considered the drink most fit for children, though only loosely connected to the orange. I can tell you that the further down the social scale we went the brighter and sweeter and richer the orange squash, and the more I loved it.
In the palace, in the castle, at the hunt ball and the country house men brayed like donkeys and women shrieked and swooped like owls: the middle classes made me fidgety with their concern—was I not out too late? Was my father being nice to me? Not too nice? Wouldn’t I fall asleep in class tomorrow? Wouldn’t I like to curl up on the sofa?—and mostly I enjoyed the sweaty heaving pleasures of the British Legion do, where the guests galumphed and the men got drunk and waved bottles around—and one thing I noticed through all the ranks of society, no matter what the background, or the income, or the form the party took, was that as the evening wore on women would begin to look pained and patient and longed to get home, but didn’t like to say so for fear of being accused of ruining the evening’s fun. Men do so dislike women who stand between them and drink.
In Darcy’s Utopia there will be no drinking before six in the evening and no one will mind, because life will be okay without it. It will be the custom rather than the law. We will have as few laws as possible. Persuasion will replace compulsion. To be drunk will be recognized as a symptom not of manliness but of extreme unhappiness, and since only on rare occasion do we want to broadcast the fact of our unhappiness to the world, the lager lout, the whisky soak, the sherry drunk will become a rarer and rarer phenomenon, until finally withering away.
Q: Were you brought up in any particular religious or political persuasion?
A: My father was converted to Communism when I was eight. I would stand on street corners with him while he sold copies of the Morning Star. He would instruct me in the history of the world while the people of the world walked by, ignoring the salvation we offered them, and the icy wind blew around our ankles. In the evenings we would have readings from Das Kapital. Yes, we did what we could to save the world, my father and I.
Q: You were very fond of your father?
A: I adored him. There was no denying he was forgetful. He forgot to hand in such little money as he collected from sales of the Morning Star; they prosecuted and he was put on probation for two years. That upset him very much. He felt keenly the ingratitude of the Party and lost his faith. During those difficult years, when he drank rather more than he should, he would sometimes even forget on the way home from gigs I was his daughter and not just an ordinary groupie.
Q: You mean you were a victim of child abuse?
A: How simply you put it. Never quite. Often nearly. But who isn’t, at least in their own minds? That is all for today. It is tiring to think about the past. How are you getting on with Lover at the Gate?
Q: I am not sure that it’s an appropriate title. Why are you so keen on it?
A: Because of the way life changes when the lover at last appears. Haven’t you found it to be so? In most people’s lives the lover stands there, at the gate, faithful, waiting, unnoticed. All we need do is ask him in. Not all of us have the courage, of course.
Q: But you had, Mrs Darcy?
A: Oh yes, and still have. So have you, Mrs Jones. One little push and the whole world’s one, no woman’s better than the next! Here’s Brenda with more coffee. Or is Jones your maiden name? Many women choose to work under their maiden names.
Q: Jones is my married name, as it happens.
A: I can see that might in the end cause some complications.
Valerie Jones made her excuses and left—she had had more than enough coffee. She felt sleepy rather than tired, as a result, she told herself, of having had so little sleep of late. She felt rather superior to Eleanor Darcy on this account and left Brenda’s house in good humour.
Valerie and Lou manage a conversation
ELEANOR DARCY TOLD ME I was welcome to call her if necessary; if I needed any further factual details for my Lover at