‘Not the ones they actually chose, then?’
‘Exactly!’ said Crow. ‘Because they’re not the choices they would have made if they’d known all the facts, which would have been the rational choices, so society helps them to make those choices. And that’s your free and social market, right?’
‘But it doesn’t feel very free,’ Hope said, ‘having other people make your choices for you.’
‘It feels a lot freer than making the wrong choices,’ said Crow. He pinched his lower lip for a moment, thinking. ‘Suppose you were a mother, right?’
‘Well, I am actually,’ said Hope.
‘Oh! Great!’ He gave her an up-and-down look, and met her eyes again with a wry glance. ‘And… if you don’t mind me saying… with another one on the way, yeah?’
‘That’s right,’ said Hope.
‘Congratulations!’ Crow beamed. ‘Perfect examples, then. When you buy a toy for your little…’
‘Boy,’ said Hope.
‘… you wouldn’t feel you’d made a very free choice if it turned out to be painted with lead paint that could be chewed off, or its head, say, was stuck on with a sharp spike that could injure the child if he pulled it off. Which they do, don’t they? Pull the heads off. Mine always did. Or if you were buying milk powder for the baby and it turned out to be contaminated with poison. These things did happen, and not so long ago. Tragic stories. The reason they don’t happen any more – well, hardly at all, because something will always slip through – is because the state – here, in China, and so on – makes regulations and employs inspectors to enforce them, and locks up and fines and even expropriates people who break them. Now, you wouldn’t feel very free if you had to do all that checking yourself, would you? Or if you couldn’t do that because it wasn’t practical, and just had to trust to luck, and you could never be sure, you’d always have a nagging doubt, and the effort of putting that doubt out of your mind. Whereas now, you can buy toys and milk and clothes and so on for the kids and feel free from all that worry. Not to mention free from the regret over making the wrong choice.’
Hope felt baffled. ‘But lead paint on toys and contamination in food is… something like fraud, isn’t it? It seems a long way from that to saying that everything needs to be controlled that way. And a long way from saying the government has to make choices for women about where they work.’
‘It’s the same principle,’ said Crow. By now he was beginning to look a little impatient. ‘The government isn’t making choices for anyone. Like I said, it’s enabling people to make the choices they would make for themselves if they knew all the consequences of those choices.’
‘But…’
‘I mean, would you want pregnant women to have the “choice”’ – he waggle-fingered the quotes – ‘to work down coal mines?’
‘Well, no,’ Hope conceded. ‘But working in offices where people once smoked thirty years ago doesn’t seem quite so risky.’
‘Oh, it isn’t,’ said Crow. ‘But it’s still risky. That foul stuff leaks out of the walls and floors for decades.’
‘Only in tiny amounts,’ said Hope.
‘Yes!’ said Crow. ‘That means it’s actually riskier than smoking itself, because the amounts are so tiny. I mean, we’re talking about femtograms per cubic metre. You know how small that is? It’s smaller than a subatomic particle! When you had actual smoke particles in the air, you could at least cough, you had some natural protection – not enough, of course, but some – whereas these nano- and femto-particles can slip right between the molecules and into your lungs and bloodstream. Not to mention your foetus’s lungs and bloodstream.’
‘Yes, well I do understand that,’ said Hope. ‘But what I don’t get is, this just excludes women from more workplaces.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Crow. ‘The law will mandate that employers of women between the ages of blah-blah, et cetera, will have to strip out or cover with sheet diamond any surfaces that—’
‘But I work from home,’ said Hope. ‘Our house is over a hundred years old, and I’m pretty sure somebody must have once smoked in it. Does that mean we’re going to have to—’
‘Ah!’ Enlightenment dawned on Crow’s face. ‘That’s what you’re worried about. I’m so sorry, I was beginning to wonder if you were some kind of Tory infiltrator!’ He laughed. ‘No, you needn’t worry about that at all. Applying this law to home working would be going too far. It’s specifically excluded from the draft bill. Here, let me show you…’
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out glasses.
‘Honestly,’ he said, half to himself, ‘you’d think the branch would have made a better fist of explaining all this to our own members.’
He slipped the glasses on. Hope could see his eyes blink rapidly. A surprised look came over his face.
‘Oh!’ he said. ‘You’re Hope Morrison!’
‘Yes,’ said Hope. ‘Pleased to meet you, too.’
‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’ Crow gave a rueful laugh. ‘Mind you, if I’d known… you’ve no idea of the trouble you’ve caused me. Nearly got yourself into, too.’
‘How?’ asked Hope, taken aback.
Crow passed a hand across his eyebrows. ‘That letter you hand-delivered.’
‘What?’ Hope had that sick feeling of having done something she hadn’t known was wrong, and feeling guilty about it.
‘Nobody hand-delivers letters. Look, you could have written to me at the Commons, written to my office, heck, you could have posted the letter to the house. If you’d looked me up, you would have seen how to book an appointment – there’s even my personal phone number.’ He tapped the earpiece of his glasses. ‘You’d have got a message, but I’d have got back to you. But hand-delivering a letter without a stamp… we have to treat that as a terrorist attempt. Like the anthrax letters, way back before you or I were born. Standing regulation – I had to call the police, and they had to scan it and analyse it. Wasted a good couple of hours.’
‘Surely a bit of common sense…’
‘Out of my hands,’ said Crow. ‘It’s the rules. It’s the law, come to that. I admit it’s a nuisance, but still…’
‘It makes you feel free, does it?’ Hope asked, tartly.
Crow grimaced. ‘Well, again… freer than being blown up or poisoned. Anyway… I have to admit I was a bit annoyed. I’m afraid that’s why I haven’t got around to replying.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Hope said. ‘But now that we’re here, maybe you could tell me what you think.’
‘About your problem?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well…’ Crow took a deep breath, then let his shoulders slump. ‘I don’t agree with your stance, as I understand it, but I can certainly help you with practical matters – finding legal advice, dealing with the Health Centre, that sort of thing.’
‘I’d be very grateful for that,’ said Hope. ‘But I was kind of hoping you could, I don’t know, raise the matter in the House, or something? Because all it would take would be a tiny little tweak to the law, just to make a conscientious objection something that doesn’t need to be justified in terms of belief.’
‘Can’t help you there, I’m afraid,’ Crow said. ‘Personally, I think the exemptions go far too far as it is. And we can’t be seen to pass a law just to get around a judge’s ruling; it’d be interpreted as interference with the independence of the judiciary and the family courts. It would take a complete redraft of the relevant section of the Act, and to be honest, there’s not the slightest chance of any parliamentary time being allotted for that.’