The Toymakers

by Robert Dinsdale

  ‘Cathy,’ he beamed, ‘they’re boys. Come over! Come and meet my boys …’

  On the first day of summer, Cathy watched from a gallery high above the shop floor as Emil opened the Emporium doors and a gaggle of shop hands she had not seen before tumbled within. Demanding their silence, Emil produced a flurry of papers, took signatures from each and marched them into the aisles. In the last weeks he had given up tinkering with the toy soldiers and devoted himself, instead, to reordering the shopfloor, erecting barricades along the apexes of aisles, planting Secret Doors that would entrap all but the most ardent cartographer in an infinite loop. The next season’s creations had been left to Papa Jack (who slept, most nights, in his workshop, enduring this family feud with the same stoicism that had once helped him survive a frozen prison camp), and all the while Emil conspired. Cathy watched as he marched the new shop hands into the copse of paper trees – and, once in their heart, to the Wendy House door.

  Cathy had seen Mrs Hornung provisioning it. It had bunk beds stacked seven high, sacks of potatoes and crates of canned beef, tea leaves enough to quench the thirst of an army and mint cake enough to sustain an Antarctic expedition. Only now did she understand what it was for. Alone, she saw Emil march the new shop hands inside – and later that day, as she and Martha worked the shopfloor, she saw the boards that nailed the door shut, the blood red sign screaming KEEP OUT!!! and the crude patchwork wolves that had been set to prowl the perimeter as guards. Unsophisticated things, all they knew to do was march and bark.

  Later that night, she stood at the workshop door as Martha sat at Kaspar’s feet, learning the intricacies of patchwork design. ‘And he’s locked all the soldiers up in there,’ Martha was saying, darning an eagle’s feathers. ‘And his new shop hands, they’ll undo everything you did, Papa. And how will we ever get in, because Uncle Emil’s turned it into his fortress …’

  Kaspar’s face creased with some memory half-forgotten. ‘Let me tell you something, little Martha. When Emil and I were boys, he simply couldn’t bear to lose. He’d build fortresses back then as well, but there was always a way in.’

  ‘There really isn’t, Papa. Mama and I marched all around, even when those wolves had wound down. He’s put boards across every window. Those shop hands aren’t coming out until opening night, and by then it will already be too late.’

  It was strange to see how buoyed the bad news made Kaspar. In a moment he was up on his feet, dancing an ungainly two-step as he dislodged a wooden crate from one of the counters. This he set down by Martha.

  ‘See …’

  Inside the box were toy soldiers and parts of toy soldiers. He set one down and, closing the cavity in its back, instructed Martha to wind it. A second he began to tinker with. ‘I’ve been holding it in my mind for so long. Sometimes all it needs is time and a puzzle works itself through. But I perfected it last night. It doesn’t matter a jot what Emil does in those Wendy House walls, not when …’

  With a final exhalation, Kaspar snapped shut the mechanism in the second soldier and wound it up. For some time, nothing miraculous happened. Then, as Cathy watched, the first soldier – which had been marching in ever-decreasing circles – began to wind down. As it neared its end, the second soldier – still with life left in its mechanism – approached the first, took its key in its wooden hands, and began to turn. Energised again, the first soldier sprang back to life and continued its dance.

  Martha clapped her hands in delight, just as the second soldier’s mechanism began to slow. This time, the first came to its rescue, winding it back up. When, minutes later, its own mechanism slowed once more, its comrade sprang to its defence. The soldiers marched on and on and on. As long as they were with each other, they would never stop.

  ‘Emil never learned how to think. He’s good at what he does, that much is true, but he can never think beyond it. He doesn’t understand. Perhaps he never will. But these soldiers don’t have to do his bidding any more, not if they can wind each other up. They don’t have to fight in any Long Wars. Why, they don’t have to be soldiers at all. They can take control, be whatever they want to be. My Martha, the world is bored of armies. It can’t bear another boy to die. It doesn’t need killing. It needs farmers and tinkers. Shepherds and railwaymen and grocers. It’s time we set the soldiers free.’

  ‘Oh yes, Papa! Oh yes!’

