for me and my baby …

  ‘Where did you go today, Cathy?’

  The question cut through whatever she had been thinking. She could not tell him. Leaving the Emporium doors with Kaspar at her side, that moment in the park when she had almost – when she had wanted – to touch him with her lips. Those things would be like betrayal to poor Emil. So instead she told him how boys across London – across the world – would thrill this coming Christmas; and when, at last, she was back in the Wendy House walls, she wrapped her arms around Sirius, lay back, and wept.

  It was true, what Kaspar had said in those first days after they met: you could never keep a secret in the Emporium aisles. Even if it took a week, a month, a year, the truth would finally out.

  In the middle of the night, she woke to the strangest pain of her life.

  It was dark in the Wendy House. The paraffin lantern had burned out, and as Cathy groped to relight it the pain reached a new horizon. Somebody had their hands deep inside her, holding on tight. She tried to sit up, upsetting the patchwork dog that had been lounging so happily across her legs, and when she did she felt the most insatiable urging in her bladder. There was a glass of water on the bedside table and she opened her mouth to throw it back. It steadied her, but everything seemed so far away; the walls, the door, the edges of everything, it was all in a haze.

  She was hovering on the edge of the bed, trying to calm the patchwork dog that ran in anxious circles around her, when the pain ebbed away. For the first time, she regained her breath, got to her feet and struck a light inside the lantern. The room seemed more solid now. She sat and teased the dog’s ears, and was whispering to it that she was all right, of course she was all right, when the pain returned. This time it was all in the small of her back. She could feel it swelling, taunting her with promises of more pain to come; then, when she finally thought she could bear it, the sensation exploded. She tried to take a breath but only half a breath would come; she tried to take another, if only to make up for the first, but again she could not fill her lungs. In that way she continued until, finally, the pain grew dull once more. She rolled back on the bed and felt the darned-sock tongue of the dog against her hand. It was this that brought her back to attention. She picked herself up, moved in awkward steps to the Wendy House door.

  She had one foot within, one foot without, when the pain returned. This time, she held on to the doorjamb until it passed. Was it only an illusion, or had the pain come back more quickly this time? It felt like the tides that filled those old estuary sands, devouring the land a few inches deeper with every wave. As soon as she was lucid again, she set off through the paper trees – but stopped before she had reached the edge of the forest. If this was what it felt like, if what had started tonight was going to end with a squalling baby in her arms, she should be back there, back in the only place in the world she could truly call home. She looked over her shoulder, at the diminutive Wendy House with its diminutive door – but she had not taken two steps toward it when the pain soared up inside her.

  She found herself sitting with her back against a paper tree, breathing quickly, breathing deeply, somehow finding a pattern that helped her steer a way through. When she looked up, the dog was standing forlornly in the Wendy House door. She beckoned to it and it loped over, its unmoving eyes somehow radiating concern.

  ‘Fetch him,’ she whispered, clasping the dog’s jaw.

  The dog seemed happy to have a command. Springing to attention, it took off through the trees.

  She did not know how long she lay there. The tightening returned, coiling her body, and though she tried to be ready for it, somehow it was always a step ahead of her, always leading her on. The way to get through it was to roll over, not to resist. She breathed when she could breathe – and when she could not, she simply held on.

  She was lying there still when she heard the voice on the other side of the forest. ‘Miss Wray!’ it cried, and she came to her senses – because Kaspar was coming to her now, and at least she would not have to do it alone. Then a second voice cried out. ‘Cathy!’ it hollered. And she froze; because the second voice was coming from the opposite side of the shopfloor, and the second voice was Emil.

  The patchwork dog gave one of its muted yaps and shambled out of the forest gloom. In moments it was on her, pushing its snout into her belly. When it drew back, Cathy saw that its paws were dark and wet; she was sitting in a pool of her own water. She was trailing her fingers through it, daring to feel what was happening underneath, when the voices cried out again. ‘Miss Wray!’ Kaspar exclaimed, and then, ‘Emil … what are you doing here?’

