by Weldon, Fay
And why should we not have it? I tell you, if you look back, you will get burned, like Lot’s wife, to a pillar of salt; Lot’s wife, nostalgic for the past. In Darcy’s Utopia it will be very bad form to hark back; collecting antiques for the domestic home will be outré. A museum will be the only place for the artefacts of past ages, and let them be as gloomy and dismal as can be. In Darcy’s Utopia it will be accepted that museums will be very boring places indeed. If you want to subdue the children you only have to take them on a visit to a museum, and they will behave at once, for fear of being taken there again.
Room service had brought breakfast, and the mail. Valerie sat up in bed, Hugo still asleep beside her, and read the transcript. What bliss, she thought, what paradise, thus to live. Someone else to cook and clean, and bring the food: to be a man’s lover, not his mother/wife. She would live in the present. She would avoid for ever the trap of nostalgia. She could see that the pleasure of this moment could, so easily, turn into pain, simply because it no longer existed. How was that to be avoided?
Q: But won’t that make for a heartless, soulless place? Surely we need the resonance of the past in order to enrich the present?
A: There you go again! Well, it’s understandable. Set foot outside your door, outside your little patch of safety, and lo, chaos waits; disease, poverty, madness, hurt, ebbs and flows all around: you’re knee deep in it. If you don’t get mugged your conscience gets pricked: the beggar at the door offends, the homeless in the alley hurts; drunkards sleep in every alley, the mad stand on the motorway and shake their fists. Those that have not reproach you: those that have, braying about profit and self-interest, offend you. You cannot believe that the past was worse than this. Rather, you don’t want to believe it was. Wars lay waste a generation, they say: fear of war has wasted one of ours.
And how we made them feel it, our young, with our talk of nuclear winter and Armageddon! The revenge of the old upon the young, to deprive them thus of all hope of the future. Look at them now: how they appal you! Hollow-eyed, white-faced, 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 linen to easy-care Terylene: she brought them to Georgina Darcy’s table, eating with Habitat cutlery not Darcy family silver, on the grounds that the latter wasted staff time in the cleaning. Julian would be offered Cheddar not Stilton at the end of dinner. Stale bread was used up, not thrown to the ducks on the moat that half ringed Bridport Lodge. The face that stared out from Georgina’s bathroom mirror, marble-set, made do with a smear of Oil of Ulay, not, as had Georgina’s, layer after layer of creams and unguents, one for the eye zone, one for the lip line, others for cheeks and chin. Eleanor was not too proud to use up what Georgina left, in this respect as in all others, but once the pots were empty chucked them out and did not replace them.
And Julian Darcy didn’t mind one bit. Eleanor’s presence in the bed outweighed the cheapness of the sheets, her company at the table was more reassuring than his family’s silver: the Cheddar, she assured him, was healthier than Stilton (by which he knew she meant cheaper) and he said he did not care about the state of her complexion, he had more important things to think about.
Eleanor told four of the six staff at the lodge that they were redundant to her needs, and so they were. These were Mrs Kneely, Mrs Foster, Edward the under gardener and Joan Baxter who came in to do the laundry. These four members of staff were the ones most visibly distressed and startled by Eleanor’s sudden appearance in their midst; the ones who tittle-tattled in the town: who admitted to signing a letter of condolence and support, drawn up by Joan Baxter and posted off to Georgina before Eleanor could intercept it; who somehow or other never managed to make the marital bed, either because of the new sheets or the behaviour of those who now slept in it. It was a better bed, however.
‘It seems that only married Vice Chancellors get their beds made properly,’ observed Julian. ‘When they live in sin they don’t.’ It was Eleanor’s custom to make a bed by straightening a sheet and flinging a duvet. Julian was accustomed to blankets, in the old-fashioned style, tucked and tidied. But who, as Eleanor enquired, could
make love properly under tucked blankets? It was absurd.
Julian received letters from his children: Julia, twenty-five, and Piers, aged twenty-two. Both said they would never see their father again, he had treated their mother so disgracefully, and would never accept a penny from him.
