The Toymakers(67)
In the morning, when she checked the journal again, Kaspar had made just three marks. ‘!!!’ he had scribbled – and, in his next missive, told her of the moment he broke the news to the Emporium boys.
First they roared with surprise, and then they roared with delight. Please convey our best wishes to my brother and tell him: if there is no band on her finger, nor new children to roam our Emporium halls, by the time the Peace has arrived, he must forfeit his birthright and cede me every last aisle!
They wrote more sporadically as Christmas approached. Perhaps Kaspar’s days were too exhausting, for Cathy’s certainly were. The new shop hands, inexperienced as they were, ran her ragged, and when she sank into bed at the end of each night, it was all she could do to write the words ‘I love you’ in the journal, then fall asleep with its pages pressed up against her face.
The snowdrops came late on the Emporium terrace that year, January already gone by the time the shoots opened up into perfect white jewels. Emil, who held them in the palm of his hand, stepped back through the plate glass doors, crossed the Godmans’ quarters and went out on to the gallery beyond. Every season ended with this same plummeting feeling in the pit of Emil’s stomach, but this year it was more terrible than most – for there, in the glade of the Long War, Miss Nina Dean was laying out soldiers for a battle of epic proportions and boys (and girls; Miss Nina Dean was drawing more and more girls into the glade) were choosing sides.
He lifted the Imperial Kapitan out of his pocket and set him to marching on the balcony rail.
‘I’ll have to talk to you,’ he said. ‘There isn’t anyone else.’
The Imperial Kapitan lifted his arm, as if in salute.
‘If she goes away now, she might not come back next winter. It’ll be off to Society and those harridan aunts of hers and … next year, who’s to say she’ll even think of our Emporium at all?’
So what are you waiting for? he thought, unable to voice it even to the Imperial Kapitan. Down below, Miss Nina Dean had started up the battle. She shrieked with glee that soared up and reached Emil, even standing so high above. He could, he supposed, march down there right now and say: I should like it, if you were to stay. We need help this year more than any, and you have already proven yourself so adept …
His eyes revolved to find the Wendy House, where it still sat between the paper trees. He could see its steepled roof between the branches. Only Kaspar knew how the branches sprouted fresh leaves each summer – but in winter they were skeletal as trees in the wild, revealing the Wendy House beneath. Kaspar had never got much further in learning how their father stretched out the space inside (that summer his toyboxes were abandoned, because he had a baby to care for, and babies eclipsed everything else, even toys …), but the Wendy House remained the most magical of all places on the shopfloor. Not just, Emil thought, for the way it staggered and amazed when you stooped through its door. There was a different sort of magic attached to the Wendy House now, one from which no one could escape. What a perfect story: Kaspar and Cathy and the Wendy House where they used to live.
Sometimes thinking of her just spirited her into being – and, as if by magic, Cathy appeared far below. On seeing her, Emil had to tighten his hold on the balcony rail. He tried to force himself to look back into the glade, but his eyes (such treacherous things!) kept drifting back to Cathy. He remembered visiting her in that Wendy House as well. The books he had read, when he thought he might be the only one holding her hand as she—
His knuckles whitened. He thought he heard the Imperial Kapitan cry out – Stop being a fool, Emil! – but it was only the sound of his own conscience, drumming against his skull, trying to get out.
Because – what do you really think is going to happen, Emil? That this winter, this winter you rule the Emporium floor, she’ll see what she didn’t back then? That she’ll come knocking late at night and tell you she was wrong, that it should have been you, you to help her push Martha out into the world, you to curl around her in bed at night, you to take her hand and marry her, down there in the paper trees? Or (and he hated himself, even as he thought it), are you really thinking … what if he didn’t come home? What if Kaspar stays out there, just like Robert Kesey, and she needs you – needs somebody, but it just happens to be you – to fill the place where he used to lie, a faux-Kaspar, a shadow, something to cling on to, something to fill the void … Is that really what you think?
She wouldn’t even have to change her name.
It was an effort, but he stared at Nina until he was certain Cathy had passed from sight. And he realised, then, what he had never realised before. This jealousy had started out for Cathy, but the feeling had blossomed and changed. He was jealous of it all now, of Kaspar being a father, of the games he played with Martha, of … I never had a mama, thought Emil, but I’ve always wanted to be a father. Even as a boy I would think of one day having boys of my own, and playing with them on the carpets as my papa played with me.
So, yes, he thought, perhaps there is a different way of looking at life … and, in the same moment he thought that, Miss Nina Dean looked up from the shopfloor. She had the look of a sculpture and she had caught his eye.
The Emporium (Cathy wrote) is closed for another winter, but there remains great excitement. Emil is to be married.
Perhaps you are not surprised, given all the stories I have brought to you, but to us in the Emporium it remains a great shock. On the day the snowdrops flowered, Emil cornered me in the storerooms and – can you believe this? – asked my permission. I believe it was only his nerves manifesting. Dear, sweet Emil will never conquer those nerves! He needed my emboldening to give him courage and, duly bolstered, he arrested Miss Dean before she left by the Emporium doors, and led her to the gallery above the Emporium dome. Then, at his signal, Mrs Hornung – who was in place in the aisles below – pulled a cord that wound up a hundred soldiers at once. High above, Nina saw them march out – and there, according to Emil’s design (what geometries it must have taken to make it happen!), they wound to a halt in such a way to spell out his proposal, Will You Marry Me?, in letters across the Emporium floor. I am pleased to say that Nina wept openly, there and then. Through her tears, she agreed to be Emil’s wife.