Birthday Party Read online

  Title

  A. A. Milne

  THE

  BIRTHDAY PARTY

  AND OTHER STORIES

  Contents

  Contents

  Note

  Birthday Party

  Anne-Marie

  The General Takes off his Helmet

  Luck Nothing

  Breitenstein

  Tristram

  C.O.D.

  Dear Old George

  In Vino Veritas

  A.V. and R.V.

  Night at the Aldwinckles

  I Don’t Like Blackmailers

  Spring Song

  The Shakespearean Theory

  The Secret

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To DAPHNE

  Whose party it is

  With my love

  Note

  NOTE

  IT may be assumed of any collection of stories that some at least of the individuals have led a previous existence in one form or another. This well-known habit of short stories calls for no apology from an author. But for those which have formed part of an earlier collection published over the author’s name an introductory note is necessary.

  In 1929, when I had a transitory bibliographical value, a value enhanced on this occasion by the distinction of the company which I kept and the clothes in which I was dressed, a little book called The Secret and Other Stories appeared in an issue of special limited editions, published by the Fountain Press of New York. There were three other stories in this ad hoc collection, of which 300 copies were on sale in England. One of those four stories is now republished. I have put it at the end of the book, where it can most conveniently be ignored by any of the Noble Three Hundred—

  Theirs’ not to reason why,

  Theirs’ but to go and buy—

  who have survived to join the present party.

  A. A. M.

  Birthday Party

  1

  David alistair shawn baker came into the world at half-past three on an April morning; and at four o’clock William Henry Baker was kneeling at his wife’s bed, her hand, wet with his tears, held against his cheek.

  ‘Oh, Will,’ she sighed.

  ‘Oh, Maggie!’ he sobbed, and felt for his handkerchief with his left hand.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ she asked faintly.

  ‘Yes, no, it’s only you, Maggie, that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Well, that’s a nice thing to say of your son and heir,’ put in Mrs Shawn from the basket wherein David Alistair Shawn lay. Maggie, she considered, had had a very easy time, much easier than her own had been when Maggie was born. All her emotion was for her first grandchild.

  ‘You must see him, darling.’

  He kissed her hand; he wanted to go on kissing it for ever, but knew that he couldn’t. He got up clumsily, and went over to the basket, wiping his eyes. He looked at his son, and felt, as other husbands have felt looking at their firstborn, ‘All that for this; so small, so ugly; and yet what a burden to have borne.’

  ‘Hallo!’ he said, and had an absurd impulse to chuck it under the chin, but restrained himself, no obvious chin being there. He looked from his son to his wife, wondering at the miracle of their union.

  ‘Now you must be off,’ said Mrs Shawn. ‘Try to get some sleep, and you may come and say good-bye just before you catch your train.’

  He bent down and kissed his wife’s forehead, whispering, ‘Thank you, Maggie dear.’ She gave him a loving smile, so tired, so remote, that the tears came back into his eyes, and he felt again for his handkerchief. He went back to the camp-bed in what was going to be the nursery. ‘Bars on the windows,’ he said to himself. ‘I mustn’t forget that. Oh well, there’s no hurry.’

  He had a few minutes with her alone before he caught his train. She had come back into the world, she was herself again; proud and happy.

  ‘You promise to have a really good dinner, darling? I don’t mean a midday dinner. Proper dinner, and drink David’s health.’

  He had had it made clear to him by Mrs Shawn that there was enough to do in the house without looking after a grown-up man who could look after himself. He was to have his meal in town, and come back by a late train. Orders.

  ‘I will, Maggie. I shall be thinking of you both all day.’

  ‘You’ll tell them at the office? They knew he was coming, didn’t they?’

  He said ‘Yes’ to both questions, and asked again, ‘You did want a boy, didn’t you, dear?’ as if he would have changed it even now if it had not been satisfactory.

  ‘Of course! Didn’t you?’

  He nodded proudly.

