"There's something about these mice." He said slowly, his arm around Patsy's waist
“Have you seen Emily?” asked Pip. It became almost a password and had enchanting results
The Love Trap
A short story by JILL GILL
ILLUSTRATED BY COSCRAVE
WHEN Patsy heard the tap on her door she thought it was Sam, and didn't hurry to open it. He was taking her to lunch at The Rocket, a new roadhouse by the river, and he had promised to call for her at twelve-thirty.
It was now twelve-forty-five. Sam was often late; with him, business came first.
The tap came again and Patsy opened the door, and found that it wasn't Sam. It was the small boy from the flat below, looking up at her with anxious blue eyes.
"Please," he said earnestly, "have you seen a white mouse with brown patches on him . . . sort of skewbald?"
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"You mean you've lost three?"
He nodded. "They'll be all right so long as no one sets a trap. There aren't any cats in the house." He hesitated. "You won't set a trap, will you?" he pleaded. "If you see Walter or Matilda or Emily, just thump on the floor, and I'll come up."
Patsy smiled. "You should be more careful with your mice," she said, severely. "But I promise not to set a trap."
"I am careful," the boy told her. "But the groceries came just as I was shutting their house, and Mum was out, and I hurried to the door."
"I see," Patsy said gravely. "You and your mother live alone, don't you? "
He nodded. "Dad's dead, and Mum has to go out to work." He paused. "That's why she lets me keep mice," he confided." They're company, and they don't annoy the other tenants like a puppy or a cat would'."
"Except when they escape? "
He sighed. "It's the first time, and they're nice mice. You needn't stand on a chair and yell!" He turned away.
"Wait!" Patsy said. "I've got some chocolates."
She brought the enormous box that Sam had given her last week.
"What's your name ? " she asked.
"Peter Brand," the boy told her, eyeing the box of chocolates with obvious disbelief. "But everyone calls me Pip. I couldn't take all those!"
" Please! If I eat them I might get fat-and Sam my young man, likes me slim!"
Pip took the box, holding it almost reverently. "Thank you," he said. "It's super! "
He met Sam on the stairs as he went down, only he didn't know it was Sam.
"Hello," "Sam said, suspiciously. " Who gave you that box of chocolates?"
"The red-haired lady in the top fiat," Pip told him. "Have you seen a mouse?" he added, hopefully.
Sam shook his head. " If I do, I'll know what to do!"
Pip was appalled "Please!" he entreated. "Don't kill it! It's mine. I've lost three."
" If you're careless enough to lose them you can't grumble if someone kills them," Sam said shortly, and went on up, puffing a little and grunting, because there was no lift. "Nasty creatures, mice!" he added, "vermin!"
Pip left the chocolates in his mother's kitchen, and went on down to the flat below. He hesitated before knocking on the door. Mr. Grant was tall and stern and rather terrifying, and doubtless he, too, would kill mice.
"What do you want ?" he asked, eyeing Pip balefully. He had dark, bushy eyebrows, very blue eyes, and his hair was beginning to turn grey.
"Please, have you seen a mouse?" Pip said, in a small, apologetic voice. " A white mouse with brown patches."
"I take it you've lost one?"
Pip nodded. "Three."
The corners of Mr. Grant's mouth twitched, almost as though he were going to smile, but all he said was, "Very careless of you! So far as I know, they're not here."
"Please, sir," Pip said quickly, before the door shut, "please, sir, don't set a mouse trap."
Mr. Grant smiled then, and the smile made him look quite different. "No trap," he said. "I give you my word." He hesitated. " Would you care for a biscuit? "
"Thank you," Pip said, because it seemed impolite refuse, and he liked biscuits as much" as chocolates.
Mr. Grant went away and, when he came back, he was carrying a large tin of shortbread. "There you are," he said, "I hope you find your mice."
"Thank you very much, sir," Pip murmured, overwhelmed.
LEAVING the shortbread beside the chocolates in the kitchen, Pip went down to the last fiat, the one in the basement.
Timothy Court, the young man who lived there, was tall and dark and friendly, and Pip came to the point.
"Please," he said, "have you. seen three mice? It's very important."
Timothy shook his head "Fraid not. When did they escape ?"
"This morning. I don't go to school on Saturdays," Pip explained. "I lost them when the grocer left Mum's order and I can’t find them anywhere."
"Have you tried the other flats?" Timothy asked.
Pip nodded. "They're not there. " You won't set a trap, will you?"
