Winston picked his way up the lane through dappled
light
and shade, stepping out into pools of gold wherever the boughs
parted. Under the trees to the left of him the ground was misty
with bluebells. The air seemed to kiss one's skin. It was the
second of May. From somewhere deeper in the heart of the wood
came the droning of ring doves.
He was a bit early. There had been no difficulties about
the journey, and the girl was so evidently experienced that he
was less frightened than he would normally have been.
Presumably she could be trusted to find a safe place. In
general you could not assume that you were much safer in the
country than in London. There were no telescreens, of course,
but there was always the danger of concealed microphones by
which your voice might be picked up and recognized; besides, it
was not easy to make a journey by yourself without attracting
attention. For distances of less than 100 kilometres it was not
necessary to get your passport endorsed, but sometimes there
were patrols hanging about the railway stations, who examined
the papers of any Party member they found there and asked
awkward questions. However, no patrols had appeared, and on the
walk from the station he had made sure by cautious backward
glances that he was not being followed. The train was full of
proles, in holiday mood because of the summery weather. The
wooden- seated carriage in which he travelled was filled to
overflowing by a single enormous family. ranging from a
toothless great-grandmother to a month-old baby, going out to
spend an afternoon with 'in-laws' in the country, and, as they
freely explained to Winston, to get hold of a little
blackmarket butter.
The lane widened, and in a minute he came to the footpath
she had told him of, a mere cattle-track which plunged between
the bushes. He had no watch, but it could not be fifteen yet.
The bluebells were so thick underfoot that it was impossible
not to tread on them. He knelt down and began picking some
partly to pass the time away, but also from a vague idea that
he would like to have a bunch of flowers to offer to the girl
when they met. He had got together a big bunch and was smelling
their faint sickly scent when a sound at his back froze him,
the unmistakable crackle of a foot on twigs. He went on picking
bluebells. It was the best thing to do. It might be the girl,
or he might have been followed after all. To look round was to
show guilt. He picked another and another. A hand fell lightly
on his shoulder.
He looked up. It was the girl. She shook her head,
evidently as a warning that he must keep silent, then parted
the bushes and quickly led the way along the narrow track into
the wood. Obviously she had been that way before, for she
dodged the boggy bits as though by habit. Winston followed,
still clasping his bunch of flowers. His first feeling was
relief, but as he watched the strong slender body moving in
front of him, with the scarlet sash that was just tight enough
to bring out the curve of her hips, the sense of his own
inferiority was heavy upon him. Even now it seemed quite likely
that when she turned round and looked at him she would draw
back after all. The sweetness of the air and the greenness of
the leaves daunted him. Already on the walk from the station
the May sunshine had made him feel dirty and etiolated, a
creature of indoors, with the sooty dust of London in the pores
of his skin. It occurred to him that till now she had probably
never seen him in broad daylight in the open. They came to the
fallen tree that she had spoken of. The girl hopped over and
forced apart the bushes, in which there did not seem to be an
opening. When Winston followed her, he found that they were in
a natural clearing, a tiny grassy knoll surrounded by tall
saplings that shut it in completely. The girl stopped and
turned.
'Here we are,' she said.
He was facing her at several paces' distance. As yet he
did not dare move nearer to her.
'I didn't want to say anything in the lane,' she went on,
'in case there's a mike hidden there. I don't suppose there is,
but there could be. There's always the chance of one of those
swine recognizing your voice. We're all right here.'
He still had not the courage to approach her. 'We're all
right here?' he repeated stupidly.
'Yes. Look at the trees.' They were small ashes, which at
some time had been cut down and had sprouted up again into a
forest of poles, none of them thicker than one's wrist.
'There's nothing big enough to hide a mike in. Besides, I've
been here before.'
They were only making conversation. He had managed to move
closer to her now. She stood before him very upright, with a
smile on her face that looked faintly ironical, as though she
were wondering why he was so slow to act. The bluebells had
cascaded on to the ground. They seemed to have fallen of their
own accord. He took her hand.
'Would you believe,' he said, 'that till this moment I
didn't know what colour your eyes were?' They were brown, he
noted, a rather light shade of brown, with dark lashes. 'Now
that you've seen what I'm really like, can you still bear to
look at me?'
'Yes, easily.'
'I'm thirty-nine years old. I've got a wife that I can't
get rid of. I've got varicose veins. I've got five false
teeth.'
'I couldn't care less,' said the girl.
The next moment, it was hard to say by whose act, she was
in his his arms. At the beginning he had no feeling except
sheer incredulity. The youthful body was strained against his
own, the mass of dark hair was against his face, and yes !
actually she had turned her face up and he was kissing the wide
red mouth. She had clasped her arms about his neck, she was
calling him darling, precious one, loved one. He had pulled her
down on to the ground, she was utterly unresisting, he could do
what he liked with her. But the truth was that he had no
physical sensation, except that of mere contact. All he felt
was incredulity and pride. He was glad that this was happening,
but he had no physical desire. It was too soon, her youth and
prettiness had frightened him, he was too much used to living
without women -- he did not know the reason. The girl picked
herself up and pulled a bluebell out of her hair. She sat
against him, putting her arm round his waist.
'Never mind, dear. There's no hurry. We've got the whole
afternoon. Isn't this a splendid hide-out? I found it when I
got lost once on a community hike. If anyone was coming you
could hear them a hundred metres away.'
'What is your name?' said Winston.
'Julia. I know yours. It's Winston -- Winston Smith.'
'How did you find that out?'
'I expect I'm better at finding things out than you are,
dear. Tell me, what did you think of me before that day I gave
you the note?'
He did not feel any temptation to tell lies to her. 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 something 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, community hikes all
that stuff. And you thought that if I had a quarter of a chance
I'd denounce you as a thought-criminal 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 before 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 dullbrown crumbly 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 troubling.
'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-leader 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 Iook cheerful 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 meIted on Winston's
tongue. The taste was delightful. But there was still 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 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 footpath 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?
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