‘Do you ever wish you had one of his music boxes? Remember those dainty old things? You could turn its crank handle and be back there, and there he’d be.’
It was a question to which Cathy had devoted the better part of her life. She tightened her robe against a sudden draught. It was funny how talking about it could play tricks upon your senses. She almost felt as if she could hear the same scuttling in the walls that had disappeared along with her husband.
‘Never,’ she whispered. ‘I loved your father as much as anything else on this earth – but if I had one of his music boxes on my bedside, why, I’d take a hammer to it this very night. If Kaspar was here and in our lives, I’d want him as he is now, every last scar of it, all the things you can see and all the ones you can’t. Because the thing your father knew better than any of us, Martha dear, is still true: the past is the past; you can’t ever go back.’
The bedroom had a draught too. Cathy checked that the window was closed and watched for a time as the clouds parted, revealing the inky blackness and arcing stars above. A clear night: the kind of November night that might, once upon a time, have heralded first frost.
She was happy for Sirius that he had the children to play with, because there would come a time, soon, when she was gone the same as Kaspar. But toys? Toys lived on.
She woke in the blackness, propelled out of a dream. It was the thought of the soldiers, the visit from Harold Elderkin, those stolen moments with her daughter on the stairs. In her dreams they had been marching again, and she wasn’t sure where toy soldier ended and soldier of flesh and blood began.
It was a Kaspar dream, and for decades those dreams had been the worst.
She rolled over, wishing Sirius was here more than ever. She closed her eyes, willing sleep to return, but soon she realised that the dream hadn’t ended. She could still hear that terrible scuttling in the wall.
Cathy screwed her eyes tighter. She screwed her eyes tighter still. She drew the covers up and over her head, a little girl afraid of monsters, and still she could hear the scuttling.
All it had taken was one little sight of them. All the walls she had been building, all the ways of keeping the devastation at bay, they were all falling clean away.
Kaspar had once told her that she was brave but she did not feel brave tonight. She felt like the lost little girl she had never been – and, oh, how she hated it …
Kicking off the bedsheets, Cathy got to her feet. The scuttling was louder now, louder than ever, but hot milk would chase it away. Hot milk and hot tea and, yes, she would tempt Sirius to come back through, if only for one night. The children would understand. A patchwork dog’s loyalty was an inconstant thing …
She was at the door when the scuttling reached its zenith.
Then: silence.
It was the silence that stilled her. She had grown used to the nightmare but, now that it was gone, a different kind of dread seeped in. Her body was telling her to turn, but she did not want to turn.
She turned.
For the first time, she realised that the noises had been coming from only one section of the skirting, the gap between the bedside cabinet and the fireplace where her wedding portraits still hung. Down there, the skirting was in shadow. The scuttling had stopped – but now there was movement, movement down there in the gloom.
She crouched, peering downwards. This time she was certain. The skirting board was shifting. It trembled at the edges, a thin seam appeared where two boards had been whitewashed together, and out popped the little tin tacks holding it in place. Then, with the rattling ferocious in the cavity beyond, the skirting board tumbled outwards, landing in the deep pile of the rug.
A myriad of black shapes rushed out of the cavity. Cathy staggered backwards, the candle she had been holding tumbling to her feet.
Out of the skirting, a battalion of wooden soldiers streamed on to the carpet. They came three abreast, until there were twenty, thirty, forty of them all milling on the floor, the keys in their backs slowly winding down. Before Cathy had caught her breath, long before she had formulated a rational thought, they were swarming towards her.
It couldn’t be. The soldiers Harold had brought, they had been wound down, simple, prehistoric things. Not one of them had the knowledge …
As Cathy tried to make sense of what was happening, one of the toy soldiers broke ranks. Advancing beyond the others, it marched to the tip of her slipper, turned on its heel and marched back. By the time it was in front of the battalion, Cathy thought she recognised the uniform and all its golden stripes. ‘You,’ she whispered, ‘but it can’t be you …’
The Imperial Kapitan was spinning on the spot, his little bugle pressed to his lips, and at his direction the others were drawing a kaleidoscope across the carpet. When the Imperial Kapitan stopped his pirouette, so did the others come to a halt. Only now did Cathy see what they had been doing. It had been a drill. Now, they were standing in formation – and, as they marched from one formation to another, Cathy could quite clearly see the words being spelled out by the way that they stood:
WE … HAVE … COME
It couldn’t be. Not words. Not language, not as sophisticated as this. Only hours before, the soldiers had been simple contraptions of wire and wood.
AT LAST WE HAVE COME
Then she remembered the cavities under the shopfloor. The years Martha had spent reading to them. The way story and language seeped into sandalwood and teak, corrupting the grain of the wood, setting it in strange new spirals.
The Imperial Kapitan had been there. The Imperial Kapitan had learned. He had, she thought now, been learning for more than thirty years, trapped inside the confines of his own head …
He directed the soldiers and, once more, the soldiers swarmed:
HELP HIM!
‘Help him?’ Cathy whispered. ‘Help who?’
The Imperial Kapitan began to spin again, and in response the regiment returned to its dance.
COME WITH US
Cathy must have cried out, for she could hear doors opening underneath her now. Martha was on the stairs and coming up fast. ‘Mama?’ she called. ‘Mama, what’s happening up there?’
WE MUST GO BACK
‘Go back where?’
HE IS WAITING!
Cathy heard the thunder of footsteps behind her and, moments later, Martha was at her side. In a horror that quickly transformed to delight, she lifted her hand to her mouth.
BACK TO THE … EMPORIUM!
Wordlessly, Cathy nodded – and at this the soldiers broke into an uncontrolled dance. Only the gesticulations of the Imperial Kapitan seemed to bring them back under control. They twirled in laps around Cathy’s feet, and then they lined up, in ranks before her. One after another they raised their arms in salute, until finally only the Kapitan was left.
There would be no salute from him. Instead he marched forward, the key in his back still winding down, and extended his hand. It took a moment for Cathy to recollect, another for her to understand. Then, she crouched down and took his tiny wooden hand in her own. It was only then that she noticed how his wood was charred black, how his varnish had melted and run, leaving those unutterable wounds on his behind.
‘Little man, what happened to you?’
Outside, the first frost of winter was hardening across London town – but the Emporium was waiting and there was not far to go.
THE GREAT LONELINESS
PAPA JACK’S EMPORIUM, 30 NOVEMBER 1953