The Toymakers(84)
There were two voices crying now; she was certain of it. The midwife would already be swaddling them. Nina would already be …
Mrs Hornung appeared in the doorway, her sleeves still rolled up as if she herself had been there at the bedside. ‘They’re asking for you, Emil. It’s time.’
But he was rooted to the spot – and until Cathy put her arms around him, and whispered that his work was about to begin, he did not dare take a step.
After he was gone, Martha clung on to Cathy’s hand. ‘Can we go, Mama? Can we see them?’
Cathy made her wait. She remembered the exhaustion that came afterwards, the feeling of plunging back to earth from that otherworld where all that existed was the breathing, the body put to its only real purpose. It was not until darkness had fallen, and the shopfloor lit by the haloes of Papa Jack’s falling stars, that she caught a glimpse of her nephews for the first time. Emil had carried them – tiny as twins often are – out on to the gallery, where they might sneak their first look at the shopfloor. He was whispering to them as Cathy approached: ‘We’ll set it right, the three of us, and there’ll be stars falling every opening night, just like there are now, stars for the two of you … There’s the cloud castle where we’ll camp, and there’s the paper forest where we’ll go hunting patchwork deer – and there, there’s the glade where we’ll play our Long War, all three of us together. They’ll come at Christmas and try to take us on, but nobody will ever win a battle, not against us Godman boys …’ Cathy was almost at Emil’s side, and now he looked around.
‘Cathy,’ he beamed, ‘they’re boys. Come over! Come and meet my boys …’
On the first day of summer, Cathy watched from a gallery high above the shop floor as Emil opened the Emporium doors and a gaggle of shop hands she had not seen before tumbled within. Demanding their silence, Emil produced a flurry of papers, took signatures from each and marched them into the aisles. In the last weeks he had given up tinkering with the toy soldiers and devoted himself, instead, to reordering the shopfloor, erecting barricades along the apexes of aisles, planting Secret Doors that would entrap all but the most ardent cartographer in an infinite loop. The next season’s creations had been left to Papa Jack (who slept, most nights, in his workshop, enduring this family feud with the same stoicism that had once helped him survive a frozen prison camp), and all the while Emil conspired. Cathy watched as he marched the new shop hands into the copse of paper trees – and, once in their heart, to the Wendy House door.
Cathy had seen Mrs Hornung provisioning it. It had bunk beds stacked seven high, sacks of potatoes and crates of canned beef, tea leaves enough to quench the thirst of an army and mint cake enough to sustain an Antarctic expedition. Only now did she understand what it was for. Alone, she saw Emil march the new shop hands inside – and later that day, as she and Martha worked the shopfloor, she saw the boards that nailed the door shut, the blood red sign screaming KEEP OUT!!! and the crude patchwork wolves that had been set to prowl the perimeter as guards. Unsophisticated things, all they knew to do was march and bark.
Later that night, she stood at the workshop door as Martha sat at Kaspar’s feet, learning the intricacies of patchwork design. ‘And he’s locked all the soldiers up in there,’ Martha was saying, darning an eagle’s feathers. ‘And his new shop hands, they’ll undo everything you did, Papa. And how will we ever get in, because Uncle Emil’s turned it into his fortress …’
Kaspar’s face creased with some memory half-forgotten. ‘Let me tell you something, little Martha. When Emil and I were boys, he simply couldn’t bear to lose. He’d build fortresses back then as well, but there was always a way in.’
‘There really isn’t, Papa. Mama and I marched all around, even when those wolves had wound down. He’s put boards across every window. Those shop hands aren’t coming out until opening night, and by then it will already be too late.’
It was strange to see how buoyed the bad news made Kaspar. In a moment he was up on his feet, dancing an ungainly two-step as he dislodged a wooden crate from one of the counters. This he set down by Martha.
‘See …’
Inside the box were toy soldiers and parts of toy soldiers. He set one down and, closing the cavity in its back, instructed Martha to wind it. A second he began to tinker with. ‘I’ve been holding it in my mind for so long. Sometimes all it needs is time and a puzzle works itself through. But I perfected it last night. It doesn’t matter a jot what Emil does in those Wendy House walls, not when …’
With a final exhalation, Kaspar snapped shut the mechanism in the second soldier and wound it up. For some time, nothing miraculous happened. Then, as Cathy watched, the first soldier – which had been marching in ever-decreasing circles – began to wind down. As it neared its end, the second soldier – still with life left in its mechanism – approached the first, took its key in its wooden hands, and began to turn. Energised again, the first soldier sprang back to life and continued its dance.
Martha clapped her hands in delight, just as the second soldier’s mechanism began to slow. This time, the first came to its rescue, winding it back up. When, minutes later, its own mechanism slowed once more, its comrade sprang to its defence. The soldiers marched on and on and on. As long as they were with each other, they would never stop.