The Toymakers

by Robert Dinsdale

  Kaspar had never felt Emil so rigid. Emil turned his shoulder but, when Kaspar’s arm followed, he wheeled around, casting Kaspar bodily to the ground. Perhaps it was the night’s exertions still taking their toll, for Kaspar was too weak and could not find his balance. He lay prone, dusting himself down.

  ‘Papa was here.’

  ‘Why, Emil,’ Kaspar said, picking himself up, ‘you little—’

  ‘It wasn’t me, Kaspar. You’ll think what you like, but I kept the secret—’ For the first time, his eyes found Cathy. ‘I kept our secret all these months. Why would I ruin it now?’ Emil knew the way Kaspar was looking at him: down his nose, imperious; it was the same look he used to wear on opening night, when the customers flocked to his creations and left Emil’s to gather dust. He flailed around until he was back at the door. ‘He says he wants to see you, as soon as you’ve the strength. I’m going there now. Cathy, I’ll do what I can. But he’s angry. He’s angry and he’s sad …’

  After Emil was gone, Kaspar marched to the door and slammed it shut. The noise reverberated in the Wendy House eaves, disrupting the paper leaves that had gathered in the gutters.

  ‘Don’t think of it,’ he said, marching back to her side.

  ‘How can I not think of it, Kaspar?’ The tension tearing through her body must have been absorbed by the baby, for she threw her head back from Cathy’s breast and started to cry. For the first time, the thought hit her: I can’t do this. Can I do this? I can’t do this.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere, Cathy. My father isn’t a monster. If you knew …’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘Knew the kind of man he is. So we’ll go to him and we’ll tell him it all and …’ His words faded away, his eyes drawn back to the baby in her arms. That girl was like a vortex, constantly pulling him down. ‘Can I … hold her?’

  The baby had stopped its bleating. It turned its puckered eyes, as sightless as Sirius, on Kaspar – as if she might even have recognised his voice. And perhaps that was it: all those nights he had spent in these Wendy House walls, announcing the creation of his toyboxes; some of that, surely, had echoed in the womb.

  Kaspar took Martha and held her up, as if to show her the world. Watching him stilled Cathy. Kaspar was right. He had to be right. A man like Papa Jack, a man who had devoted his life to the Emporium, could not possibly cast a mother and child into the outside world.

  Exhaustion was coming over her, her body crying out for rest. She lay down, was aware of Kaspar laying Martha down beside her, buttressing her with pillows so that she would not tumble from the bed. And oh, that first night with the baby in the world, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to hold her or lay her down, nor even if she was breathing as she should! Emil might have gone, but Kaspar, she knew, would always remain. ‘Sleep, Cathy. I’ll wake you if she stirs.’

  Perhaps she would have resisted – but, for the first time, he had not called her ‘Miss Wray’. That, she decided, had to mean something, and as she lay her aching body down (was any other kind of pain as sweet as this?), the thought of Papa Jack’s fury evaporated and she did not fear for anything at all. Kaspar was there, with her baby’s fist closed around his finger, when she went to sleep, and he was there when she woke up, hours later, to her daughter crying and her chest wet and sticky with milk.

  At dawn she fortified herself with toast and preserves, eggs Kaspar had lifted from Mrs Hornung’s larder, and allowed herself to be led through the paper trees. In her arms, the baby gazed up. To her, paper trees were real; were she, one day, to walk in woodland beyond the Emporium doors she might take those real trees for false. Perspectives, Cathy remembered. Kaspar had said that the magic had to do with perspectives – and perhaps, one day, even she might understand.

  Her legs did not feel her own, but Kaspar was there to catch her as they crossed the shopfloor and made the ascent to the Godmans’ quarters above. Sirius followed, announcing their arrival with one of his cotton wadding yaps.

  It was Mrs Hornung who answered. She gave Kaspar the same disconsolate shake of the head she had given him every time he was caught out as a child and, in return, Kaspar put his arms around her and held her tight. Then, Cathy followed him through. In the chamber, naked without the paper trees of Christmas, Emil was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, lining up soldiers as if to make war against himself. Perhaps he was making another war against himself too, for he barely looked at Cathy as she crossed the battlefield. Ahead of her, the heavy oaken door etched with Emporium insignia that led to Papa Jack’s study was hanging open, a portal of blackness with dancing firelight beyond.

