The Toymakers(26)
Through the labyrinthine aisles they reached the paper forest and the Wendy House at its end. As Cathy passed under the branches, Kaspar lifted more Emporium Instant Trees from the shelving and cast them on to the floor. ‘Just in case,’ he grinned, barely flinching as they erupted out of the ground behind him. Now that the Wendy House was entirely encircled, it could barely be seen from the aisle beyond. He took her over the white picket fence and walked within.
Cathy stopped dead. ‘You’ve been planning this for me …’
Things had changed since the last time she was here. Beside the bed stood a cradle. Beside that, a Russian rocking horse had been draped in blankets and shawls. A miniature kitchen had been arranged, with a gas-fired hot plate, a kettle and a single casserole dish, burnt black around the edges. The rack above was filled with jars of preserves, flour and lard. ‘Everything I could snatch from the kitchen without Mrs Hornung beginning to suspect,’ said Kaspar, turning a two-step across the carpeted expanse.
‘I’m going to live here?’
‘Why not?’ It seemed so obvious to him. ‘It has everything you could need. Not a soul on the shopfloor could see. And the walls, well, Papa made them so that a horde of children could play inside and barely a whisper would be heard without. There are three things a woman needs, Cathy. A roof over her head, food on her plate and … delightful company. One, two, three.’ At the last, he turned his index finger on himself.
‘You haven’t told Emil. Nor Papa Jack.’
‘Strictly speaking, of course, it is against the rules. Emil can be a stickler, and my papa may not understand. Ever since that unfortunate business with that toymaker off the Portobello Road … well, he’s seen ghosts in every corner. I’m not suggesting he’ll think you’re a thief, but he may think you’re in a thief’s employ. What better ruse than a girl with child, come to prey on our sympathies?’
‘You’re making fun of me.’
‘Cathy,’ he said, more earnestly now, ‘you can be safe here. You don’t really want to have your baby alone in some Lambeth lodging, do you?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, you don’t have to. All you need is here. Let the Wendy House be a sanctuary for you. Let these walls hide you away. Why, all you’d have to do is lock that door and nobody would ever find you. My papa never made a toy that would stoop so low as to break in all of his life. These walls are a fortress. The Emporium might cave in and you’d still be snug and safe in here.’ His next words were not so full of bravado. ‘Let me do this,’ he whispered, and then, full of bravado again, ‘Why would you ever want anywhere else?’
Why indeed? After Kaspar was gone, Cathy walked the circumference of the Wendy House walls. Here was an entire life in miniature. She would have been lying if she had said she was not afraid, it would not have been true to say she did not wonder why – but above everything else was the relief she felt as she rushed to grill bread over the hot plate and slathered it with elderflower preserve. Kaspar’s footsteps were fading on the other side of the paper trees, and Cathy Wray broke into the most mystified smile.
He came back to her that night, when the eerie hooting of stuffed owls on the shopfloor was keeping her awake. He had brought blackouts for the windows (‘So you can light your lantern at night’) and extra blankets for the bed; the snowdrops might have flowered, but winter was still bitter and deep. He had brought tea leaves as well, and soup from Mrs Hornung’s pot. And, ‘You’re going to be bored,’ he said, ‘so you might tutor yourselves with these.’ Onto the bedside he upended a hessian bag filled with pamphlets and old lithographs. ‘Every catalogue and advertisement the Emporium’s ever had. It’s my own collection. One year we’re going to have an exhibit devoted to it. “Kaspar Godman’s Archive of the Emporium!” Here,’ he went on, rifling through to find the oldest one. ‘What do you make of that?’
The card depicted stuffed bears of dubious design. Above it were the words: COME TO PAPA’S EMPORIUM.
‘That’s my handiwork you’re holding there. I’ll wager you didn’t know you were in the presence of an artiste par excellence.’ When she did not challenge him, he added, ‘I was eight years old. It was the same month that my papa made this …’
Kaspar whistled, and into the Wendy House lolloped Sirius, the patchwork dog. On seeing Kaspar it butted affectionately against his leg, as energetic as a concoction made up of fabric and thread could be. Then Kaspar crouched and, in teasing its ear, directed its gaze at Cathy.
‘Do you understand?’
In response, the dog lay down at Cathy’s feet.
‘He’s to keep you company, for when I can’t be here. Oh, I’ll come as often as I can, but there’s Emil to think of, and Papa too. They’ll expect me to be up in the workshop, working out designs for next winter. If they don’t see me slaving at it, they’ll suspect.’
Cathy crouched so that the dog could nuzzle her hand. She still had no sense how such a thing might work, but the more time she spent with it, the less it seemed to matter. Such was the magic of an Emporium toy.
‘Papa made him for us, to remind us of the dog we left behind. It was the winter we first came. We were living, all three of us to a single room, in one of those Whitechapel tenements a good girl like you won’t know anything about. Papa didn’t speak back then. He didn’t really have the words. But he was making us those soldiers out of wood, and we were playing our Long War, and then, one night, Emil was crying, and I was there, holding him, asking what was wrong. That was what it was like back then. Emil would crawl over in the night and I’d have to hold him, tell him we were on the greatest adventure of our lives. And when he said he’d been thinking of our old dog, well, that got me sobbing too. I’d imagine you find that hard to believe. Me, Kaspar Godman, crying like that? Well, there was something about that night. Back then we barely knew a word in English. What we wouldn’t have given to play with the boys on the floor below! But not one of them could understand a word we said. Papa was taking what work he could, tinkering around, and one night he came back with a pile of old trousers and capes. He must have spent three weeks hunkered down in the corner with those things – but then, one morning, there this dog was, all wound up and waiting to play. We named him Sirius, after the mutt we left behind …’ Kaspar clicked his forefinger and thumb, and Sirius rose on his haunches to beg. ‘He was simpler back then. He couldn’t do nearly as many tricks …’