  And, in a frightened voice: ‘Kaspar, how in God … how in God do you know?’

  ‘The dog came for me.’

  ‘It came for me too …’

  Cathy looked into its black button eyes. It panted happily, proud to have done a good job. ‘You brought them both? Why did you bring them …’

  ‘Stand aside, Emil!’

  ‘Kaspar, you’re only making things worse …’

  And then they were here. Abreast of each other they pushed through the hanging boughs, each one dropping at either side of her.

  ‘Kaspar,’ Emil began, ‘you’ll need to fetch some towels. Hot water too. Some of Papa’s whisky, to dull the pain …’

  Cathy was riding the contraction, so she did not see the way Kaspar looked across her, as if disbelieving the evidence of his own ears. Was this really Emil, little brother Emil, brushing the hair out of Miss Wray’s eyes, telling her she would be all right?

  Emil’s eyes widened. For a moment, he had the air of their papa, furious at being disobeyed. ‘Please, Kaspar. We’ll need to make her comfortable. There are drugs she could take, if only she were somewhere else. Morphine and scopolamine. Twilight Sleep. But she’ll have to …’ He stopped. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Kaspar. I read every book I could. I sent Mrs Hornung out to track down the journals. I—’

  Perhaps Emil meant to go on, but he had seen the incredulous look on his brother’s face and, as he looked to Cathy to reassure her, he could not catch her eye – for she was looking up at Kaspar, her eyes locked with his. Her body was angled that way as well, moving there by imperceptible degrees. She was reaching out for him, thought Emil, reaching out for his brother.

  He seized her other hand. ‘I know what to do,’ he whispered. Then, again, until it stopped being a statement and turned into a question. ‘I know what to do. I do know, Kaspar. I know what to …’

  ‘Emil, you’d better raid Papa’s cupboard. Brandy, rather than whisky. One of his liqueurs. And the pillows, the pillows from the Wendy House. I stashed a full set under the bed. We have to make her comfortable.’

  How daring it had felt to be issuing orders, and yet how familiar to have them being issued at him. Emil was rising to the tips of his toes to do as he was told when a thought occurred to him. It opened up a great pit and swallowed him whole. ‘You’re the one who hid her here, aren’t you, Kaspar?’

  Kaspar’s eyes darted at him. ‘Well, what did you think had happened, little brother?’ Then he was stroking Cathy’s face again, drawing a finger gently along the line of her jaw. On the ground, Cathy’s lips moved in imitation of his name. She knew she was close, but Kaspar seemed so far away. ‘I want you to listen to me, Miss Wray. Listen to me and know: it isn’t going to be easy, but it will be all right. Do you understand? Do you believe me, Miss Wray?’

  Cathy opened her mouth to say yes, yes she did believe him (and damn you, Kaspar Godman, but I told you to stop calling me that!), but it was too late. Other hands had hold of her now. Kaspar held on to her left, Emil held on to her right, but those other fingers held the rest of her body in their vice-like grasp. She took a breath before they started
to close in. Moments later they were squeezing the life out of her and there was nothing Cathy Wray could do but lie back and hope.

  THE TRUE HISTORY OF TOYS

  PAPA JACK’S EMPORIUM, MAY–SEPTEMBER 1907

  Consider Jekabs Godman: older than you think him, though you already think him as old as mountains. Tonight, if you were the kind of person to have taken a post at Papa Jack’s Emporium just to get close to the old wayfarer, to soak up his secrets as a tree soaks up the secrets of earth and rain, you would have found him asleep in his chair, for even toymakers of the highest renown grow tired, and, with the passing years, Papa Jack grows more weary than ever.

  Watch him now, as he wakes …

  Perhaps it is a dream that stirs him. Perhaps you think Papa Jack dreams of yet more fantastical creations to populate his shelves, but he does not. Papa Jack’s dreams are the dreams of wild places. They are the dreams of a young man who was once a carpenter, who might have been a carpenter still, if only his life had gone according to plan. These are not dreams any child wandering into the Emporium at winter should be permitted to see. If you were a caring parent you would shield your sons and daughters from memories like these. Better they remain where they belong, locked away behind those glacial eyes, while Papa Jack’s hands do their everyday work, threading life into patchwork creatures, spiriting up space out of nowhere, unlocking the world as it appears to a child.

