pair of them thick as thieves and always sharing and swapping secrets. Connie and Sarah were the same and so she relented and said, ‘All right, but just Sarah, mind.’
‘I only go round with Sarah,’ Connie said. ‘I wouldn’t share things with anyone else.’
Mary knew she wouldn’t. Some children growing up had a wide circle of friends, but with Angela and now Connie they had just one best friend.
Connie told Sarah the following afternoon after first extracting a promise that she wouldn’t tell anyone else.
‘It’s like a story, isn’t it?’ she said to Connie.
Connie nodded happily. ‘It’s nice knowing about your family, even if bad things happened like my uncles drowning in the Atlantic Ocean when their ship went down. Anyway Granny said she’ll tell me more tonight after Mammy’s gone to work.’
‘Chapter Two tomorrow then,’ said Sarah.
That night Connie rushed through her jobs and had only just got settled before the fire when she said, ‘Granny, did Mammy miss her own mammy?’
Mary shook her head. ‘She was too young,’ she said. ‘I know sometimes as she was growing up she felt bad she couldn’t remember her family. She used to study the picture – you know, the one on the sideboard.’
‘The one of my grandparents on their wedding day,’ Connie said. ‘Mammy told me that much. They wore funny clothes.’
‘It was the style then,’ Mary said.
‘It was a shame Mammy couldn’t remember anything about either of them,’ Connie said. ‘I know a little bit of how that feels because I can’t remember my daddy. I’m glad as well that I have a picture so I know what he looked like. But that’s all, so it’s good that Mammy at least knew what her parents looked like.’
‘Yes, that’s why she was so taken with the locket.’ Mary stopped suddenly and Connie watched a crimson flush flood over her grandmother’s face. She had never intended to mention the locket because it brought back that distressing time when Angela was forced to do that almost unforgivable thing. Maybe Angela was right and the past should be left in the past.
However, Connie didn’t connect her grandmother’s odd behaviour with anything she said, she thought rather that she was having some sort of seizure.
‘Granny,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
And when Mary didn’t answer she put her hand on her grandmother’s shoulder and said again, ‘Granny, is anything the matter?’
Connie’s touch and anxious voice roused Mary, who knew that now she had mentioned the locket she had to give Connie some explanation. She looked at her beloved granddaughter and said, ‘No, I’m fine. Sometimes memories crowd in my mind and just then I remembered how upset your mother was when she lost the locket, for it meant so much to her.’
‘I’ve never heard of it before.’
‘That would be why,’ Mary said. ‘It was beautiful and bought by your grandfather and given to your grandmother on their wedding day. Your grandmother gave it into my keeping when I took charge of Angela and said if anything happened to them I was to give it to Angela on her wedding day.’
‘And you did.’
‘Of course,’ Mary said. ‘Your mammy was moved to tears to be holding something in her hand that had once belonged to her mother.’
‘And she lost it?’
‘Yes,’ Mary said. ‘Maybe the clasp was faulty or something. But, however it happened, she lost it on the way home from the munitions one night.’
‘Oh, I bet she was upset,’ Connie said. ‘Did she look for it, or inform the police or something?’
‘Oh, I can’t remember the details of what she did now,’ Mary said somewhat vaguely. ‘But I believe she tried all ways to recover it.’
Mary thought of the locket, left in the care of the tiny baby on the workhouse steps, the only reminder of the mother who gave her away.
‘Ah, someone will have picked it up and pocketed it with no idea what it means to the person who lost it,’ Connie said. ‘Was there anything inside?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mary. ‘There was a miniature of the picture on the sideboard, your grandparents’ wedding day, and in the other side some ringlets from your mammy’s hair tied tight with a red ribbon, for she had perfect ringlets just as you do.’
‘Oh, I wish she still had it.’
‘It was supposed to come to you on your wedding day.’
‘Oh,’ said Connie, surprised at the disappointment she felt that this wouldn’t happen now. It wasn’t as if she remembered ever even seeing the locket.
‘Don’t ever mention the locket to your mother though,’ Mary warned.
Connie shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t. She must have been upset when she lost it and it would just make her sad. What did she do in the munitions? I know she worked there. I remember that and you used to take me to the nursery and then to school, but she doesn’t like talking about what she did.’
‘She made shells,’ Mary said. ‘It was in a very hot, noisy, smelly factory. They couldn’t wear anything metal that might cause a spark as that could easily cause an explosion – everything metal, even hair grips, had to be removed. Your mammy used to leave her wedding ring and locket here in the end.’
It was on the tip of Connie’s tongue to ask, if her mammy had left the locket at home, how had she managed to lose it coming home from the munitions. She actually opened her mouth to ask, but she was forestalled for Mary went on, ‘I was on at her to leave there at first, get something not so dangerous, but she said, though she hated doing it, there was a desperate shortage of shells. In the end though, she was seldom in the factory for they taught her to drive and she used to drive the lorries all over the country.’
‘Golly, did she?’ Connie said and she thought of her mother who, despite the fact she pulled pints at the pub, and cleaned there too, was so essentially a housewife and a mother and yet she had this quite exciting past. She thought of her behind the wheel of some of the big trucks chugging along Bristol Street and somehow the image didn’t seem to fit.
‘I find it hard to think of Mammy doing that.’
‘Oh she did,’ Mary said. ‘And at first I was pleased that she was out of the smelly factory, but then I thought that driving those shells all over the place was no safer than making them in the first place. Really, in a war of that magnitude, people, and not just soldiers, had to be prepared to take risks and do things they wouldn’t dream of doing in peacetime. And of course it was very well paid and that was important for your mother.’
‘Yes,’ Connie said with a slight sigh. ‘So she could save some of it for my secondary education.’
‘Yes, but more than that, she’s thinking of university.’
Connie could hardly believe her ears. ‘But, Granny, people like me don’t go to university.’
