The Young Spaniard

Description

There was a gleam of humour in his eyes, but it was not strong enough to counteract a certain bleakness in the thin face. What was there here for Rose?A Scots lawyer, James Kerr, has been asked by a relative to investigate the rumour that his cousin, Rose, has taken up with 'a young Spaniard'. When he reaches Barcelona, he finds that Raoul is not so young, and that his affair with Rose, who works in a travel agency, presents certain enigmatic aspects. And how does the scruffy, ex-Civil-War fighter, Milo, come into the picture? Unwillingly James Kerr finds himself embroiled in the mystery, suffering painfully at the hands of the police, but prevented from chucking up the whole business by his growing love for Rose's friend, Frangcon, a young schoolmistress.

Born in in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth. Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961. The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department. Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the 'Fairley Family' trilogy - Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers - books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946. For many years she was an active member of the 'Monday Lit', a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as 'prompter' the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town's St Pancras RC Church.