The Toymakers(96)

‘Kaspar,’ he whispered. ‘Kaspar, my boy?’

At Papa Jack’s touch, Kaspar turned toward him, as a child might reach out for their papa in the night.

‘Opening night used to be so special to you, Kaspar. I want it to be special again. Cathy asked me to talk to you. I promised I would, but until now I could never find the words. Because – how do you solve a life, my Kaspar? How do you solve a life like yours … and mine. A life is not such a very easy thing. So the weeks started passing, and then the months passed and the years, but … Kaspar, here I am, where I’ve always been, ever since I came back and found my boys. Here. I. Am.’

In his sleep, Kaspar had reached out and threaded his fingers into his papa’s. Papa Jack’s hand dwarfed his. He held it fast.

‘I’ve dreamt of what I might say. I’ve longed to find it. I’ve thought for so long I don’t have any more time to think, so here it is, everything I have …’ He took a deep breath because this thing he had come here to say, it did not want saying. ‘You cannot go back.’ He paused. ‘When I left my katorga, I wasn’t the same man they snatched away when you were so small. I thought I could be, but I was wrong. And all that year, as I wended my way back into the west, as I stopped to make toys in the villages and bought favours and rides and a roof over my head with toy soldiers and ballerinas and bears, I understood it more deeply than ever. I wasn’t really walking back the way I had come, because this man that I was, he wasn’t the same man who’d made the trek east. With every footstep I was somebody new.

‘You’re new too, Kaspar. A man can’t go out and see the things you’ve seen, do the things you’ve done, and come back to his old place in the world. This Emporium of ours, it crystallises childhood. It makes us long for those days when all the world was a toy and all of life was the adventure you had when you closed your eyes and made it happen. But Kaspar, if you go on like this, there isn’t a happy ending. There’s just more of … this. I had to find a new way to be. I found my boys and I took them into new lands and I made something for us there. I made this Emporium. I got away from the wilderness by finding something else. And Kaspar,’ he whispered, and brought his head down to his son’s face, and planted a kiss on him there, ‘perhaps you must too.’

A single tear rolled from Papa Jack’s eye to land intact upon Kaspar’s cheek.

Papa Jack took the back way to his workshop, unwilling to look out over the shopfloor one last time. Once inside, he shut the door. Somehow Sirius had found his way within. The patchwork dog rested its muzzle in his hands. Then it lifted itself, lapped him once with its darned sock tongue, and whimpered as it left.

Alone now, he studied his workshop.

Eyes were watching him. This was another of those things he had carried with him all of his life; he could always tell when he was being watched. He made himself tea from the pine needles and samovar Mrs Hornung always left out and, as he was stirring through syrup, he saw the flickerings of movement in the edges of his vision. ‘I see you,’ he whispered, with a smile. ‘Yes, I see you now. You may come out, if that is what you wish. Your secrets are safe with me.’

Without looking down, he retreated to his seat. The arms rose up to hold him and he realised, with a starkness he had not felt before, how good it was to be held. It had been so long since he felt the warmth of human arms. Desire did not die, not even after all this time.

As he breathed in the scent of pine forest floating up on the steam, the scuttling arose at his feet. He felt them before he could see them. Then he was down on his knees among them, the wind-up soldiery milling around.

There were ten of them. More gathered at the skirting where a loose board released them from the walls. Papa Jack lowered himself until they were of a level, staring into their delicately painted faces with his own of flesh and blood. ‘How handsome you are,’ he ventured, and extended a palm as if to invite one aboard.

The soldiers milled frantically, uncertain of what they were being asked.

‘You may go back to your skirtings, should you like,’ Papa Jack began, ‘but I should be grateful of some company tonight.’

As if emboldened (or was it in empathy?) the soldier closest to Papa Jack marched forward and set his little wooden jackboots upon his palm. Gently, so as not to topple him, Papa Jack lifted himself back into his seat. The sight of their brother at ease in the giant’s hand drew yet more soldiers from the skirtings. They lined up in battalions at Papa Jack’s feet.

‘My sons made such magic here. They made it together, if only they could see. I can see my Emil’s hand in your finish. I can see my Kaspar in how you … live. Yes, I believe I shall use the word, tonight. And at least I am not to be alone.’

The soldier in his hand was winding down. It turned frantically, seeking out its brothers on the workshop floor – until Papa Jack whispered, ‘May I?’, and the soldier, nodding in spite of his panic, stiffened as Papa Jack twisted the key in his back.

The soldier was renewed. The only soldier since the Rising to have been wound up by a man. ‘The honour,’ Papa Jack began, ‘is mine alone,’ and, setting the soldier back down, he reached into the trunk at his side. When he brought his hands out he was clutching twists of pinecone and grass, bundles of twig and dried bark.

‘It was with these that I bartered my life,’ he said, and lay them down. ‘The first toy soldiers a Godman ever made, but you should take them now. It is your ancestry, after all.’