The Toymakers(83)

The Imperial Kapitan was watching him from its place on the mantle, where he had left it after dinner the previous night. On seeing it, Emil felt a rush of such shame. How many seasons had he gone to the terrace, willing the snowdrops to stay beneath the earth? Now he dragged them up with his hands, desperate for winter to end.

The necessary tools were in his workshop. With a scalpel blade he opened the flower’s head, spread back its unripe layers. A little paper, a little felt; his fingers had painted such delicate things on the faces of his soldiers that surely they were up to this task. He worked quickly, he worked with purpose, he locked the magnifier to his eye and hunched over – and then, then when he heard footsteps behind him, then when he was holding himself so tight he felt ready to burst, then he was finished. He turned around to find Nina waiting. Her belly was rounded, his two sons grown firm.

‘They’re ready for you.’

Emil strode across the workshop, squeezing her hand as he brushed past. Out on the shopfloor, the shop hands were nervously milling. Cathy lingered, unseen in the darkness, watching him keenly.

Emil shook as he lifted his fist, opening it to reveal the snowball bulb with its flower standing tall and firm. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘Finished. We’ll see you all next year.’

A month had passed by the time real snowdrops filled the Emporium terrace. Cathy wove them into Martha’s hair, Papa Jack retired for his long summer sleep, Kaspar continued his tinkering – and down below, locked in his workshop day and night, Emil opened up the soldiers that had once been his, removed their mechanisms and took them apart piece by piece. Scalpels he had at his side, screwdrivers and tweezers and wrenches small enough to shift the most tiny of cogs. He lifted out springs and stretched them, looking for faults in the coiling. He put his magnifying glass to the teeth of the wheels that drove the pistons that drove the soldiers’ arms and legs. He dismantled and rebuilt and dismantled again, and still he couldn’t discern by which simple trick of engineering Kaspar had corrupted his Long War.

‘What am I missing?’ he said, to the Imperial Kapitan sitting static up on the shelf. ‘What did he do?’

Spring was here, the days already growing longer. They would, Emil decided with a sinking finality, all have to be destroyed. All of those hours spent at his workshop lathe, all of those unsuspecting toy soldiers put to the torch, so that he could begin again.

He was scratching out figures on a slate, trying to quantify the amount of timber he would need, the number of shop hands he would have to hire to replenish the shelves by the time Christmas came, when fists hammered at the workshop door. Behind him, Cathy hung in the frame, gasping for breath.

‘Emil, you must come.’

‘I’m nearly there, Cathy. Whatever he’s done, I’m certain—’

‘No, Emil. Now. It’s now.’

Emil was slow to understand. He began to protest – this was his time, all he needed to do was think, the answer was here, if only the world would let him find it – but then Cathy’s silence revealed all. He dropped his pencil to the worktop, watched it roll down to the feet of the Imperial Kapitan. Then he was up on his feet, finding neither his words nor his balance.

‘Now? But Cathy, there’s a month, two months to go …’

‘It’s twins, Emil. The midwife said, they come sooner if they’re twins …’

Emil stuttered out on to the shopfloor, stumbling over himself as he twirled to look at the galleries above. Perhaps it was only imagination, but he thought he could hear Nina, even all that distance away.

Cathy took him by the hand. ‘Now,’ she said, more firmly.

They reached the Godmans’ quarters by the back stair, the one that couldn’t possibly have climbed so high into the rafters as it did. Martha hung by the terrace door, standing on the tips of her toes. Papa Jack clasped his hand as he came. Mrs Hornung, or so Cathy said, was already by the tradesman’s entrance, awaiting the arrival of the midwife; and Kaspar, well, Kaspar was behind one of those doors, his head in a manual, oblivious to the nephews about to make their entrance to the world.

Nina waited alone in their bedroom. When Cathy left she had been prowling back and forth; now she sat on the edge of the bed, trying to ride the early contractions.

In the passage outside, Emil stopped dead.

‘Cathy, I don’t know if I can.’

How his heart must have been pounding. Cathy stood as close to him as a wife ever could and whispered, ‘You’ve been waiting eleven years. You were ready to help me then, and you’re ready to help her now. Don’t you remember? All of the books you collected, all of the questions you asked? Emil, not once, then or now, did I doubt you could do it. Just go in there, hold her hand until the midwife comes. Tell her you love her. She’s going to need it.’

Emil whispered, ‘Thank you, Cathy,’ and then he was gone through the doors.

Seven hours later there was cheering in the Emporium halls. Cathy – who had waited so anxiously while Emil paced the quarters, panicking each time the midwife emerged to collect more towels, more water, toast and butter to give his wife strength – heard the squawking of a newborn through the wall and breathed out. Until that moment she had not known she was holding so much tension within.

At her side, Emil was suddenly on his feet.

‘Shall I … Should I go, Cathy?’