The Legacy of Alice Waters

By Marilyn Jenkins

In ‘The Legacy of Alice Waters’, Alice poisons her lover’s wife and child (a diabolical crime for which she’s duly hanged, orphaning her own daughter). Alice's suffering ends in 1947. Those left behind continue to suffer' Her daughter grows up in ignorance of her true identity. When she discovers the truth will she understand and forgive her mother?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marilyn Jenkins
• Release date: Sep 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781849233828

Marilyn Jenkins

I’m a member of the Academi of Wales. I returned to Wales in 2000 after periods in England and abroad including Canada and Australia. My work has has been published over many years in magazines such as The Anglo Welsh Review; The New Welsh Review; Paris Atlantic; Envoi and prize-winners’ anthologies. My first poetry collection: Close Distances was published by Cinnamon Press in April 2007 with the support of the Welsh Books Council. My first novel: The Legacy of Alice Waters was published in 2009 by YWO/Legend Press (supported by The Arts Council) in January 2009. This year (2010), my poem: Taking Delivery was awarded third prize in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition.

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The Legacy of Alice Waters

Marilyn Jenkins

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Copyright Marilyn Jenkins 2009

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Letter to Madeleine

Mountain View

Monk’s Walk

Cwmafon

Glamorgan

Tel: Cwmafon 779203

18 July 1999

Dear Madeleine,

We have never met but I understand from the local social work department that you are searching for your natural mother. I recently approached the same department in an attempt to contact you. I have been given your address and details but was asked just to introduce myself at this stage.

Alice, your mother, was my dearest friend. We were at school together here, but were separated for a number of years by the war. When she died, I was still on active service in Germany, a lowly young army assistant at the Nuremberg trials. Age and declining health have brought me back to Wales to live in the house where I was raised. It holds many memories of the people I loved, especially Alice. My working life as a lawyer was hectic and I travelled a great deal so it is nice to be at rest.

Alice wrote to me not long before she died. She knew you would be adopted and your name would be changed but said she was confident that one day we would find each other. She gave me charge of her journals and asked me to pass them on to you when we met. I am so happy that I can fulfil her wishes at last.

I must warn you that you will be shocked and distressed when you learn Alice’s story but I have always believed that, in the end, the truth is less harmful than ignorance. Just remember, dear Madeleine, that from the moment you were born until the moment of her death, you were the most important and treasured being in Alice’s life. I believe her last thoughts would have been of you.

I hope we shall meet soon.

Yours,

Emily Bryant

Chapter One

Madeleine Chapman

The dog was still barking; the voices were closer at hand. Cold river-water quickly brought Madeleine to her senses. As she levered herself from a prone to a sitting position in the shallow water, sharp stones and grit cut into the flesh of her arms and hands, left pink watery trails. She looked around; there was no-one in sight but it couldn’t be long before the owners of the voices and the barking dog wandered by and saw her.

It was August and hot. The water rippled and soothed. It was an effort to pull herself together and get out of this ridiculous, humiliating position but she must. She winced as she groped for a hold on the grassy verge; the hidden gravel felt like splinters of glass under her palms. A final effort freed her from the pull of the water and she slid onto the bank where, exhausted, she slumped to recover her energy so that she could make a run for it before anyone saw her. She struggled to her knees but her head began to loop the loop and she sank back down.

What the hell! What did it matter if someone did recognise the bleeding, bedraggled wife of highly respected Dr Clive Chapman crawling drunk out of the River Avon? It would give those coffee morning women, the ones she used to call friends, something else to add to their dossier of Madeleine Chapman’s crimes and misdemeanours. She imagined them closing inwards towards each other like crab claws, listening to the one who was smiling, murmuring: ‘I tell you it’s true. She was seen climbing out of the Avon - out of her skull at that time of day. She’s out of control. Poor Clive!’ They would laugh. She just knew they would laugh. It was always: ‘Poor Clive’ and all the while she was sinking lower – no longer just a disaster but an object of amusement – a comic turn – even to herself.

Before he left for the surgery that morning, Clive told her had arranged for their daughters, Harriet and Dessie, to come down to Stratford.

‘Without telling me – you called them without telling me?’ Too weary to let her anger mount, her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I told you I didn’t want the children to know what their mother has become: a drunk and a thief. Think how shocked and ashamed they’ll be.’

