No More Learning

It was
even a sort of love-offering to start off by telling the worst.

'I hated the sight of you,' he said. 'I wanted to rape you
and then murder you afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought
seriously of smashing your head in with a cobblestone. If
you really want to know, I imagined that you had some-
thing to do with the Thought Police. '

The girl laughed delightedly, evidently taking this as a
tribute to the excellence of her disguise.

'Not the Thought Police! You didn't honestly think that? '

'Well, perhaps not exactly that. But from your general
appearance — merely because you're young and fresh and
healthy, you understand — I thought that probably '

'You thought I was a good Party member. Pure in word
and deed. Banners, processions, slogans, games, commu-
nity hikes all that stuff. And you thought that if I had a
quarter of a chance I'd denounce you as a thought- criminal



1984



and get you killed off? '

'Yes, something of that kind. A great many young girls
are like that, you know. '

'It's this bloody thing that does it,' she said, ripping off
the scarlet sash of the Junior Anti-Sex League and flinging
it on to a bough. Then, as though touching her waist had
reminded her of something, she felt in the pocket of her
overalls and produced a small slab of chocolate. She broke
it in half and gave one of the pieces to Winston. Even be-
fore he had taken it he knew by the smell that it was very
unusual chocolate. It was dark and shiny, and was wrapped
in silver paper. Chocolate normally was dull-brown crum-
bly stuff that tasted, as nearly as one could describe it, like
the smoke of a rubbish fire. But at some time or another he
had tasted chocolate like the piece she had given him. The
first whiff of its scent had stirred up some memory which
he could not pin down, but which was powerful and trou-
bling.

'Where did you get this stuff? ' he said.

'Black market,' she said indifferently. Actually I am that
sort of girl, to look at. I'm good at games. I was a troop -lead-
er in the Spies. I do voluntary work three evenings a week
for the Junior Anti-Sex League. Hours and hours I've spent
pasting their bloody rot all over London. I always carry one
end of a banner in the processions. I always look cheer-
ful and I never shirk anything. Always yell with the crowd,
that's what I say. It's the only way to be safe. '

The first fragment of chocolate had melted on Win-
ston's tongue. The taste was delightful. But there was still



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that memory moving round the edges of his consciousness,
something strongly felt but not reducible to definite shape,
like an object seen out of the corner of one's eye. He pushed
it away from him, aware only that it was the memory of
some action which he would have liked to undo but could
not.

'You are very young,' he said. 'You are ten or fifteen years
younger than I am. What could you see to attract you in a
man like me? '

'It was something in your face. I thought I'd take a chance.
I'm good at spotting people who don't belong. As soon as I
saw you I knew you were against THEM. '

THEM, it appeared, meant the Party, and above all the
Inner Party, about whom she talked with an open jeering
hatred which made Winston feel uneasy, although he knew
that they were safe here if they could be safe anywhere. A
thing that astonished him about her was the coarseness of
her language. Party members were supposed not to swear,
and Winston himself very seldom did swear, aloud, at any
rate. Julia, however, seemed unable to mention the Party,
and especially the Inner Party, without using the kind of
words that you saw chalked up in dripping alley-ways. He
did not dislike it. It was merely one symptom of her revolt
against the Party and all its ways, and somehow it seemed
natural and healthy, like the sneeze of a horse that smells
bad hay. They had left the clearing and were wandering
again through the chequered shade, with their arms round
each other's waists whenever it was wide enough to walk
two abreast. He noticed how much softer her waist seemed



1984



to feel now that the sash was gone. They did not speak above
a whisper. Outside the clearing, Julia said, it was better to
go quietly. Presently they had reached the edge of the little
wood. She stopped him.

