The Toymakers(75)

‘Papa!’ she screamed and, realising at last that Sirius was mauling her, she kicked out and sent him flying from the bed. ‘It’s … for … you!’

Something cracked inside the music box. At last, she ripped it from his hands. His fingers were left clasping the crank handle, but the box was hers; she flung the wretched thing aside, down past Sirius, down into the path of the unstoppable locomotive. Had she tried, she would still have been too slow to stop it. The steam train whistled in fury and barrelled straight into the stranded box. Canes exploded, strings drew taut, and though the locomotive reassembled to hurtle raggedly in the other direction, the box was no more. Parts of it arced in every direction.

The music was dead, but the silence was oppressive. Martha rocked back, Kaspar still unmoving underneath her.

‘Papa,’ she repeated, ‘it’s for you …’

Still he said nothing. He looked straight through her, and that was when Martha gave up. She clambered off her father, not caring for his cadaverous body underneath the sheets, and tramped back across the room.

She did not take the toy train with her. It had been for her father and, whether he wanted it or not, that was where it would stay. That was what presents were for. Disconsolate, she dropped back to the Emporium floor. She had almost reached the sanctuary of the Wendy House when her mother caught her. Her mother had a sixth sense that told her when she had been crying. She clawed angrily at her eyes, as if that might mask the tears.

‘Darling, has something happened?’

Martha could not hold it in, no matter how hard she tried. ‘It’s my papa. He won’t …’

Her sentence faltered, for another sound was filling her ears. It was the clanking of bamboo pistons, the shrill call of a whistle – and, from along the aisle, the miniature locomotive burst into sight. It passed between Martha and her mother, disappeared into the paper trees and returned, slightly worse for its explosion against the Wendy House wall. Martha tracked it with her eyes – back along the aisle, back through the open boxes where Emil’s Long War boxes were waiting to be displayed, and between the knock-kneed legs that had loomed into view.

She gazed up. There stood her papa, a wraith in a dressing robe, black hair entangled with black beard. His whiskers were crusted in the white run-off of his drool.

‘Kaspar?’ her mother breathed – but she was the second to reach him. Martha was already there, with her arms wrapped around his legs.





THE RISING



PAPA JACK’S EMPORIUM, WINTER 1917–1918


October turned into November, but still there was no frost. News came that John Horwood, the Emporium caretaker who had been presumed dead on the Somme, was alive and well (though none would recognise him if he ever returned, for his jaw had been left in the Flanders earth and now he wore a new one made of ivory and India rubber). Every day the Emporium shelves grew deeper, new displays appearing in the alcoves and other expanses. It was the time of year that Cathy liked best: those evenings of anticipation, wondering if tonight was when the first crystals of white might appear. And this year, more than any other, she had reason to cheer – for there was her Kaspar, back in his workshop, working on his toys.

Here he was now. Cathy peeped through the gap in the workshop door, and watched as he turned the concoction of felt and fabric in his hands, adjusting its insides with the miniature tools from his bench. He held his body (that body he would never let her hold) differently now, but in his eyes something of the old Kaspar remained. Around him, the workshop counters were littered with fragments of the music boxes that, in his weaker moments, he had been trying to recreate; that he had given up on each new version was the thing that made Cathy know he was still as proud and stubborn as the day they had met.

Her heart gave a flutter when she saw him set down his new creation and smile. Never had one of those smiles – once so irrepressible, so infectious – meant more to her than it did now.

The patchwork rabbit was a dainty thing. It had a key in its side that was slowly winding down and it hopped along, as rabbits do, until it found a few scraps of fabric left on the workshop floor. At these it bent down and started to eat. Kaspar sprinkled more felt and the rabbit hopped after its forage and gobbled it up. Next, Kaspar scattered bits of bent iron, a few screws, a length of copper wire. The rabbit devoured it all. Then, at the last, it stopped hopping altogether. It hunched against the cold furnace wall, furrowed its embroidered eyes – and, out of a knot in the fabric of its posterior, there popped another rabbit, this one even daintier than the last. As the adult rabbit’s motor wound down, the baby’s came alive. Eagerly, it hopped back toward Kaspar, searching out any scraps of food its mother had missed.

Sensing movement behind her, Cathy turned to see Martha approaching along the shadowed hall. Putting a finger to her lips, she whispered, ‘Come and see …’ and, with a footfall soft as Emporium snow, Martha scurried to her mama’s side. She was about to peep through the door, where another patchwork rabbit was birthing a kit, when a sound echoed up the hall. Three short blasts – the sound of a bugle, the sound of the bugle that announced first frost. Martha looked up at her mother, her face opening in delight. ‘Oh, Mama!’

Cathy pushed open the door. The room was silent. Where Kaspar once sat, there was only an empty chair. Around its legs the patchwork rabbits gave their last little hops as their motors wound down. With no felt left to feast on, or transform in whatever intricate motors Kaspar had devised, they huddled together as they grew still.