  William Henry Baker was nearly forty when David was born, and he had been married for ten years. Because his son had been so long in coming, he had been more than usually frightened. He would have been frightened in any case, for he was a timid little man, and his love for Maggie was almost the whole of his life. He had longed for a son: a son, a Shawn Baker, who would not be timid, would not be ineffectual, as he knew himself to be; would not be a clerk in an office who was treated with a tolerant, only just not contemptuous, familiarity by his fellow-clerks. Shawn Baker would be one of those big, strong, masterful men: an explorer, perhaps: a statesman, a great general. That was why Mr Baker had insisted—well, not insisted, he could never do that—had wanted the Shawn in his boy’s name. There must be a hundred David Bakers about, but Shawn Baker was unique. He sounded like somebody. Perhaps, when he became Lord Mayor of London, David would hyphen the name: Sir David Shawn-Baker.

  Yes, he had told his fellow-clerks that the baby was coming; far too often, most of them would have said. Never had a baby been so generously shared. The brighter spirits had suggested a sweepstake on the day and hour of its arrival; anything to make a commonplace event more interesting. There had been opportunities for humour which the humorous had not missed. At times Mr Baker wished that he had been more reticent; at other times he was glad to think that Shawn Baker was being talked about already. He pictured them in after years: young Henderson, an elderly man now, managing director of the firm, perhaps, saying to an important client: ‘Yes, I remember the very day he was born, his father coming into the office as pleased as Punch—oh, yes, Shawn Baker’s father was with us then—just an ordinary sort of fellow, you’d never have thought he’d have had such a brilliant son.’ And Miss Clissold, retired and living in the country, saying proudly to the Vicar: ‘Oh, yes, I knew Sir David’s dear father very well. Quite a little excitement, I remember, when Sir David was born. We all drank his health—oh, only in tea, of course.’

  But there was another reason why he was sometimes glad and sometimes sorry that he had confided in them. The elder married men were comforting. ‘Pooh, old man, it’s nothing. Danger? Nonsense! In the old days, perhaps, but not to-day. Well, I suppose you and I wouldn’t like it much, but I always say women don’t feel pain in the way men do. Not so sensitive. Besides, they give ’em anaesthetics now. Easy. No, it’s the damned expense of it that’s the real trouble. You’re not having anything to do with these blasted nursing-homes? Quite right. It’s a racket.’ But the younger ones told agonising stories of what they had suffered (and, by inference, their wives) through the long hours of labour. They went into clinical details which both terrified and outraged him; as if, in some way, by talking of these intimate things, the speaker was admitting himself to intimacy with Maggie. Then he wished with all his heart that he had kept his secret to himself.

  And the jokes. Horrible.

  So now, as he hurried to the station, it came over him suddenly that he did not want to t
ell them, not to-day. His happiness, his pride, his relief, were too great to share with strangers who could feel none of these things. Just for to-day it would be his secret. Miss Clissold would raise enquiring eyebrows, and he would shrug his shoulders. Henderson would say: ‘Well, old boy, any news of the twins?’ and he wouldn’t answer. He would just be smiling quietly to himself.

  He smiled now as he thought of the private happiness which would be his; of the secret which he would carry with him throughout the day.

  2

  At 6.45 that evening Mr Baker was walking up and down outside the entrance to the Savoy Grill, looking at his watch from time to time, and giving the impression of a man of the world, a well-known clubman, who preferred to meet the Lady Patricia (late as usual) as her Rolls-Royce drew up, and personally to conduct her inside. The Lady Patricia might be a little bewildered, left to herself, having always dined at the Ritz before; might be uncertain of the way into the restaurant—as, indeed, Mr Baker was. He was also not quite sure whether evening dress was necessary. He proposed, therefore, to follow the first arrivals obviously not in evening dress through the swing door with the air of being in their party, leaving his hat and coat where they left theirs, and accompanying them into the restaurant. Up till now he had somehow failed to do this. Each time that the opportunity had come he had told himself that it was still a little before his usual hour for dinner and that there was just time for one more saunter to the Strand and back. In this way, if he were lucky, he would miss the next opportunity also.

