19848
would  never  be  vaporized.  The  little  beetle-like  men  who 
scuttle  so  nimbly  through  the  labyrinthine  corridors  of 
Ministries they, too, would never be vaporized. And the girl 
with dark hair, the girl from the Fiction Department—she 
would never be vaporized either. It seemed to him that he 
knew instinctively who would survive and who would per-
ish:  though  just  what  it  was  that  made  for  survival,  it  was 
not easy to say.
At  this  moment  he  was  dragged  out  of  his  reverie  with 
a  violent  jerk.  The  girl  at  the  next  table  had  turned  partly 
round and was looking at him. It was the girl with dark hair. 
She was looking at him in a sidelong way, but with curious 
intensity.  The  instant  she  caught  his  eye  she  looked  away 
again.
The  sweat  started  out  on  Winston’s  backbone.  A  horri-
ble pang of terror went through him. It was gone almost at 
once,  but  it  left  a  sort  of  nagging  uneasiness  behind.  Why 
was  she  watching  him?  Why  did  she  keep  following  him 
about? Unfortunately he could not remember whether she 
had already been at the table when he arrived, or had come 
there afterwards. But yesterday, at any rate, during the Two 
Minutes  Hate,  she  had  sat  immediately  behind  him  when 
there  was  no  apparent  need  to  do  so.  Quite  likely  her  real 
object had been to listen to him and make sure whether he 
was shouting loudly enough.
His  earlier  thought  returned  to  him:  probably  she  was 
not  actually  a  member  of  the  Thought  Police,  but  then  it 
was precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger 
of  all.  He  did  not  know  how  long  she  had  been  looking  at 
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him,  but  perhaps  for  as  much  as  five  minutes,  and  it  was 
possible that his features had not been perfectly under con-
trol. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander 
when you were in any public place or within range of a tele-
screen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous 
tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to 
yourself—anything  that  carried  with  it  the  suggestion  of 
abnormality,  of  having  something  to  hide.  In  any  case,  to 
wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredu-
lous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself 
a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in New-
speak: FACECRIME, it was called.
The girl had turned her back on him again. Perhaps after 
all  she  was  not  really  following  him  about,  perhaps  it  was 
coincidence that she had sat so close to him two days run-
ning. His cigarette had gone out, and he laid it carefully on 
the edge of the table. He would finish smoking it after work, 
if  he  could  keep  the  tobacco  in  it.  Quite  likely  the  person 
at the next table was a spy of the Thought Police, and quite 
likely  he  would  be  in  the  cellars  of  the  Ministry  of  Love 
within  three  days,  but  a  cigarette  end  must  not  be  wasted. 
Syme had folded up his strip of paper and stowed it away in 
his pocket. Parsons had begun talking again.
‘Did I ever tell you, old boy,’ he said, chuckling round the 
stem  of  his  pipe,  ‘about  the  time  when  those  two  nippers 
of  mine  set  fire  to  the  old  market-woman’s  skirt  because 
they  saw  her  wrapping  up  sausages  in  a  poster  of  B.B.? 
Sneaked up behind her and set fire to it with a box of match-
es. Burned her quite badly, I believe. Little beggars, eh? But 
198480
keen as mustard! That’s a first-rate training they give them 
in the Spies nowadays—better than in my day, even. What 
d’you think’s the latest thing they’ve served them out with? 
Ear trumpets for listening through keyholes! My little girl 
brought  one  home  the  other  night—tried  it  out  on  our  sit-
ting-room door, and reckoned she could hear twice as much 
as with her ear to the hole. Of course it’s only a toy, mind 
you. Still, gives ‘em the right idea, eh?’
At this moment the telescreen let out a piercing whistle. 
It was the signal to return to work. All three men sprang to 
their feet to join in the struggle round the lifts, and the re-
maining tobacco fell out of Winston’s cigarette.
198414
ed: ‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s!’
‘What’s that?’ said Winston.
‘Oh—‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s.’ 
That was a rhyme we had when I was a little boy. How it goes 
on I don’t remember, but I do know it ended up, ‘Here comes 
a candle to light you to bed, Here comes a chopper to chop 
off your head.’ It was a kind of a dance. They held out their 
arms  for  you  to  pass  under,  and  when  they  came  to  ‘Here 
comes a chopper to chop off your head’ they brought their 
arms down and caught you. It was just names of churches. 
All the London churches were in it—all the principal ones, 
that is.’
Winston wondered vaguely to what century the church 
belonged.  It  was  always  difficult  to  determine  the  age  of  a 
London building. Anything large and impressive, if it was 
reasonably  new  in  appearance,  was  automatically  claimed 
as  having  been  built  since  the  Revolution,  while  anything 
that was obviously of earlier date was ascribed to some dim 
period called the Middle Ages. The centuries of capitalism 
were held to have produced nothing of any value. One could 
not  learn  history  from  architecture  any  more  than  one 
could  learn  it  from  books.  Statues,  inscriptions,  memori-
al stones, the names of streets—anything that might throw 
light upon the past had been systematically altered.
‘I never knew it had been a church,’ he said.
‘There’s a lot of them left, really,’ said the old man, ‘though 
they’ve been put to other uses. Now, how did that rhyme go? 
Ah! I’ve got it!
‘Oranges  and  lemons,  say  the  bells  of  St  Clement’s,  You 
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owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin’s——‘
there, now, that’s as far as I can get. A farthing, that was 
a small copper coin, looked something like a cent.’
