He was found in a carrier-bag outside a pub in London's Seven Dials, and survived the horrors of institutional care and schooling to become one of the Foreign Office's secret soldiers, surviving wars around the world. Pc Sam Trotter, who found him, named him Jarvis Brook: it was the address on the bag. But it was Queenie, who ran the pub, who saw to it that Jarvis was christened - before the Church people whisked him away. After that, Jarvis only saw his "god-parents" when he ran away, which was quite often. In this way, he met Ruth, their daughter, and despite their different lives, they grew close in their hearts, and a love developed. The war separated them when Jarvis, not quite 16, enlisted in the name of Robert Beard. They rarely saw one another, although engaged, and then first one, then the other married, and were finally reunited when Beard was near fatally wounded in Oman. He suffered amnesia - he knew neither Queenie nor Ruth, and listened to his life's history of loves and military battles from those who'd shared in them ... but it was an unknown American who supplied the key to his lost memory.