The Toymakers

by Robert Dinsdale

  ‘What you’re saying,’ said Cathy, ‘is that my husband is here – and yet he’s not.’

  The doctor laid down his papers. ‘Perhaps it is time that you saw the lieutenant for yourself.’

  Kaspar was classified as a cot case and, as such, was in the ground-floor ward, among the other bedridden and fresh amputees. Sister Philomena was emerging from the room as they arrived. Inside, makeshift curtain rails divided the beds – and there, propped up in bed with his head hanging down, was the man Cathy had loved for so many years. Lieutenant Godman. The God Man. Her Kaspar.

  He was old. That was the thing that struck her. She could see the bones of his cheeks; they gave him the look of a sculpture, though without any of a sculpture’s classical poise. Upon his lap sat a wooden box, carved with the fractures of a thousand snowflakes, and on its top a varnished plate spun at the same pace as the crank handle Kaspar’s hand was turning. On the plate danced two circus acrobats, mahogany mice in braces and long pantaloons. The melody from the contraption inside was lilting and sad, a nursery rhyme as played by a harpist of great renown. It slowed and sped up, according to the whim of Kaspar’s hand.

  ‘Did he make that thing?’ Cathy whispered.

  ‘Sister?’ called Doctor Norrell – and, at his command, Sister Philomena returned to the room. ‘The music box, did the lieutenant …’

  ‘It was in pieces, and part of his packs,’ she explained. ‘The first days he was here, he rebuilt it out of every last splinter. Sometimes, he lends it to the other men. They’re besotted with it. And it’s the queerest thing – whenever Lieutenant Godman’s without it, he comes out of himself. He gets out of bed, he starts pacing, he prowls. I do believe he has an attachment.’

  Cathy took three great strides into the ward. Some of the other soldiers revolved to face her, but Kaspar – her poor, beautiful Kaspar – did not flinch; his eyes saw only the twirling mice, his ears heard only that sweet, sad refrain.

  ‘Bring me a cane,’ she said. ‘I’ve a carriage waiting outside. Doctor Norrell, my husband is coming home.’

  The spyglass was one of Martha’s most treasured possessions. Her papa (not her blood papa, who she understood – in the storybook kind of way she understood these things – to have perished in the Aegean) had made it for her. It had an ivory handle in a pearlescent design and, if you pressed one eye to the glass, you could watch everything that was happening through its sister piece, hidden out on Iron Duke Mews. That was how she knew of her mother’s return even before the Emporium doors opened. As soon as the spyglass revealed the hansom carriage approaching, she scrambled for the dirigible tethered between the paper trees. She was in the stern, preparing to toss ballast over the side, when Sirius lolloped out of the trees and set up his thin, cotton whimpers.

  ‘Oh, come on then,’ she said with a dramatic roll of her eyes – and Sirius, so elated to be included, turned top over tail as she hauled him aboard. Now that they were ready, she threw the last of the sandbags to the Emporium floor, heaved up the tether, and clung on as the dirigible rocketed skywards.

  Up they went, up and further up, up past the Wendy House roof, up past the paper branches – and, finally, through the canopy, into the Emporium dome. Martha had flown this route before, but now came the most perilous part. Timing was key. Above her, the cloud castle was hoving into view. When it was almost upon them, she reached out for the rope dangling from its drawbridge. By using her body as an anchor, she slowed the dirigible’s rise and heaved it to a mooring by the drawbridge winch. Then, with burning arms and pride in a job well done, she helped Sirius clamber over the side.

  Down below, where the empty aisles were draped in dust sheets, the Emporium doors were opening up. The first figure who came through she knew to be her mother, both because of the ostentatiousness of her hat (Martha rolled her eyes) and the day bag hanging over her shoulder. That bag, she knew, had been a gift from her papa – the girl had hidden inside it once, just to see how deep down it could go. The figure who came next was hunched over, dwarfed by the grey greatcoat he wore. In one of his hands he held a cane, which he seemed to be using as a third leg, and he moved with mortifying slowness.

  ‘What do you think?’ Martha whispered. ‘Is it him?’

  Sirius’s tail had exploded in delight.

  ‘It is!’ she exclaimed. ‘Papa! Papa, up here!’

  It was her mother’s face that looked up. Her papa seemed not to have heard. Surely he couldn’t have forgotten the days and nights they’d camped up here, the stories he’d told her, the games they’d played across the cloud castle floor? It was here he’d told her about the birth of Sirius (or at least the first time he’d been wound up), the day he met her mother, the time he’d grown a labyrinth out of his paper trees and got trapped inside it for six days and seven nights, eating only papier mâché fruit to survive. She had doubted the veracity of that last story, but she’d loved it all the same.

  From this distance, it was difficult to tell – but it seemed that her mother was glaring. Possibly she was instructing her to stay away, but since she couldn’t be sure, she felt no great desire to obey. With one hand still restraining Sirius, she skirted around the castle walls to return to the dirigible. A few more sandbags heaved aboard would send her crashing back through the paper trees. Down, down, down they came. So filled by thoughts of reaching her papa was she, and so distracted by the delirious twirling of the patchwork dog, that she misjudged the landing. The dirigible came down hard, struck the roots of a paper oak, and listed wildly. By the time Martha had picked herself up and checked Sirius for tears to his fabric, the shopfloor was empty again.

