The Toymakers(42)

Papa Jack hovered on the threshold, with Emil at his side. The fury he had been feeling faded away. Through the Wendy House door, Kaspar was cradling a blood-grey bundle to Cathy’s breast. He was brushing the ragged hair from Cathy’s eyes, leaving fingerprint marks where he touched her skin. He was bending down to kiss her brow, finding towels to dry her, a blanket to swaddle the child.

Papa Jack stepped backwards, over the picket fence and into the paper trees. He remembered a night much like this one, in that little hovel he once called home. Back then the trees that surrounded him were true black alder and Latvian pine. There were chickens in the yard and the weatherwoman, too late to attend the birth, arrived moments afterwards to find Jekabs Godman with his newborn son in his hands. ‘We shall call him Kaspar,’ Jekabs had said, and counted it the happiest moment of his life. A memory like that could obliterate every bad feeling in the world.

In the trees he looked back at the crestfallen Emil. ‘When she’s ready, tell her to come to my workshop. I shall want to be introduced.’ Then he disappeared into the shopfloor dark.

The heart that once beat inside her was now beating up against her breast.

Cathy looked into her daughter’s eyes. Daughter. She had thought it all along, but here she was, ten minutes old and already rooting for milk. On the other side of the Wendy House, Kaspar was brewing tea. Hot buttered toast was already piled on a plate. The exhaustion she felt was not the exhaustion of nights without sleep; her body was spent, and yet every nerve tingled with satisfaction. She floated on it, holding her baby near.

What had seemed so abstract only hours ago – I am going to be a mother – was suddenly so real: I am a mother, now and from this moment on. She propped herself up, allowed Kaspar to fix the pillows around her. She did not think twice as she pulled down her blouse to feed her daughter for the first time; Kaspar waltzed around her, doing what he must. By instinct she reached out and held his hand, still stained where he had lifted the baby to meet her for the first time.

‘Do you realise,’ she said, ‘that yours are the first hands she ever felt? You, Kaspar Godman, tied to her for ever …’

Cathy looked up, thinking she might even have made Kaspar blush, and there, in the doorway, stood Emil. She had not thought of him, not until now. He was holding a roll of crisp bedsheets from one of Mrs Hornung’s cupboards, but he was carrying them like a penance, something he might offer up. He waited to be invited in, and that was the most saddening thing. ‘Come and meet her, Emil. Meet … Martha.’

Emil shuffled inside, reached the foot of the bed, and lay the bedsheets down – but he didn’t know where to look. His eyes kept darting into the corners, unable to settle on Cathy, on Martha, on Kaspar – on anything at all.

Finally, he broke the silence: ‘I was worried about you, Cathy.’

‘You had no need to be, little brother.’ Kaspar strode to his side, put an arm around his shoulder. ‘She was in good hands.’

Kaspar had never felt Emil so rigid. Emil turned his shoulder but, when Kaspar’s arm followed, he wheeled around, casting Kaspar bodily to the ground. Perhaps it was the night’s exertions still taking their toll, for Kaspar was too weak and could not find his balance. He lay prone, dusting himself down.

‘Papa was here.’

‘Why, Emil,’ Kaspar said, picking himself up, ‘you little—’

‘It wasn’t me, Kaspar. You’ll think what you like, but I kept the secret—’ For the first time, his eyes found Cathy. ‘I kept our secret all these months. Why would I ruin it now?’ Emil knew the way Kaspar was looking at him: down his nose, imperious; it was the same look he used to wear on opening night, when the customers flocked to his creations and left Emil’s to gather dust. He flailed around until he was back at the door. ‘He says he wants to see you, as soon as you’ve the strength. I’m going there now. Cathy, I’ll do what I can. But he’s angry. He’s angry and he’s sad …’

After Emil was gone, Kaspar marched to the door and slammed it shut. The noise reverberated in the Wendy House eaves, disrupting the paper leaves that had gathered in the gutters.

‘Don’t think of it,’ he said, marching back to her side.

‘How can I not think of it, Kaspar?’ The tension tearing through her body must have been absorbed by the baby, for she threw her head back from Cathy’s breast and started to cry. For the first time, the thought hit her: I can’t do this. Can I do this? I can’t do this.

‘You’re not going anywhere, Cathy. My father isn’t a monster. If you knew …’

‘Knew what?’

‘Knew the kind of man he is. So we’ll go to him and we’ll tell him it all and …’ His words faded away, his eyes drawn back to the baby in her arms. That girl was like a vortex, constantly pulling him down. ‘Can I … hold her?’

The baby had stopped its bleating. It turned its puckered eyes, as sightless as Sirius, on Kaspar – as if she might even have recognised his voice. And perhaps that was it: all those nights he had spent in these Wendy House walls, announcing the creation of his toyboxes; some of that, surely, had echoed in the womb.

Kaspar took Martha and held her up, as if to show her the world. Watching him stilled Cathy. Kaspar was right. He had to be right. A man like Papa Jack, a man who had devoted his life to the Emporium, could not possibly cast a mother and child into the outside world.