When I reached the toy shop (said the old man), everything seemed to be exactly as it was when I left it. The walls were still lined with toys, the floor was still scattered with sawdust, and behind the counter a few pots of paint were left with their lids half off, a gloopy rainbow of colours forging trails down the sides. A few cobwebs hung off the cash register. ‘Hello?’ I whispered, looking around, expecting my father to appear out of the shadows at any moment. ‘Poppa?’
But there was no answer and I bit my lip, wondering what I should do next. The hospital was only a few miles away – I could be there in seconds if I put my mind to it – but something told me that Poppa would never have gone to a hospital. He had built this toy shop himself, after all. He had created it from the ground up, not just the misshapen bricks and misplaced mortar that held the thing together, but all the contents too, every one of the toys that ran along the counters and stood on the shelves. He would never leave here; I was sure of that.
A creaking sound from behind the counter made me look up, and I saw that the door had placed itself in position and was standing slightly ajar.
‘Henry,’ I cried. ‘Henry, my old friend! You’re still here.’
The door stared at me with an accusatory expression, allowing none of the former warmth and friendship that had once been between us to reappear. Instead it simply stood there quietly, allowing me a view of the dimly lit staircase beyond. I walked towards it and looked up at the spiral of wooden steps above my head and began to climb. Sensing the urgency of the moment, Henry soon brushed past me and fitted himself into the wall, this time remaining firmly closed but allowing me to turn his handle. A light was on inside the living room and I stepped inside, the floorboards creaking beneath my feet as I entered.
Nothing had changed. The chairs were in their usual places before the fireplace, although they immediately turned their backs on me when they saw who had stepped inside. The plates and cups were arranged on the sideboard, but they turned their handles round, unwilling to be picked up. The coat stand was still in the corner, but it tiptoed away on its four legs and disappeared into what had once been my boyhood bedroom, closing the door behind it.
It made me terribly sad to see how disappointed all my father’s things were in me.
‘Oh my!’ said an elderly rabbit, appearing out of my father’s bedroom and jumping in surprise at the sight of this most unexpected visitor, before relaxing and breaking into a smile. ‘You came! I can hardly believe it! I didn’t recognize you for a moment. You’re so much older.’
‘Hello, Dr Wings,’ I said, stepping forward and stroking the rabbit’s ears. I had always been very fond of the doctor, who had attended many of my childhood illnesses. ‘I got your letter and came as soon as I could.’
‘Ah, I see,’ said Dr Wings, looking away for a moment and biting his lip. ‘I wasn’t sure if it would even reach you. You’ve been gone for so long, after all.’
‘Yes, I got sidetracked,’ I told him, unable to look the rabbit in the eye, so ashamed was I of my selfish actions. I had tried to be a good son, but the truth was, events kept getting in the way.
‘Sidetracked?’ asked Dr Wings, frowning. ‘For all these years? When your father was growing older and more infirm? How extraordinary!’
‘I am sorry about it,’ I replied, looking down at the floor. ‘But I’m here now. How is he anyway? Is he any better? I want to stay and take care of him now, really I do.’ I hesitated for a moment, the worst possible thought coming into my head. ‘He’s not … he hasn’t …’
‘Oh my,’ said Dr Wings sadly, shaking his head as he chewed on a carrot stick. ‘If only you’d got here an hour earlier.’
‘I tried to come home!’ I explained, an enormous weight of guilt beginning to spread throughout my body. ‘How did he get so ill anyway? He was fine when I left. Getting older, of course, but he wasn’t in poor health.’
Dr Wings narrowed his eyes and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘How long do you think you’ve been gone?’ he asked.
‘A few months, I suppose,’ I said, my cheeks growing red. ‘I lose track of time so easily. When you’re running all the time, you go through so many different time zones, you never quite know where you are. Or when you are.’
‘My boy, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ said the rabbit, staring at the green roots sprouting from the end of the carrot before popping it into his mouth and swallowing it in one go. ‘The fact of the matter is, you’ve been gone for almost ten years.’
‘No!’ I cried, looking at my watch as if that might confirm things one way or the other.
‘I assure you, it’s quite true.’
‘So I’ve missed ten birthdays?’ I asked.
‘You’ve missed ten of your father’s birthdays,’ pointed out the rabbit. ‘And throughout all that time, you were all he ever talked about. He followed your exploits in the newspapers every week.’
‘I certainly never meant to be away for so long,’ I said. ‘After all, I promised Poppa I would be back after the Olympic Games.’
‘But you never came home,’ repeated Dr Wings.
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘No, I never did. How did he get ill?’
Dr Wings smiled kindly at me and shook his head. ‘My boy, he got old, that’s all it is. Your father was a very elderly man. He’d worked hard all his life. Why, he was still working in the toy shop until a few weeks ago. Then he started to suffer some dizzy spells and I came to see about them but there was nothing I could do. A few days later he had a fall, and after that he took to his bed. I’m afraid we’ve been losing him ever since.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s not something I thought would ever happen,’ I said.
‘But we all grow old,’ said the rabbit. ‘You’re growing older yourself. That’s what happens. Boys become men. And men become old men. You knew that much, of course.’
I nodded. I knew one thing that never grew old: a puppet.
‘If you’d only arrived an hour earlier,’ said Dr Wings sadly, shaking his head.
‘Just an hour? You mean—?’
‘Yes. He died just before you got home. He’s in there, in bed. You can go in and see him if you want.’
I exhaled and walked slowly towards the bedroom door, hesitating for only a moment as I looked inside, nervous of what I might see when my eyes adjusted to the gloom. The curtains were closed and the room remained in an evening shade of half-darkness. On my father’s bedside table, a small lamp was snoozing quietly, but it sensed my presence, looked across, and its bulb burst into immediate brightness, so surprised was it by what it saw.
In the bed, Poppa lay looking for all the world as if he was fast asleep. He was older than I remembered him, but he looked at peace and I was glad of that.
‘It’s me, Poppa,’ I whispered, stepping forward. ‘I came home.’
After Poppa was laid to rest, it didn’t take long for me to decide that I would have to do something to honour his memory. I hung up my running shoes and decided that I would make a go of his business instead. After all, Poppa had devoted so many years to building up the toy shop, it would be a shame to simply let it go just because its creator was no longer among the living. I made peace with everything in the shop that had been disappointed with my failure to return for so many years and we vowed to begin anew together, friends again.
Fortunately for me I had learned so many things in school after our move to the village that I knew exactly what I was doing too.
I rose every morning at four o’clock and ran for five hours before opening the toy shop, just to keep fit. When there were no customers, which was always, I would make new toys; all sorts of toys – trains and cars, footballs and boats, letter puzzles and alphabet blocks, but never puppets, never ever puppets – and then paint them, decide upon a price and place them on the appropriate shelf. When Alexander struck six o’clock in the evening, I would jump into my running clothes once again and set off for some of the more distant villages for a few hours before returning to the shop, locking up for the evening and retiring upstairs to eat my dinner. A little pasta perhaps. Or a garden salad. I was in bed every night by midnight and up again by four, seven days a week.
All in all it was a good life, I told myself. And every day I tried not to think about how much I regretted leaving Poppa alone when he needed me most.