She stared down at her empty plate, muttered: ‘I’ve tried so hard to get on top of things.’ When she finally looked up; Clive had his squinty, worried look. He was chewing rapidly to free his mouth, obviously intent on saying something supportive. But Madeleine persisted: ‘I was doing really well too – I’d stopped drinking…’

Clive finally stopped chewing, gulped. ‘Yes sweetheart, I know. But now I think it’s time to let our girls into the picture. We...you...need all the support you can get. The girls will want to help. Daughters are like that. I told them not to say anything to the boys. I know you wouldn’t want that...’ He paused, shuffled slightly... ‘I can’t help feeling it’s my fault. I pushed you into taking action and facing up to things before you were ready.’

They both knew it was the truth. But Clive meant well. It was one of his weaknesses.

This went on while they were having breakfast at the kitchen table. Clive was immaculate, as usual. She was still in her creased nightgown, hair uncombed. She looked across at him. He was buttering his toast, laying it on carefully, precisely. That was the way he did everything. It made him a good doctor. He was in every respect kind and thoughtful. (Anyway, that was the general opinion).

To outsiders, there appeared to be no logical reason for her to suddenly start drinking, steal and go off the rails like an adolescent idiot. In a crisis, most people like rational explanations. Clive was no different. He focussed on the long standing problem: her abandonment by her real mother when she was a young child. For Madeleine, there was only darkness and fear back there so it was feasible. After the magistrates’ court decided she must see a therapist, it was easy to say to Clive: ‘As usual ‘Dr Know It All’ you were right. It’s all about being abandoned then adopted as a child.’ But Frank the shrink didn’t allow her to stick only to the obvious. She began to accept that the timing meant it was more complicated. She said nothing to Clive. In other words, she was protecting him.

She felt a sudden impulse to snatch the toast from his plate, the knife from his hand, yell: ‘Look at me, why don’t you? Don’t go to work. I need to talk to you. Don’t leave me alone. I can’t bear to be alone...’

But Clive drained his coffee mug, got up to leave and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. She got up too and went to the door with him where he turned to kiss her again, on the forehead this time. He patted her arm. ‘Don’t get disheartened. Remember the rule is: take one day at a time.’

The sun was already warm on her face as she stood and watched his car disappear down the drive. She moved reluctantly to close the door against the sunshine, took a deep breath and went inside to face herself.

There was a cache of vodka bottles that Clive hadn’t found. It was in the spare room in a large box beneath a pile of hat boxes right at the back of the wardrobe. She knew they would call to her as she went about clearing the breakfast dishes. But busy in the kitchen, she would be able to resist. I’ll bake, she thought. I’ll mix that banana yoghurt cake the girls loved when they were little. Until she felt stronger, she would keep away from upstairs. That’s where the calls would get louder.

Lately she found it difficult to plan what to do because she would find herself doing something else, often the opposite of what she’d intended. ‘Now off we go to the kitchen, we must clear the table and wash up.’ She said this aloud - to herself - in that false cheery tone she used with the kids when they were small. It was never very effective with them either and a few moments later, there she was – not in the kitchen which still had its breakfast clutter but in her bedroom where she stripped and went into the shower room.

Afterwards, she dressed carefully and moved to the dressing-table to make up her face and do her hair. Oh God – what a sight! What will the girls think? Why on earth did he send for them? Her recent lapse had turned her complexion the colour of stale clotted-cream; her eyes were swollen and bloodshot; her head pounded. She swore to herself: That’s it - no more vodka, no more gin – not a single glass of wine.

She was still in the bedroom, pulling on her trainers, when she had a wonderful idea: she would go into the spare room, dig out the vodka bottles, pour the liquor down the wash basin and put the empty bottles where they belonged - at the bottom of the bin which was due to be collected the following morning. She had beaten this demon once and would again. She would call Frank. She had been stupid not to do as he asked. He had told her to call him immediately if she felt herself slipping back.

Then she remembered that he was still away and would not be back until the end of the month. He didn’t even know about the letter from Emily Bryant. If only she could have talked to him about it, she was sure she would not have slipped back in the first place and started drinking again.

This is so easy, why didn’t I do this before? She was in the main bathroom, well away from their en-suite shower room. She drank vodka because it was odourless but she wanted to take every precaution so that Clive would detect nothing when he arrived home. He had been a real bloodhound lately. There were six bottles in all. She was surprised at how long it took each bottle to empty. Perhaps the mouths of this most expensive brand of Vodka were designed to stop the liquid gushing out.

