return of the husband. Ellen said she’d run her to the bus stop only their car was a write-off. Brenda said she thought perhaps she’d call Peter and he could run her to the hospital. She thought labour might have started.
And so indeed it had. Brenda’s baby was simply and safely delivered, happy and healthy and not noticeably premature. Whatever had been going on in the Parkin household had at least not affected Brenda, or her baby.
A taped telephone interview between Valerie and Eleanor
A: PUNISHMENT, YOU ASK? Perhaps it’s because I’ve never been a mother that thoughts of ‘punishment’ do not spring at once to mind. What kind of punishment will be meted out to evil-doers in Darcy’s Utopia? Good heavens, it will simply be exile from the place. To know that ‘punishment’ entails being kept away can only make a place more desirable to those who live there.
Q: But where will these exiles go?
A: To any of the other traditional societies which will no doubt abound: to places where they lock murderers in death row for years while debating whether or not to kill them, or child molesters with violent gangsters who love little children, or imprison maintenance defaulters who cannot bear to finance their ex-wife’s boyfriend, while letting others off who simply abandon all responsibility for their children: where the horrors of TV are the reward for good behaviour, and large sums of money for the sin of usury. Let defaulters be sent out to live for a while in the grimy, exhausted, baffling society we take for granted: where we must travel in underground tunnels to get to our place of normally quite unnecessary employment (unnecessary for the group other than to keep the wheels turning; necessary for the individual to provide the money which must be made but brings so little pleasure), to be consumed therein, like as not, by flash fires; let our troublemakers-in-exile go but for a breath of fresh air and camaraderie on a boat upon the river—to find the rules of navigation so irrational, so clouded by the custom and practice of the past that even to do something so human, so natural, is to endanger life itself—they will soon reflect on the errors of their ways. The wheels of industry outside Darcy’s Utopia turn to make products no one wants or needs, from nuclear warheads to teabag squeezers. What is wrong with fingers when it comes to tea bags? Let them hop about a bit in the heat of the moment, it will do them no harm, and under those turning wheels the human spirit, the human love of doing nothing for quite a lot of the time, except tinkering a bit here, fixing a bit there, lulls in activity which alternate with periods of hard and concentrated work, is crushed. I hope Aura pays your telephone bills at the Holiday Inn?
Q: Yes. You were saying?
A: I was saying I wasn’t sure that it was morally sound thus to ask Aura to support you in your love nest. I think the Independent should foot at least some of the bills. If you were living in Darcy’s Utopia your punishment would be being required to slip out to Birmingham, say, for a day or two, to wander around the concrete walkways that intertwine above its tangled motorways, and breathe in the fumes, observe the struggling sun. You certainly wouldn’t do anything to threaten your stay in Darcy’s Utopia again—or at the very least you would keep your telephone calls short.
Q: You mean there are to be no cars in Darcy’s Utopia?
A: There will be a few cars, many bicycles, and recycling stations on every street corner. There will be a free restaurant in every square—and tree-lined squares will abound which will refresh the ozone layer—where such local people as love cooking will compete in the culinary arts.
Q: Hang on a bit. Who’s doing the cooking? Whoever it is isn’t doing it for wages, because there aren’t any wages.
A: The cooks are working out their Community Unit. How does that grab you, Valerie? No more income tax, merely a Community Unit charge. We will not be taxed out of existence, will not watch the noughts wiped out on our bank statements, as happens wherever as a group we try to make things fair, but into existence. We will not pay our taxes in money—what will be the point, for money now pours in a ceaseless stream from the high street cashpoints? Yes, Valerie,