This enchanting and well-researched story is set in the aftermath of the first world war, at a time when the Spanish flu pandemic was raging throughout the UK and Europe. It’s the first full-length novel by Rue Baldry, a writer already known as a playwright and for her short stories. It is a tale that was 15 years in the making.
It begins when a mysterious stranger arrives at a posh boarding school for boys in Northumberland during a blizzard. The stranger attracts the admiring attention of one young student in particular. Will their love find a place to ‘dwell’ among the aftershocks of war and the additional losses of the pandemic, as tongues begin to wag and their illicit affair places them in danger?
Sense of isolation
Baldry vividly describes the sense of isolation at the snowbound school, where the bored and confined pupils spread rumours about the staff and fellow pupils. In addition, memories of the war and having to deal with the current casualties traumatise everyone. This febrile, suspicious time between the wars makes for a great setting for this tale of the faltering romance between 19-year-old Albert Mere, a demobbed soldier and former miner, and 18-year-old Edgar Lancaster, a sixth-former and aspiring medical student.
The horrors of war
During the many evocative flashback scenes, Baldry captures the horror but also the mind-numbing boredom of war. She conjures up the vibrant colours, deafening sounds and putrid smells of the battlefield, as the lonely, homesick soldiers forge unlikely connections.
A chance meeting
Albert Mere arrives at Whitethorne School after being given the address by his regiment’s captain, who also happens to be the headmaster’s son, and is offered a job as the school gardener. He is suffering from flashbacks to the war, resulting in violent fits, as the woods surrounding the school remind him of the trenches. This leads to a chance meeting with Edgar Lancaster, who tries to comfort him.
Opposites attract
The God-fearing Albert is conflicted by his flowering homosexual desires, but the more unconventional Edgar helps to bring him out of his shell and nurses him through his nightmares. The couple begins to bond over grief for their lost friends. Their illegal love affair across the class divide is twice threatened: once by separation, when they leave the school in differing circumstances, and then by discovery, when an old foe resurfaces. The question is whether their furtive relationship can survive being exposed to the world.
Paperback 303 pages. Due to be published on 11th June by Northodox Press Ltd.
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