Photo by Don Stouder on Unsplash
With thanks to Ian Theodoreson, I am delighted to host his story entitled The Unexpected Visitor
The estate agent blurb described the house as ‘A substantial Victorian property carefully restored by the present owners, preserving many of the original features. It is located on one of the town’s premier roads overlooking the golf course’.
What the write up didn’t describe was the fact that the basement displayed yet more original features as it hadn’t been subjected to the same ‘careful restoration’ the rest of the house had. Indeed it had not been subject to any restoration as the Browns had run out of steam. They had devoted five years of their lives and all of their savings doing up the main house and had decided that enough was enough. The basement became the repository for all those things that will be incredibly useful one day and, amongst the piles of boxes, crates and a well-stocked wine rack, a family of mice installed itself. On the whole they kept themselves to themselves, only occasionally encroaching upon the main living area, and regular assaults with a variety of mousetraps by Mr Brown helped keep their numbers to manageable levels.
A neighbour down the road, sensing Mr & Mrs Brown needed a new diversion from decorating, suggested he introduce them to the golf club, at which point they hung up their paint brushes and instead attempted to master the art of hitting a small ball in a straight line, without much success. Gary Player once famously said of golf ‘The more I play, the luckier I get’: if he meant that as a generally applicable aphorism then he was wrong with regard to the Browns.
Their efforts at golf were a disappointment both to the Browns themselves and to the more conservative members of the club, who viewed them with some suspicion. Not only did they not master the technical aspects of the sport, but they didn’t really fit in with the social elite who commanded the club house either. The club secretary was a particularly pompous man, Jack Cuthbert who, in his spare time, doubled up as their local Councillor. His wife Heather, by contrast, was a rather timid woman whose presence merely served to amplify her husband’s sense of superiority.
After a number of years the time came to sell their ‘substantial Victorian pile’ and to move to something smaller. Mr Brown had something of a love/hate relationship with older properties – there was a sense of grandeur living in them but it was constantly tempered with the knowledge that at any moment the decorative ceiling might crash down around ones ears. Consequently, once they decided to sell, the need to do so became urgent, before some further defect revealed itself that would take time and energy to address.
A number of prospective buyers looked around but no offers were forthcoming. The Browns decided that the agent wasn’t doing a good enough job at explaining the potential benefits of living in the house so they decided that they would show the next people around themselves: maybe give prospective buyers a sense of the genteel lifestyle Mr Brown felt the house projected.
It was with a heavy heart therefore that they learned from the agent that ‘a lovely couple, a local Councillor and his wife’, had booked to see the house. Jack Cuthbert was every bit as pompous looking round the house as he was propping up the bar in the club house however, not deterred, Mrs Brown had arranged to serve tea and cake in the living room after the ‘tour’.
In actual fact the Cuthberts were showing some interest in the house not least, Mr Brown suspected, because its imposing bulk could be seen from the nineteenth green. It was however, at this moment, that an unexpected visitor made his presence known. During a lull in the conversation Mr Brown heard the unmistakable ‘snap’ of a Little Nipper mousetrap springing into life. It had been hidden beside the log basket, just out of sight and he had completely forgotten it was there.
Generally when a mousetrap activates, the kill is swift and clean. Occasionally however it catches the mouse a glancing blow and traps its victim without finishing it off. This was one such occasion and the unfortunate animal, its head firmly caught but still able to move its hind legs, leaped into the air and onto the carpet directly in front of Mrs Cuthbert’s feet. There was a moment’s silence as everyone contemplated the vision before them, broken by Mrs Cuthbert’s scream as she threw the piece of cake she was holding into the air and rushed out of the room. ‘How dare you’, shouted Jack Cuthbert, his face red with rage, ‘my wife is a vegetarian’.
It was at this moment that Mr Brown’s calm demeanour finally deserted him – all the tension of the sale, his general distaste for the Cuthberts and the preposterousness of the situation overwhelmed him. ‘Well, we were not expecting her to eat it!’ he shouted sarcastically after their retreating forms and watched them storm up the driveway.
‘Well, that went well’ said his wife, calmly. ‘I suspect they won’t be making an offer on the house though’.
‘And you better deal with that’ she said pointing to the writhing body on the floor, still trapped in the Little Nipper, ‘I think it’s got breathing problems’.
The following day the Browns resigned their membership of the golf club.
