Tales of the Unexpected

Temple?’ he said aloud, searching his memory. ‘Christopher Mulholland?…’
    ‘Such charming boys,’ a voice behind him answered, and he turned and saw his landlady sailing into the room with a large silver tea-tray in her hands. She was holding it well out in front of her, and rather high up, as though the tray were a pair of reins on a frisky horse.
    ‘They sound somehow familiar,’ he said.
    ‘They do? How interesting.’
    ‘I’m almost positive I’ve heard those names before somewhere. Isn’t that queer? Maybe it was in the newspapers. They weren’t famous in any way, were they? I mean famous cricketers or footballers or something like that?’
    ‘Famous,’ she said, setting the tea-tray down on the low table in front of the sofa. ‘Oh no, I don’t think they were famous. But they were extraordinarily handsome, both of them, I can promise you that. They were tall and young and handsome, my dear, just exactly like you.’
    Once more, Billy glanced down at the book. ‘Look here,’ he said, noticing the dates. ‘This last entry is over two years old.’
    ‘It is?’
    ‘Yes, indeed. And Christopher Mulholland’s is nearly a year before that – more than
three years
ago.’
    ‘Dear me,’ she said, shaking her head and heaving a dainty little sigh. ‘I would never have thought it. How time does fly away from us all, doesn’t it, Mr Wilkins?’
    ‘It’s Weaver,’ Billy said. ‘W-e-a-v-e-r.’
    ‘Oh, of course it is!’ she cried, sitting down on the sofa. ‘How silly of me. I do apologize. In one ear and out the other, that’s me, Mr Weaver.’
    ‘You know something?’ Billy said. ‘Something that’s really quite extraordinary about all this?’
    ‘No, dear, I don’t.’
    ‘Well, you see – both of these names, Mulholland and Temple, I not only seem to remember each one of them separately, so to speak, but somehow or other, in some peculiar way, they both appear to be sort of connected together as well. As though they were both famous for the same sort of thing, if you see what I mean – like… well… like Dempsey and Tunney, for example, or Churchill and Roosevelt.’
    ‘How amusing,’ she said, ‘but come over here now, dear, and sit down beside me on the sofa and I’ll give you a nice cup of tea and a ginger biscuit before you go to bed.’
    ‘You really shouldn’t bother,’ Billy said. ‘I didn’t mean you to do anything like that.’ He stood by the piano, watching her as she fussed about with the cups and saucers. He noticed that she had small, white, quickly moving hands, and red finger-nails.
    ‘I’m almost positive it was in the newspapers I saw them,’ Billy said. ‘I’ll think of it in a second. I’m sure I will.’
    There is nothing more tantalizing than a thing like this which lingers just outside the borders of one’s memory. He hated to give up.
    ‘Now wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Wait just a minute. Mulholland… Christopher Mulholland… wasn’t
that
the name of the Eton schoolboy who was on a walking-tour through the West Country, and then all of a sudden…’
    ‘Milk?’ she said. ‘And sugar?’
    ‘Yes, please. And then all of a sudden…’
    ‘Eton schoolboy?’ she said. ‘Oh no, my dear, that can’t possibly be right because
my
Mr Mulholland was certainly not an Eton schoolboy when he came to me. He was a Cambridge undergraduate. Come over here now and sit next to me and warm yourself in front of this lovely fire. Come on. Your tea’s all ready for you.’ She patted the empty place beside her on the sofa, and she sat there smiling at Billy and waiting for him to come over.
    He crossed the room slowly, and sat down on the edge of the sofa. She placed his teacup on the table in front of him.
    ‘
There
we are,’ she said. ‘How nice and cosy this is, isn’t it?’
    Billy started sipping his tea. She did the same. For half a minute or so, neither of them spoke. But Billy knew that she was looking at him. Her body was half-turned towards him, and he could feel her eyes resting on his face, watching him over the rim of her teacup. Now and again, he caught a whiff of a peculiar smell that seemed to emanate directly from her person. It was not in the least unpleasant, and it reminded him – well, he wasn’t quite sure what it reminded him of. Pickled walnuts? New leather? Or was it the corridors of a hospital?
    ‘Mr Mulholland was a great one for his tea,’ she said at length. ‘Never in my life have I seen anyone drink