She bought the most expensive brands of spirit to distance herself from the dying derelicts she remembered clustering at certain notorious street corners; they had sipped purple liquid from bottles nestling in brown paper bags. Expensive booze wouldn’t stop her destroying her liver, Clive warned her. She just hoped it would take longer.

She emptied two bottles, clean as a whistle, lined them up on the floor to wait for the rest. She was halfway through the third when it grew tedious and she began to swish the stuff around the basin, putting in the fingers of her left hand to make dams and flurries. She sucked her fingers. Her mouth and throat softened, the taste was as seductive as a lover’s tongue. She stopped pouring the liquor, held the bottle upright and placed it on the tiled windowsill above the basin.

They stared at each other.

She felt the battle begin and stood there helpless. She couldn’t bring herself to pour away more of the only thing that took away the pain of living. Draining the bottle and most of another had brought her to the river. The idea came to her after she tried to sober up by filling the wash basin with cold water and plunging her head in. The shock was both pain and pleasure. It took her back to a dive into the coldwater pool in Cardiff when she was a girl. She had loved swimming underwater. In the green, silent world she could forget her troubles. It could do the same for her now, today. Another long swig from the bottle and she felt confident enough to get in her car and drive to the river. In the river she could leave everything behind for ever.

Eager to get it over with, as soon as she got to the bank, she didn’t look – just shut her eyes and jumped. But a hot summer meant the river was low; she landed in rocky shallows and ended up not only winded but cut, bleeding and after a struggle back on the river bank where reality clicked into place and she gasped to get her breath back.

She was useless. She couldn’t even commit suicide. It was funny; she began to laugh softly to herself as she noticed a couple of girls with a golden Labrador, free of his lead, advance near her, heading for the river bank. She turned to look back at the river. With luck, they wouldn’t notice her sodden, blood-smeared state – would just think she was relaxing in the sun. Then she felt the dog sniffing her back.

‘Here Judy. Leave.’

Madeleine felt another soft nudge at her shoulder. She half turned, patted the dog and smiled at the girls. They smiled back. Judy began to whimper and whirl, pulling away and racing back. The one with the crimson punk haircut grabbed Judy’s collar and slipped the lead on. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘She’s lovely,’ Madeleine said. ‘Young and friendly.’

‘Sure is, but she won’t settle or we’d sit and help you dry out. Or we all have a dip.’ She winked.

Her companion who had a safety pin through her ear lobe and ‘I Love Satan’ printed in green across the front of her black tee shirt just smiled. Madeleine smiled back.

I am in the fellowship of the unorthodox, she thought. I feel quite at home. She wished they would stay but they were off with a wave, led by Judy straining at her lead.

* * *

Emily Bryant

One humid afternoon, that same August, Emily Bryant went up to her bedroom to rest. She took Alice’s last letter with her.

She lay on her bed and read the letter through, slowly, held it to her cheek for a moment and closed her eyes. Little wonder that when she fell asleep she dreamed of Alice.

They were girls again, together in Cassie’s kitchen. Emily was whisking egg whites for a soufflé. She held the bowl under her left arm and beat with her right. Alice sat on the scarred oak table swinging her shapely legs and watching. She wore a blue dress; her red-gold hair was held back by a filmy white scarf. Its ends lifted, floated as though in a gentle breeze making Alice appear cool and relaxed as her eyes followed the rhythmic movement of Emily’s arm.

In contrast, Emily grew hotter and crosser as her left arm grew heavy; the ache spread across her chest so fiercely that she dropped the bowl. It exploded on the stone flags and the pieces bounced, viciously scattering clouds of white froth. When they touched Emily’s hands, they cut like glass.

The crashes were outside her dream. Emily woke. The casement window that she’d opened wide to let in some air had blown free of its catch; it was still rattling and banging and she would have to get up and fix it.

First she had to deal with the pain in her left arm, that painful tingling in her hands. She reached sideways took up the small spray from her bedside table, gave a couple of squirts under her tongue then leaned back to wait for the pain to ease. She closed her eyes and concentrated on steadying her breathing.

But she couldn’t keep the dream away. It intruded or rather Alice intruded. She rose again in Emily’s inner eye just she had appeared in the dream: young, pretty and composed. There was none of that apprehensive quality that always lay beneath the surface when she was alive.

