The Ugliest House in the World by Peter Ho Davies

Author:Peter Ho Davies [Davies, Peter Ho]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

January 1900

The Reverend Price preached on against the recanters through the winter. The hair had closed entirely over his head now and grew down almost as far as his shoulders. "Our Samson," they began to call him. It was said that he shaved three or four times a day, and people swore they had seen him practicing sermons in his kitchen with a Bible in one hand and a razor, flourished, in the other.

At New Year he spoke to them of evolution. "Professor Darwin writes that men only became men after a million years. First we were fish and then fowl and then swine and so on and so forth through every kind of beast until men." He shook his head. "Vain fancy. Has not the great scholar Bishop Usher made a careful accounting of all the generations begat through the Scriptures and proven the earth to be not above five thousand years old? Time enough for the Lord, but not for all the professor's changes. For what is change to Him that is unchanging? What is time to Him that can reach out and turn it back as easily as you move the hands on a pocket watch? Men are men and there's an end on it. The Lord God made us in His image, as surely as He put slate in these mountains for you." He paused for a moment to stare fiercely out at them. "And yet if Professor Darwin were living with us in Bethany today, he might not have so far to go to prove his point that man is descended from apes." He meant the Cynffonwyr, the men with tails, and with that he began to distribute a handbill with a list of their names.

On another occasion he handed out placards saying, "Nid oes bradwr yn y ty bwn—There is no traitor here," for the men to place in their parlor windows. Thomas asked Catrin's permission and she shrugged.

"What do I care?" she said.

He had stopped her going to chapel in the seventh month. She didn't show much, but ever since he had seen her struggling to kneel he made her keep indoors as much as possible. Even so, he felt people were talking about him behind his back.

123's hands healed in time for him to help move the furniture out of people's houses. Most men could have done it themselves, but few of them could bear to. They let the big man do it and shared some of the money they got for the pieces. At first they sold to relatives or friends—farmers from the valley, mostly—but soon there was more furniture on offer than the farmers knew what to do with and people from town—fishermen, shopgirls, domestics—began to come on trips to see what they could pick up.

Thomas's uncle still brought him potatoes once a week, saying, "I expect you'd win them from me at billiards by and by," so he sold only selected items. He would have liked Catrin to help him, but she told him, "You earned the money, you choose.

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