Julian said, ‘My children have treated me disgracefully; they have brought humiliation upon me. Julia dropped out of a promising academic career to be a nurse. Piers never gets up before two in the afternoon. Why do they think I want to see them again? I don’t.’
Brenda brought news that the black magic group had been disbanded, and Nerina was to be married in a Muslim ceremony to her brother’s best friend, and no longer went to college. Brenda’s husband Pete had, at Brenda’s insistence, made representation to the academic authorities about the sacrificing of a goat on college property. The RSPCA had been called in. There had been a terrible scandal. The media communications course had been re-evaluated. Hadn’t Eleanor read about it?
‘I’m kind of cut off here at the university,’ said Eleanor. ‘I can never work out which is the real world and which isn’t. But I’m very happy with Julian. That’s all I need to know.’
‘Don’t you even think about Bernard?’
‘I can’t say I do,’ said Eleanor. ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’
Brenda said she felt rather the same about her baby. She’d left baby and pushchair behind in the supermarket queue and gone home without them, quite forgetting, but she’d had the baby under a year and Eleanor had been married for fifteen years.
‘That was Ellen,’ said Eleanor. ‘I have been re-born. Risen guilt free as Eleanor from the ashes of the past. Do you think Nerina is continuing her black magic from home?’
Brenda said, from the sound of it, it was perfectly possible. Bernard was still in a bad way: clinically depressed, many reckoned.
‘Won’t Nerina get into trouble for not being a virgin?’ asked Eleanor.
Brenda said she thought there were spells to see to that kind of thing; failing that, cosmetic surgery could put it right. There were local doctors who specialized in it. What did Eleanor do all day?
‘I keep very busy,’ said Eleanor. ‘Julian is giving me a crash course in monetary theory: we mean to write a book together. And there is a local trouble here we have to sort out.’
Eleanor wrote to the emoluments committee declaring that she had reduced the running costs of Bridport Lodge by forty-two per cent, producing figures to prove it, and when it came to difficult and embarrassing votes at Convocation, Senate and Academic Board level, as to whether or not Professor Darcy could be seen to be in his right mind, it was this document that swung the feeling of the various meetings in his favour. Men fall in love: it was their right to do so. To be open about these matters was clearly in the mood of new university thinking, thrusting and energetic, and the various governing bodies did what they could to adjust themselves gracefully. Even when Eleanor enrolled as an undergraduate to do a degree course in economics they did not flinch. And so eventually Professor Darcy’s stock rose, not fell, at the University of Bridport, thanks to his wife leaving him and him taking in, to share his bed and board, and publicity, a young woman half his age, already married to another.
As for Georgina, she went to live with her daughter, and said she wouldn’t take a penny from Julian. Nor did she try to sue him for possession of the matrimonial home – although, as Eleanor pointed out, the house went with Julian’s job, so she wouldn’t have stood much of a chance anyway. She showed little interest in reclaiming her clothes, jewellery, or personal effects. Georgina made it generally known that anyway she’d had it up to here with university life in general and Julian in particular: no one was to make a fuss. The first response antagonized the academic community, who felt as a result more kindly disposed towards Eleanor than they otherwise would: the second eased Julian of guilt.
One morning, as Eleanor and Julian sat at the polished mahogany breakfast table, sipping coffee, and spreading toast made with white sliced bread and Marks & Spencer marmalade, and looking out over the Dorset hills, to the glimpse of sea beyond, Eleanor wearing an Edwardian silk wrap from Oxfam and Julian in a dressing gown inherited from his father – both his parents, perhaps fortunately, for they were the most respectable folk and divorce unknown in the family, were deceased – Julian said, ‘Eleanor, what preparations have you made for the graduation ceremonies?’ and Eleanor said, ‘Why, are they very special?’ And Julian said, ‘Well, actually yes, they are the high spot in the annual university calendar. There are graduation dinners – we hold them here – garden parties in the grounds, teas likewise, concert suppers, around two hundred at each, I suppose; honour graduands to be fêted and so on. Georgina spent quite a lot of time and energy doing it.’
‘I think the university office should do it,’ said Eleanor.