Dreams, Emily decided, must work in contraries. The only cooking I do is in a microwave. So why was I whipping egg whites? Alice was the domesticated one. All in all - it was a disturbing dream. When the banging woke her, she was about to yell at Alice: ‘Who do you think you are - making me do all the work while you sit there like Miss Pretty?’

No. That couldn’t be right. Never! For her to resent Alice was unthinkable.

Alice. Alice - whatever I do, wherever I go, I must carry you with me.

The pain in her arm faded to an ache. Another loud crash and she half raised her head to look. The window had lodged shut; she didn’t need to get up to close it. Gratefully, she sank back onto the pillows. A rustle near her cheek reminded her of the letter; she felt for it, picked it up and read it again though she knew it by heart:

His Majesty’s Prison Service

January 10th 1947

Darling Em,

Don’t be upset when you read this letter. By that time, it will all be over and I shall be free. I feel completely calm and resigned. (Perhaps they drop something into those endless cups of tea and cocoa that my two companions persuade me to drink.) The funny thing is that when the appeals were over and the date was fixed the terror left me. Believe that, please.

I sit here and try to think back to happier times. I especially think of the love and help you and Cassie gave me when I was growing up. I wish the war had not separated us for so long. I love you so, Em - my oldest, dearest friend. As for Cassie – how could she be so different from ‘Lily the Terrible’ - her sister - my mother?

Remember those magic days we spent with Cassie in Brideswell? I dare not dwell on what happened there later, but I won’t let it spoil those earlier memories with the ‘Earth Mother’. See how your names and people-labels stay with me always. Mine of course was ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The label fitted me. I was a dreamer alright; the trouble was that I couldn’t tell the difference between dream and reality. That’s what has brought me here. Fool, fool, to cling to my dream of a great romantic love. (of course it always went along with the prospect of a home of my own and children).

I stuck to it for years when a sensible woman would have grasped the truth: My dream was a foolish delusion – except for my sweet Daisy, my darling girl. She is very real and must suffer the consequences of what I did, alone, without the mother who adores her. I thought I would go mad when they took her away from me. It took me days to calm down. Then I realised that I’d been shocked out of madness into sanity. Lying on my bunk, I faced what I had become through my dreams, visions, voices, the misery I have caused the people I love. I fear most for Daisy who is too young to grasp what has happened.

I wrote to Olly to ask him to look after our child. He did not write back. My solicitor brought me his cold refusal. Ice is worse than hate; it is the opposite of passion, the opposite of love. How can he punish Daisy for something I did? She is as much his child as the boy I killed. I don’t blame him for hating me for killing his wife and son but Daisy is innocent.

There is no-one in the family who can take her. Dearest Cassie is dying. My father says he thinks Daisy will be better with ‘a fresh start’. I prayed that the army would give you leave from Nuremberg, not that you could give her a home but I know you would make sure she would be well cared for. You were always so practical. I could always rely on you.

To have any chance of a loving future, I accept that Daisy will have to be adopted. But I have faith. I know that, one day she will come looking for me – for the truth. Instead she will find you and you will help her.

I leave nothing of any material value. What I ask, Em, is that you will accept guardianship of my journals. Oh my - that does sound pompous but I don’t know how else to put it. I managed to carry on writing my life and my thoughts in those journals you so often teased me about. I hope you will read them. I want you to pass them on to Daisy when she comes. I want her to understand that her mother loved her and was more than a killer who ended up at the end of a rope.

However, when we were girls, we shared so many secrets, so many loves and one deep, deep hate. I know there is one secret we shall both carry to our graves. I must warn you there is an account in one of the journals that might be best be removed, perhaps even destroyed. I don’t think Daisy or anyone else should read them.

I don’t know whether Cassie will live long enough for you to see her when you finally leave Germany. If you do see her, tell her I love her and am sorry for the pain I caused her. I know you will see my father. My journals are in a case I gave him for safe keeping. Tell him again that I love him. I have tried to reassure him. He never did anything to harm me (except to look away – but don’t tell him that.) He really does deserve happiness in his second marriage. It’s wonderful that he has a little son with Anna. He always wanted a son. I believe little Owen is walking now.

I believe I could have persuaded Dad to take Daisy and Anna is a kind woman. But I don’t think kindness is enough. The last thing I want for Daisy is to be raised in a home where she is not completely accepted and adored. I want Daisy to have a different childhood from my own.

I know you will not forget me, Em darling.

With my last goodbye,

I send you once more, my deepest love.