  Kaspar bowed to Cathy (why did he have to pretend to be so ostentatious, even after last night?) and, leaving her behind, marched through.

  ‘Papa,’ Cathy heard him begin, ‘you’ve every right to be …’

  And after that, Cathy heard nothing: only the miniature explosions of Emil’s cannonade, the invective he muttered at his soldiers as they made battle, and the whimper of the baby asleep against her shoulder.

  Soon, Kaspar reappeared. Resting a hand on each of her shoulders, he whispered four words – ‘He’s only my papa’ – and stepped back to reveal the way through. She saw the embers of an old hearthfire, alcoves steeped in books. On a perch, a patchwork owl with snow white plumage was constantly revolving its head.

  With Martha nuzzling into her neck, she entered the room.

  Papa Jack was sitting in a rocker, needle and thread in his brutish hands. There was little room to approach, so instead she stood on the tiny square of exposed carpet, and felt an unnatural chill as the door creaked shut of its own volition. Of all the rooms in the Emporium, this was the smallest. Its walls seemed to taper in like the walls of a cavern, or the inside of a great kiln. Books hung precariously from the uppermost shelves, every one of them the clothbound tomes in which Papa Jack had inscribed his best designs. The only light came from the hearth’s dying embers, the firefly jars pushed in between the books. And Papa Jack’s face was illuminated like that: snowfall lit up by fire.

  After a moment, the old man lay down his needle and thread.

  ‘It’s Cathy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Papa Jack took her in, as if he was seeing her for the very first time. Was it Cathy’s imagination, or was he looking through her, at some imaginary horizon?

  ‘Tell me, have you named her?’

  Cathy’s blood beat black. ‘She’s named Martha,’ she replied, shocked at her own steel. ‘Sir, I understand you’ll be angry. I know people have come here, before, to steal from you. That’s not me.’

  ‘I don’t like liars,’ he whispered. ‘But I understand why you’d lie. Tell me – is there going to be trouble, Cathy? Trouble in my Emporium?’

  In reply, she said, ‘She’s not yet a whole day old.’

  ‘With your family, Cathy.’

  ‘My family’s right here, sleeping in my arms.’

  ‘You’re a runaway. I see that now.’ His voice, like stones in snowfall. ‘Had I seen it before, Cathy, you could still have spent winter in our Emporium. You might still have had your baby down there, in my Wendy House. So let there be no misunderstanding. The Emporium is yours for as long as you want it. There are rules, rules of hospitality I learned long ago, and I don’t mean to work against them now. This child was born here, born in space I chipped out of the world with these two hands. That means a thing, to a man as old as me. But … when people run, people chase. So tell me, is that how it’s going to be?’

  Cathy was still reeling, trying to listen to her own thoughts. The Emporium – hers for as long as she wanted? Her child, born into space Papa Jack chipped out of the world …

  ‘They don’t want us,’ she finally said. ‘My family were sending me away. To a home … And if it had been that way, there would have been a matron and she’d have been wresting Martha out of my arms, right here, right now, and then she’d have been with somebody else, with a different name, with a differ
ent …’ She paused. She would not tremble, not now. Strange how seeing Martha in the flesh had made her a mother; she had been a mother all of this time. ‘I’m sixteen now. Girls younger than me have made it on their own. That’s what I’ll do if you …’ She thought she had the courage to say it, but when the moment came it was too much an ultimatum, and her tongue would not let her go on.

  ‘Cathy, may I?’

  Papa Jack opened his hands. For a moment, Cathy tightened herself – but it was only an instinct; she knew she was safe, here in the Emporium. She knelt and gently placed Martha on his lap, where his hands closed around her. How huge they were; she might have rested in his palm.

  ‘This Emporium of ours, it has always been a place for runaways. I spent so long running, Cathy Wray, until I founded this Emporium. Mrs Hornung and our very first shop hands, all of them lost, with no place to go. It takes a special sort of person to make the Emporium their home. Now there’s you …’

  Martha awoke, to see the gnarled face of Papa Jack looking down.

