The bus had stopped while yet more passengers piled aboard. She searched for something to say, but each lie evaporated before she could give it voice. ‘I don’t know,’ she finally admitted.
‘Didn’t you think about that before—’
Before he had finished, she cut in, ‘What are you doing here, Kaspar?’
‘Me?’
‘It doesn’t look right, you being out of the Emporium. It’s like seeing a … swallow in winter!’
Kaspar’s face creased. ‘Miss Wray,’ he said, as his laughter subsided, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’
The words did not flay her as she had thought that they might.
‘Emil.’
‘Don’t blame Emil. The way he’s been moping around, I knew something was wrong. And when I found all those snowdrops hung up to dry in his workshop – well, it takes a lot for Emil to break the rules. He’d been plucking them, you see, every morning for the last week. Seems he didn’t want the season to finish, that he didn’t want someone to go. By God, I thought he’d fallen in love! There he was, mooning after one of the seamstresses or … It was just rotten luck that Sally-Anne got to the terrace before him this morning. No doubt he’d have plucked every snowdrop until spring, tried to keep the Emporium open until the Royal Gardens are in full flower. So he had to tell me, you see? The idea I’d tell our father what he’d been up to …’ The bus was about to take off again, but Kaspar cried out for the horseman to stop, and extended a hand. ‘Cathy Wray, don’t make me be a gentleman in front of so many rabid onlookers. But you can’t possibly think I’d let you – let you both – just wander off like that, can you?’
Back at the Emporium, the shop floor was in silence. The gloom that had settled was almost subterranean, and what wan light broke in from the skylights above could hardly penetrate the aisles. Kaspar brought Cathy in through one of the tradesman’s doors, and now they stood in an alcove where pop-up books thronged the shelves. Each one of them held new delights, each page a cascade that could reach out and envelop its reader in lost worlds of dinosaurs and mammoths, of desert islands infested by cannibal hags, of fog-bound London streets and lonely Fenland locks. Mrs Hornung had already begun laying out the dust sheets, hiding the exhibits for another season. Kaspar made Cathy wait until he had scouted the aisle ahead, and only then did he usher her on.
Through the labyrinthine aisles they reached the paper forest and the Wendy House at its end. As Cathy passed under the branches, Kaspar lifted more Emporium Instant Trees from the shelving and cast them on to the floor. ‘Just in case,’ he grinned, barely flinching as they erupted out of the ground behind him. Now that the Wendy House was entirely encircled, it could barely be seen from the aisle beyond. He took her over the white picket fence and walked within.
Cathy stopped dead. ‘You’ve been planning this for me …’
Things had changed since the last time she was here. Beside the bed stood a cradle. Beside that, a Russian rocking horse had been draped in blankets and shawls. A miniature kitchen had been arranged, with a gas-fired hot plate, a kettle and a single casserole dish, burnt black around the edges. The rack above was filled with jars of preserves, flour and lard. ‘Everything I could snatch from the kitchen without Mrs Hornung beginning to suspect,’ said Kaspar, turning a two-step across the carpeted expanse.
‘I’m going to live here?’
‘Why not?’ It seemed so obvious to him. ‘It has everything you could need. Not a soul on the shopfloor could see. And the walls, well, Papa made them so that a horde of children could play inside and barely a whisper would be heard without. There are three things a woman needs, Cathy. A roof over her head, food on her plate and … delightful company. One, two, three.’ At the last, he turned his index finger on himself.
‘You haven’t told Emil. Nor Papa Jack.’
‘Strictly speaking, of course, it is against the rules. Emil can be a stickler, and my papa may not understand. Ever since that unfortunate business with that toymaker off the Portobello Road … well, he’s seen ghosts in every corner. I’m not suggesting he’ll think you’re a thief, but he may think you’re in a thief’s employ. What better ruse than a girl with child, come to prey on our sympathies?’
‘You’re making fun of me.’
‘Cathy,’ he said, more earnestly now, ‘you can be safe here. You don’t really want to have your baby alone in some Lambeth lodging, do you?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, you don’t have to. All you need is here. Let the Wendy House be a sanctuary for you. Let these walls hide you away. Why, all you’d have to do is lock that door and nobody would ever find you. My papa never made a toy that would stoop so low as to break in all of his life. These walls are a fortress. The Emporium might cave in and you’d still be snug and safe in here.’ His next words were not so full of bravado. ‘Let me do this,’ he whispered, and then, full of bravado again, ‘Why would you ever want anywhere else?’
Why indeed? After Kaspar was gone, Cathy walked the circumference of the Wendy House walls. Here was an entire life in miniature. She would have been lying if she had said she was not afraid, it would not have been true to say she did not wonder why – but above everything else was the relief she felt as she rushed to grill bread over the hot plate and slathered it with elderflower preserve. Kaspar’s footsteps were fading on the other side of the paper trees, and Cathy Wray broke into the most mystified smile.
He came back to her that night, when the eerie hooting of stuffed owls on the shopfloor was keeping her awake. He had brought blackouts for the windows (‘So you can light your lantern at night’) and extra blankets for the bed; the snowdrops might have flowered, but winter was still bitter and deep. He had brought tea leaves as well, and soup from Mrs Hornung’s pot. And, ‘You’re going to be bored,’ he said, ‘so you might tutor yourselves with these.’ Onto the bedside he upended a hessian bag filled with pamphlets and old lithographs. ‘Every catalogue and advertisement the Emporium’s ever had. It’s my own collection. One year we’re going to have an exhibit devoted to it. “Kaspar Godman’s Archive of the Emporium!” Here,’ he went on, rifling through to find the oldest one. ‘What do you make of that?’
The card depicted stuffed bears of dubious design. Above it were the words: COME TO PAPA’S EMPORIUM.
‘That’s my handiwork you’re holding there. I’ll wager you didn’t know you were in the presence of an artiste par excellence.’ When she did not challenge him, he added, ‘I was eight years old. It was the same month that my papa made this …’
Kaspar whistled, and into the Wendy House lolloped Sirius, the patchwork dog. On seeing Kaspar it butted affectionately against his leg, as energetic as a concoction made up of fabric and thread could be. Then Kaspar crouched and, in teasing its ear, directed its gaze at Cathy.
‘Do you understand?’
In response, the dog lay down at Cathy’s feet.
‘He’s to keep you company, for when I can’t be here. Oh, I’ll come as often as I can, but there’s Emil to think of, and Papa too. They’ll expect me to be up in the workshop, working out designs for next winter. If they don’t see me slaving at it, they’ll suspect.’