"Wouldn't dream of doing such a thing," Timothy said, blithely. "Come in and have a glass of lemonade."
Pip was drinking the lemonade when he saw the photograph on Timothy's mantelpiece.
THAT'S the lady in the top flat!" he said.
"Patsy Doran," Timothy agreed.
"But she said her young man's name is Sam!"
"It is now," Timothy said. "But once upon a time it was Timothy."
Pip considered this. "Then why have you still got her photograph?" he asked.
"Because I still love her!"
"Oh!"
"Only she doesn't love me," Timothy added, wryly. "I'm just a poor, struggling journalist and Sam, the man she loves, is a plutocrat. He owns a chocolate factory."
"But she can't eat chocolates," Pip pointed out. "They make her fat." He finished his lemonade and put the glass on the table. "Thank you very much," he added. "I'd better go now. Mum will be home. If you see a mouse-"
"I'll let you know," Timothy promised.
Pip paused by the door. "What's Sam like? " he asked. "Is he sort of podgy, with a blue suit?"
"That's right," Timothy said gloomingly. "Why? "
"I just wondered," Pip said. "He kills mice."
"He would!" Timothy scoffed. " He's got no imagination!"
Pip went upstairs and found his mother in the kitchen. She was nearly as young and pretty as Patsy Doran, only her hair was fair, like Pip's, and she was a little too thin.
"Where’ve you been, poppet?" she asked. "And where did those chocolates and the shortbread come from? And what's happened to the mice?"
She was very quick and she never missed anything.
While Pip told her what had happened she whisked up an omelette for lunch.
"The trouble with mice is, they're so small," she said. "It's hard to find something that's only as big as a nibble! But they won't be far away. I expect they're hiding in this kitchen and they'll turn up soon."
For once, she was wrong. The mice didn't turn up, and their absence had the oddest effect on the other tenants.
As Timothy had told Pip, once upon a time he and Patsy had been in love. He had even asked her to marry him. But he was careless over money andmuch too generous, and Patsy said she couldn't face a life of skimping and saving. She had six brothers and sisters at home in Cumberland, and her father was a country parson, so that she knew all about it.
Then, one day, she met Sam at a party. Sam was solid and secure and careful.
"Why can't you be like that? " Patsy asked Tim.
"Like what?" he retorted. "An animated money bag?"
They quarrelled and Patsy refused to make it up. When she saw Tim she swept past him with her nose in the air, and she let Sam take her out in his imposing car. Tim pretended he didn't care. He went round whistling self-consciously, and grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
Then Pip's mice escaped and, to Tim's astonishment, Patsy began to thaw. She met him on the doorstep one night and instead of sweeping past him, nose in air, she hesitated.
"Those mice," she said. "Has Pip found them?"
"Not so far as I know," Timothy replied.
SHE was gone before he could say more, but he felt absurdly happy and light-hearted, and grateful to Pip. He went. bounding up to the Brand's fiat and invited Pip to go to the zoo with him the following Saturday.
The next time Tim and Patsy met it was he who broke the ice.
"Seen a mouse yet?" he asked, and Patsy smiled.
"No," she said. And then, "My youngest brother has mice. He's rather like Pip."
While Tim was wondering what to say next, and how to keep her talking, she left him, and went on up to her flat. She had heard nibbling in her kitchen the night before, and to-day she had managed to buy an old-fashioned box mousetrap, the kind that imprisons the mouse and cheese, without hurting the mouse.
Hugh Grant found himself asking tenderly after the mice. Once upon a time he had kept mice himself, and loved them dearly, Once upon a time he had longed for a son like Pip. But in 1943, when, as a young man of twenty-four he had been in a Japanese prison camp, his girl, Felicity, had fallen in love with an American.
It was lonely living by himself, coming home to the cold, empty flat. But now he found himself watching for Pip, listening for the sound of his small feet clattering on the stairs. Pip. . . or his young mother.
She was kind and gentle, and each time Hugh inquired about the mice she invited him up to her flat for a cup of coffee. Sometimes she invited him to dinner, and she was a good cook, although she looked a mere girl. Hugh hoped that the mice would stay hidden for a long time, because once they were captured there'd be no excuse to waylay Pip and Sally Brand.
Sally Brand . . . it was a comforting name, a name you could trust. She had a hard time, too, supporting herself and Pip. She spent nothing on her-self. Her clothes were old and neatly darned, and she never went out in the evenings. She needed someone to lean on, someone to look after her.