'Don't go out into the open. There might be someone
watching. We're all right if we keep behind the boughs. '

They were standing in the shade of hazel bushes. The
sunlight, filtering through innumerable leaves, was still hot
on their faces. Winston looked out into the field beyond,
and underwent a curious, slow shock of recognition. He
knew it by sight. An old, closebitten pasture, with a foot-
path wandering across it and a molehill here and there. In
the ragged hedge on the opposite side the boughs of the elm
trees swayed just perceptibly in the breeze, and their leaves
stirred faintly in dense masses like women's hair. Surely
somewhere nearby, but out of sight, there must be a stream
with green pools where dace were swimming?

'Isn't there a stream somewhere near here? ' he whis-
pered.

"That's right, there is a stream. It's at the edge of the next
field, actually. There are fish in it, great big ones. You can
watch them lying in the pools under the willow trees, wav-
ing their tails. '

'It's the Golden Country — almost,' he murmured.

'The Golden Country? '

'It's nothing, really. A landscape I've seen sometimes in
a dream. '

'Look! ' whispered Julia.

A thrush had alighted on a bough not five metres away,



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almost at the level of their faces. Perhaps it had not seen
them. It was in the sun, they in the shade. It spread out its
wings, fitted them carefully into place again, ducked its
head for a moment, as though making a sort of obeisance to
the sun, and then began to pour forth a torrent of song. In
the afternoon hush the volume of sound was startling. Win-
ston and Julia clung together, fascinated. The music went on
and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations,
never once repeating itself, almost as though the bird were
deliberately showing off its virtuosity. Sometimes it stopped
for a few seconds, spread out and resettled its wings, then
swelled its speckled breast and again burst into song. Win-
ston watched it with a sort of vague reverence. For whom, for
what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watch-
ing it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and
pour its music into nothingness? He wondered whether af-
ter all there was a microphone hidden somewhere near. He
and Julia had spoken only in low whispers, and it would not
pick up what they had said, but it would pick up the thrush.
Perhaps at the other end of the instrument some small, bee-
tle-like man was listening intently — listening to that. But
by degrees the flood of music drove all speculations out of
his mind. It was as though it were a kind of liquid stuff that
poured all over him and got mixed up with the sunlight
that filtered through the leaves. He stopped thinking and
merely felt. The girl's waist in the bend of his arm was soft
and warm. He pulled her round so that they were breast
to breast; her body seemed to melt into his. Wherever his
hands moved it was all as yielding as water. Their mouths

156 1984



clung together; it was quite different from the hard kisses
they had exchanged earlier. When they moved their faces
apart again both of them sighed deeply. The bird took fright
and fled with a clatter of wings.

Winston put his lips against her ear. 'NOW,' he whis-
pered.

'Not here,' she whispered back. 'Come back to the hide-
out. It's safer. '

Quickly, with an occasional crackle of twigs, they
threaded their way back to the clearing. When they were
once inside the ring of saplings she turned and faced him.
They were both breathing fast, but the smile had reappeared
round the corners of her mouth. She stood looking at him
for an instant, then felt at the zipper of her overalls. And,
yes! it was almost as in his dream. Almost as swiftly as he
had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she
flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture
by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated. Her
body gleamed white in the sun. But for a moment he did
not look at her body; his eyes were anchored by the freckled
face with its faint, bold smile. He knelt down before her and
took her hands in his.

'Have you done this before? '

'Of course. Hundreds of times — well, scores of times,
anyway'

'With Party members? '

'Yes, always with Party members. '

'With members of the Inner Party? '

'Not with those swine, no. But there's plenty that WOULD



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if they got half a chance. They're not so holy as they make
out. '

His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it: he wished
it had been hundreds — thousands. Anything that hinted at
corruption always filled him with a wild hope. Who knew,
perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of
strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing in-
iquity. If he could have infected the whole lot of them with
leprosy or syphilis, how gladly he would have done so! Any-
thing to rot, to weaken, to undermine! He pulled her down
so that they were kneeling face to face.