  Too late, her mother had taken her papa into the quarters above. Martha hesitated before following. All of her excitement had evaporated, and in its wake were only nerves. She stamped her foot. It was not fair. Nerves were what happened to other people.

  ‘Let’s make him a present!’ she declared. ‘Something to welcome him home. Something he can’t possibly ignore …’ Turning on her heel, she marched back into the aisles. ‘Well, are you coming?’

  Behind her, Sirius looked suddenly downcast. Denied his master’s return, he hung his head and sloped after her, grovelling as he came. Human beings, he had decided, were the most inscrutable things.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Cathy. ‘Might I take your boots?’

  Kaspar stopped in the bedroom doorway, tilting his ragged face up to take in the room. Cathy hoped it was stirring something in him, for what he saw was a snapshot of the day he had left the Emporium behind. In the three years since, she had not touched a thing, dusting carefully around each ornament, making certain every toy soldier would be standing to attention just as on the day he had left. If only to have something to say, she bade him sit at the end of the bed.

  Levering off his boots was easy. He winced as the shock waves worked through his body, but his legs were weak and they slipped right off. So many parts of his body were unfamiliar. His left foot had only three toes and on the right the ends of each were worn down to stumps. Yet there was a silver lining in every black cloud; Kaspar was so detached that he did not see her recoil, nor how her left hand grappled her right to stop it from lifting to her mouth.

  Did he need rest? Did he need air? Did he need company? She had no way of knowing – and so, falling back on the lessons they had learned together as they watched Martha grow, she promised to return with milk for his bedside and a hot water bottle for his bed.

  By the time she came back, Kaspar was propped up in bed, an angular form beneath the blankets. In his lap the music box played its lament while the mice danced erratically on top. His head was hanging down, lost in the twirling of the mice, but all around him were splinters and shards of broken wood. Every toy soldier who had stood so proudly on the shelves, waiting for their general to return, was destroyed. All that was left were pieces of painted faces, peering expressionless out of the ruin.

  That night, she crawled into bed beside her husband, not knowing
if it was the right thing to do. The heat from his body had warmed the sheets and that was the most alien thing. His back was turned to her. She tried to hold him but it felt all wrong. She turned against him and that felt wrong as well. So instead she lay awake. Some time in the night, Kaspar must have woken too (or perhaps he never slept at all?), for she heard the lilting melody of the music box. Soon after that, he returned to his slumber, more peaceful than before. The melody did nothing for Cathy. In the morning she woke and went about her business, but Kaspar remained.

  Sometimes he could be seen in the workshop. He took out tools he had not touched in years and tinkered with the music box, then retreated with it to his room, or some unseen cranny of the Emporium floor. The shopfloor itself had changed since he had been gone; Cathy was afraid he’d get lost, but Sirius took to following him at a distance, always ready to lead him back. In the evenings, Mrs Hornung brought him food. At first the plates came back untouched, but soon she understood that he had reverted to the dishes of his boyhood, that he found comfort in those old textures and tastes. After that she made only his vareniki and kasha broths. Sometimes Papa Jack sat with him as he ate. Other times Emil came. He was desperate to introduce Kaspar to his wife, to fill Kaspar’s head with the stories of the seasons he had missed, but Cathy pleaded with him not to. Kaspar took it all in but said nothing, returning each time to the music box in his hands. Whether it was day or dead of night, his fingers were never more than a whisper away from it. Even when Martha stole through to sit at the end of his bed, he would not acknowledge her. He wound and rewound the music box and lay back, stupefied.

  ‘He doesn’t want to be back, does he, Mama?’ Martha sobbed as Cathy put her to bed at night.

  ‘Your papa is very unwell, Martha. But one day …’

  ‘It’s the music box. Why does he always listen to the music box?’

  Cathy did not know, but she resolved to find out. That night, when he slept, she teased it out of his hands. Without its touch, his sleeping grew fitful. She took care not to wake him and sat at his bedside, her fingers trembling over the crank. Why she hesitated, she did not know, and yet it took some courage before she began to play it. The contraption turned at her command, the mice began to dance, and the music drifted up to bewitch her.

  It was a sensation like so many other Emporium toys. The sounds were so perfect, the dance so particular, that she no longer felt like Catherine Godman, twenty-seven-year-old mother and stalwart of Papa Jack’s Emporium; the toy had touched her, somewhere deep inside, and now she was Cathy Wray, five or six or seven years old. The edges of the bedroom she shared with Kaspar seemed to evaporate, and out of the haze appeared the furniture and fittings of that little room she and Lizzy used to share, in an age that seemed so long ago. The longer the music played, the more real things seemed, the richer the colours, the deeper the textures. On the bedside sat the copy of Gulliver’s Travels; on the shelf, the wooden rabbit. She had felt this way once before, that moment many years ago when Papa Jack gave her one of his pinecone ballerinas, and soon the only reason she knew it was not real was because, when she looked down, it was the hand of an adult still turning the handle of the music box.

