The Toymakers(86)

Martha took her hand and led her up the back stair. At the top, the door to Kaspar’s workshop sat for ever ajar.

Kaspar was sitting in the rocking chair that once belonged to Papa Jack, while dozens of self-winding men were lined up in battalions before him. Somebody had been making tallies on a board with chalk. The workshop floor was a parade ground where units turned and fell over, picked themselves up and formed rank and file again. Across the parade ground, whenever a soldier began to slow, one of his compatriots would twirl around, fit his hands into the grooves chipped into the key at his back, and wind him back to full strength. It was, Cathy thought, like watching the dancing of honeybees. The wind-up army moved as a swarm, or not at all.

Kaspar was keeping metronomic rhythm with his foot, but when Martha started tugging on his sleeve he looked up. ‘Cathy,’ he said, ‘look! They’re drilling. We’ve been trying to persuade them to drill differently – why should they stand in battalions if they’re not to be soldiers any more? – but it’s bred into them. Something in the way that they’re made. So – look!’ Kaspar’s hands revealed a mountain of miniature overcoats, woollen jumpers and shirts. Tiny Wellington boots in forest green and navy blue. ‘Dress as a soldier and perhaps you’re a soldier. But dress as …’

‘It hasn’t worked,’ Martha chipped in. ‘They don’t let you put them on.’

‘And then we thought – why should they? They’ve been being told what to do for far too long. Who am I to tell them how to dress? Oh, Cathy, they do the most remarkable things. Cathy, they can learn …’

Cathy crouched down. At the sudden intrusion the toy soldiers formed ranks and routed, re-forming on the other side of the workshop floor.

‘They need a leader,’ said Martha. ‘Sometimes they just whirl and twirl and collide with one another or end up shaking hands. If they had a leader, they might smarten up a little. That’s what we think.’

‘It’s like nothing else in the Emporium. They perform the same action a hundred times, and for every hundred times, one will go wrong. Perhaps it upsets them, so they simply try over again. But when it offers them an advantage …’ Kaspar’s eyes sparkled like frost. ‘All year they’ve been discovering new things.’

Kaspar opened up a box by his side, one emblazoned with the insignias of the Long War, and set down a static soldier. Moments later, the battalion marched forward to where it lay. From here on, their drill was deftly orchestrated. The soldiers worked in two groups – one to open up the cavity in the soldier’s back, and another to make sure the first group never wound down. The soldiers tasked with attending the static soldier moved with nuance that had not been possible one winter ago. They reached in and upset gears, lifted out a cog to replace it with three of smaller design, shortened the cam shaft and inserted more guide wires into the soldier’s arms. When they were done, they wound their new brother up for the very first time.

Soon, he had taken his place in the battalion – and, to Cathy’s mounting surprise, was winding up the fellows around him with newfound aplomb.

‘You built them to build each other?’

‘It’s better than that,’ beamed Martha. ‘Papa didn’t build them this way at all. They built themselves.’

Emil was diligent in releasing the new shop hands at the end of each summer night. First locking the Wendy House door behind him, he lined the workers up among the paper trees and ran his hands over each, searching for what blueprints or implements they might be stealing away, then marched them in file to the half-moon hall. If any minded the way he emptied their pockets, they did not say it; men returned from war with only half a leg, or mothers raising their children alone, needed what work they could find. And, as Emil released them into Iron Duke Mews each night, he reminded himself: they are not your friends, they are not your friends. They were his workers, that was all, and this seemed the most important lesson of his life.

Tonight he locked the door, made one last circuit of the boarded-up Wendy House, and walked back through the paper trees. There, waiting for him where the forest met the shopfloor, was Nina. Their sons squirmed in their pram, angling for a look at their father, and Emil dropped down to rub his bristly face in theirs.

‘How is it?’ Nina asked.

‘The finishes aren’t right, but there’s time for that yet. Still two months until first frost might come. We’ve boxed up enough to fill the shelves, but they need paint and lacquer. Only I can do that.’ Another night he might have seemed defeated, but on this night he was filled with hope. ‘We’ll be ready. If there’s an armistice this winter, it will be out there, in the world. Not here in my Emporium.’ Emil squeezed Nina’s hand, her fingers threaded through his. ‘Our Emporium.’

They walked together through aisles that would soon live again, past the Long War glade that would soon ring with the sounds of battle – and, as they went, they were so caught up in talking about the way things would be, the first opening night their sons would ever see, that they did not realise there were already toy soldiers walking across the shopfloor, watching their every move. They did not see the wind-up army that marched in the cavities along the bottom of the shelves, did not see them stopping to wind each other up as they came. If only they had looked behind them, they might have seen the army as it marched into the paper trees, turning circles around the Wendy House where more of their kind were being chipped out of branches and trunks.