'Listen. The more men you've had, the more I love you.
Do you understand that? '

'Yes, perfectly'

'I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue
to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the
bones. '

'Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the
bones. '

'You like doing this? I don't mean simply me: I mean the
thing in itself? '

'I adore it. '

That was above all what he wanted to hear. Not merely
the love of one person but the animal instinct, the simple
undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear
the Party to pieces. He pressed her down upon the grass,
among the fallen bluebells. This time there was no difficul-
ty Presently the rising and falling of their breasts slowed
to normal speed, and in a sort of pleasant helplessness they



1984



fell apart. The sun seemed to have grown hotter. They were
both sleepy. He reached out for the discarded overalls and
pulled them partly over her. Almost immediately they fell
asleep and slept for about half an hour.

Winston woke first. He sat up and watched the freck-
led face, still peacefully asleep, pillowed on the palm of her
hand. Except for her mouth, you could not call her beauti-
ful. There was a line or two round the eyes, if you looked
closely. The short dark hair was extraordinarily thick and
soft. It occurred to him that he still did not know her sur-
name or where she lived.

The young, strong body, now helpless in sleep, awoke in
him a pitying, protecting feeling. But the mindless tender-
ness that he had felt under the hazel tree, while the thrush
was singing, had not quite come back. He pulled the over-
alls aside and studied her smooth white flank. In the old
days, he thought, a man looked at a girl's body and saw that
it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you
could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emo-
tion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear
and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a
victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a po-
litical act.



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Chapter 3



^ We can come here once again,' said Julia. 'It's generally safe
to use any hide-out twice. But not for another month or
two, of course. '

As soon as she woke up her demeanour had changed. She
became alert and business-like, put her clothes on, knot-
ted the scarlet sash about her waist, and began arranging
the details of the journey home. It seemed natural to leave
this to her. She obviously had a practical cunning which
Winston lacked, and she seemed also to have an exhaus-
tive knowledge of the countryside round London, stored
away from innumerable community hikes. The route she
gave him was quite different from the one by which he had
come, and brought him out at a different railway station.
'Never go home the same way as you went out,' she said, as
though enunciating an important general principle. She
would leave first, and Winston was to wait half an hour be-
fore following her.

She had named a place where they could meet after work,
four evenings hence. It was a street in one of the poorer
quarters, where there was an open market which was gener-
ally crowded and noisy. She would be hanging about among
the stalls, pretending to be in search of shoelaces or sewing-
thread. If she judged that the coast was clear she would blow
her nose when he approached; otherwise he was to walk



1984



past her without recognition. But with luck, in the middle
of the crowd, it would be safe to talk for a quarter of an hour
and arrange another meeting.

'And now I must go,' she said as soon as he had mastered
his instructions. 'I'm due back at nineteen-thirty. I've got to
put in two hours for the Junior Anti-Sex League, handing
out leaflets, or something. Isn't it bloody? Give me a brush-
down, would you? Have I got any twigs in my hair? Are you
sure? Then good-bye, my love, good-bye! '

She flung herself into his arms, kissed him almost vi-
olently, and a moment later pushed her way through the
saplings and disappeared into the wood with very little
noise. Even now he had not found out her surname or her
address. However, it made no difference, for it was incon-
ceivable that they could ever meet indoors or exchange any
kind of written communication.

As it happened, they never went back to the clearing in
the wood. During the month of May there was only one
further occasion on which they actually succeeded in mak-
ing love.
That was in another hiding-place known to Julia,
the belfry of a ruinous church in an almost- deserted stretch
of country where an atomic bomb had fallen thirty years
earlier. It was a good hiding-place when once you got there,
but the getting there was very dangerous. For the rest they
could meet only in the streets, in a different place every eve-
ning and never for more than half an hour at a time. In the
street it was usually possible to talk, after a fashion. As they
drifted down the crowded pavements, not quite abreast
and never looking at one another, they carried on a curi-



