‘We must,’ said Papa Jack.
There was silence. For a time, nobody could look at Emil. They kept their faces buried in their bowls. Then, when it was not enough to ignore his anguish any longer, their eyes seemed repelled, moving as one along the length of the table, past Papa Jack, past Cathy, past Mrs Hornung, to its other end. There sat Kaspar, engaged in a suppertime skirmish with Martha (his salt cellar was advancing on her fortress of interlocked knives and spoons). Until now he had pointedly been ignoring his brother’s disgrace, for a look from Kaspar could have turned Emil’s rage incandescent. Now he looked up, to see his family staring back at him. His face opened wide, in dumb realisation.
Cathy curled up, Kaspar around her. Small as she was, she fit perfectly inside the arc of his body.
‘How are we going to tell her?’
‘We’ll tell her her father is a brave, brave man.’
‘She’ll miss you.’ Cathy paused. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘Don’t think I haven’t thought the same. I’ve spent almost every day with you since I shuttered you up in my Wendy House, Cathy. It isn’t the Emporium that’s my universe. It’s you. Of course, they may not take me yet. They may find a weak heart …’
‘Oh,’ Cathy sighed, ‘please.’ Then, more seriously now, ‘You don’t have to do this.’
But I do, thought Kaspar – and, as soon as he thought it, the idea solidified around him. Kesey and Dunmore, Douglas Flood and John Horwood, they were already part of a battalion, the Artisans Rifles, and they were in training, or they were over the water, out in the world. Those last words, out in the world, transformed the way he was thinking. ‘Do you know,’ he whispered into Cathy’s ear, touching it with his lips, ‘I always wanted an adventure. It used to be that sneaking out of the Emporium in summer was enough. But I think back on that journey we made with our papa, over the oceans with a man we barely knew, and – for all the wonders in the Emporium aisles, was anything as adventurous as this? I’ll be gone mere months. I wouldn’t even miss first frost. I could be out there, with those Emporium boys, and back by opening night. Perhaps – perhaps this is the adventure for now?’
Cathy turned in his arms, to face his naked chest. ‘You’ll write.’
‘I’ll write. The most florid, extravagant letters a wife ever received.’
She held his hand, searched for the simple wedding band there.
‘And keep it on you always, no matter where you are or whatever you do.’
‘Until I die,’ he whispered.
Sirius was at the foot of the bed. He let out a disenchanted moan.
Daybreak found Emil in his workshop. If he had cared to look in the mirror this morning (he did not, for fear of the man who would be glowering back), he would have seen his eyes bloodshot and red. If Papa Jack, Cathy or any of the rest had pressed him on it, he would have told them it was exhaustion, and the evidence of that would have been piled up around him – for last night toy soldiers had sprung out of his lathe like a plague, and the red on his fingertips was the residue of the paint he had used to dress them in their finery. But he would have been lying. For last night, Emil had ventured into the Emporium attics, those great antechambers where whole childhoods are stored away, and unearthed the first games he and Kaspar used to play. Crude toy soldiers and their three-legged mules; maps they had painted across which they fought the first battles of the Long War; a spinning top that Kaspar had given to Emil that first Christmas they were English boys, its edges grooved so perfectly it hummed a lullaby as it spun. It was spinning now, up on the shelf above his worktop, spinning beside the Imperial Kapitan. It had been spinning all night and, though there was no magic in it, not like the toys Kaspar now made, still Emil kept seeing memories manifesting themselves in the edges of his vision: he and Kaspar gambolling through the empty Emporium, the first morning their papa took the lease on the place; he and Kaspar, kindling a fire together, that night they got lost in the shifting aisles and couldn’t find their way back.
The spinning top stopped, skittering up against the Imperial Kapitan.
Emil was about to set it spinning again when he realised he was no longer alone. In his workshop door, Mrs Hornung was waiting. ‘Emil, it’s time.’
‘I’ll be out presently.’
‘Young man, your brother is leaving now.’
Emil ground his teeth. Why was it Mrs Hornung always made him feel like this? He was a little boy again, clinging on to her apron tail. He remembered, starkly, the time he had mistakenly called her mother and the look of consternation that had flickered across her face. That night, Papa Jack had come to smooth his bedsheets around him, while Mrs Hornung took a day’s leave. Some boys, all they wanted was a mama.
‘I can’t.’
‘You must.’
He spun around. ‘But I mustn’t, don’t you see? He’s going off and it … it should have been me. I should be the one. If it weren’t for my heart, I would be. And now it will be …’ He stopped. Seemingly he had changed what he was going to say, because when he spoke again it was with a new, forced lightness. ‘Kaspar has a daughter.’ She should have been mine too was the terrible thought that entered his mind. ‘He has a wife.’ And Cathy, Cathy should have been … ‘He shouldn’t have to leave them, and all on my account.’
‘This isn’t on your account, Emil. There are thousands of men like Kaspar crossing over the water.’ She touched him like a mother might touch him, and that only made Emil hate himself more. ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
Kaspar was in the half-moon hall when Mrs Hornung and Emil made their way up the aisle. He was crouching down, his arms wrapped around Martha and, when he stood up, the girl would not let go; she was dangling from his neck. It took Cathy to prise her away, and then she herself needed prising. Papa Jack clasped Kaspar by the hand, drawing him into a mountainous embrace. And Emil, Emil lingered on the edges of it all.
‘Back by first frost,’ Kaspar declared. He took each of them in until, finally, his eyes landed on his brother. ‘You’ll look after them for me, of course.’
Emil tumbled forwards, betrayed by his own feet. He wrapped himself in his brother’s arms, fumbling a fist into the pocket of his greatcoat. Then, he unfurled his fingers.
There were words being whispered into Emil’s ear. ‘Look after our Emporium well, little brother.’ And, ‘I love you, Emil.’
Emil did not say it in return – but, as Kaspar reached the end of Iron Duke Mews, he knew it all the same. A little spinning top had been tucked into his pocket and, as he walked, it was humming a tune he had never forgotten.
The Emporium was empty that day, more empty than the most barren of summer days. Cathy busied herself fixing the braids of Papa Jack’s ragdolls. Martha’s tutor, Mr Atlee – whose own sons had already gone where Kaspar had followed – arrived to teach her the simple precepts of trigonometry (and to bore her senseless to boot). Mrs Hornung lost herself in a maelstrom of cookery, filling the kitchens with the scents of Kaspar’s favourite foods, of kasha and dumplings, as if that might keep a little part of him here, where he belonged. And Emil waited nervously outside his papa’s workshop door, watching through the crack as his father stitched more flaming feathers into his phoenix’s hide.
‘Papa,’ he said, finally pushing through. How many times had he come to this workshop as a boy, sat cross-legged on the floor and watched as his father brought some new fantasia to life? ‘Papa, are you well?’
It was not often that this man as old as mountains looked bereft, but he looked bereft now.
‘Don’t be sad, Papa.’