The Toymakers: Dark, enchanting and utterly gripping'

by Robert Dinsdale

LONDON 1917

What had seemed a tiny shop from without reveals itself to be a grand labyrinth within.

this would have been my haven as a child

do not let yourself get distracted by the bears whose eyes follow you from every shelf,

Keep your eyes on the man in front, for he is almost at his destination. Come closer now, that we might listen.

All are welcome at Papa Jack’s Emporium, for everyone was once a child, no matter what they’ve done or whom they’ve grown up to be.

advanced. Some other customers have drawn near, lured by the commotion. See the woman with the cage of pipe-cleaner birds, the vagrant soldier marvelling at the stuffed dogs lounging in their baskets? Keep a careful eye on them; you will see them again.

beautiful writing style

for the very first time, lain down their arms.

‘They have surrendered,’ she whispers

peace

The soldiers she is staring at are happy now, and it is the most incredible thing.

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NOVEMBER 1906 They brought her down to Dovercourt to sell her unborn child.

Mrs Albemarle’s Home For Moral Welfare

Cathy sat alone in the bay while her mother and Mrs Albemarle (for so the woman had introduced herself)

‘She’ll be sixteen by the time you take her,’

‘Catherine, dear. It isn’t a test. Do you know how far along you are?’

Help Wanted Are you lost? Are you afraid? Are you a child at heart? So are we.

Sales and stocktaking, no experience required. Bed and board included. Apply in person at London’s premier merchant of toys and childhood paraphernalia Papa Jack’s Emporium

London, she thought. Yes, she could disappear in a place like that. People went missing in London all of the time.

the world cared nothing for a single runaway daughter. It had seen the story so many times.

she saw Papa Jack’s Emporium for the very first time.

Papa Jack’s Emporium, it seemed, was a destination, not some place to be discovered by pedestrians idling by.

‘That’s how I found myself here as well, but that was twelve years gone, when his boys was just bairns. You’ll call me Hornung. Mrs Hornung, though the first name’s Eva.’

It was better to be afraid of what she knew than what she didn’t.

Yes, Papa Jack’s Emporium is a place out of step with the world outside.

Most of those soldiers were his summer’s work, or else the work of last winter’s craftsmen, but all of them were Emil’s design.

the Emporium’s most prized pieces were for Emil alone.

Thinking of the stories his papa once told, he decided to give it a name like no other.

This, he decided,

would be the first: the Imper...

This morning an Oriental dragon snaked from one end of the store to another. The atrium at the Emporium’s heart had become the wilderness lair of two enormous black bears.

Emil’s brother Kaspar was nowhere to be found. His bed had the air of one that had not been slept in for days,

He thought, suddenly, of the feat of magic in the workshop above, how Kaspar’s night light had cast those enchantments,

before their papa’s tinkering had magnified it a thousandfold.

There was a time only their father was capable...

You can do the most extraordinary things if you keep the perspective of a child.

never lose that perspective.

To make a toy, you’ve got to burrow into that little part of you that never stopped being a boy. Because, hidden down there, are all the ideas you woul...

their faces contorted in terror. Immediately, he knew what he had done. The bears between the bookshelves, they had been too real.

He had aligned the eyes and teeth too well, taken his work too far again.

Things could go drastically wrong with a toy ill made; games turned sour on an instant.

any black mark against Kaspar was a golden star for Emil.

‘you came to this shop not only as our assistant, but as our guest.

He said toymaking like another man might enchantment; he said carpentry like another man might describe his morning ablutions.

Papa Jack’s Emporium closed its doors for the final time on an overcast day in the August of 1953.

well, that was a life. Then she toddled off to catch a bus.

It was only then that she noticed how his wood was charred black, how his varnish had melted and run, leaving those unutterable wounds on his behind.

Thirty years he had been waiting. Thirty years – and now, this.

Emil appeared out of the swirling motes of dust, his eyes swollen from lack of sleep, his beard an eruption of untended, wiry tufts. A broom hung at his side, wielded like a weapon.

They thought I was evil, and all because I wanted to play my Long War.