  ‘A child born into my Emporium ought to know how my Emporium was born, don’t you think?’

  Cathy brought Martha back to her shoulder.

  ‘If you’re to stay, if you’re Emporium through and through, it’s important that you know. It isn’t a story I’m fond of telling. It’s important you know that as well.’

  Papa Jack clapped his hands and, from beneath the shelfing, a toy chest picked itself up, shuffling across to him on a hundred pinewood legs. At his feet it lowered itself to the ground and opened its lid. Inside were rags, worn leather gloves, a nest of silver fur as of some eastern wolf. Sitting atop the nest, there lay a wooden contraption painted in dark forest green and sparkling white. Papa Jack lifted this up. Set down on his lap, it looked a simple toy: a diorama of dark pine forest and endless snow, a crank handle and simple figurines of men in brown coats, iron-capped boots, felt and fur hats.

  ‘I made this long ago, so that I would always remember. So that my boys out there would know. If you’re ready, Cathy, you might help me now …’

  She paused, suddenly aware of the door closed at her back. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Trust me, Cathy. Please.’

  Cathy knelt again at the old man’s feet and, at his behest, took hold of the crank handle on the end of the toy. Papa Jack’s hand closed over hers. She was surprised to find his skin as soft as the baby she was holding.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, ‘though I was more afraid than I could possibly be.’

  Then, with his hand still over hers, the handle started to turn.

  It began like this:

  The crank handle turned and, with it, Cathy’s hand.

  Deep in the contraption, the cam shafts rose and fell, propelling the figures to begin their march. The toy kept them in place, rotating the diorama of icy tundra and black pine forest against which they walked, but this march was endless.

  Cathy felt the first wave of cold as the numbing of her fingers. She tried to draw back her hand but Papa Jack’s lay over it, holding her fast. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he whispered, and something in his voice gave Cathy the courage to continue, even as the cold reached up her arm, even as crystals of frost coated every hair hanging from her head.

  She looked about. A whiteness, swirling and indistinct, was rising up the walls around her, obscuring the books on the shelves, the mortar and brick. Soon the walls fell away. The whiteness was absolute. It plucked her out of the Emporium and cast her down here, in this otherworld of Papa Jack’s creation. A single snowflake landed on the tip of her nose and, when she looked down, she saw that she was wrapped in fur, that Martha was swaddled up tight beneath a fur-lined hat.

  A voice sailed past her. ‘You there! Stay in line!’ She heard the tramping of boots, too many boots to hold in her imagination.

  She had seen this once before. In the space between the aisles, Emil had spread out his picnic hamper, and the shelves had faded away to reveal a wildflower meadow, picnickers all around. Only hadn’t that been the perfection of his toy, bringing to mind the thought of a summer’s day so vividly that she created it for herself? Hadn’t that been imagination? Whatever this was, it had to be something more – for these were not her memories, not her imaginings. These were coming from the toy and the man who hunched over it, still turning the handle with a perfect motion. Somehow she was inside his head, his imagination become manifest.

  She was startled out of these thoughts by silhouettes on her shoulder. A column of figures opened up and marched around her, disappearing into the vortex of snow up ahead: men, countless men, in ragged felt coats and muskrat hats, some with packs slung over their shoulders, some dragging sleds in which other men were piled up.

  ‘Where am I?’ Cathy gasped. For the first time, trees appeared as stark silhouettes in the whiteness ahead. She felt herself being drawn to them, as if she too was marching in procession with the column. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘You see the man ahead, the man who stands apart from the rest?’

  She did. He was walking with his head bowed low but, as she looked, he turned to her and held her gaze. Those eyes, they were glacial blue.

  ‘Papa Jack, is that … you?’

  ‘Back then his name was Jekabs Godman. But yes, this is me. If you’re to stay in our Emporium, you must go with him now.’

  The figure had lifted a gloved hand. He was beckoning to her, but Cathy held fast. While she was here, one hand still on the crank handle, still feeling the touch of Papa Jack, it was possible to feel safe. Untethered, perhaps she would disappear, be swallowed whole by this toy and whatever magics it was performing.

