Home, she thought, and into her head came an explosion of atriums and aisles, the quarters above and workshops deep below; the pack of patchwork dogs over which Sirius ruled; the phoenix that sat, at all times, in the rafters wherever Papa Jack roamed; and that little Wendy House, hidden now in the paper trees, where it sometimes seemed her very life had begun. ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘home,’ and put an arm around her daughter as the cacophony faded behind.
Come back to the Emporium now. It has changed much since we have been away. Eight years have seen the aisles transformed, but so too the sky above them. The cloud castle that floats, forever churning out the steam on which it survives, in the Emporium dome, belongs to Emil; the patchwork pegasi that gambol around it, those were built by Papa Jack. The paper trees that you must remember have long since put down roots, rucking up the floorboards for aisles around. The Secret Doors have been unleashed, their entrances and exits finally tethered together, so that now a customer might enter on the shopfloor and exit on to a gallery high above. The Midnight Express, Emil’s endeavour of two summers past, is a miniature locomotive that will ferry customers from the atrium into the new showrooms, bigger on the inside than the out, that Papa Jack has chipped out of the world. There are too many new delights to mention (though let me mention Kaspar’s Masques – put one of these on and you might find yourself becoming the animal whose likeness you have taken), but some things will never change in this Emporium of ours: Kaspar still cavorts recklessly around, Emil still lines up the soldiers he has diligently made, and Cathy still makes certain their Long War does not rise up out of the battlefield into the Emporium aisles. Yes, come back to the Emporium with me now. You have been away too long …
The letters arrived before the end of the month. Emil, who was up every morning at dawn to turn his workshop lathe, brought them to Papa Jack’s breakfast table where the whole family gathered. Mrs Hornung had served up devilled eggs but, this morning, there was not an appetite in the entire Emporium. Sirius begged for scraps but, every time Martha sneaked one into his cotton wadding jaws, he turned up his nose, uncertain what to do with things as alien as toast and griddled fish.
‘Douglas Flood,’ Emil began, reading the first letter aloud. ‘Kesey and Dunmore. They’re saying they’ll be back by Christmas, that we needn’t worry. This thing will be over by first frost, that’s what they’re being told. But what if it’s not?’
Kaspar, embroiled in one of his breakfast battles with Martha, would not be drawn on the subject. Cathy saw him pointedly keeping his eyes down.
‘Let’s send some more notices into the wild,’ Papa Jack began. His voice was more feathery than it had been; Emil’s rattled like Vickers gun fire, but Papa Jack’s remained a whisper. ‘There are always shop hands.’
‘Not good ones. Not like Douglas and Dunmore. Even Robert Kesey! How could we teach a new team to wrangle the rocking horses, or to make more soldiers … or even where everything is? Can you imagine a first-year shop hand teaching one of your unicorns how to walk, let alone the pegasus foals to fly? By the time we were done the snowdrops would be up and …’ There came a knock at the door and Mrs Hornung reappeared, a telegram in her hands. When Emil tore it open, his face blanched. ‘John Arthur,’ he swore. ‘John Arthur signed up too. Well?’
But the faces around the breakfast table bore the news without the panic that had turned Emil’s features to a parody.
Kaspar flourished his finger in one direction, drawing Martha’s gaze. While she was looking the other way, he snatched an egg from her plate, made it reappear in her pocket – and, when she cracked it open, it revealed not gleaming white and vibrant yolk, but a patchwork chick who squawked, waiting to be fed. ‘Emil, is there a time in life when you might not think it’s the end? Do you know …’
Papa Jack lifted a granite hand. ‘Your brother is right to be afraid.’
‘I didn’t say I was afraid, Papa …’
‘If this is truly what they’re saying it is—’ and here Papa Jack brandished the newspaper ‘—then we would do well to watch ourselves. Godman is a name that might pass, not like Schneider or Schmidt, but there can be scarcely a boy in the city who doesn’t know us for what we are. That we’re not like them. Bring them into our Emporium, sit them down with our toys, and they would see that we were all children, once – but, passing in the street, or looking up at the shuttered-up shopfront with a rock in their hand and a belly full of beer? No, not then.’
Emil twisted. ‘The Russias are ranged up against the Kaiser, father, just the same as us …’
‘A little thing like that oughtn’t matter to the man on the street. Given the excuse, a certain sort of man would put a stone through your window if you so much as had a different colour eye. No, I’ve seen this before. London loves its toymakers from the frozen East … until it doesn’t. Love and hate, they are such very similar things.’
Cathy had heard quite enough. However much Kaspar was trying to distract her (he was using his pencil to draw figures on the tablecloth, and now those figures were dancing, pulling faces, battling each other back), Martha’s eyes kept darting to Papa Jack. When Papa Jack spoke, the world stopped turning on its axis so that it might listen.
‘Martha, perhaps it’s time you cleared the plates away.’
Martha’s face turned to a rictus. ‘Mother.’
‘Now, Martha.’
Kaspar could see where this was going; the only time Cathy ever turned brittle was when Martha glared like this. But she had Cathy’s pluck, the same pluck that had brought Cathy to the Emporium doors, and that was something that couldn’t be quashed. Better that it be diverted instead. Even the wildest rivers could be diverted.
‘Mademoiselle, shall we?’ In moments Kaspar was bustling Martha through to the parlour where, together, they would tempt Sirius to lick the crockery clean.
After they had gone, Cathy looked between Emil and Papa Jack. ‘If you must talk of this thing, there are enough locked doors in the Emporium.’ She stood so that she might look down on them, as if it was they who were her children. ‘Whatever this is, she’s eight years old.’