The Landlady Roald
Dahl
Billy Weaver had travelled down from London on the slow afternoon train, with a
change at Reading on the way, and by the time he got to Bath, it was about nine
o’clock in the evening, and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky
over the houses opposite the station entrance. But the air was deadly cold and
the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but is there a fairly
cheap hotel not too far away from here?”
“Try The Bell and Dragon,” the porter answered,
pointing down the road. “They might take you in. It’s about a quarter of a mile
along on the other side.”
Billy thanked him and picked up his suitcase and set out to walk the
quarter-mile to The Bell and Dragon. He had never been to Bath before. He
didn’t know anyone who lived there. But Mr. Greenslade at the head office in
London had told him it was a splendid town. “Find your own lodgings,” he had
said, “and then go along and report to the branch manager as soon as you’ve got
yourself settled.”
Billy was seventeen years old. He was wearing a
new navy-blue overcoat, a new brown trilby hat, and a new brown suit, and he
was feeling fine. He walked briskly down the street. He was trying to do
everything briskly these days. Briskness, he had decided, was the one
common characteristic of all successful businessmen. The big shots up at the
head office were absolutely fantastically brisk all the time. They were
amazing.
There were no shops on this wide street that he was walking along, only a line
of tall houses on each side, all of them identical. They had porches and
pillars and four or five steps going up to their front doors, and it was
obvious that once upon a time they had been very swanky residences. But now,
even in the darkness, he could see that the paint was peeling from the woodwork
on their doors and windows and that the handsome white facades were cracked and
blotchy from neglect.
Suddenly, in a downstairs window that was
brilliantly illuminated by a street lamp not six yards away, Billy caught sight
of a printed notice propped up against the glass in one of the upper panes. It
said BED AND BREAKFAST. There was a vase of yellow chrysanthemums, tall and
beautiful, standing just underneath the notice.
He stopped walking. He moved a bit closer.
Green curtains (some sort of velvety material) were hanging down on either side
of the window. The chrysanthemums looked wonderful beside them. He went right
up and peered through the glass into the room, and the first thing he saw was a
bright fire burning in the hearth. On the carpet in front of the fire, a pretty
little dachshund was curled up asleep with its nose tucked into its belly. The
room itself, so far as he could see in the half darkness, was filled with
pleasant furniture. There was a baby grand piano and a big sofa and several
plump armchairs, and in one corner he spotted a large parrot in a cage. Animals
were usually a good sign in a place like this, Billy told himself; and all in
all, it looked to him as though it would be a pretty decent house to stay in.
Certainly it would be more comfortable than The Bell and Dragon.
On the other hand, a pub would be more
congenial than a boardinghouse. There would be beer and darts in the evenings,
and lots of people to talk to, and it would probably be a good bit cheaper,
too. He had stayed a couple of nights in a pub once before and he had liked it.
He had never stayed in any boardinghouses, and, to be perfectly honest, he was
a tiny bit frightened of them. The name itself conjured up images of watery
cabbage, rapacious landladies, and a powerful smell of kippers in the living
room.
After dithering about like this in the cold for
two or three minutes, Billy decided that he would walk on and take a look at
The Bell and Dragon before making up his mind. He turned to go.
And now a queer thing happened to him. He was in the act of stepping back and
turning away from the window when all at once his eye was caught and held in
the most peculiar manner by the small notice that was there. BED AND BREAKFAST,
it said. BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST. Each word was
like a large black eye staring at him through the glass, holding him,
compelling him, forcing him to stay where he was and not to walk away from that
house, and the next thing he knew, he was actually moving across from the
window to the front door of the house, climbing the steps that led up to it,
and reaching for the bell.
He pressed the bell. Far away in a back room he
heard it ringing, and then at once —it must have been at once because he hadn’t
even had time to take his finger from the bell button—the door swung open and a
woman was standing there.
Normally you ring the bell and you have at least a half-minute’s wait before
the door opens. But this dame was like a jack-in-the-box. He pressed the
bell—and out she popped! It made him jump.
She was about forty-five or fifty years old,
and the moment she saw him, she gave him a warm, welcoming smile.
“ Please come in,” she said pleasantly. She stepped aside, holding the door
wide open, and Billy found himself automatically starting forward. The
compulsion or, more accurately, the desire to follow after her into that house
was extraordinarily strong.
“I saw the notice in the window,” he said,
holding himself back.
