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between her swiftly moving fingers. ‘But she’s a wilful woman and stubborn as a mule. “Leave the curtains,” I says to ’er. “Leave ’em for now, and Jack’ll come over next week and hang ’em for you.” But no, she wants ’em up then and there, and if I won’t ’elp ’er, she says, she’ll get up on the chair and hang ’em herself. “Drat the curtains!” I says. I wish I’d never brought ’em over in the first place.’
    ‘It must be difficult for you,’ said Mrs Morris, while Abbie smiled inside herself – like her mother, giving nothing away.
    ‘So, of course,’ Mrs Pattison continued, ‘I’ve got no choice but to climb up and hang the dratted things meself. Let Mother start trying to do it and she’d only ’ave a fall. And she ain’t got over the last one yet. That was terrible that time. Did I tell you about that afternoon when she . . .’
    Her voice went on.
    Mrs Morris occasionally, if half-heartedly, complained about the Pattisons’ visits – though more specifically of the visits of Pattison’s wife. ‘ He’s not too bad,’ she would say to her husband. ‘And when it’s just the two of you I can relax, concentrate on a bit of reading or something. But when she comes too, it’s goodbye to any thoughts of relaxing, that’s for sure.’ Then she would sigh, as if relenting. ‘Still, I suppose I can put up with it now and again. Just thank God it’s not every week, that’s all.’
    As far as Abbie knew, Mrs Pattison was about the only person in the village who ever engaged her mother in conversation – if such it could be called – and even that was forced upon her. As for Mr Pattison, Abbie observed that her mother rarely exchanged more than a good evening and a good night with him.
    Tonight the chess game finished just on ten past nine and as Abbie’s father put the pieces away after his victory he asked Pattison and his wife if they’d like to stay for another cup of tea and another drop of ale. While Pattison gratefully accepted the offer of ale, his wife declined the tea, saying that as much as she’d like a drop more, it was inclined to give her insomnia, so if it was all the same she’d join her husband and have a little drop of ale too – which would help to settle her stomach.
    What little ale was left Abbie, getting a nod from her father, shared between the visitors. For the next fifteen minutes or so they sat and chatted, the conversation coming mostly from the men. Abbie listened fascinated as her father spoke of a book that he had recently been reading, which had apparently caused considerable disturbance in the outside world. Written by a man named Darwin, she learned, it was called On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and all boiled down to the idea that there had never been any special time of creation; that there never had been that week in which God had created the world and everything in it – in fact, it appeared that God had not created the world at all, but that all the living things had somehow developed from other living things.
    ‘Well, I never did!’ said Mrs Pattison. ‘Who ever heard of such a thing! That’s blasphemy. And what about us , then? Where did we come from, I’d like to know?’
    ‘Well,’ said Abbie’s father, ‘according to Darwin we’re like every other living creature – we developed from lower forms of life.’
    ‘Lower forms of life?’ Mrs Pattison said. ‘What d’you mean by that?’
    ‘Well – other animals.’
    ‘Other animals , indeed!’
    ‘That’s what Darwin says,’ Frank Morris went on. ‘And going by what I read in the papers there’s a lot that agrees with him.’
    ‘Papers,’ said Mrs Pattison contemptuously. ‘People read too much in the papers, if you ask me. I never heard of such a thing. What kind of animals? Pigs and horses and such, I suppose.’
    ‘What do you think, Mrs Morris?’ asked Mr Pattison, turning to Abbie’s mother. ‘D’you think there could