  The terrifying decision to dine at the Savoy had been taken at lunch that morning. The cup of coffee slopped into the saucer, the baked beans overrunning the side of the plate, the stained marble-topped table which had satisfied William Henry Baker for so long, suddenly disgusted the father of Shawn Baker. Not in these surroundings, not even in the homely comfort of a City chop-house, should Sir David’s health be drunk. To go West into the bright world of fashion, and be one with the heroes and heroines of so many serialized meals was indeed an alarming adventure to him; but to Shawn Baker it would be routine, and the friendly ‘Good evening, Sir David,’ of head-waiters a familiar sound in his ears. Perhaps Mr Baker’s ideas of heredity were a little muddled. Perhaps he was wrong in thinking that a sudden, uncharacteristic display of moral courage by the father can influence the character of a son already born. Perhaps he was right in thinking that a post-natal virtue, if some sign of it could be achieved, would at least be evidence of a latent virtue such as a son might have inherited and would bring to maturity. Right or wrong, fearfully he had pledged himself to dine in style that evening; right or wrong, he had told himself that on the keeping of his pledge the whole future of David Alistair Shawn Baker depended.

  The Savoy was the obvious tourney-ground. It was nearest to the familiar City, which was in itself a sort of comfort; it was the most advertised in novels. Moreover, young Dugdale, son of old Dugdale and now taken into partnership, who had begun his career in the clerks’ room (in order to ‘start at the bottom and work my way sideways’, as he put it cheerfully) had spoken so often of the girls he had taken to the Savoy that he had given it a solidity which made the adventure a little more plausible. Mr Baker was one of the firm, dining, as was the firm’s custom, at the Savoy. What was there frightening in that? Nothing. He had the money in his pocket, he was ready for anything, afraid of nobody.

  A taxi drew up at the door, and a man and a girl got out. With a weak feeling at the knees and a sick feeling in the stomach, Mr Baker followed them in.

  3

  The man was Mr Basil St John Wender, and the girl was Miss Charmian Flyte. Unlike David Alistair Shawn Baker, they had chosen (and who better?) their own names. Mr Wender was good-looking in a business-like way; a solid man of fifty with what he thought of (and hoped you would think of) as a Roman nose commanding a strongly coloured face, the red of a sanguine temperament fighting it out with the blue-black of a jaw which, for all his care, never seemed freshly shaved. To make up for this there was always an air of eau-de-Cologne about him. His hands were beautifully manicured; as indeed they should have been, seeing that Miss Charmian Flyte herself attended to them every week. She was what he would have called a pretty little thing; with more character of her own and less admiration for his than he supposed. This was the first time he had taken her out to dinner. Being a man of generous impulses where his own tastes were concerned, he had ordered champagne, and, as a result, they amused each other a good deal.

  They also found easy amusement in others. In Mr William Henry Baker, for instance.

  He was at a little table in the gangway, alone. With their backs to the glass screen separating them from the lounge they had him under their eyes; had so had him all through his dinner. It would not be true to say that Mr Baker was particularly conscious of them, for he felt that the eyes of all the early diners were upon him, that all the waiters were whispering about him; that, in short, what he was undergoing was not a romantic adventure, but an unpleasant ordeal. The prices of the strangely named foods were far beyond what he had expected, prices more suited to a purchase of the whole animal (whatever it was) from which the dish came. Conveying as best he could the suggestion that he was under doctor’s orders, he chose the most moderately priced dish he could identify, to be followed by the most translatable sweet; and, since wine was essential for the drinking of David’s health, he added a half-bottle of the cheapest Burgundy, telling himself, as he did so, that he was throwing money away, had been a fool to come, and that David’s chance of inheriting anything worth while from his father was now remote. Perhaps he would be like his mother, sons often were, and Maggie was perfect. What would she say when he confessed how wickedly extravagant he had been? He would have to tell her; he had never had any secrets from Maggie.