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ous, intermittent conversation which flicked on and off like
the beams of a lighthouse, suddenly nipped into silence by
the approach of a Party uniform or the proximity of a tele-
screen, then taken up again minutes later in the middle of
a sentence, then abruptly cut short as they parted at the
agreed spot, then continued almost without introduction
on the following day Julia appeared to be quite used to this
kind of conversation, which she called 'talking by instal-
ments'. She was also surprisingly adept at speaking without
moving her lips. Just once in almost a month of nightly
meetings they managed to exchange a kiss. They were pass-
ing in silence down a side-street (Julia would never speak
when they were away from the main streets) when there was
a deafening roar, the earth heaved, and the air darkened,
and Winston found himself lying on his side, bruised and
terrified. A rocket bomb must have dropped quite near at
hand. Suddenly he became aware of Julia's face a few centi-
metres from his own, deathly white, as white as chalk. Even
her lips were white. She was dead! He clasped her against
him and found that he was kissing a live warm face. But
there was some powdery stuff that got in the way of his lips.
Both of their faces were thickly coated with plaster.

There were evenings when they reached their rendezvous
and then had to walk past one another without a sign, be-
cause a patrol had just come round the corner or a helicopter
was hovering overhead. Even if it had been less dangerous,
it would still have been difficult to find time to meet. Win-
ston's working week was sixty hours, Julia's was even longer,
and their free days varied according to the pressure of work



1984



and did not often coincide. Julia, in any case, seldom had an
evening completely free. She spent an astonishing amount
of time in attending lectures and demonstrations, distrib-
uting literature for the junior Anti-Sex League, preparing
banners for Hate Week, making collections for the savings
campaign, and such-like activities. It paid, she said, it was
camouflage. If you kept the small rules, you could break the
big ones. She even induced Winston to mortgage yet an-
other of his evenings by enrolling himself for the part-time
munition work which was done voluntarily by zealous Par-
ty members. So, one evening every week, Winston spent
four hours of paralysing boredom, screwing together small
bits of metal which were probably parts of bomb fuses, in a
draughty, ill-lit workshop where the knocking of hammers
mingled drearily with the music of the telescreens.

When they met in the church tower the gaps in their
fragmentary conversation were filled up. It was a blazing af-
ternoon. The air in the little square chamber above the bells
was hot and stagnant, and smelt overpoweringly of pigeon
dung. They sat talking for hours on the dusty, twig-littered
floor, one or other of them getting up from time to time to
cast a glance through the arrowslits and make sure that no
one was coming.

Julia was twenty- six years old. She lived in a hostel with
thirty other girls ('Always in the stink of women! How I
hate women! ' she said parenthetically), and she worked, as
he had guessed, on the novel-writing machines in the Fic-
tion Department. She enjoyed her work, which consisted
chiefly in running and servicing a powerful but tricky elec-

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trie motor. She was 'not clever', but was fond of using her
hands and felt at home with machinery. She could describe
the whole process of composing a novel, from the general
directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the
final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not in-
terested in the finished product. She 'didn't much care for
reading,' she said. Books were just a commodity that had to
be produced, like jam or bootlaces.

She had no memories of anything before the early six-
ties and the only person she had ever known who talked
frequently of the days before the Revolution was a grand-
father who had disappeared when she was eight. At school
she had been captain of the hockey team and had won the
gymnastics trophy two years running. She had been a troop-
leader in the Spies and a branch secretary in the Youth
League before joining the Junior Anti-Sex League. She had
always borne an excellent character. She had even (an infal-
lible mark of good reputation) been picked out to work in
Pornosec, the sub-section of the Fiction Department which
turned out cheap pornography for distribution among the
proles. It was nicknamed Muck House by the people who
worked in it, she remarked. There she had remained for a
year, helping to produce booklets in sealed packets with ti-
tles like 'Spanking Stories' or 'One Night in a Girls' School',
to be bought furtively by proletarian youths who were un-
der the impression that they were buying something illegal.

'What are these books like? ' said Winston curiously.

'Oh, ghastly rubbish. They're boring, really. They only
have six plots, but they swap them round a bit. Of course

164 1984



I was only on the kaleidoscopes. I was never in the Rewrite
Squad. I'm not literary, dear — not even enough for that. '

He learned with astonishment that all the workers in
Pornosec, except the heads of the departments, were girls.
The theory was that men, whose sex instincts were less con-
trollable than those of women, were in greater danger of
being corrupted by the filth they handled.