  Martha dove into the box and plucked up another soldier to set it marching with the rest. This one’s mechanism had not yet been doctored and it knew nothing of winding up its comrades – and yet, when it wound down, the others sprang to its defence, keeping it running long after it ought to have stopped.

  ‘You see?’ grinned Kaspar. ‘That isn’t soldiers, killing each other just because they ought to. That’s people, helping each other just because they can. Isn’t it a beautiful thing?’

  A Report On a MOST Miraculous THING by Martha Godman (aged 11 ¾)

  The Topic I am to write about this week is What I Wish To Be. Do I wish to be a school teacher or do I wish to be a mother? Do I wish to be secretary to a rich Financier, or do I wish to be a LADY EXPLORER. The question set is interesting in and of itself but (Martha licked the tip of her pencil here, certain that Mr Atlee would disapprove) a more interesting question presents. How to get what One Wants, with reference to toy soldiers of Emporium Design.

  What if One was trapped in a Circumstance of which one disapproves? What if One was made to be a way One did not wish to Be? How might One take charge of One’s own JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE. Destiny, we have been taught, is resolute. But what if One wishes to change one’s God-given Destiny?

  Step the First

  It is the directions, assumptions and Privileges of Others which keep us in place.

  Point 1st: A toy soldier must be wound at all times, or else perish.

  Point 2nd: If a toy soldier can be shown to Wind Himself, he need never rely on the Privileges of Others.

  Step the Second

  Helping Oneself is nothing if One does not help Others. A movement can only succeed when what is Revolutionary becomes that which is Ordinary and Accepted.

  Point 3rd: If a toy soldier can be shown how to help others Wind Up, they too can be RELEASED FROM SHACKLES.

  Point 4th: Soldiers released from SHACKLES can release others from SHACKLES. As we are taught disease spreads from hand to hand so too does Knowledge and Freedom.

  Step the Third

  A journey is begun. Who knows where it might lead? The first step is to learn GOVERNANCE OF THE SELF.

  Soldiers do not want to be soldiers and if you give them the CHANCE to DECIDE, the most Miraculous Things will MANIFEST.

  (Composition by Martha Godman, August 1918)

  Cathy put down the paper and felt Mr Atlee’s eyes considering her above the bronze of his pince-nez. It didn’t matter how old you were; a schoolteacher’s gaze would always be withering.

  ‘Am I to imagine she is making some veiled analysis of Women’s Suffrage? We have covered as much in lessons, and your daughter has never been less than forthright … But all of this? Understanding what one wants, casting off shackles, rewriting one’s own destiny? Your daughter is, dare I say, a little young for radical politics. And this business with toy soldiers? Some risqué comment, I imagine, on conscientious objection? Her, with a father who sacrificed so much to keep this country free?’

  Cathy hung her head.

  ‘Quite apart from anything else, this egregious use of Capital Letters is alarming. I am certain she does this just to spite me.’

  Of this Cathy was quite certain: she had caught the girl practising the most ostentatious capital letters by torchlight in bed.

  ‘I’ll speak with her.’

  ‘See that you do,’ Mr Atlee declared, gathering his papers. ‘It is for her own good. Mrs Godman, goodness knows, I admire this place, I’m grateful for my years of service – but have you ever thought that, perhaps, just perhaps, Martha might benefit from some exposure to the real world?’

>   Cathy waited some time after Mr Atlee had taken his leave before she set out to find Martha. Mr Atlee had set her arithmetic problems to work through before his next attendance, but as ever she was not to be found with her books. Cathy found her in the Godmans’ quarters instead, fussing with one of the twins while Nina tried in vain to spoon stewed apple into the other. At six months old they were developing the same ursine look as their papa, the same paunchiness too.

  ‘Martha, a word.’

  ‘No, Mama, he doesn’t have words. It’s only babbling. He just makes sounds.’

  Cathy thought: it’s as if Kaspar truly is her father; the knowing look, the deftness of tongue, she gets it all from him.

  A simple glare compelled her to set the youngest Godman down and come to her mother’s side. Retreating to the corner, Cathy unfurled the report over which Mr Atlee had remonstrated and asked her, ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It’s all true, Mama. I wouldn’t tell lies.’

