The Toymakers(64)
Stranger still is being without Emil. We dedicate meals to him (the food is not near Mrs Hornung’s delectable standard, but Emil would like it all the same), and think of him often. No doubt you find it some comfort that he remains to look over the shopfloor and cultivate marvels this summer, and I admit I find it some comfort that he will be there for Cathy and Martha as well, but I remember the look in Emil’s eyes when the physicians declared him exempt. Of course, they say we shall be home by Christmas, and – adventuring aside – it is that which I hope for. I should like to see Martha marvelling at opening night, and wake with Cathy to give her our gifts come Christmas morning.
There was more. Kaspar described his training in details meant to delight his father, lampooning the other recruits and singing the praises of every Emporium shop hand – who, or so Kaspar professed, showed dexterity beyond the requirements of mortal man, and thus had proven themselves particularly adept at fixing a bayonet, patching a sand-bag, and shoeing a malcontent horse.
Shoeing a stallion is quite different from appending a runner to a rocking horse, but in the end it is not nearly as difficult. Do you remember the Arabians we built for the Christmas of ’99? I recall them as more dastardly than any warhorse I am likely to meet. And this reminds me, Papa: Douglas Flood has been assigned as an ostler’s assistant. It means he must shovel manure all day. Not a duty with which he ever had to contend in the Emporium corrals …
The next time Kaspar wrote he was in Belgium, where the 7th Division had arrived too late to prevent the fall of Antwerp and had turned, instead, toward the Flemish town of Ypres, already overrun. Cathy knew the town only from the stamps on the bails of linen delivered to the Emporium doors, but the image she had of it proved to be remarkably similar to Kaspar’s own: a tumbledown town of stone walls and turrets, more weathered and steeped in history than any model village or foldaway fortress the Emporium had ever made. It was here, Kaspar declared, that the Division would halt the enemy’s advance. And,
Tell me about Cathy. She has written to me that all is well, that Martha remains proud of her Papa and makes pictures of me each night. But – what is the truth, Papa? Are they well?
Cathy almost shut the journal then. The temptation to cast it across the room was almost insurmountable. ‘You’d have known, if only you’d asked,’ she whispered, and her vitriol showed itself in spittle showered across the page. Wherever Kaspar was now, perhaps the ink in his own journal was smearing just as the ink in this.
On the next page Papa Jack had written, for the first time, back to his son.
My Kaspar, how good it feels to see your words. The Emporium continues as you can imagine, with long days and nights, empty of everything but the invention. I will keep my promise, my boy, and say nothing of our communications to Cathy and Martha – yet perhaps you do them little credit, for they are thinking of you and know you too well to believe in the fairy tales you send.
Your patchwork dog whimpers at your bedside at night, but Martha and Cathy are keeping it warm.
Sometimes the missives came in a flurry. Other times, there were weeks between each and Papa Jack filled the silences with quiet reports of interludes at the Emporium. As Papa Jack wrote of the patchwork spider he was planning, Kaspar found himself marching the flat lowlands of the Belgian border, those farms and coppices of ancient Flanders. ‘It is a challenge to reach the sea,’ he declared, with the glee of one boy defying another to beat him in a race, ‘and by this many battles will be saved.’
Cathy’s breathing stilled as she read the next pages. For Kaspar had not reached Ypres, not without seeing his very first battle. Those same farms and coverts that he described so gaily, that was where he had first fired a gun. And, ‘It was not nearly as I had thought, Papa,’ was all that he wrote. ‘Yet now we have reached Ypres. Through the darkness we can hear them in the fields, but the town is ours … and it is here I shall spend my opening night.’
The next letter described the Division at rest as winter approached. Ypres was a welcome distraction from the camps and barns they had barracked in on the march. There were beds and soft linen and (Cathy winced) French girls in the beer halls at night. There was food, as well, better food than the tins and dried army rations on which they had marched. Not Mrs Hornung’s Emporium fare, that much was true, but delectable all the same.
Papa! (read the following page) First frost across Ypres. What magics on opening night?
And, beneath that, in Papa Jack’s own hand:
Alas, no frost across the Emporium roofs! You are not so very far away, my son, but winter keeps its own pace. Be safe and be warm.
She had startled at the thought of Kaspar seeing battle, but it was the idea that, for the very first time, Kaspar had known a different first frost to the Emporium that made Cathy soften toward him. She looked at the date Kaspar had scrawled at the top of this missive. Two weeks had passed since that date – and she pictured him, standing on the ramparts (did they have ramparts in Ypres?) and gazing out over Flanders fields, bejewelled in white. How homesick he must have felt, even with the shop hands around him.
All the same, the next pages revealed Kaspar content with his lot. He professed his fears for Cathy and Martha often – but, of Ypres and the villages behind the front where the Division made its barracks, he spoke in glowing terms.