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 melted 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 hea