  The first thing he saw, as he reared up from those dreams (lest they swallow him whole, as they had on so many nights), was Mrs Hornung. She had arranged his feet in front of the fire, draped the blankets over his lap as she did every night. The teapot at his side (bark, pine needle, nettle – for Papa Jack remained the wild man Jekabs Godman at heart) was still hot, so perhaps he had not slept for long. Mrs Hornung clucked to see him wake, in the same admonishing tone she once used to scold his sons.

  ‘Is something wrong, Jekabs?’

  Papa Jack picked himself up. At first Mrs Hornung thought he might topple, but as always he trudged slowly forward. In the fringes of the room, the patchwork creatures lifted their heads to follow him with their sightless eyes. A threadbare robin, loosely weaved, flapped its stubby wings and flew, in its own ungainly way, to his shoulder, where its motor promptly cut out.

  Sometimes, the Emporium itself spoke its secrets to him, whispering through mortar and brick.

  Papa Jack wound the little bird back up. As life returned to its motor, so it bounced upon his palm. Cupping it there, he left the Godmans’ quarters and went out on to the gallery skirting the Emporium dome. Far below, the shopfloor was in darkness. The Emporium in summer was at once a sad and glorious thing, filled with anticipation, filled with promise, filled with yearning. Papa Jack brought the bird to his lips, whispered a word and cast it out, into the air.

  Follow …

  The robin swoops down, as gracefully as a robin made of felt and duck down can. Plummeting and flying are two very different things; this robin conflates them in a dance of its own. Down through the dark, over the tops of empty aisles it comes; then, at last, to the copse of paper trees where the Wendy House lies hidden. Here it crashes through corrugated boughs. In the emptiness beneath, the Wendy House appears. Now the bird can control itself no longer; its motor is tiny, and it must save what energy it can for the return journey. It pretends to peck at the ground, looking for fallen grubs – and, as it does, it looks through the Wendy House door.

  Imagine what it sees.

  The return flight is an epic. If patchwork creatures had patchwork poets, one would have spun for this robin a myth of classical proportion. As it is, we must content ourselves with the image of the robin’s wings beating furiously as it fought gravity to return to the Godmans’ quarters. There it found Papa Jack’s palm once more. And there, before its motor wound down for a second time, it chirruped its last. Patchwork creatures have no language of their own; remember, they are only toys. But still, Papa Jack understood. Behind his beard, his face blanched as white as the Siberian snows. In seconds, he was in his robe, dark brown like the pelt of a bear; seconds later, he was holding his canes as he tramped through the door.

  Papa Jack could not remember the last time he walked the shopfloor. The ways down to it were legion, but it had been so long that not even his feet remembered the way. He found himself in storerooms where patchwork mammoth lay; in the engine room where his flying locomotive still sat, awaiting the moment it might be needed again. He walked past the locked chamber where the Emporium Secret Doors had been barricaded (they opened in one place, but nobody knew where they went to; they had been locked away ever since), and only by sheer chance did he find the old night train and follow its tracks to the paper trees.

  How furious he had been to hear of them rearing up, rupturing the boards of his shopfloor, and yet how majestic they now were! He would have stopped to marvel at them, but from deep within the copse there came a cry: somebody in pain, or terror, or both. Papa Jack had known pain before. He had known terror as well. It propelled him on – for there had never been such sounds in his Emporium, not this place he had created as a bulwark against the bitterness, the darkness, that was adult life.

  He came out of the trees to find the Wendy House sitting there, crowned in paper vines. On a rock inside its white picket fence slumped Emil. The boy had his head hanging low so that, at first, he did not see Papa Jack arrive. But Papa Jack was a man whose presence could not go unnoticed. Emil felt a shadow cross him, and looked up to see his father.