  Some, but not all, of his emotions were visible to Mr Wender and Miss Flyte. As Miss Flyte so well put it, the poor little man seemed like a fish out of water; and though neither of them had seen a fish out of water except on a fishmonger’s slab, when it bore little resemblance to Mr Baker, they agreed laughingly that this was exactly what he did look like.

  ‘Thought it was an A.B.C.,’ suggested Mr Wender, ‘and then found too late that it wasn’t. Having a little difficulty with his French, isn’t he?’ This was when Mr Baker was deeply involved in the menu. ‘Wonder what he’ll make of the wine-list?’

  ‘That’s easy, darling. He just says “25”, and there you are.’

  ‘I may be, but he isn’t. “25” is champagne. He won’t be having champagne,’ said Mr Wender, with the simple ostentation of one who was. ‘Well, girlie, enjoying yourself?’

  She nodded. ‘I always say there’s nothing like the dear old Savoy. It’s sort of different, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Another glass of Pommery?’

  ‘Just what Mother ordered,’ laughed Miss Flyte, as he-picked up the bottle.

  All through his dinner Mr Wender’s eyes invited the attention of his neighbours. The pretty girl he was entertaining, the lavishness of his entertainment, the forceful personality of the entertainer, were shared with them; even the people drinking cocktails in the lounge behind him could look enviously, admiringly, through the glass screen. Picking up the second bottle, he flicked an eye in that direction so as to include them, said ‘Good God!’ suddenly, and put the bottle down.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Miss Flyte.

  His hand to his cheek, his head averted, he told her.

  4

  It might have been Sir David Shawn Baker himself who lay back in his chair twirling his empty glass. He was at ease with the world. He saw himself taking Maggie to the Savoy on her next birthday. He imagined somebody asking him—not that anybody would—what he thought of the Ritz, and heard himself answering, ‘Well, personally, I prefer the Savoy,’ and perhaps something about ‘my usual table’. He wondered why he had ever been frightened. The whole thing was so
easy. You just decided where you would dine that night, went there, chose your dinner (and, of course, your bottle of wine) and dined. There was one trifling impediment which escaped him for the moment. Something which, in certain circumstances, might prevent full enjoyment of the evening. No, not Maggie’s absence; she and David had been with him all the time; at first encouraging him, then, as the half-bottle did its work, sharing his pride and satisfaction. But there had been a moment, a little while back, just before he had begun that second glass of Burgundy, when the roseate cloud in his mind had suddenly darkened. It couldn’t have been very important, because now everything was rosy again. Still, it was silly not to remember . . .

  The folded bill on his plate caught his eyes. Ah, that was it. He couldn’t pay the bill. All these potatoes and things added up surprisingly, and the waiter seemed to have made a mistake about the number of the Burgundy. ‘My son, Sir David, will pay it next time he comes in.’ Doubtless something could be arranged. He would give his mind to it directly. Just now it was resting with its feet up in a cosy warmth of contentment.

  A big important-looking man was coming to his table. Probably—what was that fellow’s name in that book?—Prince Florizel of Bohemia. Mr Baker was glad to see him.

  ‘How are you?’ said Mr Wender genially, holding out a large white hand.

  Mr Baker, shaking it, said that he was very well. Never better, in fact.

  ‘That’s good. I noticed that you were dining alone. My friend,’ he indicated her over his shoulder, and added confidentially, ‘one of the most famous actresses from the Comédie Française, is most anxious to meet you. I wonder if you would give us the great pleasure of finishing your meal at our table?’

  Mr Baker said that in fact he had finished it, three, or possibly four, minutes ago.

  ‘Still,’ smiled Mr Wender, in the persuasive voice which had launched a thousand companies, ‘you will let us give you a glass of champagne, a cigar, and a cup of coffee.’ He stopped a passing waiter and said, ‘Sir Joseph is dining with me. Just put that,’ he indicated the bill carelessly, ‘on to mine.’ He bowed to Mr Baker. ‘If you will give me that great pleasure?’