1984 - Planet eBook

Down in the yard the red-armed woman was still marchingto and fro between the washtub and the line. She took twomore pegs out of her mouth and sang with deep feeling:They sye that time ‘eals all things,They sye you can always forget;But the smiles an’ the tears acrorss the yearsThey twist my‘eart-strings yet!She knew the whole drivelling song by heart, it seemed.Her voice floated upward with the sweet summer air, verytuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy. One hadthe feeling that she would have been perfectly content, if theJune evening had been endless and the supply of clothes inexhaustible,to remain there for a thousand years, peggingout diapers and singing rubbish. It struck him as a curiousfact that he had never heard a member of the Party singingalone and spontaneously. It would even have seemed slightlyunorthodox, a dangerous eccentricity, like talking to oneself.Perhaps it was only when people were somewhere nearthe starvation level that they had anything to sing about.‘You can turn round now,’ said Julia.He turned round, and for a second almost failed to recognizeher. What he had actually expected was to see hernaked. But she was not naked. The transformation that hadhappened was much more surprising than that. She hadpainted her face.She must have slipped into some shop in the proletarian