‘What kind of restitution?’
‘I was thinking of a home-cooked dinner, from one supporter of King and Country to another.’
‘If you hadn’t guessed, this is my busiest time of year. A home-cooked dinner indeed!’
Emil snorted, imitating disgust, yet even now he was thinking of roast potatoes on a plate, gravy thick with dripping, bread and butter and …
‘Then I might cook for you here.’
‘I think Mrs Hornung may have a moment at the thought of a stranger rifling in her larder.’
Miss Nina Dean returned Emil’s snort, turned on her heel, and marched away. Still flushing red, Emil returned to his wrapping. Only now did he realise how his heart was pounding. He was glad she was gone, he was sorry he was gone, and the two were curdling into the most unholy grumble in his stomach. A shadow fell across him. ‘Yes?’ he snapped – and, on looking up, saw that it was none other than Miss Nina Dean, her arms laden down with dozens of boxes of soldiers.
She deposited them on the counter with a crash.
‘I shall take them all, these and a hundred more. My aunts and I shall deliver them to the boys’ homes, for they’re bound to swell this year when fathers stop coming home. And I shall want a dozen boxes of ballerinas as well. Dainty ones, who can spin en pointe and hold perfect arabesques. And then – then, after you’re done with your wrapping, done with your harrumphing and general discontent, then you can accept my apology, consent for me to cook for you, and look me in the eye.’
Emil’s gaze shot up. His whole body was quaking.
‘Does that sound like a thing you might do for me?’
And Emil said, ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it does.’
My papa is a scoundrel, wrote Kaspar. I had sworn him to secrecy and took it as a pledge. But there you are, dear Cathy, dancing across the page. As fortune had it, I was awake and staring at the page as the words appeared. I followed you with every etch of the pen. And I know you were angry, Cathy. It was there, in the rush of ink. So, first of all, let me say now how sorry I am. I wanted to spin you a yarn, a tale of adventure, but that is not what life is, and I should have known that from the first. So, now that you are here, every unvarnished thing …
She could not remain bitter, not for long. Bitterness was a kind of privilege afforded to those in better times – and how could she be bitter, when at least he was still alive, and Robert Kesey cold in the ground.
I have missed you Kaspar. That is all. And I want nothing but the truth. I want to know you.
The truth.
And nothing but the truth.
The truth, Mrs Godman. But my truth is dull these past days. We are sent down and behind the line, leaving others in the 7th to their patrols. To be a soldier, it appears, one must stomach long bouts of nothings and short bursts of every thing in the world. Tell me news of the Emporium, Cathy. Tell me something I can tell the boys. We have already missed opening night …
So much to tell, thought Cathy, but where to begin? She watched as Kaspar’s words materialised and thought: he needs some levity, he needs some hope. And what better hope than this?
Emil, she wrote, and hesitated on the word, is falling in love.
It was the dawn of December, two weeks since she invaded the Emporium kitchens to make good her apology to Emil, and Cathy thought she had seen Miss Nina Dean every day since. If she was not there when the doors first opened to wish Emil a good day, she was there in the afternoon, on her hands and knees in the Long War glade, first learning the rules of the game and then directing others. On the second of the month, when London hunkered under its first real snowfall of the season, Cathy gazed out from one of the galleries and saw her leading one army, a gaggle of boys around her, while Emil led the opposing force. Emil’s cries of celebration at routing one of her units flurried up into the Emporium dome.
‘I haven’t seen him as elated, not even when he used to play with Kaspar.’
Mrs Hornung was at her side, her face screwed up in concentration. ‘Do you trust her?’
The question gave Cathy pause.
At first I was uncertain, she wrote to Kaspar that night.
To waltz in here as she did and call Emil a coward, right there in front of his customers – well, that is a slight from which it must be hard to recover. And yet recover from it he has! It helps that she is forthright, it helps that she brooks no nonsense, it helps that she is more sure of herself than almost any other lady I have met. In truth, she can seem more like mother to Emil than she does admirer. Her affiliation with the Order of the White Feather, Emil explains, was at the insistence of her aunts, that coven who marched in here on opening night and witnessed Emil’s humiliation. When quizzed upon it, Emil insists that it took more courage to return to the Emporium and make amends than it did to come in with an accusing finger – and on that he is correct. And yet Mrs Hornung’s words have stayed with me today and they linger still. Miss Nina Dean has a cold exterior, but sometimes the light shines through. Certainly, had she no genuine affection for Emil, she would not have spent today on her hands and knees battling with toy soldiers. It cannot be her interest, so she must do it solely for him. And when I catch myself asking why, I must stop and scold myself. For why shouldn’t a woman look at Emil and feel the same things I first felt that summer you helped me stowaway in the Wendy House walls? Do I think so little of Emil to deny him even that? What kind of a friend, of a sister, would that make me? So, yes, I do trust Miss Nina Dean. I choose to trust her because Emil chooses to trust her. That should be enough.
In the morning, when she checked the journal again, Kaspar had made just three marks. ‘!!!’ he had scribbled – and, in his next missive, told her of the moment he broke the news to the Emporium boys.
First they roared with surprise, and then they roared with delight. Please convey our best wishes to my brother and tell him: if there is no band on her finger, nor new children to roam our Emporium halls, by the time the Peace has arrived, he must forfeit his birthright and cede me every last aisle!
They wrote more sporadically as Christmas approached. Perhaps Kaspar’s days were too exhausting, for Cathy’s certainly were. The new shop hands, inexperienced as they were, ran her ragged, and when she sank into bed at the end of each night, it was all she could do to write the words ‘I love you’ in the journal, then fall asleep with its pages pressed up against her face.
The snowdrops came late on the Emporium terrace that year, January already gone by the time the shoots opened up into perfect white jewels. Emil, who held them in the palm of his hand, stepped back through the plate glass doors, crossed the Godmans’ quarters and went out on to the gallery beyond. Every season ended with this same plummeting feeling in the pit of Emil’s stomach, but this year it was more terrible than most – for there, in the glade of the Long War, Miss Nina Dean was laying out soldiers for a battle of epic proportions and boys (and girls; Miss Nina Dean was drawing more and more girls into the glade) were choosing sides.
He lifted the Imperial Kapitan out of his pocket and set him to marching on the balcony rail.
‘I’ll have to talk to you,’ he said. ‘There isn’t anyone else.’
The Imperial Kapitan lifted his arm, as if in salute.
‘If she goes away now, she might not come back next winter. It’ll be off to Society and those harridan aunts of hers and … next year, who’s to say she’ll even think of our Emporium at all?’