The Toymakers(57)

The spinning top stopped, skittering up against the Imperial Kapitan.

Emil was about to set it spinning again when he realised he was no longer alone. In his workshop door, Mrs Hornung was waiting. ‘Emil, it’s time.’

‘I’ll be out presently.’

‘Young man, your brother is leaving now.’

Emil ground his teeth. Why was it Mrs Hornung always made him feel like this? He was a little boy again, clinging on to her apron tail. He remembered, starkly, the time he had mistakenly called her mother and the look of consternation that had flickered across her face. That night, Papa Jack had come to smooth his bedsheets around him, while Mrs Hornung took a day’s leave. Some boys, all they wanted was a mama.

‘I can’t.’

‘You must.’

He spun around. ‘But I mustn’t, don’t you see? He’s going off and it … it should have been me. I should be the one. If it weren’t for my heart, I would be. And now it will be …’ He stopped. Seemingly he had changed what he was going to say, because when he spoke again it was with a new, forced lightness. ‘Kaspar has a daughter.’ She should have been mine too was the terrible thought that entered his mind. ‘He has a wife.’ And Cathy, Cathy should have been … ‘He shouldn’t have to leave them, and all on my account.’

‘This isn’t on your account, Emil. There are thousands of men like Kaspar crossing over the water.’ She touched him like a mother might touch him, and that only made Emil hate himself more. ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’

Kaspar was in the half-moon hall when Mrs Hornung and Emil made their way up the aisle. He was crouching down, his arms wrapped around Martha and, when he stood up, the girl would not let go; she was dangling from his neck. It took Cathy to prise her away, and then she herself needed prising. Papa Jack clasped Kaspar by the hand, drawing him into a mountainous embrace. And Emil, Emil lingered on the edges of it all.

‘Back by first frost,’ Kaspar declared. He took each of them in until, finally, his eyes landed on his brother. ‘You’ll look after them for me, of course.’

Emil tumbled forwards, betrayed by his own feet. He wrapped himself in his brother’s arms, fumbling a fist into the pocket of his greatcoat. Then, he unfurled his fingers.

There were words being whispered into Emil’s ear. ‘Look after our Emporium well, little brother.’ And, ‘I love you, Emil.’

Emil did not say it in return – but, as Kaspar reached the end of Iron Duke Mews, he knew it all the same. A little spinning top had been tucked into his pocket and, as he walked, it was humming a tune he had never forgotten.

The Emporium was empty that day, more empty than the most barren of summer days. Cathy busied herself fixing the braids of Papa Jack’s ragdolls. Martha’s tutor, Mr Atlee – whose own sons had already gone where Kaspar had followed – arrived to teach her the simple precepts of trigonometry (and to bore her senseless to boot). Mrs Hornung lost herself in a maelstrom of cookery, filling the kitchens with the scents of Kaspar’s favourite foods, of kasha and dumplings, as if that might keep a little part of him here, where he belonged. And Emil waited nervously outside his papa’s workshop door, watching through the crack as his father stitched more flaming feathers into his phoenix’s hide.

‘Papa,’ he said, finally pushing through. How many times had he come to this workshop as a boy, sat cross-legged on the floor and watched as his father brought some new fantasia to life? ‘Papa, are you well?’

It was not often that this man as old as mountains looked bereft, but he looked bereft now.

‘Don’t be sad, Papa.’

‘There are times when it is good and right to feel sad,’ Papa Jack whispered.

It was only now that Emil noticed that the wind-up mechanism from the trunk beneath the shelves, the one with the little figurines and a barren snowscape, had been set on the mantel. Papa Jack had been playing with it, then, visiting that place in the tundra where he had first learned the magic in toys. In that moment, Emil understood the weight of his father’s sadness – for wasn’t Kaspar going where Papa Jack had gone before, marched off into the world with a pack on his shoulder and no certainty he was ever coming home? A new, terrible feeling rose into Emil’s gorge: I want it to be me, he thought; I want it to be me, so that I can be close to my papa.

‘Kaspar will be home soon.’

‘We can hope, at least.’

For a time there was silence. Emil found a felt sack, filled with tiny leather balls, and sank into it; a chair sprang up around him, moulding to the shape of his body. ‘It’s going to be strange without my brother, but we can do it, can’t we, Papa? The Emporium is still going to open. There’s still going to be first frost. And … the people will still come. Kaspar or not, Iron Duke Mews will be filled with them – and, and … they’ll be expecting miracles. They’ll want them, this year more than any. Opening night can still be a spectacle. I know I have my’ – he had to rush the word, because he barely wanted to say it at all – ‘limitations, Papa, but I can do it. I … promise I can.’

Papa Jack threw himself to his feet, the phoenix tumbling to the floor (where it picked itself up and looked disdainfully on). In two great strides he had crossed the workshop and smothered Emil in his arms. It had been an aeon since Emil felt his father up close, smelt the powder gathered in his beard, the heady scent of wood chippings, axle grease and glue.