Love, Alice

by Barbara Davis

  After careful consideration, Dovie had decided to skip the letters, at least for now. Dora had had enough bad news to last a lifetime. It was time for a little happy news, and even that might prove more of a shock than the poor woman could take.

  Easing onto the edge of the bed, Dovie took Dora’s hands in hers. “Dora, I need to make sure you’re ready for what you’re going to hear today. It’s a lot to take in, and I’m afraid you might be in for a bit of a shock. Are you up to it, do you think? Because if you aren’t, we can wait until you’re stronger.”

  “Now. Tell me now.”

  “All right, but first your medicine, and a little tea.”

  Dovie helped Dora sit up, plumping the pillows behind her neck and shoulders, then turned her attention to the display of pills on the bedside table—one white, one yellow, and half a blue. She handed them to Dora, along with a bottle of water, then waited to make sure she swallowed them. “Will you eat some toast if I bring it?”

  “Later.”

  Dovie understood. She wanted the news. Now.

  “Fine. But you promised to drink some tea.” Dovie gave Dora a stern look as she pressed the mug into her hands. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She returned a short time later. Austin was with her but hung back in the doorway, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Dora eyed him with a mix of confusion and annoyance, before bringing her watery gaze back to Dovie. “I thought you had some news for me.”

  Dovie suppressed a smile. There was the Dora she’d come to love, impatient and slightly imperious when she didn’t get her way. It was good to see her again. “This is a friend of mine, Dora. He stopped by this morning, and wanted to meet you.”

  Dora remained mute as Dovie dragged a pair of chairs over to the bed and gestured for Austin to take one. He declined with the barest shake of his head, opting for a less conspicuous position—one more favorable for bolting should he change his mind. She’d better get on with it before he lost his nerve. Or she did.

  “I have something for you, Dora,” she said, reaching into her pocket to produce a small cotton bundle. “Something I think you might recognize.”

  Dora stared at the gold watch and chain as Dovie unwrapped it and laid it in her palm, a flurry of emotions passing over her weathered face. Confusion. Disbelief. Recognition. “How . . . where did you get it?”

  “From the woman Alice used to work for. She wanted you to have it.”

  Dora’s face crumpled as she pressed the watch to her lips. “She kept it. All those years . . . my girl kept it.”

  “The woman who gave me the watch is named Gemma Tate. She also gave me two letters—Alice’s last letters. There are some things in them—hard things—that I’m afraid you won’t like, which is why I’ve decided not to read them today. We’ll read them later if you want, when you’re stronger, but for now I’m just going to tell you some of what’s in them.”

  Dora nodded, sullen but too anxious for news to protest.

  “You remember why Alice first went to the Tates—because she was told that’s where she would find her baby?”

  Dora’s eyes glittered like hard gray stones. “The boy—Danny.”

  “Yes. Danny. And when she got there she realized she’d been lied to.”

  Another nod.

  Dovie reached for Dora’s hand, anxiously wadding the bedspread. “She wasn’t lied to, Dora. The address Danny gave Alice that night was the right one.”

  A crease appeared between Dora’s silvery brows as she struggled to piece together what Dovie was telling her. She lifted her eyes to Dovie’s. “I don’t . . . understand.”

  “I know,” Dovie said, giving her hand another squeeze. “It’s confusing, but the little boy Alice was helping Gemma raise was actually her own. She didn’t know at first. Neither did Gemma. But eventually they realized the truth—that Gemma’s son was actually the child Alice had given up at Blackhurst. His name is Austin.”

  “Is he . . .” Dora’s mouth worked mutely as the tears began to well.

  “He’s here,” Dovie said softly. As if on cue, Austin stepped forward, coming to stand beside the bed. “This is Austin, Dora. This is your grandson.”

  Dora swallowed convulsively as the words gradually penetrated, confusion blooming into understanding, then a broken, bittersweet joy. Finally, a sob tore from her throat, and she reached for Austin’s hand, pressing it to her cheek as she rocked and crooned and wept.