“Yes, I know.”
“I was wondering about a room.”
“It’s all ready for you, my dear,” she said.
She had a round pink face and very gentle blue eyes.
“I was on my way to The Bell and Dragon,” Billy
told her. “But the notice in your window just happened to catch my eye.”
“My dear boy,” she said, “why don’t you come in
out of the cold?”
“How much do you charge?”
“Five and sixpence a night, including
breakfast.”
It was fantastically cheap. It was less than
half of what he had been willing to pay.
“If that is too much,” she added, “then perhaps
I can reduce it just a tiny bit. Do you desire an egg for breakfast? Eggs are
expensive at the moment. It would be sixpence less without the egg.”
“Five and sixpence is fine,” he answered. “I
should like very much to stay here.”
“I knew you would. Do come in.”
She seemed terribly nice. She looked exactly
like the mother of one’s best school friend welcoming one into the house to
stay for the Christmas holidays. Billy took off his hat and stepped over the threshold.
“Just hang it there,” she said, “and let me
help you with your coat.”
There were no other hats or coats in the hall.
There were no umbrellas, no walking sticks—nothing.
“We have it all to ourselves,” she said,
smiling at him over her shoulder as she led the way upstairs. “You see, it
isn’t very often I have the pleasure of taking a visitor into my little nest.”
The old girl is slightly dotty, Billy told
himself. But at five and sixpence a night, who cares about that? “I should’ve
thought you’d be simply swamped with applicants,” he said politely.
“Oh, I am, my dear, I am, of course I am. But
the trouble is that I’m inclined to be just a teeny-weeny bit choosy and
particular—if you see what I mean.”
“Ah, yes.”
“But I’m always ready. Everything is always
ready day and night in this house just on the off chance that an acceptable
young gentleman will come along. And it is such a pleasure, my dear, such a
very great pleasure when now and again I open the door and I see someone
standing there who is just exactly right.” She was halfway up the stairs, and
she paused with one hand on the stair rail, turning her head and smiling down
at him with pale lips. “Like you,” she added, and her blue eyes travelled
slowly all the way down the length of Billy’s body, to his feet, and then up
again.
On the second-floor landing she said to him,
“This floor is mine.”
They climbed up another flight. “And this one
is all yours,” she said. “Here’s your room. I do hope you’ll like it.” She took
him into a small but charming front bedroom, switching on the light as she went
in.
“The morning sun comes right in the window, Mr.
Perkins. It is Mr. Perkins, isn’t it?”
“No,” he said. “It’s Weaver.”
“Mr. Weaver. How nice. I’ve put a water bottle
between the sheets to air them out, Mr. Weaver. It’s such a comfort to have a
hot-water bottle in a strange bed with clean sheets, don’t you agree? And you
may light the gas fire at any time if you feel chilly.”
“Thank you,” Billy said. “Thank you ever so
much.” He noticed that the bedspread had been taken off the bed and that the
bedclothes had been neatly turned back on one side, all ready for someone to
get in.
“I’m so glad you appeared,” she said, looking
earnestly into his face. “I was beginning to get worried.”
“That’s all right,” Billy answered brightly.
“You mustn’t worry about me.” He put his suitcase on the chair and started to
open it.
“And what about supper, my dear? Did you manage
to get anything to eat before you came here?”
“I’m not a bit hungry, thank you,” he said. “I
think I’ll just go to bed as soon as possible because tomorrow I’ve got to get
up rather early and report to the office.”
“Very well, then. I’ll leave you now so that
you can unpack. But before you go to bed, would you be kind enough to pop into
the sitting room on the ground floor and sign the book? Everyone has to do that
because it’s the law of the land, and we don’t want to go breaking any laws at
this stage in the proceedings, do we?” She gave him a little wave of the hand
and went quickly out of the room and closed the door.
Now, the fact that his landlady appeared to be
slightly off her rocker didn’t worry Billy in the least. After all, she not
only was harmless—there was no question about that—but she was also quite
obviously a kind and generous soul. He guessed that she had probably lost a son
in the war, or something like that, and had never gotten over it.
So a few minutes later, after unpacking his
suitcase and washing his hands, he trotted downstairs to the ground floor and
entered the living room. His landlady wasn’t there, but the fire was glowing in
the hearth, and the little dachshund was still sleeping soundly in front of it.