"They don't even like having married women there,' she
added. Girls are always supposed to be so pure. Here's one
who isn't, anyway.

She had had her first love-affair when she was sixteen,
with a Party member of sixty who later committed suicide
to avoid arrest. 'And a good job too,' said Julia, 'otherwise
they'd have had my name out of him when he confessed. '
Since then there had been various others. Life as she saw it
was quite simple. You wanted a good time; 'they', meaning
the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules
as best you could. She seemed to think it just as natural that
'they' should want to rob you of your pleasures as that you
should want to avoid being caught. She hated the Party, and
said so in the crudest words, but she made no general criti-
cism of it. Except where it touched upon her own life she
had no interest in Party doctrine. He noticed that she never
used Newspeak words except the ones that had passed into
everyday use. She had never heard of the Brotherhood, and
refused to believe in its existence. Any kind of organized
revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure,
struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules
and stay alive all the same. He wondered vaguely how many

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others like her there might be in the younger generation
people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution,
knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something
unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority
but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog.

They did not discuss the possibility of getting married.
It was too remote to be worth thinking about. No imagin-
able committee would ever sanction such a marriage even
if Katharine, Winston's wife, could somehow have been got
rid of. It was hopeless even as a daydream.

'What was she like, your wife? ' said Julia.

'She was — do you know the Newspeak word GOOD-
THINKFUL? Meaning naturally orthodox, incapable of
thinking a bad thought? '

'No, I didn't know the word, but I know the kind of per-
son, right enough. '

He began telling her the story of his married life, but cu-
riously enough she appeared to know the essential parts of
it already. She described to him, almost as though she had
seen or felt it, the stiffening of Katharine's body as soon
as he touched her, the way in which she still seemed to be
pushing him from her with all her strength, even when her
arms were clasped tightly round him. With Julia he felt no
difficulty in talking about such things: Katharine, in any
case, had long ceased to be a painful memory and became
merely a distasteful one.

'I could have stood it if it hadn't been for one thing,' he
said. He told her about the frigid little ceremony that Kath-
arine had forced him to go through on the same night every



1984



week. 'She hated it, but nothing would make her stop doing
it. She used to call it — but you'll never guess. '

'Our duty to the Party' said Julia promptly.

'How did you know that? '

'I've been at school too, dear. Sex talks once a month for
the over-sixteens. And in the Youth Movement. They rub it
into you for years. I dare say it works in a lot of cases. But of
course you can never tell; people are such hypocrites. '

She began to enlarge upon the subject. With Julia, every-
thing came back to her own sexuality. As soon as this was
touched upon in any way she was capable of great acuteness.
Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the
Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex
instinct created a world of its own which was outside the
Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if
possible. What was more important was that sexual priva-
tion induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could
be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way
she put it was:

'When you make love you're using up energy; and after-
wards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything.
They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be
bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and
down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour.
If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited
about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two
Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot? '

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct inti-
mate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy.

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For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity
which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right
pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and
using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to
the Party, and the Party had turned it to account. They had
played a similar trick with the instinct of parenthood. The
family could not actually be abolished, and, indeed, people
were encouraged to be fond of their children, in almost the
old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were
systematically turned against their parents and taught to
spy on them and report their deviations. The family had
become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was
a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded
night and day by informers who knew him intimately.

Abruptly his mind went back to Katharine. Katharine
would unquestionably have denounced him to the Thought
Police if she had not happened to be too stupid to detect the
unorthodoxy of his opinions. But what really recalled her
to him at this moment was the stifling heat of the afternoon,
which had brought the sweat out on his forehead. He began
telling Julia of something that had happened, or rather had
failed to happen, on another sweltering summer afternoon,
eleven years ago.

