The Thief of Broken Toys (9 page)

He slammed the front door behind him,
didn't bother locking it, strode up the hillside.
Ray had never been as fit as he would have
liked, and by the time the path levelled out, he
was sweating and panting, but eager to reach
his goal.

It was mid-afternoon. The old man was
waiting for him, dressed in jeans and a shirt, a
light coat, and walking boots. He smiled gently
as Ray approached, then held out his hand.

“Here,” Ray said. “Whatever it is you do . . .”
He placed the colourful plastic toy in the man's
hand, and stepped back.

The old man looked down at the saw for a
few seconds, and his face was so expressionless
that Ray's guts sank, his shoulders slumped,
and he thought,
Has anything been happening
here at all?
The man turned the toy this way
and that, and sunlight shone between clouds
and glinted from its garish colours.

“Come with me,” he said at last. He lifted
the toy, then nodded out toward the sea.
“Something to show you.”

“Come with you where?”

But today, the old man was not wasting
words. He turned and walked farther along
the cliff, and then turned right from the path
and forced his way into the plants growing
thick at its edge. They seemed hardly to touch
him, and when he glanced back to see if Ray
was following, there was a strange look in his
eyes. He appeared almost nervous.

“Not far,” he said. “You've seen it before.
Not been there, but seen it. And now I've
something to show you.”

Ray glanced at the gorse, the hawthorn
bushes.

“It's easy if you know where to tread,” the
old man said.

So Ray followed, because he had the sense
that this was the culmination of something,
or the beginning of something new. At first
he tried to judge just where the old man was
stepping and follow his lead, but he soon found
that the plants appeared to be parting around
his legs. There was no sense of movement, no
sound of them rustling or twisting out of his
way, but his route was unimpeded. He stared
at the old man's back and, past him, the sea.
Moments later, he saw the angular shoulder of
the stone hut.

“Home,
sweet
home,”
the
man
said,
chuckling. There was something not quite
right about that sound, and Ray paused, the
plants suddenly pressing in around him again.
A thorn stuck into his thigh; a stem was curled
around his ankle. As he tried to pull back, he
was pricked and spiked again, more wounds
to add to the scabbed punctures on his fingers
and hands.

“Come on, now,” the old man said. “You
want to know what it is I do, don't you?”

Ray looked from him to the overgrown
structure, and back again.

“Don't you?”

Ray nodded. He moved forward, and the
man let him.

“Then step inside,” he said. “Gotta fix this
broken toy.”

He waited until Ray stood beside him. They
were maybe ten feet from the cliff here, the
actual edge blurred by the plants that grew out
over the terrible drop.
I thought about stepping
from there once
, he thought, and looked back
along the cliff to where he'd stood.

“Two men built it almost seventy years
ago,” the old man said. “They were already
middle-aged then. Fishermen, they'd seen the
cruelties man can inflict on man in the mud
of Ypres. So when the second war started,
they wanted to do their part. Fish, they were
told, help to feed our nation. But fishing to
them was like breathing to us. It seemed . . .
helpless. So they built this thing as well, and
for the duration of the war, they took turns
sitting up here, watching.” He looked out to
sea at the three large ships on the horizon,
and the smaller vessels bobbing closer in.

“How do you know all that?” Ray asked.

“Because I came here, and sat here, and they
told me.” He stared at Ray as if challenging
him to question.

“So why bring me here now?”

The old man looked again at the broken toy
in his hand, and this time he seemed to give
it serious attention. He turned it this way and
that, held it up to the light, shook it, breathed
onto it, and then held still, as if listening.

“To show you how this whole thing works,”
the old man said. “To show you how to perform
wonders.” He edged past the hawthorn tree
crowding the end of the stone building, and
Ray followed.

