's, and dingy in a different
way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look, as though the place had
just been visited by some large violent animal. Games impedimenta --
hockey-sticks, boxing-gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts
turned inside out -- lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a
litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books. On the walls were
scarlet banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and a full-sized poster
of Big Brother. There was the usual boiled-cabbage smell, common to the
whole building, but it was shot through by a sharper reek of sweat, which
-- one knew this at the first sniff, though it was hard to say how -- was
the sweat of some person not present at the moment. In another room someone
with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune with the
military music which was still issuing from the telescreen.
'It's the children,' said Mrs. Parsons, casting a half-apprehensive
glance at the door. 'They haven't been out today. And of course--'
She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the middle. The
kitchen sink was full nearly to the brim with filthy greenish water which
smelt worse than ever of cabbage.