The Toymakers(6)
She had been to London once before, but that had been in the Distant Past, and all she remembered of that trip was a café with chequered table cloths, sausages and chips and ice cream. A holy dinner, if ever there was one. Now, she found herself coming down the steps into a city she could not understand. A horse-drawn bus was sitting in front of the station, while the pavement heaved with office clerks. It was best to keep her head down, to barrel on, even though she had only the faintest idea in which direction to head. By instinct, she picked her way to the tramline and watched as one, two, three trams rolled past. When the fourth came she found courage enough to ask the driver if he knew where Iron Duke Mews might be. Somewhere up west, he said, and invited her aboard.
Soon, the driver summoned her up and set her back down. Regent Street was dizzying, and no place for a girl whose nausea was growing by the minute; all she could do now was hurry on, putting her trust in whatever lay at the other end.
Fortunately, Iron Duke Mews was not far away, though it took her some hours, weaving in her own wake, to find it. She had circumvented the overwhelming opulence of Claridge’s Hotel three times before she saw a regiment of children bullying their nursemaid along the row. Though the nursemaid looked harassed beyond measure, a smile was playing in the corner of her lips. Soon, Cathy began to see others – a father with his son tugging on his hand; a Kensington couple, carefully controlling the chaos as their three daughters cavorted around them – all heading in the same direction. But it wasn’t until she saw others returning that she knew she was right. A grandmother, dressed as if expecting a night at the opera, was leading her grandson out of the alley, and in his hands was a wooden sled harnessed to tiny woollen dogs. They seemed to scrabble in his palms while the sled floated on air behind.
Iron Duke Mews opened in front of her – and there, in the kaleidoscope of lights at its end, she saw Papa Jack’s Emporium for the very first time.
It was a double-fronted building, dominating the dead-end where the alley turned in on itself and forbade further passage; Papa Jack’s Emporium, it seemed, was a destination, not some place to be discovered by pedestrians idling by. The entrance was a gothic archway, around which heart-shaped leaves of the most fearsome red had been trained. On either side stood windows of frosted glass, obscuring the myriad colours within. The edifice of the building was speckled in lights, like snowflakes rendered in fire. Cathy had never seen electricity used like this, had not imagined it could be so giddy or enchanting. Smells were calling out to her too, gingerbreads and cinnamon that plucked her out of this November night and cast her down in a Christmas ten years ago.
She was still staring as a family emerged, trailing behind them a dirigible balloon. As long as a motorcar, it bobbed along at the height of their heads, while in the gondola below their two toddlers turned and gaped. One of them caught Cathy’s eye as he was borne past.
‘I’m going to have to talk to you, little thing,’ she whispered, with her hand on her belly. ‘If I don’t talk to somebody, I’m bound to go mad, and you’re the only one there is. So … what do you think?’
What the baby thought was: cinnamon! And gingerbread! And – where are we sleeping tonight, Mama? It called out to her through sinew and bone.
The way into Papa Jack’s Emporium was narrow, but soon she stepped into tassels of navy blue – and, through a prickling veil of heat, she entered the shopfloor. It was big in here, bigger than it had seemed from the street – impossibly big, Cathy might have noticed, if she wasn’t so fixed on keeping her nerves at bay. Her eyes were drawn, momentarily, to the serpents of fabric and lace that swooped in the vaulted dome above the aisles. The mannequin of a woodcutter at her side bowed ostentatiously. A pyramid of porcelain ballerinas turned en pointe to display themselves at their best.
The aisles were alive. She took a step, stumbled when her foot caught the locomotive of some steam train chugging past. She was turning to miss it when wooden horses cantered past in their jagged rhythms, their Cossack riders reaching out as if to threaten the train gliding by.
The aisle that she chose was lined with castles at siege. Some of the dioramas were frozen, with siege towers rolled into place, but others clicked into gear at Cathy’s footfall. Knights errant ran sorties with loyal companions across tabletops and shelves. On one shelf, a party of pikemen held the defence against a warband of troglodytes plucked from some Scandinavian saga.
Around the corner, where more dirigible balloons were tethered, a queue was forming at a countertop. Cathy joined it and waited until the shoppers in front had finished having their mammoths wrapped up in paper, or the pieces of their pirate galleons slotted together by expert hands. Then, finally, she reached the head of the queue. At the counter, a boy no older than she was battling to keep the lid of a tiny box stamped EMPORIUM INSTANT TREES from springing open, while simultaneously attending to the spinning tops making a symphony on the shelves behind.
‘I’ll be with you in one moment,’ he said as he finally snapped the box shut. Then he reared up. He was a good-looking young man, with eyes of mountain blue and black hair growing frenzied around his shoulders. He had been attempting a first beard, but the shadow on his chin was pitiful compared to the black thatches that were his eyebrows, and there was chubbiness to his face that gave him the air of a boy much younger.
‘Forgive me,’ said Cathy, ‘but I’m here about the job.’