“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
440 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.