Sophie’s   

Sophie's Locket

Mum gives my sister Giggie’s silver and amethyst brooch.

            ‘Anything for me?’

I needn’t have worried because Mum hands me a golden locket on a fine chain.  One I’d never seen Giggie wear. ‘She said specially for you, Sara, because you’re named for her.’

            Letters entwined, faint with age, S and F, Sarah and Fred.

            Earlier today Fred tried to topple himself into her grave and I’d held him down forcibly in his wheelchair. Crazy guy, head lolling, hands flapping. He doesn’t remember any of us, let alone his wife.  So why did he want to join the coffin?  Does he know what a funeral is?  Does he know anything? He doesn’t look at all like the guy inside the locket. He stinks of wee and I had to look after him till he went back to the home.

It isn’t a particularly sad occasion because Giggie was active up to the end.  Mum said the funeral’s a celebration of her life.  Your great grand.  Ninety eight. Kept her marbles to the end. Always independent. What changes she’d seen. . .blah blah.

            My sister snatches at the locket.  ‘Let me see. She always favoured you. Can’t think why.’

            I swing the necklace out of her reach, and in the summer sun reflections scurry across the living room walls like golden mice. ‘I’m nang.’

She frowns. ‘Vanilla, klingon.’

‘Talk sense,’ Mum says.

My sister explains with a sigh. ‘She thinks she’s brill.’

‘It’s time she outgrew teen talk.’

Giggie used to say I reminded her of herself when young. That’s why she was fond of me, right up to the time I made her angry.  After that I thought she wouldn’t leave me anything, certainly not this beautiful keepsake.

‘She had red hair.’  Relenting I open the locket for my sister.

‘Pretty once. How ugly people grow when they’re old.’

Ugly?  I’d never thought about that.  She was just dear Giggie.  But, be honest, she wasn’t beautiful. Her mouth was thin lipped, sagging down at the sides in permanent contempt for the rest of the world. Nose large, far more pointed than in her portrait. Eyes small, hidden under heavy eyelid folds.  Secretive eyes.

I remember how scathing she could be about other people. How had she treated Fred before he went bonkers?  I was too young back then to speculate about relationships.

The wake ends and friends and relatives begin to roll away in their respective vehicles. I scavenge the last egg and cress sandwich and a couple of eclairs.  The caterers are friends of Mum’s and they make the wickedest food.

Accolades float across the air as the last goodbyes are said. Wonderful old lady.  She was planting out bedding begonia the day before she was rushed into hospital. Tough as old boots. Don’t make them like that today. Loved and respected by everyone.

Everyone but me.

It wasn’t my fault. My history teacher encouraged me to take interest in my family’s past. ‘They were all connected with Northampton’s shoemaking.’  He pointed over my shoulder at the map on the screen. ‘Those flats and the Indian takeaway are on the old Manfield’s site. Thriving shoemakers when your grandfather started work. And his dad’ (that’s daft Fred) ‘owned two factories, tanning and last making.’

Boring. I made notes for the required essay.

No, it was the family tree that interested me.  A relation no one knew about. Sophie, born 1912, died 1928.  Same age as me.

I made Giggie a cup of tea and sat beside her among the crowded mementoes. ‘Tell me about your sister Sophie.’

Didn’t expect her reaction.  Her eyes, they’re usually calm, blue as the Med, gentle. Not now. Literally flashing.  Her face contorted with rage? Distress?  Fear?

‘I never had a sister.’

‘Come on, Giggie.’  I touched her hand.  Paper thin skin, knuckles knotted.  ‘It’s years since she died.  Doesn’t affect anyone now.’

Clenching her false teeth she grouched, ‘Disgraceful.’ My persistence or her sister?  ‘Wicked people should be forgotten. Wiped out of memory.’

That was all. A clam has nothing on Giggie when she doesn’t want to remember.  After I left she rang Mum on her mobile.  Mum was not best pleased. ‘At your age you should know it’s very unkind to upset old people, Sara. Giggie’s a dear, so fond of you.  Treat her with respect.’

Giggie’s parents had lived in Hardingstone village, now part of Northampton. I bussed there after another few searches through Northants Family History Society website.  Church dating from twelfth century, stone, boring.  Couldn’t find Sophie’s grave. 

Meandering through the churchyard like one of her own lost souls came the vicar. Neck scraggling out of backwards collar. Eye sockets bruise dark. Not a prepossessing sight.

