The Toymakers(18)

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An Invitation to a Midwinter’s Supper

Your confidant, Kaspar

9pm

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Sally-Anne was either disgusted or beset with jealousy. Cathy could not tell which. She tossed her hair and leapt to her feet, brandishing one of those romantic penny novels she so loved. ‘He just wants to know what’s under your skirts.’ Well, thought Cathy, that was probably true – but not in the way Sally-Anne was thinking. And what was this about confidant? Cathy felt quite certain Kaspar Godman was not the kind of man who could keep any sort of secret, let alone one as revelatory as this.

The clock on the wall was inching towards eight. Cathy folded the invitation and slipped it beneath her pillow. Then, ‘Sally-Anne, have you any clothes I can borrow?’ she asked.

The Godmans had quarters on the highest gallery above the shopfloor, up a servants’ stair that spiralled out of their workshops. Winter staff only rarely ventured up here, no matter how long their standing, and, like so many corners of the Emporium, this was virgin ground to Cathy. As it was, the great oaken door that led to Papa Jack’s workshop was barricaded shut (Cathy had heard tales of one assistant who had gained a position here only so that he could deliver secrets back to his overseers at Hamley’s; the workshop had been a fortress ever since) but the stairs grew out of a narrow passageway just beyond. Cathy was halfway up before she saw the movement on the top step and watched as something unfolded, sniffed the air and stood up. The dog she had first seen among the paper trees lumbered forward on patchwork paws, its stuffing bulging where it had been pressed out of shape while it slept. Its fur was of velvet, cut up by seams as if somebody had taken it apart and stitched it back together. In patches it was grey, in others purple and blue. The insides of its ears were pieces of tartan, and the tongue that lolled from its snout had a heel in it, like a dangling sock. Its nose was nothing more than a crosshatch of black thread.

When it realised Cathy was near, it set up a bark. For a moment, Cathy was stilled. Then, judging that what teeth it had were only scraps of felt, she knelt down to pet it. Soon, the creature – if creature it could be called – rolled over, imploring her to knead it back into shape. Unable to refuse the doleful look in its black button eyes, Cathy sank to her haunches and began. Her fingers found the little wind-up mechanism buried in its tummy and she turned it once, giving the dog even more vigour. After that it lolled in ecstasy, its contented noises like the swishing of cotton against cotton.

Finally, Cathy gathered herself and knocked at the door.

She was expecting Kaspar, or Emil, or Papa Jack himself, but instead Mrs Hornung opened the door and battled back the patchwork dog with a broom. ‘Sirius!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve a set of shears in here just right for a pest like you …’

The dog’s whimper was the sound of wet laundry being slapped.

Mrs Hornung had never seemed as sour as she had on the night Cathy arrived at the Emporium doors. The way she looked now, Cathy might even describe her as genial. Her official position was Emporium Mistress, a title that made her seem more matronly than it ought. Sally-Anne said she used to be the nursemaid, a job that had predominantly comprised of tracking Kaspar and Emil down to whatever hiding place they had made on the Emporium floor and delivering a series of improbable punishments for their cheek. She had even been the one to teach them the King’s English, but whatever they had done had aged her prematurely; their misadventures could be read in the wrinkles latticing her face. Now that the Godman brothers were grown, her role had transformed: a better title might have been Emporium Housekeeper, responsible for making sure the shop assistants were watered and fed.

‘I’ll help you off with those. These carpets are a nightmare to clean.’

Cathy had to brace herself as Mrs Hornung levered off her shoes. Then she was ushered onwards, into a palatial hall where glass capsules set between the rafters revealed snow clouds strewn across the London sky. Steps couched in thick burgundy dropped into a living room bedecked in Emporium Instant Trees, colourful streamers hanging around each. A huge hearth dominated half of the room, flames licking high into the chimney, and on a raised level close to the door a table was already laid for supper. Somewhere, a piano was playing a concerto to itself, ebony and ivory rippling up and down without the touch of human hands.

Mrs Hornung meant to whisk her on, but the carpeted expanse in the middle of the room was occupied by a hundred toy soldiers. Some of them were in static regiments on the fringes of the carpet, but others were either marching at each other with rifles raised, or lying prostrate on the ground. On one side of the room, Emil was hunched over a regiment, winding them up madly; on the opposite side, Kaspar was mirroring the action, but spreading his soldiers along a much vaster front.

As Mrs Hornung hopped through, her foot caught one of the marching soldiers, knocking him back into his brethren. ‘Forfeit!’ Emil piped up, leaping to his feet. ‘I call it null and void!’

‘Act of God,’ Kaspar announced. ‘We’ve accounted for them before.’

‘Act of God? It’s outside the rules of the game.’

‘It’s warfare, little brother. There are no rules.’

‘That’s demonstrably untrue! Don’t you remember your Deuteronomy?’

Kaspar grinned, ‘You’d do better to remember your Sun Tzu.’

Just as the battle seemed about to escalate from the minions on the carpet to the deities above it, Mrs Hornung returned – and beside her, Papa Jack. Cathy had only rarely seen him since that first night. The toymaker, Sally-Anne said, stayed in his natural habitat, and that was his workshop. He was holding himself on two wooden canes, their bulbs carved into the visages of bears, and looked even more mountainous like this than he had in his workshop chair. His hair was a waterfall frozen over the crags of his body.