  Dovie’s throat ached as she watched the scene play out, grateful beyond words that Austin had agreed to be part of it. She looked at his face, almost tender as he went down on one knee, taking her hands in his, letting her have her cry.

  It was some time before Dora’s tears finally quieted, dwindling to moist sniffles and the occasional hiccup. After dabbing her eyes on the edge of the sheet, and sipping from the bottle of water Dovie pressed into her shaking hands, she fixed her eyes on Austin. “Do you remember her?”

  Austin nodded, dimpling like a boy. “She taught me to tie my shoes.”

  “Tell me,” Dora pleaded. “Tell me . . . everything you remember . . . about my girl.”

  Dovie shot Austin a worried glance. “Dora, are you having trouble breathing? You sound a little winded.”

  Dora was about to protest when Austin patted her hand. “Why don’t you rest a little? We’ll have plenty of time to talk about Alice, and to get to know each other. Right now I think Dovie would like you to rest.”

  To Dovie’s surprise, Dora sagged back against her pillows, pale and spent. “Thank you,” she breathed, with a radiant smile. “Both of you.”

  Dovie laid a hand on her brow, just to be sure. It was cool, but her breathing was definitely labored. “Dora, do you need your inhaler?”

  “Sleep,” she slurred thickly, blue-veined lids already drooping. They fluttered open briefly as she groped for Austin’s hand, clutching it as if she feared he might vanish. “Don’t leave.”

  The dimples reappeared as he shot her a wink. “Not a chance.”

  Dovie couldn’t say how long she lingered in the doorway, watching Dora sleep, or how long it had been since Austin had slipped out of the room. She only knew she was happy. For the first time in weeks Dora seemed at peace, her weathered face serene at last, her breathing almost easy. And she had Austin to thank for it.

  She smiled as she pulled the door closed, then went looking for him. She found him on the back porch, bent over the railing. He turned when he heard her approach.

  “She still asleep?”

  Dovie nodded. “Something tells me she’s going to be asleep for a while. Thank you, by the way, for what you did . . . and for how you were in there.”

  “I guess it’s been quite a day for her.”

  “For you, too,” Dovie said quietly. “Are you okay?”

  “I will be. It’s just a lot of reality to deal with all at once. Like waking up in the middle of a Dickens novel—I’m being visited by the ghosts of all my pasts.”

  “Scrooge was a better man after facing his ghosts.”

  He shot her a crooked smile. “And as I recall, he went kicking and screaming the whole way, but you might be right. Maybe it’s time I faced a few ghosts. God knows hiding from them hasn’t worked. I’ve spent so much of my life pretending nothing mattered that I had just about convinced myself nothing did. Then you came along.”

  Dovie’s pulse skittered. “What do I have to do with anything?”

  “You made me see myself, and I hated you for it. It was like you turned this great big spotlight on everything that was wrong with my life, and all of a sudden I didn’t want the things I used to want. I wanted something different. And I hated you for that, too. Because I knew I couldn’t have those things.” He paused, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

  Dovie lifted her chin a notch. “I�
��m pretty sure I got the part where you hate me.”

  “That is not what I said. Okay, it’s what I said, but it’s not what I meant. What I meant was that you made me want things I didn’t deserve—you made me want you. I knew it the minute I kissed you that night on the dock, and it scared the hell out of me. The happily-ever-after thing? I don’t know how to do that, Dovie. All my life I’ve watched people hurt each other. That’s what I know. What my father did to my mother. What I did to Monica. I don’t want to do that again—not to you. I don’t know what that means. I just know it’s true.”

  “Your mother thinks you’re in love with me.” The words came out softly, almost breathlessly, catching even Dovie off guard. She held her breath, watching his face, waiting for some kind of response.

  Finally, he touched her, the back of a single finger grazing the curve of her cheek, her jaw, her mouth, leaving a tingle of warmth in its wake. “I think she might be right,” he said softly. “She usually is.”

  “Well, then . . .” She paused, kissing him, her lips parted and featherlight as they brushed his. “You should probably know that she thinks I’m in love with you, too.”

