she had help in the house. It’s a sorry fact that a woman’s fortune so often depends upon the man she marries.
‘Well,’ said Belinda, when she finished reading—I tried to appear indifferent, not to pace up and down—‘you’ve got a lot of it right. I hadn’t realized that Apricot’s marriage to Julian was bigamous. Poor Julian: I went to visit him in prison once, but I don’t think he was pleased to see me. He remembered me as one of the waitresses the year we helped Apricot out when she catered for Graduation Week. He couldn’t think why he was being visited by a waitress. He always was a terrible snob. Liese got asked to dinner because Leonard shoots grouse with the best people, even though it’s only because they want a cheap car, but Frank and me never qualified. Too arty. Even in an open prison he manages to be hopelessly urbane. They all hate him. But he was right about a-monetarism. There’s quite a group of us believe in it, you know. The only way to move society out of its present predicament, the dead end of the surplus society, is to devalue money itself.’
‘You must talk to my friend Hugo Vansitart about that,’ I said. ‘I’d very much appreciate your views on the supernatural. Was there, in your opinion, any sort of curse on Bernard?’
‘You mean other than just being married to Apricot?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Of course not,’ said Belinda. ‘The media communications course set off a kind of mass hysteria, that’s all.’
‘Brenda seems to think there was. Is.’
‘Oh, Brenda!’ said Belinda. ‘She’s got four children under seven. You can’t expect sense from her. It was all simple cause and effect; Apricot left Bernard and he went to pieces. He was already halfway there. The economy went to pieces when the cash dispensers started pouring out money; but on Sundays only, thus spoiling the whole idea. It had already more or less collapsed. Of course there was resistance. No one was properly prepared. People panicked: They saw the differential going between rich and poor: they didn’t understand what was happening. They can understand Communism and they can understand Capitalism, but that’s all. That the West should try and adopt the Soviet non-money economy, just as the Soviets try to take Capitalism on board, blew their minds. People like polarities—Apricot’s always saying that. Had Julian and Apricot simply wanted to switch them, that would have worked; people would have accepted it. But in the end the courage to see it through wasn’t there.’
‘In other words, the Devil got into the works and spoiled everything,’ I said.
‘So long as you’re talking metaphorically,’ said Belinda. ‘So long as you don’t get any idea into your head that there’s some power out there talking through Eleanor Darcy’s mouth, at any rate one which knows what it’s talking about.’
‘Well,’ I said comfortingly, ‘Hugo is dealing with the political and economic background. I’m more concerned with the human angle.’ I had the feeling she didn’t like me very much. But the mistress is always an offence to the married woman. ‘You feel I’ve got her more or less correct?’
‘You’ve got Apricot’s life the way she would have wanted it to be, let’s say that. Well, thank you. I’ve made up my mind. I’ve thought for a long time I might write something about Apricot, now I’m pretty sure I will. You do the gospel according to St Valerie, I’ll do the gospel according to St Belinda.’
And I realized I hadn’t been milking her for information, she had been milking me, and I, like a fool, had let her read my manuscript. And I also thought, serve me right. Since holing up in this Holiday Inn I hadn’t been a nice person at all. I’m sure when I lived at home I was a better person all round.
As soon as my hand had stopped trembling I set to work again. There is nothing like work for putting an end to unhealthy introspection.
LOVER AT THE GATE [11]
Eleanor goes to visit Jed and Prune
ELEANOR WENT TO VISIT Jed and Prune. She found poor Prune in tears, but that didn’t surprise her. Prune had miscarried another baby, at three months. It was clear to Eleanor that she intended creeping about her kitchen for the rest of her life, trying to bind her errant husband to her by having babies she was not fit to have.
‘Oh, Ellen,’ said Prune, ‘you’re so famous now I hardly know what to say to