over her. She seemed to have
become completely spiritless. It was evident even to Winston that she was
waiting for something that she knew must happen. She did everything that
was needed -- cooked, washed, mended, made the bed, swept the floor, dusted
the mantelpiece -- always very slowly and with a curious lack of
superfluous motion, like an artist's lay-figure moving of its own accord.
Her large shapely body seemed to relapse naturally into stillness. For
hours at a time she would sit almost immobile on the bed, nursing his young
sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of two or three, with a face made
simian by thinness. Very occasionally she would take Winston in her arms
and press him against her for a long time without saying anything. He was
aware, in spite of his youthfulness and selfishness, that this was somehow
connected with the never-mentioned thing that was about to happen.
He remembered the room where they lived, a dark, close-smelling room
that seemed half filled by a bed with a white counterpane. There was a gas
ring in the fender, and a shelf where food was kept, and on the landing
outside there was a brown earthenware sink, common to several rooms. He
remembered his mother's statuesque body bending over the gas ring to stir
at something in a saucepan. Above all he remembered his continuous hunger,
and the fierce sordid battles at mealtimes. He would ask his mother
naggingly, over and over again, why there was not more food, he would shout
and storm at her (he even remembered the tones of his voice, which was
beginning to break prematurely and sometimes boomed in a peculiar way), or
he would attempt a snivelling note of pathos in his efforts to get more
than his share. His mother was quite ready to give him more than his share.