Surprisingly the old fish was helpful. ‘Written out of the family history? Disgraced? Could be pregnant.  If suicide she’d be buried outside the churchyard then because suicide was mortal sin. But the graveyard was enlarged in the forties, so she’ll be inside now. How times change. And for the better.’  She snorted.  ‘No memorial. Those are for the most upright members of society.’

I giggled and she laughed too. Then she told me where further church records could be accessed.  ‘People shouldn’t be airbrushed out,’ she said.

But no point in following up any further. Other interests intruded. You can guess what.

End of trail.

And then, as I checked more history for my still unfinished essay, I unearthed Giggie’s first marriage.  To an Eric Dyke. Lasted a year.

Even Mum didn’t know. ‘And don’t you upset Giggie again with your questions, Sara.’

How could I?  She still wasn’t speaking to me.

But coincidences happen. Chronicle and Echo reported on a nursing home party for one of our oldest inhabitants.  He’d been a player and then a lifetime supporter of the Cobblers. Photo of blowing out one candle on hundredth birthday cake with current football captain.

Eric Dyke.

I visited.

A fuggy room with somnolent residents barricaded into place by zimmer frames. The telly blared out a chat show.  Every chair had its incontinence mat. Everyone had a hairy chin. Which was male, which female? Even their voices were the same pitch.

The care worker pointed out a tubby little man dozing in the corner.  Dim as old Fred I thought, but I was wrong.

He was sparky as Giggie.

And his memory was much less selective.

It took me some time to charm him into telling me his history, but once started he couldn’t stop. ‘Fancy a young girl wanting to know about me,’ he kept saying as he bored me to tears about the technicalities of shoe riveting.

I worked him round to marriage.  He didn’t mention Giggie, so eventually I had to come clean and declare my interest.

 He frowned.  ‘Best forgotten,’ he said. Then, ‘No, you’re right. Why should she be remembered with contempt?’

She? Giggie? Or her sister?

‘Two daughters, Sophie the younger,’ he said. ‘Their mother died when Sophie was born. Their father,’ my great great granddad, ‘remarried but there were no children by that marriage.  Better perhaps if there had been.’  Musing, he stared out of the window at the late spring rain. ‘Who can tell? The stepmother was a proud greedy woman. Came from a farm labourer’s family. No one could understand why Sophie’s father married someone so inferior in station.  Birth was important in those days, you see. My mother explained how it happened.  The stepmother, encouraged by her own parents, insinuated herself into the family when the first wife was ill.  Showed compassion towards the lonely widower and sympathy to the motherless pair. Until safely married, till death us do part.

‘Sophie was her father’s favourite and he showed it. As she grew up she took after his first wife. The barren stepmother was full of jealousy.  She poisoned her husband’s mind with her malicious lies.  And, I regret to say, she encouraged Sarah to envy her younger sister. Eventually. . . ‘

He paused again.  His faded eyes brimmed over with tears and he let them trickle down his cheeks.

I thought in amazement, he’s totally reliving past sorrows.  It isn’t true that time heals and people forget.

‘Sophie became increasingly distressed by her treatment. And she was kind and gentle. Whatever work she did in the home, her stepmother discredited. She was the trouble maker, the black sheep. Eventually it came to a head when her father believed the lie that she was pregnant. He turned her out, shouting and swearing so we heard it from where we lived three doors away.’

‘And then?’ I asked quietly. Suddenly this young woman seemed real as myself with similar hopes and fears.

‘She drowned herself.’

‘I’m sorry.  Very sorry.’ And shocked beyond words.

‘I blame myself.’

‘Why?  How could you . . .?’

‘Sarah told me about Sophie’s pregnancy.  I was appalled.’  He whispered, ‘I loved her. I gave her a locket with our initials on it. Once I’d saved enough I was going to ask her to marry me. But that night when she came to my home for help I shut the door on her.’

I took his trembling hands in mine as he struggled to finish.  ‘Don’t upset yourself any more.’

‘It’s right it should come out. I married Sarah. A harsh young woman, not sweet tempered like her sister.  We had a row.  She told me then she’d lied because she wanted Sophie sent away.  No remorse.’ He patted my hand.  ‘I’m glad I’ve told you.’

So after Giggie’s funeral I study those worn initials more carefully.  No, it’s not S and F, it’s S and E with the bottom of the E worn faint. Are the pictures Sophie and Eric, or did Giggie change them?  

And I think, what’s murder?  Is it the knife? The broken bottle to the throat? A push out of a high window? The bullet? Or is it words of spite and hatred that will never be judged as criminal in a court of law?

I hand the locket to my sister. ‘Keep it.’