The Toymakers(80)

Emil reached Kaspar in the same moment that Cathy came to his side. ‘I can still walk, little brother,’ Kaspar said, barely concealing his frustration. Then he was at the table. No place had been left for him, so suddenly Nina was on her feet. ‘There’s really no need,’ Kaspar said. ‘It’s customary to stand to make a toast.’

Kaspar held out a hand. Martha passed him a glass. ‘My friends, my family, my daughter, my wife.’ He was looking at them all so fiercely, but on his lips was that same infectious smile of old. ‘It has been a considerable thing to come home. To find you all here again, where you surely belong. With my hand on my heart, I can say that, through every night I spent out there, I kept the image of you all in my mind. My papa and my brother. My Cathy and my Martha. Kesey and Dunmore and little Douglas Flood.’ His brittle hand had fallen to dance through Martha’s hair. She squealed at his touch, looking up with little thrills of delight – and Cathy had to fight the compulsion to draw her away. It was only Kaspar, she told herself. The only father she’d ever known. ‘The Emporium is my home,’ he went on, and something in his voice began to show the frailty he’d been working so hard to keep at bay. ‘This place is my beating heart. Its storerooms and aisles. The dens where I used to play. And I know, now, that that is the only reason I came back to you, while so many of our friends perished. Because how could a man ever die, when he doesn’t carry his heart with him? When he’s locked it away here, at the bottom of his toybox, with everything else he holds dear? The world outside those doors knows more sorrow than I dare remember – but in here? In here, there is snowfall of paper and rocking horses running wild. There are forest glades and butterflies of satin, trains that loop impossible loops and patchwork dogs that never grow old and die – and there is the memory,’ he whispered, ‘of when we were two little boys, who knew nothing other than our games.’

Emil had started to clap, but perhaps it was premature; not one of the other shop hands joined in.

‘The Emporium has changed since I embarked,’ Kaspar went on. ‘But I’m home now and, I’m sorry, Emil, but the Emporium must change again …’ He stopped to survey the room, taking in every face that was staring at his. ‘From the moment the doors open tomorrow, and for ever after, the Emporium will sell no more toy soldiers.’

There was silence, less stunned than perplexed, around the table.

‘Let us put that in our past, like everything else.’

‘Kaspar,’ Emil ventured, ‘what do you mean, no more—’

‘It is a simple matter, my brother. There are so many magical confections in these halls. Why must we sully ourselves with soldiers any longer?’

‘Now, Kaspar,’ Emil said, sterner now. ‘Listen here, the Long War—’

‘—is still going on,’ said Kaspar. ‘I know it is.’ He leant down to plant a kiss on Martha’s brow. Then, pitching into his cane, he returned along the aisle from which he had come, ignoring the cries that harried him on his way.

‘Eat!’ Emil exclaimed, and the shop hands, who until now had maintained a reverential hush, began their mutterings as the tinkling of plates and forks dispelled the silence. ‘Well, it’s preposterous!’ Cathy heard Emil go on. ‘To think he can waltz in here and make a judgement like that, a judgement on us all. It’s ugly, that’s what it is. Isn’t it, Papa? Well …’

But Papa Jack said nothing. The old man sat slumped in his chair, his pinecone figurine still clasped between forefinger and thumb.

Trade began slowly next morning, as it always did once the festivities had died down, but by the small of afternoon a steady trickle of customers were filling the aisles, the rich children of Knightsbridge coming out to indulge their Christmas allowances. Emil, who spent the morning prowling the shopfloor (if only to make certain that the boxes of the Long War still took pride of place on the carousels) put on his usual ebullient show whenever a boy asked him the way into his cloud castle, or the secret tune that could make the dancing bears perform a fandango. Yet in his quiet moments his eyes kept searching, lingering on the galleries above in case his brother dared to be seen.

The day was almost done, the shopfloor emptying as customers gave up the dallying in which they had spent their days, when he heard the commotion. Balancing on one of the units, trying to draw down a dirigible, he pirouetted around. By the counters at the front of the store, a rotund man was remonstrating with Cathy, his face (behind whiskers waxed as if to look incensed) turning scarlet with rage. A small crowd of onlookers had already formed.

Through bobbing heads and arms flung skyward, Emil watched as the man set up two small units of soldiers on the counter, wound them up and let them go. It was a battle like any other, just the same as the thousands that had already been played with Emporium toys. In perfect formation, the soldiers marched at one another. These were infantrymen, armed with only bayonets; they would do and they would die, and whichever was left standing would be the victor.

It took only seconds for the soldiers to meet. Yet, as they came together, it was not battle that Emil saw. No infantryman sent another cartwheeling over the edge, or snarled itself in its enemy’s arms. As one, the soldiers stopped. Each lifted a hand and grasped the hand of the soldier it had, only moments ago, been sworn to kill.

‘Well?’ the rotund man was demanding. ‘What is the meaning of it?’