'With a bit of luck you'll not have one, but two, spies in the family.' And with that startling thought I left her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The British weekend being what it is I didn't get to the War Office until Monday. Anyone invading these islands would be advised to begin not earlier than four P.M. on a Friday; he'd have a walkover. I filled in the necessary form at the desk and was escorted by a porter to the wrong office. Two attempts later I found the man I needed, an elderly major called Gardner who was sitting on his bottom awaiting his pension. He heard what I had to say and looked at me with mournful eyes. 'Do you realize the war has been over for thirty years?' I disliked people who ask self-evident questions. 'Yes, I'm aware of it; and I still want the information.' He sighed, drew a sheet of paper towards him, and picked up a ball point pen. 'It's not going to be easy. Do you know how many millions of men were in the army? I suppose I'd better have the names.' 'I suppose you had.' I began to see why Gardner was still a grey-haired major. 'George Ashton, private in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers; demobilized 4 January, 1947.' 'In London?' 'Probably.' 'Could have been at Earl's Court; that was used as a demob centre. The other man?'
'Howard Greatorex Benson, sergeant in the Royal Army Service Corps. I don't know where he was demobilized.' 'Is that all you know of these men?' 'That's it.' Gardner laid down his pen and looked at me glumly.
'Very well, I'll institute a search. You'd better give me your address or a phone number where I can find you.' He sniffed lugubriously.
'It'll take about a month, I should say.' 'That's not good enough. I need the information a damned sight faster than that.' He waved a languid hand. 'So many records,' he said weakly. 'Millions of them.'
'Don't you have a system?' 'System? Oh, yes; we have a system-when it works.' I set out to jolly him along and by a combination of sweet talk, name-dropping and unspoken threats got him out of his chair and into action, if one could dignify his speed by such a name. He stood up, regarding me owlishly, and said, 'You don't suppose we keep five million army records here, do you?' I smiled. 'Shall we take your car or mine?' I had what I wanted four hours later. At the time I thought I'd been lucky but later decided that luck had nothing to do with it because it had been planned that way thirty years earlier. We started with the records of Earl's Court, now an exhibition hall devoted to such things as cars and boats, but then a vast emporium for the processing of soldiers into civilians. There they exchanged their uniforms for civilian clothing from the skin out-underwear, shirt, socks, shoes, suit, overcoat and the inevitable trilby or fedora hat of the 1940s. There was also the equivalent of a bank which took in no money but which lashed it out by the million; the serviceman's gratuity, a small-very small-donation from a grateful nation. At its peak the throughput of Earl's Court was 5000 men a day but by early 1947 it had dropped to a mere 2000. The ledgers for 4 January were comparatively small; they had coped with only 1897 men-it had been a slack day. Infuriatingly, the ledgers were not listed in alphabetical order but by army number, which meant that every name and page had to be scanned. 'What was the name again?' said Gardner. 'Ashton.'
'Ashton,' he muttered, as he started on the first page of a ledger.
'Ashton… Ashton… Ashton.' I think he had to repeat the name to himself because he had the attention span of a retarded five-year-old. I took another ledger and started to check it. It was like reading a war memorial with the difference that these were the survivors; a long list of Anglo-Saxon names with the odd quirky foreigner for spice, and even more boring than checking Heathrow passenger lists. Half an hour later Gardner said, 'What was that name again?' I sighed. 'Ashton. George Ashton.' 'No-the other one.'
'Benson, Howard Greatorex.' 'He's here,' said Gardner placidly.
'Benson!' I went to the other side of the table and leaned over Gardner's shoulder. Sure enough, his finger rested under Benson's name, and the rest of the information fitted. Sergeant H. G. Benson, RASC, had been discharged on the same day, and from the same place, as Private G. Ashton, REME. I didn't think coincidence could stretch that far. 'That's a piece of luck,' said Gardner with smug satisfaction.
'Now we have his army number we shall find his file easily.' 'We haven't got Ashton yet,' I said, and we both applied ourselves to the ledgers. Ashton came up three-quarters of an hour later. Gardner scribbled on a piece of paper and drifted away in his somnambulistic manner to organize the search for the files, while I sat down and began to sort out what we'd found. I tried to figure out the odds against two specific men in the British Army being demobilized on the same day and from the same place, but the mathematics were too much for me-I couldn't keep count of the zeroes, so I gave up. It was stretching the long arm a bit too far to suggest that it had happened by chance to two men who subsequently lived together as master and servant for the next quarter of a century. So if it wasn't coincidence it must have been by arrangement. So who arranged it? I was still torturing my train cells when Gardner came back an hour later with the files. There was a sticky moment when I said I wanted to take them away; he clung to them as though I was trying to kidnap his infant children. At last he agreed to accept my receipt and I left in triumph. I studied the files at home, paying little attention to Ashton's file because it had nothing to do with the Ashton I knew, but I went over Benson's file in detail. His career was exactly as Ogilvie had described. He joined the army in 1940 and after his primary training and square-bashing he was transferred to the RASC and his promotions came pretty quickly at first-to lance-corporal, to corporal, and then to sergeant where he stuck for the rest of the war.
All his service was in England and he never went overseas. Most of his duties were concerned with storekeeping, and from the comments of his superiors written in the file, he was quite efficient, although there were a few complaints of lack of initiative and willingness to pass the buck. Not many, but enough to block his further promotion. His pay-book showed that he was unmarried but was contributing to the upkeep of his mother. The payments ceased in 1943 when she died. From that time until his discharge his savings showed a marked increase. I thought that anyone who could save out of army pay in those days must have lived a quiet life. His medical record was similarly uneventful.
Looked at en masse it appeared alarming, but closer inspection revealed just the normal ailments which might plague a man over a period of years. There were a couple of tooth extractions, two periods of hospitalisation-one for a bout of influenza and the other when he dropped a six-inch shell on his left foot. Luckily the shell was defused. My attention was caught by the last entry. Benson had complained of aches in his left arm which had been preliminarily diagnosed as twinges of rheumatism and he had been given the appropriate treatment. He was thirty-three then, and rheumatism seemed a bit odd to me, especially since Benson had a cushy billet for a soldier in wartime. Not for him route marches in the pouring rain or splashing about joyfully in the mud; he worked in a warm office and slept every night in a warm bed. Evidently the medical officer had thought it odd, too, when the treatment didn't work. In a different coloured ink he had appended a question mark after the previous diagnosis of rheumatism, and had scribbled beneath, 'Suggest cardiogram.' The amendment was dated 19 December, 1946. I went back to the general service file where I struck another oddity, because his immediate superior had written as the last entry, 'Suggested date of discharge 21 March, 1947.' Underneath another hand had written, 'Confirmed', and followed it with an indecipherable signature. I sat back and wondered why, if it had been suggested and confirmed that Benson should be discharged in March, 1947, he should have been discharged three months earlier. I consulted the medical record again and then rang Tom Packer. This account started with Tom Packer because it was at his place I first met Penny. I rang him now because he was a doctor and I wanted confirmation of the idea that was burgeoning. If he didn't know what I wanted he'd be certain to know who could tell me. After a brief exchange of courtesies, I said, 'Tom, I want a bit of free medical advice.' He chuckled. 'You and the rest of the population. What is it?' 'Supposing a man complains of a pain in his left arm. What would you diagnose?' 'Hell, it could be anything. Have you got such a pain?' 'This is hypothetical.' 'I see. Could be rheumatism. What's the hypothetical age of this hypothetical chap?'