Birthday Boy

The Dorchester Hotel, London. 20 May 1970 It was said by almost all who knew him that the war had changed Mr Albert Campion.

It was as if the air of exuberant gayness he had worn in the 1930s, rather like a loud and vulgar waistcoat, had been exchanged, after 1945, for a more sober, sombre frame of mind, grey and austere enough to fit perfectly with the changing times. Mr Campion's supporters always maintained that this was the necessary psychological camouflage for a man who had made a career of not being noticed emerging into a new world.

Of the guests, mostly distinguished, who gathered at the Dorchester Hotel to celebrate his seventieth birthday, there were some who had seen the transformation at first hand, some who had suspected that a change in his character had taken place due to his embarking on both marriage and fatherhood in wartime, and there were those blissfully too young to have known Mr Campion before the war, or indeed the war itself.

Knowing that on such an august occasion his guests would demand a speech from him (much as an angry village mob made demands, though without the pitchforks and torches), Mr Campion had taken the precaution of making a few notes. Confident that at least some of his audience would appreciate his nod towards Horace's famous Ab ovo usque ad mala dictum, he intended that his personal life-menu from egg to apple would sweep gloriously from being a child of the Victorian era to a New Elizabethan pensioner. Along the way he would note numerous cultural and social milestones. The Wright brothers for one, or rather two, must certainly be mentioned, having started the craze of men flying which had culminated, last year, with man making a firm boot-print on the moon. The BBC, Campion was sure, was bound to be accepted sooner or later as a cultural institution, despite its diversification into television, a popular drug which really ought to be available only on prescription, and he really must make a point of thanking Al Jolson for inventing talking pictures, Mr Disney for the gift of Technicolor and the Duke of Ellington for providing the soundtrack.

'I don't think you are taking this seriously,' said Amanda.

'A leopard can't change his stripes,' rumbled Mr Lugg.

'Don't you encourage him! He really has to learn that music hall is dead and he doesn't have to play the fool. All the people at this party know what you're like and they've come because they love or respect you, not to suffer your end-of-the-pier act.'

Mr Campion smiled fondly at his wife.

'I notice you said love or respect, inferring that I am not entitled to both. So if I cannot persuade our guests to love me for my witty patter, do you think I can gain their respect by pointing out that I have, so far, lived under six monarchs and fifteen different prime ministers, perhaps sixteen if I can hang on until the election next month? Or are they just coming for the cake? There will be cake, won't there? I only agreed to have a birthday on condition there was cake.'

'Yes, there will be cake,' Lady Amanda relented and smiled, 'with thick white icing strong enough to stand on.'

'And marzipan, I 'ope. A proper birthday cake 'as a good half-inch underlay of marzipan.'

The Campions looked at the bald fat man, both of them thinking that the mere mention of cake, icing and marzipan should by rights have turned the straining buttons on Lugg's starched white shirt into death-dealing projectiles and his bow-tie into a garrotte.

'Haven't you got an elsewhere to be?' Mr Campion suggested airily as Lady Amanda tied his bow-tie for him, her delicate fingers manipulating the back silk as skilfully as a pair of spiders cooperating on the perfect web. 'Downstairs, in the party room perhaps? Surely there must be minions to intimidate, spoons to count, napkins to fold, guests to insult; things like that.'

Lugg's Easter Island statue of a head trembled in mock indignation, an expression the Campions were all too familiar with.

'I fort I was an 'onoured guest at this shindig, not being a flunky as per usual,' grumbled the fat man. 'But since you're taking your own sweet time getting dressed and having your hair done, I don't mind doing a bit of meeting-and-greeting downstairs while you keep the crowds waiting.'

'I won't be long,' said Campion, deliberately running the fingers of his right hand through his still luxuriant, if white, hair, 'but when you do have a good head of hair ...'

'All right, don't rub it in,' grumbled Lugg, noticing in the mirror in front of which Campion was preening that the room's overhead lights were producing a reflective glow from his bald pate.

'You could go and say hello to the guests, I suppose, as long as you don't start frisking them or chucking bricks at any you don't like the look of.'

'We expecting the usual suspects, then?'

Mr Campion turned sideways on to the mirror, appreciating both the slim figure inside the sleek dinner suit and the slender arms of his wife around his shoulders.

'They're a motley crew but you'll know most of them, although there are one or two guests arriving from the Continent from whom I have successfully managed to conceal your existence for many years.'

'Foreigners, eh? I might have known,' muttered Lugg, making no attempt to hide his distaste; not at nationality but at being kept in ignorance.

'There will be an important French lady, a German gentleman and two ladies of Spain, so best behaviour, please.'

'And 'ow will I recognize 'em?'

'As they are neither family of mine nor friends of yours, they will be the ones standing politely to one side, behaving themselves, not shouting for a waitress and demanding more aperitifs and canapés.'

'Do you want me to converse with them, or do I just stand there like a wooden Indian?'

'Probably best if you say as little as possible. Get Rupert and Perdita to do the small talk. Oh, and you should know, the German gentleman is a Freiherr.'

'A friar? Wot, like a monk?'

'Freiherr; it's a title, somewhere between a knight and a baron, so show some respect.'

Lugg sighed dramatically and shifted his considerable bulk in the direction of the door of the suite. 'Another case of "up the workers", eh? Don't worry, I know my place.'

'I...