1984 - Planet eBook

and did not often coincide. Julia, in any case, seldom had anevening completely free. She spent an astonishing amountof time in attending lectures and demonstrations, distributingliterature for the junior Anti-Sex League, preparingbanners for Hate Week, making collections for the savingscampaign, and such-like activities. It paid, she said, it wascamouflage. If you kept the small rules, you could break thebig ones. She even induced Winston to mortgage yet anotherof his evenings by enrolling himself for the part-timemunition work which was done voluntarily by zealous Partymembers. So, one evening every week, Winston spentfour hours of paralysing boredom, screwing together smallbits of metal which were probably parts of bomb fuses, in adraughty, ill-lit workshop where the knocking of hammersmingled drearily with the music of the telescreens.When they met in the church tower the gaps in theirfragmentary conversation were filled up. It was a blazing afternoon.The air in the little square chamber above the bellswas hot and stagnant, and smelt overpoweringly of pigeondung. They sat talking for hours on the dusty, twig-litteredfloor, one or other of them getting up from time to time tocast a glance through the arrowslits and make sure that noone was coming.Julia was twenty-six years old. She lived in a hostel withthirty other girls (’Always in the stink of women! How Ihate women!’ she said parenthetically), and she worked, ashe had guessed, on the novel-writing machines in the FictionDepartment. She enjoyed her work, which consistedchiefly in running and servicing a powerful but tricky elec-