‘Well, no,’ said Julian, quite firmly, and she saw for the first time the glint in his eye which unnerved governments and faculty boards. ‘I think it is your job. You could get in outside caterers,’ he added, and from an untidy drawer drew an untidy file, in spite of which untidiness he laid his hand unerringly upon the card he sought: ‘Highlife Caterers – Academic Functions a Speciality.’
Eleanor said, ‘Caterers are a wicked waste of money. I’ll do it myself.’
Word got round college and university that Ellen Parkin was going to do the Graduation Week catering single-handed and many predicted her downfall. There would be poached egg on toast for tea, they said, instead of salmon canapés with caviar; Irish stew for dinner instead of filet mignon: bread and butter pudding for dessert and sweet sherry all round. There was glee at the prospect. Julian Darcy would realize his mistake and Eleanor would be out on her ear and plain Ellen again, and serve her right. A man who got rid of one woman would get rid of another. And would Bernard take her back? No one knew. No one had seen Bernard lately: his name no longer appeared on the college’s staff list. They assumed they’d know if he was dead, but no one much cared.
Bernard was in fact quite often seen by Eleanor and Julian. He would stand on the gravel drive in front of Bridport Lodge in the very early morning, unshaven and unkempt, staring up at their bedroom window. When he knew he had been seen he would slink away.
‘If only we had dogs,’ said Julian, ‘we could set them on him. Would you like a dog, Eleanor?’
Eleanor said no, she was not a doggie sort of person. Julian said he was glad: Georgina Darcy had been. Georgina was spoken of, when at all, in the past tense. Bernard, in some respect still unfinished business, was at least accorded an existence in the present.
Liese and Leonard came to dine with Julian and Eleanor. Liese had abandoned her principles and now wore a fur coat, and Leonard made up in funny stories anything he lacked in a capacity for abstract thought.
Eleanor went out to the pantry to bring in the trifle the maid had left before going off duty. Liese followed her.
‘Eleanor,’ said Liese, ‘don’t you care any more what’s going on in Mafeking Street?’
‘No,’ said Eleanor.
‘Bernard’s had to move out of No. 93. The mortgage company have repossessed it. And he’s moved in with your father Ken and his girlfriend Gillian.’
‘Gillian? Ken was living with Gillian’s mother.’
‘She’s moved out.’
‘No wonder I have amnesia,’ said Eleanor, and dropped the glass bowl of trifle. It broke. She and Liese scooped what was eatable into a plastic bowl, rearranged it, and served it. Eleanor was the only one who cut her mouth on a sliver of glass. The sight and taste of her own blood falling on to whipped cream recalled the memory of snow, and the snowman which represented Bernard. The next morning she called him, at Ken’s. The bill, she was glad to note, had been paid.
‘Bernard,’ she said, ‘is No. 93 up for sale?’
‘It has been for three months,’ he said. ‘Now the mortgage company own it. It wouldn’t sell because it was haunted.’
�
��Only a tiny bit haunted,’ said Ellen. ‘Only by my mother.’
‘It got worse after you left,’ he said. ‘The estate agents said when people came to look over it they’d see things on the stairs, and smell dry rot, though the surveyors couldn’t find any. How are you? Why do you keep sending these divorce petitions through the post? You know I’m a Catholic.’
Eleanor said she’d better come over and see him, and her father, and her father’s new girlfriend.
‘She’s not new,’ said Bernard. ‘It’s been going on for years. She’s much too good for him.’
Ken’s fingers had become arthritic and he could no longer play the banjo. Gillian had a back problem and a cataract in one eye, surprising in one so young, but Bernard said the depletion of the ozone layer and the consequent increase in ultraviolet light was causing an epidemic of cataracts. It was not a cheerful household.
Bernard said along with everything else the curse of invisibility had been put on him. He existed but did not exist. People looked through him in the street, in shops. He might as well be a little old lady for all the notice anyone took of him.
‘Bernard,’ said Eleanor, ‘you are very visible to me and Julian when you stand outside our window. I wish you wouldn’t. It does no one any good.’
‘It does me some good,’ said Bernard, and smiled. He had shaved. He was looking a little less pale and thin. Gillian was a good cook, he said, considering her one eye. She was better than Eleanor had ever been.