  ‘You’ll have to hurry,’ Papa Jack breathed. ‘If he lingers too long, the gang masters will come for him. They are a brutal kind of man. They were once like Jekabs, prisoners every one, but they came back as guards. Please, Cathy. Jekabs is a … decent man. He’ll tell you it all.’

  She tried to resist, but the wind flurried behind her, propelling her on. Her fingers slipped from beneath Papa Jack’s, his eyes turned away from her, and soon she was whirling forward, borne by the snowfall itself.

  Jekabs Godman was taller than the hunched mountain of a man he would become. He was, if it was possible to admit it, as handsome as his son Kaspar, with hair of jet black (now beaded in frost) and defiant features that over time would shift into peaks and ravines. He welcomed her with a smile. ‘Walk with me,’ he began, ‘and beware of the rest. Don’t speak to another soul.’

  His voice was not the feathery voice it would one day become, but he still spoke far too gently for the ravaged landscape around. ‘Where are we going?’ Cathy asked.

  ‘We are going into the east,’ Jekabs Godman said, ‘and leaving everything we knew. It will be six long years for me. They call this … katorga. It is the most harrowing thing that can be visited on a man. Some of us will die on the way. Some of us will die there. But me? Well, you already know: I will survive. What you don’t know is how. But come. We have walked but twenty-six of our miles. There are still six thousand to go.’

  And then, as the column marched around them, Jekabs Godman told her his story.

  Ten days ago, Jekabs Godman was a husband, a father, a carpenter of modest income but high renown. Now, he was nothing. Ten years ago, he was an apprentice, dreaming of the things he might one day make with his hands. Now, Jekabs Godman touched the burning indentations in his shoulder, the symbol that demarked his crime, still smelling of seared hair and flesh. The press of bodies against him forced him to look up. In front of them lay the east, frigid and featureless as the end of the world.

  Ten days: all it took to destroy a world. Jekabs Godman was arrested on the first day. On the second he protested his innocence. On the fourth he confessed. On the fifth day he discovered the crimes of which he was accused, and on the sixth was found guilty. On the seventh day he was branded with hot iron and ink and, by the eighth, he had accepted his fate. Jekabs Godman: imperial saboteur and o
perator of an outlawed printing press. He had been using it, in the cellar of a well-acquainted friend for whom he had built cabinets, to run up leaflets for a stall he proposed to erect at Christmas, where he might sell some of the odds and ends he made to while away the hours between jobs: little wooden angels, delicate pine bears. On the front of the leaflets were Russian horses of the kind he dreamed he might one day build – and above hung the words: ‘Are you a child at heart? Then … Welcome to Papa Jekabs’ Emporium …’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jekabs, and he put an arm around Cathy as if to protect her from the imaginary winter wailing around, ‘toys had always been my dream. I had a son, you see, and another on the way. To play with my children with toys that I made, that was almost the only dream I had. And until that knock came at my door, in the dead of the night, that was how life would have been. But they came for us all in those days. If you weren’t a killer or a criminal, you were a sympathiser. As for me, and as for sympathy, well, I’d never thought the world could have enough …’

  Night crystallised. On the plain the blackness was never absolute, for the stars whose light was smeared across the heavens were reflected in grain fields and hedgerows dusted in snow. A fox, silver as the moon, darted across Jekabs’ path and in its eyes was the promise of something Jekabs would never feel again: freedom.

  They had walked through the vagaries of twilight, prison outriders hemming them in just as assuredly as the dark. Men on horseback thundered up and down the line, keeping tallies in their heads but never breathing a word. When the outriders sounded their horns to announce the day’s march had reached its end, they made camp in the pastures of some farm whose service was rewarded by the gratitude of the Tsar (eternal and enriching, but never made manifest). The farmhouse sat at a fork between two of the ancient cart roads that criss-crossed this corner of the world, and in its reach were cattle barns and the ruins of the farm that had sat here in centuries past. Here the prisoners were corralled. Some were sent out to gather firewood and forage. Others were set to butchering the pig dutifully trolled out by the farmer. Jekabs’ duty was to wait and endure.