Thus, the scene is set for a complex and fascinating plot. Tom’s inconsistent behaviour towards Camille makes her suspicious. The feeling is mutual, but of course, Tom knows a relationship is impossible. At the school Tom meets Camille, a young French teacher, to whom he is attracted. He is a success, bearing the uncanny ability to ‘bring history alive’ to even the most apathetic of his students. In the present day, Tom’s new role is as a history teacher in an east London secondary school. Hendrick keeps him close by telling him that his daughter Marion has inherited the condition and assuring Tom that he will find her, but Tom becomes increasingly suspicious of Hendrick’s motives. He lost his mother in brutal circumstances and his wife and daughter, all because of anageria. His condition brings him nothing but pain and grief. Hendrick rules the organisation and controls its members, cleverly maintaining their loyalty with a delicate balance of threat and the promise of protection.īut Tom is unhappy. Superstition has treated them badly in the past. They fear discovery by the scientific community and what this might mean. ‘Albas’, as they are known, are committed to keeping their condition secret and thereby protecting themselves from scrutiny. He, and others with his condition, are part of a worldwide secret organisation known as Albatross, led by the slightly sinister now elderly Dutchman, Hendrick. Tom has to spend his long and eventful life dodging attention, changing location every eight years or so. The last time Tom sees Rose is when she is in her 50s, on her death bed with the plague, while he still looks like the young man she fell in love with many years earlier. Rose is the love of Tom’s life and although they move around, trying to avoid staying in one place too long and attracting attention, he realises that his existence presents a danger to Rose and the child.
In his ‘late teens’ he meets and falls in love with Rose, and they have a child, Marion. He is haunted by the fact that his mother was condemned as a witch in the small village in which they lived, because the locals suspected dark forces at play when her teenage son appeared never to age. What an incredibly lucky guy, you might think, but his condition is a curse and does not go unnoticed. Tom was born in London in 1581 and mixed with the likes of Shakespeare and Marlowe in his youth, worked for Captain Cook in the 1700s and was a jazz pianist in Paris in the 1920s where he met, among others, F Scott Fitzgerald and watched Josephine Baker dance. He is one of a tiny group of people who live for many hundreds of years. Tom Hazard has an extremely rare condition called anageria which means he ages extremely slowly.
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