Q: Not just on Sundays, as your husband advised the Treasury in those heady days of the Bridport Scandal?
A: He did not go far enough. Every day of the week. It is how we make the transition from the money economy to Darcy’s Utopia. And nothing will taste better than food cooked by the community cooks—the healthier, the cleverer, the more energetic you are, the more work will be required of you. As things are, twenty-five per cent of us work to support the seventy-five per cent who do not. I don’t think we will see much drop in production—merely in anxiety. And of course if work is unpleasant you will cross off your Community Units really quickly, and be free to do as you like.
Q: I still think people only work for money.
A: Do you? No. You work because you like to do it. Mrs Khalid worked to get out of the house, for company. Her husband, the lawyer, I daresay worked from a sense of Commitment. Nerina worked to earn the attention of Jed. Her black magic circle worked to raise the Devil, and I’m sure without thought of monetary reward. You may say ‘you are talking about professional people, self-conscious people, the clever and the intelligent’—and yes, I am, but we have machines to do work, and people whose intense pleasure it is to make these machines. Any man who will only work for money let him not work at all. I don’t mind keeping him. It seems a small price to pay to live in Utopia. As it is, now that money buys so little, now the thrill of owning a car better than your neighbour’s, a better designed pair of jeans, begins to wear off, people work not for money but for the status money brings. Valerie? Are you still there?
Q: I was just moving the phone to my other hand.
A: You did call me. I didn’t call you. Where were we? Competition in the culinary arts. Yes, Brenda is a terrible cook, but a very good mother. She will expend her Community Units in childcare, not the communal cooking pot. Cooked food can of course be taken away to eat within the family unit, or eaten on the spot with friends. There will be little loneliness in Darcy’s Utopia. Solitude for those who seek it, company for those who need it. The old and the young will mix freely: the young won’t hate the old any more because the old will be more than just a reminder that the flesh is mortal and youth and life itself a passing thing, because the old will no longer be miserable; they will not feel their uselessness: they will be full of tales not of the good old days, but of the bad old days before Utopia, and so they will be loved and not abhorred. There will be no granny beatings in Darcy’s Utopia.
Q: But if there were, if I can return to this subject of punishment, because I don’t quite share your trust in human nature, would simple exile really be sufficient punishment?
A: You worry about exile. Perhaps you feel exiled yourself? Unable, because of your behaviour, to return home; obliged to live forever in the Holiday Inn. How are you getting on with my life story? How far have you got? Has Julian turned up on the scene?
Q: Yes. He has. How long was it after his declaration of love that you left Bernard? I realize you don’t like these direct questions, and use them as a starting ground for your preoccupations, but perhaps subjects such as exile are really more suitable for discussion with Hugo. The readers of Aura are more accustomed to thinking about matters of the heart: they like to know about you. Do you believe in short, sharp shocks for offenders, in abortion, in fidelity and so forth? What life has taught you, in fact? Personally I find Darcy’s Utopia fascinating, but my readers aren’t at ease with politics.
A: More’s the pity. Let them become so. Let each and every one of them consider the nature and purpose of punishment. Do we imprison other people to satisfy our desire for vengeance, to deter others, or to reform the wrongdoer, by making prison so horrible he never does it again? We know this latter seldom works but we go on trying it as a solution. There will be no prisons in Darcy’s Utopia. I advise you to