Your own,

Alice

*

Emily shivered. That phrase: ‘my last goodbye’ never failed to pierce her. After all these years it still upset her to think how, in spite of her courageous words, Alice must have been terrified. She hid this terror out of consideration for her reader, except where it concerned Daisy. Then her passion showed through.

Emily always found the trade off that Alice was prepared to make quite remarkable. Alice who was to die soon was determined she would not be lost to her child, even if it meant that one day that child would learn that her mother had suffered a murderer’s sordid punishment. It was a just punishment too (as the law stood at the time).

What seemed most important to Alice was that her daughter would learn how much her mother loved her. She believed that the journals would reveal it – and also (and this was a real gamble) that Daisy would see that her mother was a human being and not ‘a killer who died at the end of a rope’. This was the reason why she had given Emily the responsibility of deciding whether to remove a section from one of the journals. Emily knew which passage she meant. It appeared harmless enough – to an innocent eye. Or was that wishful thinking?

How easy it was for the soon to die to utter their last wishes! They could sleep – leave their burden with the living. They didn’t want to consider that there might be powerful stumbling blocks.

Emily looked up at the ceiling, raised a fist, shook it: ‘And here I am now – a tired, dying old woman who must make sure your wish is granted even if you will never know one way or the other.’ She laughed. ‘Or can you watch from up there Alice, love? If so, you’ll know I didn’t give up on Daisy, there’s plenty of proof of that. But to hand her the journals, I had to wait for her to find me. I thought there was plenty of time.’

But time had almost run out. She was determined not to die and leave the business unfinished. She hoisted herself up on her elbows, swung her legs over the side of the bed and placed her two feet firmly together on the carpet. When she was sure that her balance was solid, she reached for her cane and cautiously made her way out of her bedroom. At her age, broken limbs heal slowly and she still walked with a limp but her dream of Alice, the sense of her own mortality, pushed her back to tackle the world while she was able; she would not give in to frailty until she was good and ready. A cup of tea, some paracetamol for the headache she knew would follow the spray sniffing and she’d be ready for work.

* * *

Madeleine Chapman

Madeleine lay back on the grass. In the early heat, her clothes had dried to a cooling dampness. She felt relaxed – exhausted but relaxed. It reminded her of the way she felt after giving birth. Straightforward childbirth, that is. She had three of those. Only with the fourth, her last baby, Daisy – known as Dessie, had she suffered complications: an unplanned caesarean followed by her only experience of post-natal depression.

She hadn’t wanted to touch the child for weeks, hadn’t wanted to feed her; that piercing cry had plunged her into despair. Twenty seven years ago, she hadn’t taken to the booze. Then, all she’d wanted was to be left alone and sleep the day away. Clive tried to convince her she couldn’t do this. She had to function or she would sink deeper into lethargy and depression. She couldn’t even be bothered to name the poor child.

It was the last issue that Clive really got impatient about. ‘Give her a name. You can’t keep calling her ‘IT’ for God’s sake.’ He’d started to call the baby ‘Mona’. She cried a lot and it was his mother’s name.

‘Don’t you dare make that official,’ Madeleine said. ‘It’s bad enough that she cries all the time.’

‘Right. Then I’ll pop in the registry and ‘It Chapman’, she shall be.’

‘Just leave me alone. I can’t think.’ Maddie went back to lie on the sofa.

Finally, one morning when they were almost out of time, Clive waited by the front door, smacking his leather gloves against his palm. The weather was icy and Stratford was under a couple of inches of snow. He wouldn’t leave, close the door against the cold until she cooperated. Desperate to get back to the warmth of the sitting room, the cocoon of her sofa, she said: ‘Why don’t we call her Daisy? I like the name Daisy.’

‘Fine. Daisy it shall be.’ He made a face, shrugged and left.

That’s how it was settled. He did add his mother’s name, ‘Mona’. It really was a clumsy combination especially since Clive got into the habit of calling the baby by her full name, perhaps his way of showing he didn’t really approve of Madeleine’s choice. It sounded too much like Desdemona for luck, so Madeleine shortened it to Dessie as a compromise. It was accepted and stuck.

But that morning, when Madeleine returned to the sitting room, to the temporary peace before the child woke, the little one was definitely Daisy. Madeleine wondered where the name had come from so suddenly, so vividly. It had felt familiar and somehow, right.