It was three or four months after they were married. They
had lost their way on a community hike somewhere in Kent.
They had only lagged behind the others for a couple of min-
utes, but they took a wrong turning, and presently found
themselves pulled up short by the edge of an old chalk
quarry. It was a sheer drop of ten or twenty metres, with



1984



boulders at the bottom. There was nobody of whom they
could ask the way As soon as she realized that they were
lost Katharine became very uneasy To be away from the
noisy mob of hikers even for a moment gave her a feeling of
wrong-doing. She wanted to hurry back by the way they had
come and start searching in the other direction. But at this
moment Winston noticed some tufts of loosestrife growing
in the cracks of the cliff beneath them. One tuft was of two
colours, magenta and brick-red, apparently growing on the
same root. He had never seen anything of the kind before,
and he called to Katharine to come and look at it.

'Look, Katharine! Look at those flowers. That clump
down near the bottom. Do you see they're two different co-
lours? '

She had already turned to go, but she did rather fretfully
come back for a moment. She even leaned out over the cliff
face to see where he was pointing. He was standing a little
behind her, and he put his hand on her waist to steady her.
At this moment it suddenly occurred to him how completely
alone they were. There was not a human creature anywhere,
not a leaf stirring, not even a bird awake. In a place like
this the danger that there would be a hidden microphone
was very small, and even if there was a microphone it would
only pick up sounds. It was the hottest sleepiest hour of the
afternoon. The sun blazed down upon them, the sweat tick-
led his face. And the thought struck him. . .

'Why didn't you give her a good shove? ' said Julia. 'I
would have. '

'Yes, dear, you would have. I would, if I'd been the same

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person then as I am now. Or perhaps I would — I'm not cer-
tain. '

'Are you sorry you didn't? '

'Yes. On the whole I'm sorry I didn't. '

They were sitting side by side on the dusty floor. He
pulled her closer against him. Her head rested on his shoul-
der, the pleasant smell of her hair conquering the pigeon
dung. She was very young, he thought, she still expected
something from life, she did not understand that to push an
inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing.

'Actually it would have made no difference,' he said.

"Then why are you sorry you didn't do it? '

'Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this
game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure
are better than other kinds, that's all. '

He felt her shoulders give a wriggle of dissent. She al-
ways contradicted him when he said anything of this kind.
She would not accept it as a law of nature that the individ-
ual is always defeated. In a way she realized that she herself
was doomed, that sooner or later the Thought Police would
catch her and kill her, but with another part of her mind
she believed that it was somehow possible to construct a se-
cret world in which you could live as you chose. All you
needed was luck and cunning and boldness. She did not un-
derstand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the
only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead,
that from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was
better to think of yourself as a corpse.

'We are the dead,' he said.



1984



'We're not dead yet,' said Julia prosaically.

'Not physically Six months, a year — five years, conceiv-
ably. I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably
you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put it
off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So
long as human beings stay human, death and life are the
same thing. '

'Oh, rubbish! Which would you sooner sleep with, me or
a skeleton? Don't you enjoy being alive? Don't you like feel-
ing: This is me, this is my hand, this is my leg, I'm real, I'm
solid, I'm alive! Don't you like THIS? '

She twisted herself round and pressed her bosom against
him. He could feel her breasts, ripe yet firm, through her
overalls. Her body seemed to be pouring some of its youth
and vigour into his.

'Yes, I like that,' he said.

"Then stop talking about dying. And now listen, dear,
we've got to fix up about the next time we meet. We may as
well go back to the place in the wood. We've given it a good
long rest. But you must get there by a different way this time.
I've got it all planned out. You take the train — but look, I'll
draw it out for you. '

And in her practical way she scraped together a small
square of dust, and with a twig from a pigeon's nest began
drawing a map on the floor.



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Chapter 4



Winston looked round the shabby little room above Mr
Charrington's shop. Beside the window the enormous
bed was made up, with ragged blankets and a coverless bol-
ster. The old-fashioned clock with the twelve-hour face was
ticking away on the mantelpiece.