The Toymakers(59)

‘It’s down to you now, dear Cathy. I can’t recall an opening night with so many new hands, not since our very first!’

There were familiar faces this season, but in the half-moon hall the new shop hands gathered, nervously awaiting their introduction to the aisles. Cathy, who had sifted through the letters of entreaty that piled up on Papa Jack’s mat, knew already that most would be girls, but in her mind she had imagined them as images of herself, the runaway coming to the Emporium with little more than the clothes she stood up in. Instead, she found mothers and grandmothers, elder sisters and aunts – the rags of families left behind this Christmas, eager for change.

At least Sally-Anne was here. That calmed Cathy. ‘Just us this year, girl. We’re to sail this ship, are we?’

‘We still have Emil,’ Cathy replied.

‘Oh,’ she said, rolling her eyes, ‘we’ll always have Emil …’

It seemed a spiteful thing to say – but then, Sally-Anne had not seen the way he grew purple with shame that day he tried to sign up. In the weeks approaching first frost, Cathy had seen how feverishly he worked. It meant the world to Emil that this season should not suffer, because Kaspar was not here to sprinkle his magic up and down the aisles.

Cathy stepped forward, facing the crowd. ‘I remember the first day I stood in this hall,’ she began – and she vividly did: the cold at her back, the emptiness gnawing in her belly, the exhilaration of escape. ‘Savour it, because, though this could be the first of many Emporium seasons, you will never have a first time again. Tonight the spectacular will happen. Christmas begins. And I know how much you all need Christmas …’ She paused, thinking of Kaspar behind the lines in some derelict barracks. ‘But there is work to do before those doors open, and so few hours to do it. I hope you’re ready …’ At this point a mechanical reindeer, all of its patchwork sloughing off, came cantering down the aisle, Sirius chasing wildly behind. Cathy closed her eyes. This was going to be more arduous than she thought. ‘You’ll need to show some of them how to wrangle them,’ she whispered to Sally-Anne. ‘Papa Jack has so much in store.’

‘Let’s take them on a tour. Show them what they’re letting themselves in for.’

Cathy nodded. ‘But don’t go losing one of the grandmothers in the storerooms. We haven’t time to organise search parties.’

Sally-Anne grinned, ‘Not this year …’

Sally-Anne relished playing mother hen and led them into the aisles. A diminutive grandmother with tight white curls, a middle-aged couple who clasped each other’s hands as they filed past, a young man dragging behind him a lame leg and somebody’s spinster aunt; the Emporium would have a motley crew this Christmas, but motley did not have to mean miserable.

Cathy was about to follow the procession when a girl caught her eye. She might have been no more than fifteen, sixteen years old, with hair as red as anger, and somehow this struck Cathy as familiar. Her eyes were grey and marked by freckles, her teeth just crooked enough to be noticed. She had been fixing Cathy with a look, trying to pluck up the courage to talk.

Being a mother made you think impossible things. There must have been only six or seven years between them, and yet by instinct Cathy put a comforting arm around her shoulder. ‘You mustn’t be nervous. This winter you’ll see such magical things.’

‘You’re Cathy Godman, aren’t you?’

‘I am.’

‘My name’s Frances,’ she ventured. ‘Frances Kesey. My brother, Robert …’

Cathy beamed, ‘You’re Robert’s sister.’

She nodded, finding her nerve. ‘He spoke so much about this place. That’s why I’m here, you see. To see all the things my brother talked about …’ She spoke in the same broad Cornish that Robert Kesey had spoken, even more his sister in voice than she was in the flesh. ‘Oh, we didn’t believe it, Mrs Godman, that first Christmas he came here. We thought he had a girl, or was just trying to be contrary, because that was his way. That maybe he’d been gone from home so long just to spite our parents. Robert liked to tell a tale, and when he talked about patchwork dogs and trees bursting out of tiny wooden shells and … why, Wendy Houses bigger on the inside! Well, we could be forgiven for thinking he was having us on. It wasn’t until the next year, when I woke at New Year and there were paper trees all over our garden, a whole forest of them sprouted overnight, that I knew it was real. After that, he’d bring gifts every year. I have a ballerina, a mouse, who turns pirouettes up the walls, across the ceiling. I have a dress that shows me how to dance.’ She stopped. Cathy thought: how strange for the girl to be overcome with such emotion … ‘He was going to bring me here one day. We would ride on runnerless rocking horses together, or we’d sneak into the storerooms and see the patchwork giants Papa Jack makes in secret. Woolly mammoths and cave bears and – are there truly spiders, the size of a horse, sleeping in the cellars? So you see, I had to come and see it for myself. I want to feel the things he felt. Eat dinners in the Palace each night, and make merry with the other shop hands and maybe, just maybe, open up my own patchwork dog and be the first thing its black button eyes see when I wind it up …’

The girl’s words exploded. Now they were formless, ugly things as she tried to contain her tears.