A few mornings later, she was at the sink, rushing through the clearing up before the baby woke and started to yell, when an old Music Hall song began to play on the radio, sung by a loud baritone. She stopped what she was doing to listen: ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you...’ She switched off the radio and stood staring down at the floor, nursing her upper arms.

She was listening to the same song. It sounded in her head, belted out in a woman’s voice, loud, raucous. She had the extraordinary sensation that she was being lifted up in someone’s arms, wheeled round and round. ‘That was my name,’ she said to herself. ‘Before Mum and Dad took me, I was called Daisy. I remember. I remember.’

She wanted to switch off her thoughts as she had the radio but she couldn’t. She went to find her baby and picked her up, still sleeping. She held her close, whispered: ‘I’m here, darling. I’m here. I’ll never let you go.’

The baby hardly stirred, stayed fast asleep. Madeleine walked through the downstairs rooms, still holding her own Daisy tightly. They would stay fast together always. It was terrible to have the beginning of your life swallowed up in blackness. But what Madeleine feared was not just the darkness of ignorance. A churning in her stomach and an ache in her throat signalled that there was something terrible back there. She knew, accepted, that she had given her last baby her own name, the name that had been stolen from her because something, someone had destroyed her young life. Her mind still would not grasp clear memories but her loss, her terror was recorded in every cell of her body.

Her love and commitment to Dessie grew along with a sense of guilt at her early indifference. They said that even a young baby could feel its mother’s rejection; now, each time she looked at her baby, she was overwhelmed by love. After Dessie nothing was quite the same again.

The name had triggered something because the bad dreams she had as a child came back – the daylight questions: Who am I?’ Who was my real mother and why did she abandon me? The questions had hummed beneath the surface while she went on with her life and she coped with them – until recently. Why had they begun to stir so loudly now - whip up a storm that disrupted her life? It was Frank, the shrink, who made her see connections between her present and her past.

Frank wasn’t at all what she expected. From what she’d heard and read, therapists, shrinks or what have you, would make their victims lie on couches and let them ramble on without intervening. Perhaps Frank belonged to a special school of shrink, or just hadn’t the time to waste. He asked questions; he dug and probed. It was a novel experience – this laying herself bare to another human being.

In fact, she’d been horrified at the prospect. As soon as they were outside the magistrate’s court, she told Clive she wouldn’t do it.

‘You must – then we can forget about all this.’

She took ‘this’ to mean they court ordeal they had just endured. It was hard to believe that she’d been there as the accused and pleaded guilty to stealing dresses and such from Laura Ashley in Cheltenham. Her solicitor told her she must ask for all her other offences be taken into account.

‘Forget. How can I forget? No-one else will.’

‘With a bit of luck – no-one will find out. This is Cheltenham.’

‘And how far is that from Stratford? If it gets into the local paper it’s bound to leak out.’ She was right. It did and it didn’t take long.

He tucked her arm under his. ‘Even if it does, people will be sympathetic. You’ve had a breakdown that’s all. We have to find out what’s the reason for the change of behaviour.’

They found a coffee bar full of youngsters. Straight from court, middle aged, formally dressed, they looked out of place among them but Madeleine felt safe. No-one knew her here. She piled sugar into the cup and watched the grains dissolve. ‘I’m sorry; I really don’t know what else to say.’ She pushed the coffee cup away. It tottered in its saucer, spilling coffee.

‘Just see the therapist and talk. Find out what’s troubling you.’ Clive said. She noticed he didn’t say – ‘Can’t you tell me what’s troubling

Reviews for The Legacy of Alice Waters

[sheller-30919 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I haven't come across a book like this for ages. Instead of a thin plot and plastic characters, Jenkins weaves a nov el from past to present in a way that grips you to the end. It tells the tragic story of the poisoner Alice Waters hanged just after the second world war and her daughter's search for the truth in 1999. The miracle is t hat by the end, we understand why she turned to murder and I symapathised with Alice. Jenkins is a Welsh writer and the Welsh background adds an extra dimension. SUPERB

[frankieshaw · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'd like to thank Sheller whose review drew me to this book. Whoever reads my reviews will know I love books about the second world war . In fact the period is only a part of the story of Alice Waters. What is so good about the novel is the way the past and and the present are linked together. Although a poisoner is not easy to forgive, the tragic Alice Waters became for me a kind of Tess of the D'Urbevilles. She is both tragic and forgiveable. The characters - past and present are vivid and believable. This writer is a real find. I can't find anything else she has written b ut I hope she produces more.