The Toymakers(25)

The Emporium closed its doors on a frigid January morning, London encrusted in frost.

Mrs Hornung had prepared great cauldrons of stewed apples to see the shop hands on their way, but aside from this there was no ceremony. Papa Jack did not emerge from his workshop. Emil and Kaspar barely ghosted past. By the time Cathy was done packing what few possessions she had, most of the shop hands were already gone. She wound her way slowly to the shopfloor, already denuded of last season’s toys, and stood at the open doors, feeling the bracing chill of the London air.

‘You’ll be back next year, dear?’ said Mrs. Hornung.

‘I will,’ Cathy lied, and went out with both hearts beating wild.

At the end of Iron Duke Mews, Sally-Anne scurried past her, whispered ‘Good luck!’ and climbed into a taxicab her gentleman had sent to spirit her away. Then Cathy was alone, and London seemed suddenly so vast and unknown.

The Emporium had looked after her for a time. Emil had looked after her by saying nothing, ever since the feast on Christmas Day. Now there had to be another way. She supposed that the Emporium was looking after her still, for there was a secret place in her satchel where all of her winter pay had been stashed. If she was careful, it would see her until spring. But spring would bring with it new life in more ways than one, and it was a long time until this new year’s first frost and the Emporium’s reopening. How different life would be by then.

She set off, into the great unknown.

Decisions like this should not be made on an instant. And yet, that was what she was doing: deciding her child’s future at every intersection of roads, mapping out its life story by gravitating toward one tram stop or the next. Without knowing it, she reached Regent Street, where horse-drawn trams and trolleybuses battled for control of the thoroughfare. North or south was the decision she had to make. The wind was coming from the north; so south it was.

It took her some time to find a bus bound for Lambeth and Camberwell beyond. Those places seemed as likely as any. Sally-Anne had spoken of grand houses along the Brixton road, carved up into tinier apartments for city clerks and railway workers. One of those might do, for ushering her baby into the world. The question of what happened next was one she was steadfastly putting to the back of her mind.

The bus was slow in wending its way south. Cathy took a seat on the lower deck, where the windows were fogged by the cold and London was a ghostly miasma through the glass. They had not yet reached the circus at Piccadilly when she felt somebody sitting down beside her. Though she kept her head down, she could sense that the stranger had turned in her direction. He was sitting uncomfortably close, his eyes roaming all over her face, her hair, her belly. Finally, she could bear it no longer. She looked up, determined to dress him down – she would rather be thought hysterical than stomach his scrutiny a moment longer – and there sat Kaspar Godman, looking half-affronted that she had not noticed him sooner.

‘And where do you think you’re going?’

‘Kaspar, what are you—’

‘You didn’t think to say goodbye?’

‘The Emporium’s closed, Kaspar,’ she said, quickly reordering her thoughts. ‘Everybody left.’

‘So where are you going?’

The bus had stopped while yet more passengers piled aboard. She searched for something to say, but each lie evaporated before she could give it voice. ‘I don’t know,’ she finally admitted.

‘Didn’t you think about that before—’

Before he had finished, she cut in, ‘What are you doing here, Kaspar?’

‘Me?’

‘It doesn’t look right, you being out of the Emporium. It’s like seeing a … swallow in winter!’

Kaspar’s face creased. ‘Miss Wray,’ he said, as his laughter subsided, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’

The words did not flay her as she had thought that they might.

‘Emil.’

‘Don’t blame Emil. The way he’s been moping around, I knew something was wrong. And when I found all those snowdrops hung up to dry in his workshop – well, it takes a lot for Emil to break the rules. He’d been plucking them, you see, every morning for the last week. Seems he didn’t want the season to finish, that he didn’t want someone to go. By God, I thought he’d fallen in love! There he was, mooning after one of the seamstresses or … It was just rotten luck that Sally-Anne got to the terrace before him this morning. No doubt he’d have plucked every snowdrop until spring, tried to keep the Emporium open until the Royal Gardens are in full flower. So he had to tell me, you see? The idea I’d tell our father what he’d been up to …’ The bus was about to take off again, but Kaspar cried out for the horseman to stop, and extended a hand. ‘Cathy Wray, don’t make me be a gentleman in front of so many rabid onlookers. But you can’t possibly think I’d let you – let you both – just wander off like that, can you?’

Back at the Emporium, the shop floor was in silence. The gloom that had settled was almost subterranean, and what wan light broke in from the skylights above could hardly penetrate the aisles. Kaspar brought Cathy in through one of the tradesman’s doors, and now they stood in an alcove where pop-up books thronged the shelves. Each one of them held new delights, each page a cascade that could reach out and envelop its reader in lost worlds of dinosaurs and mammoths, of desert islands infested by cannibal hags, of fog-bound London streets and lonely Fenland locks. Mrs Hornung had already begun laying out the dust sheets, hiding the exhibits for another season. Kaspar made Cathy wait until he had scouted the aisle ahead, and only then did he usher her on.