PATSY DORAN caught a mouse in her box mouse trap on the night that Sam asked her to marry him. They'd been to a party and left early, because Patsy had a headache.
Sam drove her home. She invited him in for some coffee, and he proposed.
"I need a wife like you," he said in his flat, harsh voice. " You can talk to people. You're good at entertaining, and you look like a film star! How about it, Patsy? When will you marry me ?"
"I . . . " Patsy began, and stopped. " There's a mouse in my trap! "she said, beaming with delight. "I can hear it scrabbling."
Sam was annoyed. "If you've got a poker, I'll deal with it."
"But it's Pip's mouse! Walter or Matilda or Emily!"
"A mouse is a mouse! Vermin!" Sam said, heading for the kitchenette.
"No!" Patsy cried, appalled. "It’s Pip's mouse! I shall take it down to him to-morrow."
"Don't be soft!" Sam grumbled, advancing on the trap.
"If you dare to hurt even one of its whiskers I'll never speak to you again!" Patsy raged. "And I can't marry you, Sam. I don't love you. I thought I did, but I don't."
"Because I want to kill a mouse? "
"Because you've no imagination! You're just an animated money bag!" she told him hysterically, snatching the trap from his hand.
He was angry. And, perhaps, he had a right to be, Patsy realized. He collected his hat and coat and left without saying good-bye, and Patsy knew that he would never come back. She had deliberately thrown away comfort and security. But what were comfort and security compared with love?
Her heart ached for Tim. She had missed him so dreadfully all these months. And when she saw him he looked as though he didn't care!
Clutching the mousetrap, Patsy tan downstairs. There was a light under Tim's door, and she could hear the drumming of his typewriter.
She tapped, her heart racing, and the drumming ceased.
"Come in," Tim called.
Patsy opened the door. "Look!" she said, breathlessly, "A mouse!"
Tim saw only her eyes. He jumped up and Patsy and the mouse and the mousetrap were in his arms.
"Forgive me?" she whispered, as he kissed her.
Later she said, "Pip told me you still cared, or I wouldn't have dared to come. He said you still had my photograph! He loves you, and he hates Sam! Sam kills mice."
They examined the mousetrap with the small brown and white mouse and the large lump of cheese inside.
"You're not the only one!" Tim told the mouse. "I've got a mouse, too, safe in a biscuit tin! I found her sitting on my mat eating crumbs, about half an hour ago."
"Shall we take them up now?" Patsy suggested. "There's a light in the Brand's flat and I heard voices."
Sally Brand had been darning when Hugh arrived, bearing a portly and complacent mouse.
"I found the little beggar asleep in my bedroom slipper," he said.
"It's Walter! ""Sally cried, joyfully.
"Oh no, It’s not!" Hugh contradicted. "This mouse is either Emily or Matilda, and she's about to become a mother, if I'm not mistaken!"
"WHAT shall I do?" Sally said, "they have such large families!" It was comforting to be able to appeal to Hugh.
She took Emily (or Matilda) to the Mouse House and popped her in.
"She looks lonely by herself," Hugh said, thoughtfully.
Sally looked at the mouse, and then she looked at Hugh, and she knew that he, too, was lonely.
"I'll have no excuse to come and see you now," he sighed.
"How about Walter and the other one?" she teased.
"I'd forgotten them! "
"Couldn't you still come, even if, they were here?" Sally said, gently. "It's good for Pip to have a man about the place. He was only two when Tom, my husband, died."
"And how about you?" Hugh asked. "Would you miss me if I stayed away? "
" Of course," she said simply. "I'd miss you dreadfully."
He knew then that one day soon he would ask her to be his wife, and she knew, too. But not yet because, at present, their love was like a closed bud. When the first petal unfolded . . . he would ask her then.
They were chatting over the inevitable cup of coffee when Tim and Patsy arrived, bearing a biscuit tin and a mousetrap and the unmistakable enchantment of the just-betrothed.
"There's something about these mice," Tim said slowly, his arm round Patsy's waist. By this time the mouse was sitting up happily in the palm of Sally's hand.
Hugh nodded, smiling at Sally.
"When Pip came to my door and said, Have you seen a mouse?' . . ."
The door of Pip's bedroom opened quietly. "Have you seen a mouse?" he hissed. "Have you. . .?"
" We have!" they told him, joyfully. THE END
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