  EPILOGUE

  MAGNOLIA GROVE CEMETERY,

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  DECEMBER 6, 2005

  Dovie hugged the bouquet of Christmas mums close to her chest as she stared up at the stone angel, its weathered wings spread wide against the chilly gray sky. It felt strange being back, like visiting a friend she’d lost touch with.

  As if sensing her thoughts, Austin reached for her hand, his fingers warm and reassuring as they closed over hers. To his right, Dora stood clutching her handbag, thinner and paler than she had been on that first terrible day, but stronger somehow, too, because she was no longer stooped with grief. She had hold of Austin’s sleeve, clinging to him like a child to a favorite blanket, as if she still couldn’t believe he was quite real. Beside Dora, Gemma stood cradling an armful of peonies, her face somber and very still. After a moment, she stepped forward to lay them at the foot of Alice’s grave. She stood there for a time, lips moving soundlessly. When she turned to rejoin them, her eyes were shiny with tears. Austin reached for her hand, giving it a squeeze, then looked expectantly at Dovie.

  It was time.

  Dovie reached for the envelope she had tucked into her coat pocket before leaving the house. It had been her idea to read Alice’s final words here, surrounded by the people who had loved her, but suddenly her mouth was dry, her hands trembling as she slid the single sheet free and began to read.

  My dearest Austin,

  How bittersweet to write your name—now, when our time is all but run out. Forgive me. I promised myself I would not dwell on such things. Not when there are so many more pressing things to say, things I should have said in my last letter but did not.

  Bitterness is a tenacious thing, all bared claws and gnashing teeth. And I was bitter when I wrote that letter, spewing my rage and self-pity out onto the page. And yet it brought me no peace. Because it was done in anger—and was meant to wound a friend. Now my bitterness is spent, and I find there is more to say, wounds to mend, and peace to find.

  When you came into the world I was forced to give you up. Now, as I leave the world, I am forced to give you up again. The first time, I railed against fate. But there is no railing now. Because in a way, I have kept my promise. All I ever wanted was for my child—my beautiful, beautiful son—to have a good life and a mother who loved him. And that has come to pass, perhaps not in the way I expected, but maybe in a better way. You have been blessed for a time with two mothers, two women who loved you with their whole hearts. Now you will just have the one. You will feel the loss at first, but not for long. She loves you so much—enough for the both of us—which is why I now relinquish you with a full and free heart. Because the heart holds no grudges, my darling. The heart always lets go.

  I have written things, unkind things that I now regret, scribbled in moments of weakness, and the kind of pain that blinds us to any truth but our own. Now, at the end of things, I know that any offense against me was committed out of love for you—and is therefore forgiven. I ask you to do the same.

  And now I must ask you to do something else, to take a trip when you can manage it, to the village in Cornwall where I grew up—to Sennen Cove—and ask after a woman named Dora Tandy, who lives in the cottage at the end of Trimble Lane. Bring her back the watch I took the day I ran away, and tell her she has a grandson—and that Alice sends her love.

  I must go now, my darling. I’m so very tired, and Johnny has been waiting such a long time. Be a good boy and always mind your mother—and try not to forget your nanny.

  Love,

  Alice

  Love, Alice.

  The words seemed to hang in the air as Dovie folded the letter and tucked it out of sight—a gift from mother to child, but also from one mother to another. Dora felt the weight of her daughter’s words, too, and reached out to touch the angel’s foot, a gesture so poignant it could only be a mother’s. Beside her, Gemma’s face glistened with tears, and a kind of peace that hadn’t been there before. Austin wrapped her in his arms, holding her close. No one spoke, but there seemed no need for words.

  They had all heard it. And they all understood. From the very first letter penned at Blackhurst nearly forty years ago, Alice’s signature had remained constant—All my love, Mam.

  Until this one.

  The altered signature had been no accident, no mere lapse of memory by a dying woman. Rather, it had been carefully and lovingly penned, a testament to her forgiveness, and her willingness to give her most precious possession—her son—into the care of her dearest friend.

