black-clothed, they walk like zombies round the streets, puffing in or shooting up the dreary stuff, which makes the present real, enables them to smile, and lift a languid hand in salutation to their friends. They vomit if they can, they sick it all up: and if their digestions in spite of all abuse stay sound, they drop their litter instead: walk ankle deep in discarded Coke cans, beer tins, fast food packs, dust and rubbish of every kind, not to mention the excreta of rats and dogs, and they don’t care one bit. It even seems to cheer them up a trifle. Looking at all this, you are assailed by guilt and confusion, and you think, what’s happened can only be this: that once there was a golden age, and everything ever since has been a falling away from that. Well, it shows a niceness of nature. You believe there’s something good somewhere: if only by process of polarity: that is to say, your profound belief in the existence of opposites; that if there is bad, there is also good.
Q: Isn’t there?
A: As it happens, yes. But it lies in front, not behind. We move towards the golden age, not away from it: it is inscribed in gold upon the gates which open into Darcy’s Utopia.
Q: You see it as a walled city, then?
A: I’m not quite sure. It stays vague. There are shining towers, golden spires. Or is that some memory I have of Toronto? I suspect as a place it may be rather boring to the eye, being ecologically sound. A lot of people will be doing a lot of painting pictures and making music, so the standard won’t be very high. But we’ll make up in quantity for what we lose in quality. And of course affairs of the heart will keep most of us very busily occupied, and make up for a lot.
Q: I take it that, in the manner of Utopias, the streets will be clear of litter?
A: Singapore changed from the dirtiest city in the world to the cleanest, by dint of one month in which the police shot on sight anyone dropping litter.
Q: And that will happen in Darcy’s Utopia?
A: I was joking, Mr Vansitart. I am teasing you. No, there are no firearms in the place. No one can point a stick of metal at anyone else and kill them from a distance, that goes without saying. Since it will be a recycling society, rather than a consuming society, there will be very little litter available for the dropping: and being a pleasant enough place, no particular desire to spoil it: and profit no longer being the object of the manufacturing process, Coke won’t have to come in cans: it will flow free from taps. There will be Coke points everywhere. Money will flow freely from the cash points next to them, in the transitionary period while we move from a money economy to a Community Unit economy. If you remember, our taxation comes in the form of a sliding scale of units—the young, strong, able, good and bright are awarded the most, the weak, ill, inadequate and feeble the least. Natural justice demands it. To each according to the ability, from each according to the need. The aim ceases to be to acquire money, but to expend Community Units. Those who are left with least at the end of their lives win the game! Unpleasant work gets rid of more units than does pleasant; cigarette smoking will actually gain you more units: the consumption of luxuries likewise. Necessities will be available in plenty in the shops—shopkeepers will be honoured; to keep shop will be a high status occupation, eating up Community Units by the hour! A coveted job. But we’re getting bogged down in detail, Mr Vansitart. Don’t you think it’s time for a drink? (Calls) Brenda, you don’t mind, do you? We’re going for a drink.
Valerie looked down at Hugo’s sleeping body, and the thought came to her, a little hard nugget in a meringue which otherwise melted on the tongue, that this was the wrong body, Lou’s was the right body. She spat the little hard nugget out of her mind efficiently, and rapidly, and her body dissolved back into rapture, but the pleasure of the moment stayed spoiled.
LOVER AT THE GATE [9]
Eleanor entertains
ELEANOR BROUGHT HABITS OF economy with her from her life as Ellen Parkin: she brought them into Georgina Darcy’s bed, changing the sheets from user-unfriendly