  The music soared and, suddenly, she could perceive the Emporium no longer. Whatever spell the toy was weaving, her childhood had grown solid, undeniable around her. There was movement in the corner of her eye and, when she looked up, the door opened to reveal Lizzy, five years old. By instinct, Cathy opened one arm to receive her. It was then that she saw: she no longer had the arm of an adult. It was a child’s arm that reached out to Lizzy. She was wearing the white pinafore dress that her mother kept for Sunday best. Lizzy nestled into her shoulder and Cathy gave in, returning the embrace. ‘Let’s play, dear Cathy!’ Lizzy cried (and the voice, so familiar, echoed in her body). ‘Do you remember Polly?’ Cathy did; it was the name of a game of skipping they used to play, up and down the estuary sands. She found herself saying, ‘But I can’t, dear Lizzy.’ And, ‘Why ever not?’ asked her sister. ‘Don’t you see?’ said Cathy. ‘I’m not really here. I have to keep winding. If I don’t keep winding, none of this exists …’

  Her sister looked at her quizzically. ‘Winding what, dear Cathy?’

  Cathy looked down. By some miracle, both her hands were free. The music still played, but it was distant now, a solemn song at the back of her head – and of the music box, she could see no sign.

  ‘Where is it?’ Cathy cried. She leapt to her feet. In her panic she did not see that her arm was adult again. Something in her frenzy had brought it back. She whirled around, spied the music box sitting on the bed and snatched it up. The crank handle had been turning of its own accord. She seized it, stopped it from moving. The mice resisted, determined to dance on, but she held it fast and watched, with relief, as the old bedroom fragmented around her. The last thing she saw was Lizzy’s plaintive face, calling out. ‘Come back, Cathy. Cathy, come back. Don’t you want to play?’

  The music stopped. Cathy cast the music box down and, when she looked up, she was in the gloom of the Emporium again. Kaspar whimpered in his sleep, words without form – though their meaning was clear. In his dreams he was three hundred miles away, trapped in a foxhole in the French earth.

  She slid back into bed beside him. Now, at least, she knew where Kaspar was whenever he went away. He was twenty years away, in a world without Cathy and Martha, a world without death, a world in which the only wars were waged across the Emporium carpets – back when he and Emil were brothers-in-arms, and if he wanted to stay there, thought Cathy, and live those moments again–well, who was she to say otherwise?

  As she lay down, Kaspar called out. He cried for his mama, and somehow his sleeping fingers found the music box where it had landed. Cathy heard that haunting melody again and wished him well on his way.

  Stay away from him, Martha, her mother had said. Give him his peace. Lord knows, he’s earned it. Well, what about her? What had she earned across all those years? Three Christmases without a father. Three birthdays. One thousand nights of going to bed and folding her hands and saying her prayers. Sometimes she had dreamed about him. She’d written little notes, tied them to the leg of a pipe-cleaner bird and hoped it might somehow flutter all the way to France. All that had to count for something, or what was everything for?

  Martha strained with the bamboo cane in her hand; she strained too hard, and it snapped. No matter – she would just start again. She had resolved that she was going to finish his gift today, and nothing was going to stop her. Accordingly, the Wendy House floor – for it was this that she had designated her workshop – was itself a battlefield, littered with the carcasses of her past attempts. This morning her frustration was mounting. She did not want to give up.

  The principle was simple, but only as far as every Emporium toy seemed simple on the surface. A steam train, built from a frame of bamboo, would hurtle along until it crashed headlong into a wall. The resultant explosion would crumple the bamboo in such a particular fashion that, when it sprang back into being, it would now be a locomotive headed in the other direction. In that way, the train could bounce back and forth between two workshop walls all day long. Imagine the games that could be played! Martha thought – but then, upon seeing the wreckage spilled around her, her heart sank. Ambition, Papa Jack had said, was only the first step to producing a perfect toy. After that, you had to have art.

  It was, she reluctantly decided, time to get help.

  Her mother would not be any use. Papa Jack would be sleeping, so Uncle Emil it would have to be. She found him in his own workshop, whittling yet more toy soldiers out of a great trunk one of the Emporium’s foresters had delivered at summer’s end. His favourite toy, the Imperial Kapitan, was watching over him as always it did.

  ‘It doesn’t work,’ she said, depositing the tangle of canes and cotton twine at his feet. ‘I know what it’s meant to do, so why won’t it … do it?’

  Emil, who had been too engrossed in his own w
ork, looked up. This was a sentiment he had known all of his life. He set down his lathe, moved aside the paints and pots of varnish, and considered the concoction Martha had brought.

  ‘Let me see,’ he began, and sat cross-legged beside her. He lifted the mess, rearranged the canes and joists until it took the form of a locomotive again. She had planned a miraculous design, but it was little wonder she had not made it work. A thing like this took a lifetime’s nuance – yet he found himself inordinately proud that she had envisaged it. She was, without doubt, an Emporium girl.

  ‘It’s for my papa,’ said Martha as Emil continued to fiddle.