  Cathy thought: she wouldn’t; the truth delights her too much. ‘But what is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s the soldiers. Papa will show you. Come on …’

  Martha took her hand and led her up the back stair. At the top, the door to Kaspar’s workshop sat for ever ajar.

  Kaspar was sitting in the rocking chair that once belonged to Papa Jack, while dozens of self-winding men were lined up in battalions before him. Somebody had been making tallies on a board with chalk. The workshop floor was a parade ground where units turned and fell over, picked themselves up and formed rank and file again. Across the parade ground, whenever a soldier began to slow, one of his compatriots would twirl around, fit his hands into the grooves chipped into the key at his back, and wind him back to full strength. It was, Cathy thought, like watching the dancing of honeybees. The wind-up army moved as a swarm, or not at all.

  Kaspar was keeping metronomic rhythm with his foot, but when Martha started tugging on his sleeve he looked up. ‘Cathy,’ he said, ‘look! They’re drilling. We’ve been trying to persuade them to drill differently – why should they stand in battalions if they’re not to be soldiers any more? – but it’s bred into them. Something in the way that they’re made. So – look!’ Kaspar’s hands revealed a mountain of miniature overcoats, woollen jumpers and shirts. Tiny Wellington boots in forest green and navy blue. ‘Dress as a soldier and perhaps you’re a soldier. But dress as …’

  ‘It hasn’t worked,’ Martha chipped in. ‘They don’t let you put them on.’

  ‘And then we thought – why should they? They’ve been being told what to do for far too long. Who am I to tell them how to dress? Oh, Cathy, they do the most remarkable things. Cathy, they can learn …’

  Cathy crouched down. At the sudden intrusion the toy soldiers formed ranks and routed, re-forming on the other side of the workshop floor.

  ‘They need a leader,’ said Martha. ‘Sometimes they just whirl and twirl and collide with one another or end up shaking hands. If they had a leader, they might smarten up a little. That’s what we think.’

  ‘It’s like nothing else in the Emporium. They perform the same action a hundred times, and for every hundred times, one will go wrong. Perhaps it upsets them, so they simply try over again. But when it offers them an advantage …’ Kaspar’s eyes sparkled like frost. ‘All year they’ve been discovering new things.’

  Kaspar opened up a box by his side, one emblazoned with the insignias of the Long War, and set down a static soldier. Moments later, the battalion marched forward to where it lay. From here on, their drill was deftly orchestrated. The soldiers worked in two groups – one to open up the cavity in the soldier’s back, and another to make sure the first group never wound down. The soldiers tasked with attending the static soldier moved with nuance that had not been possible one winter ago. They reached in and upset gears, lifted out a cog to replace it with three of smaller design, shortened the cam shaft and inserted more guide wires into the soldier’s arms. When they were done, they wound their new brother up for the very first time.

  Soon, he had taken his place in the battalion – and, to Cathy’s mounting surprise, was winding up the fellows around him with newfound aplomb.

  ‘You built them to build each other?’

  ‘It’s better than that,’ beamed Martha. ‘Papa didn’t build them this way at all. They built themselves.’

  Emil was diligent in releasing the new shop hands at the end of each summer night. First locking the Wendy House door behind him, he lined the workers up among the paper trees and ran his hands over each, searching for what blueprints or implements they might be stealing away, then marched them in file to the half-moon hall. If any minded the way he emptied their pockets, they did not say it; men returned from war with only half a leg, or mothers raising their children alone, needed what work they could find. And, as Emil released them into Iron Duke Mews each night, he reminded himself: they are not your friends, they are not your friends. They were his workers, that was all, and this seemed the most important lesson of his life.

  Tonight he locked the door, made one last circuit of the boarded-up Wendy House, and walked back through the paper trees. There, waiting for him where the forest met the shopfloor, was Nina. Their sons squirmed in their pram, angling for a look at their father, and Emil dropped down to rub his bristly face in theirs.

  ‘How is it?’ Nina asked.

