The Toymakers(52)

Trips out of the Emporium were few and far between, but Cathy relished each one. Winters had always passed in the same controlled chaos she had known since she arrived at the Emporium, but summers could be stultifying. Too much time in the shadowed aisles was not good for the soul, no matter what Emil said; a turn through the summer sun was the restorative Cathy needed, and a trip to Sir Josiah’s always renewed her faith in what the Emporium was for.

Kaspar was about to steer into the controlled pandemonium of Regent Street when Cathy clasped his arm, directing his gaze at the girl sitting beside her. Eight years old and the mirror image of her mother, small and dark with darting green eyes, Martha was peering over the side of the motorcar, gawking at the great billboards of the Piccadilly Circus as if it was these things, not the wonders of Papa Jack’s Emporium, that defied all reason. She wore the same look every time they emerged from the Emporium, constantly finding adventure in the ordinary.

‘Do we have to go back quite yet?’

‘What was I thinking?’ Kaspar gasped, in mock surprise. Martha beamed up at him. ‘A change of heart never hurt a soul,’ he declared and, bellowing at a horse and trap about to cross their way, he arced the motorcar around and sped off along the broad way.

The afternoon was growing old, Hyde Park in full blossom. He drove them up and down the Rotten Row, turned dramatic circles around the Apsley Gate, and finally – when it was growing dark – plunged headlong into the grand parades of Belgravia, where men in tall frock coats (didn’t these people know it was summer, and a twentieth-century summer at that?) looked aghast at these deplorables come to ruin the afternoon. One man barked at them to show some respect, and this was a thing that delighted Kaspar and Cathy both. They turned to blow kisses – and would have followed through with dainty little waves if only the air had not been suddenly filled with invective, the hollering of a brawl and, next moment, the sound of shattering glass.

Belgrave Square, an explosion of green among the grand terraces, was drawing people to it like ants to spilled sugar. As it met the crowd, the motorcar had to slow to a crawl. Two tradesmen crossed their path with impunity, barely flinching when Kaspar ordered them out of his way. One of the men clasped a rock in his fist. Brazenly, he tossed it from one hand to another, then brought his arm back and let it fly. Over heads and the crowns of treetops it flew. It fell short of the house behind the black railings, but the second and third were better thrown. Glass shattered. Somebody sounded an alarm.

‘Head down, Martha.’

‘But Mother—’

‘Head down, please.’

From Martha’s lap, a patchwork face picked itself up. Sirius had grown a little more ragged with the years. His black button eyes had been ripped off by over-eager hands, stitched on and restitched again; his patches were thicker where they had been replaced, and what mechanisms still drove him purred a little more incessantly every time he moved his limbs. Martha held on to him, her face screwed up in a scowl. This was the problem with living in the Emporium, thought Cathy. You did not develop an instinct for the real world when all you knew was toys. Martha had no reason to fear for she had never seen anything like this – but then, so Cathy supposed, neither had she. Two men were scrambling into the boughs of one of the trees, the better to observe the carnage.

‘It isn’t safe,’ she whispered. ‘Kaspar, what do you think it is?’

‘It’s … the embassy.’

Sirius was up on his haunches, hackles raised as if to protect Martha. A man crashed alongside the car, brought his arm back and let fly with another rock. More glass shattered in the face of the building above, the volley followed by a dozen and more.

By now the motorcar had ground to a halt, an island in the sea of men. Kaspar tried to hallo one of them, but to no avail. Instead, he reached down and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

‘What’s happening here?’

‘See for yourself, mister,’ a voice barked back, and soon Kaspar found an afternoon edition pressed into his hands.

Kaspar unfurled the rag while another stream of men, bank clerks and bricklayers, buffeted the wagon to join the crowds on the other side. With a flick of his wrist it rolled down his arm. Three striking words leapt out of the print:





HIS MAJESTY DEFIED!


Kaspar dropped the newspaper into Cathy’s lap, where she read on: war begun without formal declaration, a dreadnought sunk by German privateers in the northern sea, heroes recalled from summer holidays in far-flung climes. And there, underneath it all: YOUR COUNTRY UNDER ATTACK.

‘Can I read, Mama?’

In silence, Cathy folded the newspaper and placed it underneath her seat.

‘Perhaps we should return home, Mrs Godman?’

Mrs Godman. Even now it was a novelty to hear it, in the same taunting tone he used to say Miss Wray.

Home, she thought, and into her head came an explosion of atriums and aisles, the quarters above and workshops deep below; the pack of patchwork dogs over which Sirius ruled; the phoenix that sat, at all times, in the rafters wherever Papa Jack roamed; and that little Wendy House, hidden now in the paper trees, where it sometimes seemed her very life had begun. ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘home,’ and put an arm around her daughter as the cacophony faded behind.

Come back to the Emporium now. It has changed much since we have been away. Eight years have seen the aisles transformed, but so too the sky above them. The cloud castle that floats, forever churning out the steam on which it survives, in the Emporium dome, belongs to Emil; the patchwork pegasi that gambol around it, those were built by Papa Jack. The paper trees that you must remember have long since put down roots, rucking up the floorboards for aisles around. The Secret Doors have been unleashed, their entrances and exits finally tethered together, so that now a customer might enter on the shopfloor and exit on to a gallery high above. The Midnight Express, Emil’s endeavour of two summers past, is a miniature locomotive that will ferry customers from the atrium into the new showrooms, bigger on the inside than the out, that Papa Jack has chipped out of the world. There are too many new delights to mention (though let me mention Kaspar’s Masques – put one of these on and you might find yourself becoming the animal whose likeness you have taken), but some things will never change in this Emporium of ours: Kaspar still cavorts recklessly around, Emil still lines up the soldiers he has diligently made, and Cathy still makes certain their Long War does not rise up out of the battlefield into the Emporium aisles. Yes, come back to the Emporium with me now. You have been away too long …