He didn't know what to expect when
they walked inside; he'd spent no time
contemplating it. The instant before he saw,
he imagined the insides to be overtaken with
nature. There was no roof to the shelter —
whatever had been built there had long-since
collapsed and been subsumed — and the heads
of the walls were crumbled by frost and plant
growth. Inside might lie the rotting remains of
the roof, piled into the corners and smothered
with plants. Perhaps some wild rose bushes
might have taken hold, sheltering against
the walls. It was possible that the place had
been found and used by lovers or drinkers,
or those who simply wanted to be alone, and
maybe evidence of their loving or solitude was
still there — initials carved into the walls, an
atmosphere of melancholy.

What he saw was so far removed from
what he had, briefly, imagined that he paused
and closed his eyes, waiting for the image to
vanish. But when he looked again, he saw the
same view, and he had to concede that this
was the truth.

The inside of the ruined stone building
had been completely cleared out. There was
a table at its centre, as tall as a dining room
table though much smaller, and a chair
tucked beneath it. Something sat on the table
shrouded with a soft chamois leather. Beside it,
fixed to the end wall, was a large glass-fronted
cabinet containing an array of tools. Such was
his shock that Ray could not accurately make
out shape or purpose; he simply saw the glint
of metal and the shine of well-used wooden
handles. There were other things in there too,
made of material he wasn't quite so sure of.
But his attention was quickly snatched from
the strange cabinet by the other, stranger
display that took up the back wall.

Hung from hooks on a fine metal mesh were
dozens of toys. There were dolls and teddies,
action figures and ballerinas, cars and models,
and others Ray could not identify. They took
his breath away. Each of them seemed to be
broken, with limbs missing or plastic cracked,
and they formed an orderly queue awaiting
the man who would fix them.

The old man stood quietly by his side.

“How long have you . . . ?” Ray asked.

“I've been here a while. Not too long,
though. I move around.”

“And all these . . . all from Skentipple?”

“Some,” the man said. “Some are from the
surrounding area, or from places a long time
ago. There are always toys that can't be fixed.”

Ray's eyes were drawn again and again to
the chamois-covered object on the table. It
was a mystery he wanted to uncover, but it
was also something safe to look at. The toys
and the tools, they were unreal, and —

Impossible?
he thought.
Really? And why is
that?

The old man walked forward, his feet
scratching grit across the smooth timber
floor. He pulled out the chair and sat down.
He seemed instantly at ease, comfortable
where he was, as much a part of the tableau
as everything else. With the old man in the
picture, everything Ray saw started to make
sense.

The man moved the chamois aside, and on
the table lay the broken toy saw.

“But you just carried that in here!” Ray said.
He looked on the ground around him, looking
to see where the old man had dropped the real
saw. Then he darted forward and snatched
it up from the table. Turning it this way and
that, depressing the button on the broken
object, he saw a scrape here, a dent there, and
he recognized them both.

“Let me,” the old man said, taking it gently
from his hands.

“But what about all these?” Ray asked,
nodding at the back wall. “Aren't they all
first?”

“I get to decide what deserves my attention
first,” he said. “I . . . prioritize. Doing so is
freedom, but it's also sometimes part of my
curse. So watch. Learn. I brought you here
because you need to take over when I'm gone.”

“What?”

“Such wonders, here,” he said. “I know you'll
welcome them.”

“But — ”

“Watch,” the old man said quieter. “Learn.”
And he went about fixing the toy.

A million questions crowded in, confusing
Ray, making him queasy and dizzy. But the
moment the man opened the tool cabinet
by his side, Ray was enrapt. He watched in
wonder, questions and concerns ushered back
and hidden away for a while in the darker
corners of his mind.

Some of the tools were obvious, but the
man quickly started using things —
doing
things — that made no sense. Ray frowned,
squinting, trying to see past the strange
actions and understand the weird implements.
But moments later, the man sat back and the
toy was alone on the table before him, and Ray
was none the wiser.

“That's it?” he asked.