The room was wonderfully warm and cosy. I’m a lucky fellow, he thought, rubbing
his hands. This is a bit of all right.
He found the guest book lying open on the
piano, so he took out his pen and wrote down his name and address. There were
only two other entries above his on the page, and as one always does with guest
books, he started to read them. One was a Christopher Mulholland from Cardiff.
The other was Gregory W. Temple from Bristol.
That’s funny, he thought suddenly. Christopher
Mulholland. It rings a bell.
Now where on earth had he heard that rather
unusual name before?
Was it a boy at school? No. Was it one of his
sister’s numerous young men, perhaps, or a friend of his father’s? No, no, it
wasn’t any of those. He glanced down again at the book.
Christopher Mulholland
231 Cathedral Road, Cardiff
Gregory W. Temple
27 Sycamore Drive, Bristol
As a matter of fact, now he came to think of
it, he wasn’t at all sure that the second name didn’t have almost as much of a
familiar ring about it as the first.
“Gregory 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 odd? Maybe it was in the newspapers. They weren’t
famous in any way, were they? I mean famous cricketers7 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 incredibly
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 fingernails.
“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 that 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 toward 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?
At length, she said, “Mr. Mulholland was a
great one for his tea. Never in my life have I seen anyone drink as much tea as
dear, sweet Mr. Mulholland.”
“I suppose he left fairly recently,” Billy
said. He was still puzzling his head about the two names. He was positive now
that he had seen them in the newspapers—in the headlines.
“Left?” she said, arching her brows. “But my
dear boy, he never left. He’s still here. Mr. Temple is also here. They’re on
the fourth floor, both of them together.”
Billy set his cup down slowly on the table and
stared at his landlady. She smiled back at him, and then she put out one of her
white hands and patted him comfortingly on the knee. “How old are you, my
dear?” she asked.
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen!” she cried. “Oh, it’s the perfect
age! Mr. Mulholland was also seventeen. But I think he was a trifle shorter
than you are; in fact I’m sure he was, and his teeth weren’t quite so white.
You have the most beautiful teeth, Mr. Weaver, did you know that?”
“They’re not as good as they look,” Billy said.
“They’ve got simply masses of fillings in them at the back.”
“Mr. Temple, of course, was a little older,”
she said, ignoring his remark. “He was actually twenty-eight. And yet I never
would have guessed it if he hadn’t told me, never in my whole life. There
wasn’t a blemish on his body.”
“A what?” Billy said.
“His skin was just like a baby’s.”
There was a pause. Billy picked up his teacup
and took another sip of his tea; then he set it down again gently in its
saucer. He waited for her to say something else, but she seemed to have lapsed
into another of her silences. He sat there staring straight ahead of him into
the far corner of the room, biting his lower lip.
“That parrot,” he said at last. “You know
something? It had me completely fooled when I first saw it through the window.
I could have sworn it was alive.”
“Alas, no longer.”
“It’s most terribly clever the way it’s been
done,” he said. “It doesn’t look in the least bit dead. Who did it?”
“I did.”
“ You did?”
“Of course,” she said. “And have you met my
little Basil as well?” She nodded toward the dachshund curled up so comfortably
in front of the fire. Billy looked at it. And suddenly, he realized that this
animal had all the time been just as silent and motionless as the parrot. He
put out a hand and touched it gently on the top of its back. The back was hard
and cold, and when he pushed the hair to one side with his fingers, he could
see the skin underneath, greyish black and dry and perfectly preserved.
“Good gracious me,” he said. “How absolutely
fascinating.” He turned away from the dog and stared with deep admiration at
the little woman beside him on the sofa. “It must be most awfully difficult to
do a thing like that.”
“Not in the least,” she said. “I stuff all
my little pets myself when they pass away. Will you have another cup of
tea?”
“No, thank you,” Billy said. The tea tasted
faintly of bitter almonds, and he didn’t much care for it.
“You did sign the book, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“That’s good. Because later on, if I happen to
forget what you were called, then I could always come down here and look it up.
I still do that almost every day with Mr. Mulholland and Mr. . . . Mr. . .
.”
“Temple,” Billy said, “Gregory Temple. Excuse
my asking, but haven’t there been any other guests here except them in
the last two or three years?”
Holding her teacup high in one hand, inclining
her head slightly to the left, she looked up at him out of the corners of her
eyes and gave him another gentle little smile.
“No, my dear,” she said. “Only you.”