  ‘The finishes aren’t right, but there’s time for that yet. Still two months until first frost might come. We’ve boxed up enough to fill the shelves, but they need paint and lacquer. Only I can do that.’ Another night he might have seemed defeated, but on this night he was filled with hope. ‘We’ll be ready. If there’s an armistice this winter, it will be out there, in the world. Not here in my Emporium.’ Emil squeezed Nina’s hand, her fingers threaded through his. ‘Our Emporium.’

  They walked together through aisles that would soon live again, past the Long War glade that would soon ring with the sounds of battle – and, as they went, they were so caught up in talking about the way things would be, the first opening night their sons would ever see, that they did not realise there were already toy soldiers walking across the shopfloor, watching their every move. They did not see the wind-up army that marched in the cavities along the bottom of the shelves, did not see them stopping to wind each other up as they came. If only they had looked behind them, they might have seen the army as it marched into the paper trees, turning circles around the Wendy House where more of their kind were being chipped out of branches and trunks.

  Emil did not see the soldiers as they fanned back into the aisles, looking for others of their kind. He was already carrying his children up the stairs to bed by the time they discovered the aisle with his old workshop waiting at its end – so he did not see them venture in, and he did not see them venture back out, carrying one more inert soldier between them. If he had, perhaps things would have turned out differently for Papa Jack’s Emporium – for there, on the shopfloor, the toy soldiers lay down the Imperial Kapitan, so regal and strong, so perfect, the leader for which (or so Martha believed) they cried out. They gathered about him (they could not have been admiring, because their minds were only useless blocks of wood) and worked in pairs to turn him over. And there, as in Kaspar’s workshop above, they opened his insides, lost themselves in industry, and finally wound him up.

  The Imperial Kapitan picked himself up. There was something different about the way he lifted his arm in the salute for which it had first been made, something different in the way that, when one of the soldiers beside him began to wind down, he stepped forward and wound him back up.

  The Imperial Kapitan stood where he belonged, at the head of the army. The wind-up host marched on – and not a soul in the Emporium saw it, so not a soul in the Emporium believed.

  Cathy always knocked before she entered Papa Jack’s workshop. It was a habit she meant never to shake. It had been a long time since crossing that line made her remember the frightened girl sh
e had been when she first came here, but something of that feeling returned tonight. She did not wait for an answer, but stepped directly through.

  Papa Jack was in his chair, where he always was. She had thought to find him stitching more feathers into the hide of his phoenix (the feathers so often failed to survive the bird’s conflagrations, though the mechanism lived on), but instead he was asleep, his fingers twitching in whatever dreams of wilderness and winter still plagued him.

  He opened his eyes before Cathy came to his side. That was a habit from those wilderness days as well.

  ‘How has it been?’

  The spectaculars of opening night had diminished in the year Kaspar left for France. It had seemed, to Cathy, an echo of the loss she had been feeling – for how could the Emporium ever be as filled with enchantment as when Kaspar walked its aisles? – but, in truth, it had been because of shipments not reaching London’s wharves, and merchants biding their time while prices rose and fell. In the winters since, Emil and Papa Jack had spent long nights lost in each other’s counsel, seeking a way to dazzle and delight even in these austere times. What did it matter what commodities were at hand? Papa Jack had insisted. Once, he had been a toymaker with only leaves and lengths of twig – and weren’t those toys every bit as fantastic as the things that brought people to the Emporium twenty years later? Tonight had been testament to this, the most muted Opening Night in the Emporium’s history – but the joy in the aisles had been of a different pitch than ever before. First frost had come on the night of the tenth of November, and rumour had it there was an armistice in France, that, this time, all of their boys truly would be home by Christmas night.

  ‘It was a special kind of chaos, just as it always is. But …’

  She did not tell him how the Long War was already off sale, how Emil had filled the shopfloor with his recast soldiers, only to discover hours later that the glade had been pillaged, every box opened and emptied, the toy soldiers he had slaved over all summer gone. She left out the moment Emil tore into Kaspar’s workshop and demanded to know what he had done (even though Mrs Hornung insisted he had not left the workshop all morning and, indeed, had been asleep for almost all of opening night). Perhaps Papa Jack needed no protection, not even in his old age, but those things did not seem right, somehow, to mention.