Charlie Brown, DFC DFM, is an ex-member of a Pathfi nder Squadron. His ideal job, as the incumbent caretaker of Beech House in the Kent countryside, enables him to pursue his dream of becoming a writer of novels.

His is a dream that he has nurtured all through his days at Burnside Orphanage in Sydney, Australia, and later, in a Lancaster bomber, running the gauntlet of night fighters, ack-ack and searchlights in two tours of bombing raids over Germany. As he pursues his dream, he is in turn helped and hindered by Penny, a beautiful heiress, and Phoebe… the resident pregnant ghost of Beech House.