words in
low expressionless voices.
'What time do you leave work?'
'Eighteen-thirty.'
'Where can we meet?'
'Victory Square, near the monument.'
'It's full of telescreens.'
'It doesn't matter if there's a crowd.'
'Any signal?'
'No. Don't come up to me until you see me among a lot of people. And
don't look at me. Just keep somewhere near me.'
'What time?'
'Nineteen hours.'
'All right.'
Ampleforth failed to see Winston and sat down at another table. They
did not speak again, and, so far as it was possible for two people sitting
on opposite sides of the same table, they did not look at one another. The
girl finished her lunch quickly and made off, while Winston stayed to smoke
a cigarette.
Winston was in Victory Square before the appointed time. He wandered
round the base of the enormous fluted column, at the top of which Big
Brother's statue gazed southward towards the skies where he had vanquished
the Eurasian aeroplanes (the Eastasian aeroplanes, it had been, a few years
ago) in the Battle of Airstrip One. In the street in front of it there was
a statue of a man on horseback which was supposed to represent Oliver
Cromwell. At five minutes past the hour the girl had still not appeared.
Again the terrible fear seized upon Winston. She was not coming, she had
changed her mind! He walked slowly up to the north side of the square and
got a sort of pale-coloured pleasure from identifying St. Martin's Church,
whose bells, when it had bells, had chimed 'You owe me three farthings.'
Then he saw the girl stand