  Dovie’s throat ached as she backed away from Dora, Gemma, and Austin. They needed a moment, and there was still something she needed to do. A few yards down the path, she stopped in front of William’s grave. She smiled when she saw the bloodred poinsettia nearly obscuring the headstone—almost certainly Kristopher’s doing. William had loved Christmas.

  There was a strange sense of finality as she bent down to place her own flowers at the base of the stone, the feeling that a door had finally closed. They had been friends—through everything, and in spite of everything—but his memories belonged to Kristopher now.

  Good-bye, Billy.

  She was brushing the moisture from her hands when she spotted Josiah at the opposite end of the path. He tipped his hat as their eyes met, and lifted a hand. Dovie waved back as she watched him turn and disappear. It made her sad to think she wouldn’t be seeing him as often as she used to. Theirs had been an unlikely alliance, a strange blend of severity and sympathy. He had offered a shoulder free of judgment, advice when she wanted it, and even when she didn’t, and friendship when she had desperately needed a friend. She would always be grateful for that.

  Gemma and Dora were already heading back to the car, but Austin was waiting when she stepped back onto the path. He took her hand as they began to walk. “You okay?”

  “I am, actually. It’s strange. I’ve spent so much time here feeling sad and miserable, but today was different. It felt good, right. Like an unhappy chapter of my life is finally ending, and I can move forward.”

  Austin stopped walking and pulled her around to face him. “Speaking of chapters ending, I need to thank you. For what you did for my mother, and Dora, and me. For today. For all of it. Everything feels different now, and it’s because of you.”

  Dovie cocked an eye at him, grinning. “I’m not so sure. Your mother has a theory.”

  “What kind of theory?”

  “It has to do with butterflies and tidal waves, but basically she thinks there was a reason it was me in the cemetery the day Dora left that letter on Alice’s grave.”

  “She’s saying it was fate?”

  Dovie thought about the word. In fact, she’d been thinking about
it for quite some time, but it seemed inadequate somehow in light of the extraordinary events of the past few months. “Fate is one possibility,” she said finally. “But I wonder if it wasn’t something else, something a little . . . closer to home.”

  She lifted her gaze to the angel standing guard over Alice Tandy’s grave. Austin looked from the angel to Dovie and then back again, his face momentarily blank. Finally, her meaning seemed to dawn.

  “You think Alice had something to do with all this? That she was somewhere behind the cosmic curtain, pulling strings?”

  Dovie smiled. “I don’t know, but I can’t think of anyone who’d have a better motive, can you? She waited as long as she could for things to work themselves out, and when they didn’t, she stepped in. She needed you to know. Maybe she needed us all to know.”

  “Know what?”

  Dovie reached for his hand, pressing it to her lips. “That the heart holds no grudges. That the heart lets go.”

  Author’s Note

  I never set out to tell the story of the Magdalene laundries. In fact, when I began work on Love, Alice I wasn’t even aware of their existence. I knew only that Alice Tandy was an unwed mother searching for the child she had given up. And then one night I was listening to the news and they announced that the Australian government had issued an apology to thousands of women who had essentially been imprisoned, forced into hard labor, and then made to give up their babies, and I knew Alice was one of those women. And so my research began.

  All my life I had thought of the word asylum as meaning a place of refuge, but the women forced into the laundries found them to be anything but. Rather, they found places of brutality, degradation, oppression, and psychological abuse. Inmates, some as young as twelve or thirteen, were forcibly detained, often behind a series of locked doors and gates, their names changed, their families as good as dead to them.

  They were called penitents by the nuns, their unborn babies referred to as sins or mistakes. Inmates were watched closely and punished vigorously for breaking the rules. Correction included beatings, head shavings, the withholding of food, and being stripped to the skin and made to stand before the other inmates as mortification for the sins of vanity and willfulness. In some establishments, as a final and stunningly heartless act of penance, expectant mothers were made to sew baby clothes and blankets, and even write letters to their unborn children explaining why they were unfit to raise them.