“You weren't watching?” The old man
turned the toy on and pushed it gently across
the table. A buzz-saw noise rose and fell, lights
flashed through its speckled plastic case. Ray
closed his eyes, because the last time he'd
heard that, Toby had been alive. When he
looked again, only a second or two later, the
man stood before him, holding out the toy in
his hand.

“Here,” he said. “For you.” He looked very
tired. He hadn't before — until now, Ray had
marvelled at how good the old man looked —
but he suddenly seemed faded. His skin was
paler, his eyes deeper. “And now I've done for
you, I want you to do for me.”

“Do what?” Ray asked.

“Take over. I'm old, and . . .” The man looked
back at the toys still hanging on the wall. “And
I can't help everyone. It's not fair. It was never
part of the deal.”

“Deal?”

“Say you will,” the man said, intense. “Say
you will, and I'll tell you everything. How it
came about, the grief that consumed me, the
joy I felt when he came and asked me to . . .”
He waved at the toys, gaze never once leaving
Ray's eyes.

“I can't,” Ray said, not a refusal, simply a
statement of fact.

“You
must
!” the man said. He came close,
and for the first time Ray was scared of
him. He was old, yes, and he looked like the
next sea breeze would break him. But there
was something about him — there always
had
been — that seemed not quite here. Not
quite right. A distance in his eyes, perhaps,
but a power in his stance as well. He might
have weaker, older muscles, but there was a
strength to him that defied understanding.
And now he scared Ray to death.

Ray backed away three or four steps,
feet leaving the wooden floor boarding and
tangling in plants and roots. The old man
stopped and grinned, something twinkling in
his eyes. And Ray felt the weight of nothing
behind him.

He glanced back quickly and dizziness hit
him.
Three more steps and I'd have been over
,
he thought, and the sea surged into the cliffs
two hundred feet below him. Months back,
that would have been his wish, but now he
suddenly had something to live for. He wasn't
sure what, but he did understand that this old
man had given it to him.

“Really,” Ray said, hands out in a pleading
gesture. “Thank you.
Thank
you! But . . .” He
nodded at the strange open room, the tools,
the broken toys. “I just can't. I don't know any
of this.”

“You think I did when it happened to me?”
the man said. He didn't shout, and Ray thought
he probably never had. He conveyed the world
in a whisper. “I'm
trapped
here,” he said, and he
seemed suddenly hopeless, wretched. A thing
of power in bondage.

“I'm sorry,” Ray said. He started away
from the stone hut, along the cliff parallel
to the edge. It was tough going, and he kept
glancing back at the man watching him from
the tumbled front façade of the strange
building.
How did he get those things in there?
Ray thought
. How does he keep them dry, keep it
safe? How does he
live
in there?
But losing sight
of the tool cabinet and the incongruous timber
flooring seemed to erase them from his mind.

“I can take it all back,” the man said. “Don't
think because I've fixed your memories they're
yours forever.”

“You didn't fix my
memories
!” Ray said.

“Think what you like. Just . . . won't you
listen? Can't you just
hear
me?” He was not
quite pleading. Not quite.

Ray
was
thigh-high
in
undergrowth.
Thorns pricked at him, and looking down
he couldn't understand how he'd become so
entangled.

“Please?” the old man said.

Ray pushed on toward home, and the
safety of precious memories. Never for an
instant would he consider what the old man
had asked. Never for a moment could it be a
possibility. And when he looked up again, the
old man was gone.

“Hello?” Ray shouted. There was no answer.
“Hey. You still there?” But there were no
sounds here other than the cliff sounds, the
sea sounds, and the breath of the breeze. He
stared at the stone building, trying to discern
anything out of the ordinary. Could the walls
he looked at really be lined with broken toys
on the other aside? He thought not. Were
there really plants ripped from the mortar,
timber flooring laid, furniture installed? Of
course not. That was ridiculous, product of
some part of his mind he'd lost sight of since
Toby's death. That part was making itself
known again, dragging him from the brink of
despair in a subconscious attempt to rescue
his own sanity.