The Toymakers(122)

Never has a blackness been as bitter as this. The Imperial Kapitan has failed his god, failed his people. For thirty years, what parts of his mind survive as knots in the wood, will not let him forget.

Cathy stepped back, in horror, from the Wendy House wall. ‘How could you, Emil? It wasn’t a parley. It was an … execution. What am I to find in there? Tell me that, Emil! A husk? Whatever’s left of my husband?’

The Wendy House sat in the storeroom where the patchwork beasts had dragged it almost thirty years before. Cathy looked at the boarded windows and crêpe paper ivy, the steepled roof and stoppered-up chimneypot on top. This place that had once been her home, had it also been a … prison?

‘You’re the one who wrote that letter,’ she breathed.

In reply, there was only stony silence.

‘And you’re the one who left Sirius out in the snow. Left him to wind down and die. All to make me think Kaspar had walked out, when really …’

Sirius looked up at the boards and set up a howl.

The toy soldiers were already obeying the Imperial Kapitan, driving wooden bayonets at the boards that sealed the door. But it would take a thousand lifetimes for a toy soldier to break through. Martha crouched down and gathered them near.

‘I tried to warn him. I told him I’d do anything, anything to keep our Emporium alive, anything so that it was there for my sons. Well, he didn’t listen. It wasn’t meant to be like this. It was only meant to be – what did he call it? A meeting of minds. But he wouldn’t, Cathy, he wouldn’t even meet halfway, and I had to make sure …’

There were other boxes in the storeroom, crates deemed of no value, left behind when the prospectors came. Between them stood an axe, once used to fell the paper trees. Cathy strained to lift it, dragged it to the Wendy House door.

‘Mama, you mustn’t. You’ll break your back.’

‘Let me,’ said Emil. ‘I owe him that. I owe you …’

But Cathy had already hoisted it high. She brought it up above her shoulders and let its weight carry her forward. ‘You owe me thirty years, Emil. You owe me a life. You owe me …’ She stopped herself wheeling around, the axe in her hands. ‘You owe me a world. Whatever’s through these doors, you …’

Martha came between them. ‘Perhaps you should go, Uncle Emil.’

‘Go? But this is mine. My Emporium …’

The axe bit into the boards, but the door did not buckle. It bit again, and splinters showered down. Three times, four times, five times and more, Cathy threw her body at the axe and the axe into the wood – until, at last, the boards scythed apart. Then, taking to them with fingers and fists, she revealed the little red door.

Its paintwork was tarnished. The brass knocker, its head the shape of a wolf, was thick with grime. Cathy reached out and touched it. She gave Martha a questing look and, when she nodded, she knocked on the door. But the sound was hollow, no answer came, and when she tried again it was in desperation, not belief.

So she returned to the axe.

The door was stronger than the boards, and Cathy remembered, suddenly, the old truth: that Papa Jack had never made a toy that would break and spoil a child’s day. Against Papa Jack’s invention, an axe was useless. She dropped it at her side, was about to turn and cast invective at Emil – but he was already standing there, drawing a little silver key from a chain that hung around his neck.

The door had grown warped with age, but it gave in to Cathy’s touch – and, as it rolled inwards, she saw the Wendy House interior for the first time in half a life.

Inside was only darkness.

By torchlight they crossed the threshold. The sweeping light picked up the corners of the Wendy House, much further away than they had any right to be. Cathy stood in the heart of the room, taking in the bed that had once been hers, the hotplate and cabinets, the old threadbare rug – but, cavernous as it was, the Wendy House was empty. Nothing remained but the dust.

‘It can’t be,’ Martha whispered.

Emil was about to step through when Cathy said, ‘No, Emil. This Wendy House isn’t for you. It’s mine. Mine and Kaspar’s, remember? Ours. That summer …’

‘Cathy, please.’

‘Just go, Emil. Just go.’

For some time, Emil stood on the threshold and stared. He too remembered that summer. He remembered reading books about childbirth and bringing her his designs. He remembered their picnic out in the glade and the way her face had dimpled when she said, treat yourself more kindly, Emil. That’s an order. He remembered how whole that had made him, how he’d felt capable of doing it all, all because of the girl – and, whether she wanted him or not, how it hardly mattered, because she was here and she mattered and she was Cathy Wray. All of those memories, they had lasted a lifetime – and, in an instant, they unravelled.

‘Cathy?’ he ventured, but the silence was answer enough.

After he was gone, Cathy sat on the edge of the bed and teased her fingers so that Sirius might join her. There he lay, black button eyes as disconsolate as black button eyes could be. Across the floorboards, the toy soldiers came to a halt. The Imperial Kapitan was gesticulating for them to line up in some new formation, but they did not have the words for what they were feeling, and not one of them knew where to stand; sometimes language was such an inconsequential thing.