Exmac

Like any other elderly party off to London for lunch at the club or a spot of Christmas shopping, the squire of Birch Grove boarded a first-class railway carriage at Haywards Heath station near his home in exurbanite Sussex. Curtained by the Times, he rode in upper-crust anonymity into London's Victoria Station, fumbled absentmindedly for his pass at the ticket barrier, and left the station on foot. His destination this time was not 10 Downing Street or Admiralty House, but 12 Catherine Place, where Harold Macmillan stayed last week with his son Maurice and daughter-in-law Katie.

Macmillan's mission in town, only two months after his resignation as Britain's Prime Minister, was to attend the House of Commons post-mortem debate on the Profumo-Keeler scandal.

The affair by now had about as much charge as morning-after champagne, but Macmillan felt it was his duty to be present. From the front-bench aisle seat that is traditionally reserved for former Prime Ministers, Macmillan finally rose to deliver his last, compellingly honest words on the case that came near to toppling his government last summer. Though gaunt and ashen-faced from his recent illness, 69-year-old Harold Macmillan threw back his shoulders with the kind of dignity under attack that comes instinctively to the Old Guardsman. "Of course," he said, "I was deceived. That must always be for me and for the whole House a great sorrow." Soon afterward, Harold Macmillan, who held office for almost seven straight years--a record unmatched by any other peacetime Prime Minister in nearly half a century--rose and, bowing to the Speaker, drove off to No. 12.

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