Sometimes the missives came in a flurry. Other times, there were weeks between each and Papa Jack filled the silences with quiet reports of interludes at the Emporium. As Papa Jack wrote of the patchwork spider he was planning, Kaspar found himself marching the flat lowlands of the Belgian border, those farms and coppices of ancient Flanders. ‘It is a challenge to reach the sea,’ he declared, with the glee of one boy defying another to beat him in a race, ‘and by this many battles will be saved.’
Cathy’s breathing stilled as she read the next pages. For Kaspar had not reached Ypres, not without seeing his very first battle. Those same farms and coverts that he described so gaily, that was where he had first fired a gun. And, ‘It was not nearly as I had thought, Papa,’ was all that he wrote. ‘Yet now we have reached Ypres. Through the darkness we can hear them in the fields, but the town is ours … and it is here I shall spend my opening night.’
The next letter described the Division at rest as winter approached. Ypres was a welcome distraction from the camps and barns they had barracked in on the march. There were beds and soft linen and (Cathy winced) French girls in the beer halls at night. There was food, as well, better food than the tins and dried army rations on which they had marched. Not Mrs Hornung’s Emporium fare, that much was true, but delectable all the same.
Papa! (read the following page) First frost across Ypres. What magics on opening night?
And, beneath that, in Papa Jack’s own hand:
Alas, no frost across the Emporium roofs! You are not so very far away, my son, but winter keeps its own pace. Be safe and be warm.
She had startled at the thought of Kaspar seeing battle, but it was the idea that, for the very first time, Kaspar had known a different first frost to the Emporium that made Cathy soften toward him. She looked at the date Kaspar had scrawled at the top of this missive. Two weeks had passed since that date – and she pictured him, standing on the ramparts (did they have ramparts in Ypres?) and gazing out over Flanders fields, bejewelled in white. How homesick he must have felt, even with the shop hands around him.
All the same, the next pages revealed Kaspar content with his lot. He professed his fears for Cathy and Martha often – but, of Ypres and the villages behind the front where the Division made its barracks, he spoke in glowing terms.
I am making us toy soldiers, Papa. Little trinkets to sit in our barracks or carry with us on patrols. Nightly we must walk them and a man can feel awfully alone, marching in file through farms and forest he does not know. A toy soldier in a pocket can be great comfort. It tells us we are part of a tribe. I wonder, Papa, about the years you spent in the frozen East, and what your toy soldiers meant to you …
He spoke, too, of the days spent digging the line, reshaping the land. Robert Kesey had struck up a romance with a local girl. They had no language in common, but Kesey delighted her with a patchwork mouse he had secreted in his packs.
Two days after the first frost in Flanders came a declaration from Papa Jack.
This year we have a new friend to work the shopfloor. Perhaps you will not remember Wolfram Siskind, who until this summer worked his chocolatiers’ in a little Bond Street mews – but I can assure you, your ten-year-old self thought his shop an extravaganza to set our Emporium to shame. You will recall the scenes outside the German embassy, how they threw rocks and lay the little red door to siege? I am afraid Wolfram suffered a similar fate and, since the summer, his shop has been lain to waste too many times. So, for this winter only, he will sell his concoctions of chocolate and honey and spun sugar from a grotto here on our own shopfloor. The truth is, Wolfram has struggled in his work for some time. He is an artiste in his chosen form, but across time his spun sugar mice, his chocolate hawks, his bears sculpted from toffee and nuts have grown so that they feel too real – and not even the most merciless child could bring themselves to eat them. Instead, they take them home and make them beds from cotton wool, or keep them in their doll’s houses as toys. For Wolfram it is a triumph, but one suspects his creditors take a different approach. Whatever we can do to help him, we will. You would find him a man after your own heart.
Your loving Papa.
The next page was filled with a scrawl so fierce that Cathy was taken aback. There was violence in that hand. Beneath it there had once been words, but Kaspar had scoured them out so deeply not even their impressions remained, only a spiralling chaos of black ink.
On the next page, the words could be read, but the hand still unsteady:
On patrol this night Robert Kesey dropped dead by my side. His body will be laid to rest come the dawn. We returned fire into the pitch of night and, Papa, I have killed my first men. Do not tell me a German could ever be after my own heart.
To which Papa Jack had simply replied:
Never forget – once upon a time, those men played with toys too.
And it put Kaspar Godman to such shame that he had not written since, not even when his father begged and begged and begged.
It was late when Cathy closed the journal. The clock on the wall, with its manifold faces, told her it was after three. Frost had grown in fractures across the window glass, winter starting to harden. It would, at least, bring custom to the shopfloor.
She ventured out, and into the rest of the Godmans’ quarters. In the workshop the fire had burnt down to embers, and Papa Jack was asleep in his chair. It was so rare that he retired to his bed, not in these long months of winter. She was about to replace the journal on his lap, when his inkpot and pen caught her eye. And, damn it, why shouldn’t she? She was his wife. She picked up the quill and pressed it to the page.
Kaspar, she wrote, I know.
Beneath it she signed her name. Then, because her anger had faded with the night, she forced in the words ‘my love’, cramped up so that he might still think it an afterthought.
In her dreams that night were patchwork dogs and razor wire. Kaspar Godman had a contraption in his back and Robert Kesey had to wind it up so that Kaspar could march. She woke in a cold sweat, and another Emporium day began.
The gall of the white feather was nothing compared to the gall Emil felt on seeing its giver again – and yet, the next day, as he stood god-like over more battles of the Long War, there she was, watching him from an alcove between the aisles. It was most distracting. It had taken only a day for the rumours of the new Long War game to spread across the schoolyards of London town. Boys had dragged their mothers to the Emporium directly after their school days finished. Others, Emil knew, would be planning trips from Gloucester and Cirencester, Edinburgh and the Yorkshire Wolds. Pilgrimages from far and wide, all to see his soldiers, and there she was, like a ghost at his feast.
One boy had tugged on his hand and told him how he wanted a troop of soldiers just like my daddy, and this had given Emil the biggest thrill of his life.
When Emil could stand it no more, he stepped from his pedestal, called the boys battling away to a parley, and told them he would be back soon.
For a time it was enough not to be in her line of sight. He worked at the register, wrapping presents, and in the work found his composure – except, when he looked up, there she was again, lined up in the queue with all the other shoppers. By the time she got to the front the blood was roiling in his veins.
‘Hello,’ she ventured. ‘Sir?’
There was only so long Emil could keep his head down.
‘You haven’t asked me my name.’
Emil snapped, ‘I’m aware of it. I hadn’t planned to. I’d planned to order you out of my Emporium, but we don’t turn a soul away. It’s one of our dictums.’
‘Dictums,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Emil Godman, you have the quaintest turn of phrase.’
This only infuriated him more. He had so few words.
‘As a matter of fact, I’ve come to tender an apology. I have a cousin on the Board. I verified your record. You’re no coward, Emil Godman.’
This caught Emil almost wholly off-guard. He fumbled with wrapping paper, tied his hands to a box of the Long War with ribbon.
‘My name is Nina Dean. I’m afraid I was … too eager. I would like to make restitution.’
Restitution, thought Emil. You have such a formal turn of phrase.