  What words Emil wanted to say withered on his tongue. But his eyes told a story. They directed his father to the Wendy House window. He had to crouch to peer in, for his great bulk towered above the Wendy House roof, his shoulders half as broad as the Wendy House itself. Inside, the space distorted with the quality of a kaleidoscope. And there, at the kaleidoscope’s centre, was his son. Kaspar was on his knees at the edge of a bed, and in that bed lay one of the shop girls, the one who had arrived on first frost. Her legs were parted and her back was arched and she was clinging to Kaspar as if he was the only thing tethering her to the world.

  Papa Jack turned his tundra eyes on Emil.

  ‘Papa, listen …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Papa, please.’

  ‘He’s taken it too far, these flirtations of his.’

  ‘No! It isn’t … Papa, it isn’t his.’

  Papa Jack looked, incredulous, at Emil. ‘Then …’

  ‘Not me,’ Emil whispered, with unexpected regret. ‘It isn’t mine. Papa, she had nowhere to go and—’

  Papa Jack could listen to nothing more. He hunched over, meaning to push through the diminutive door – and perhaps he would have done so as well, but at that moment there came a different kind of cry, the air rent apart by the squalling of a newborn child.

  Papa Jack hovered on the threshold, with Emil at his side. The fury he had been feeling faded away. Through the Wendy House door, Kaspar was cradling a blood-grey bundle to Cathy’s breast. He was brushing the ragged hair from Cathy’s eyes, leaving fingerprint marks where he touched her skin. He was bending down to kiss her brow, finding towels to dry her, a blanket to swaddle the child.

  Papa Jack stepped backwards, over the picket fence and into the paper trees. He remembered a night much like this one, in that little hovel he once called home. Back then the trees that surrounded him were true black alder and Latvian pine. There were chickens in the yard and the weatherwoman, too late to attend the birth, arrived moments afterwards to find Jekabs Godman with his newborn son in his hands. ‘We shall call him Kaspar,’ Jekabs had said, and counted it the happiest moment of his life. A memory like that could obliterate every bad feeling in the world.

  In the trees he looked back at the crestfallen Emil. ‘When she’s ready, tell her to come to my workshop. I shall want to be introduced.’ Then he disappeared into the shopfloor dark.

  The heart that once beat inside her was now beating up against her breast.

  Cathy looked int
o her daughter’s eyes. Daughter. She had thought it all along, but here she was, ten minutes old and already rooting for milk. On the other side of the Wendy House, Kaspar was brewing tea. Hot buttered toast was already piled on a plate. The exhaustion she felt was not the exhaustion of nights without sleep; her body was spent, and yet every nerve tingled with satisfaction. She floated on it, holding her baby near.

  What had seemed so abstract only hours ago – I am going to be a mother – was suddenly so real: I am a mother, now and from this moment on. She propped herself up, allowed Kaspar to fix the pillows around her. She did not think twice as she pulled down her blouse to feed her daughter for the first time; Kaspar waltzed around her, doing what he must. By instinct she reached out and held his hand, still stained where he had lifted the baby to meet her for the first time.

  ‘Do you realise,’ she said, ‘that yours are the first hands she ever felt? You, Kaspar Godman, tied to her for ever …’

  Cathy looked up, thinking she might even have made Kaspar blush, and there, in the doorway, stood Emil. She had not thought of him, not until now. He was holding a roll of crisp bedsheets from one of Mrs Hornung’s cupboards, but he was carrying them like a penance, something he might offer up. He waited to be invited in, and that was the most saddening thing. ‘Come and meet her, Emil. Meet … Martha.’

  Emil shuffled inside, reached the foot of the bed, and lay the bedsheets down – but he didn’t know where to look. His eyes kept darting into the corners, unable to settle on Cathy, on Martha, on Kaspar – on anything at all.

  Finally, he broke the silence: ‘I was worried about you, Cathy.’

  ‘You had no need to be, little brother.’ Kaspar strode to his side, put an arm around his shoulder. ‘She was in good hands.’