‘Where was St Martin’s?’ said Winston.
‘St Martin’s? That’s still standing. It’s in Victory Square, 
alongside the picture gallery. A building with a kind of a tri-
angular porch and pillars in front, and a big flight of steps.’
Winston  knew  the  place  well.  It  was  a  museum  used 
for propaganda displays of various kinds—scale models of 
rocket bombs and Floating Fortresses, waxwork tableaux il-
lustrating enemy atrocities, and the like.
‘St  Martin’s-in-the-Fields  it  used  to  be  called,’  supple-
mented  the  old  man,  ‘though  I  don’t  recollect  any  fields 
anywhere in those parts.’
Winston did not buy the picture. It would have been an 
even  more  incongruous  possession  than  the  glass  paper-
weight, and impossible to carry home, unless it were taken 
out  of  its  frame.  But  he  lingered  for  some  minutes  more, 
talking to the old man, whose name, he discovered, was not 
Weeks—as  one  might  have  gathered  from  the  inscription 
over the shop-front—but Charrington. Mr Charrington, it 
seemed,  was  a  widower  aged  sixty-three  and  had  inhabit-
ed this shop for thirty years. Throughout that time he had 
been intending to alter the name over the window, but had 
never  quite  got  to  the  point  of  doing  it.  All  the  while  that 
they  were  talking  the  half-remembered  rhyme  kept  run-
ning through Winston’s head. Oranges and lemons say the 
bells  of  St  Clement’s,  You  owe  me  three  farthings,  say  the 
bells of St Martin’s! It was curious, but when you said it to 
19841
yourself  you  had  the  illusion  of  actually  hearing  bells,  the 
bells of a lost London that still existed somewhere or other, 
disguised and forgotten. From one ghostly steeple after an-
other  he  seemed  to  hear  them  pealing  forth.  Yet  so  far  as 
he  could  remember  he  had  never  in  real  life  heard  church 
bells ringing.
He  got  away  from  Mr  Charrington  and  went  down  the 
stairs  alone,  so  as  not  to  let  the  old  man  see  him  recon-
noitring the street before stepping out of the door. He had 
already made up his mind that after a suitable interval—a 
month,  say—he  would  take  the  risk  of  visiting  the  shop 
again. It was perhaps not more dangerous than shirking an 
evening at the Centre. The serious piece of folly had been to 
come back here in the first place, after buying the diary and 
without knowing whether the proprietor of the shop could 
be trusted. However——!
Yes,  he  thought  again,  he  would  come  back.  He  would 
buy further scraps of beautiful rubbish. He would buy the 
engraving of St Clement Danes, take it out of its frame, and 
carry it home concealed under the jacket of his overalls. He 
would drag the rest of that poem out of Mr Charrington’s 
memory.  Even  the  lunatic  project  of  renting  the  room  up-
stairs  flashed  momentarily  through  his  mind  again.  For 
perhaps five seconds exaltation made him careless, and he 
stepped  out  on  to  the  pavement  without  so  much  as  a  pre-
liminary glance through the window. He had even started 
humming to an improvised tune
Oranges  and  lemons,  say  the  bells  of  St  Clement’s,  You 
owe me three farthings, say the——
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Suddenly  his  heart  seemed  to  turn  to  ice  and  his  bow-
els  to  water.  A  figure  in  blue  overalls  was  coming  down 
the pavement, not ten metres away. It was the girl from the 
Fiction Department, the girl with dark hair. The light was 
failing,  but  there  was  no  difficulty  in  recognizing  her.  She 
looked him straight in the face, then walked quickly on as 
though she had not seen him.
For  a  few  seconds  Winston  was  too  paralysed  to  move. 
Then  he  turned  to  the  right  and  walked  heavily  away,  not 
noticing  for  the  moment  that  he  was  going  in  the  wrong 
direction. At any rate, one question was settled. There was 
no doubting any longer that the girl was spying on him. She 
must  have  followed  him  here,  because  it  was  not  credible 
that  by  pure  chance  she  should  have  happened  to  be  walk-
ing  on  the  same  evening  up  the  same  obscure  backstreet, 
kilometres distant from any quarter where Party members 
lived. It was too great a coincidence. Whether she was really 
an  agent  of  the  Thought  Police,  or  simply  an  amateur  spy 
actuated  by  officiousness,  hardly  mattered.  It  was  enough 
that she was watching him. Probably she had seen him go 
into the pub as well.
It was an effort to walk. The lump of glass in his pocket 
banged against his thigh at each step, and he was half mind-
ed to take it out and throw it away. The worst thing was the 
pain in his belly. For a couple of minutes he had the feeling 
that  he  would  die  if  he  did  not  reach  a  lavatory  soon.  But 
there  would  be  no  public  lavatories  in  a  quarter  like  this. 
Then the spasm passed, leaving a dull ache behind.
The street was a blind alley. Winston halted, stood 
198418
for  several  seconds  wondering  vaguely  what  to  do,  then 
turned round and began to retrace his steps. As he turned 
it occurred to him that the girl had only passed him three 
minutes  ago  and  that  by  running  he  could  probably  catch 
up  with  her.  He  could  keep  on  her  track  till  they  were  in 
some  quiet  place,  and  then  smash  her  skull  in  with  a  cob-
blestone.  The  piece  of  glass  in  his  pocket  would  be  heavy 
enough for the job. But he abandoned the idea immediately, 
because even the thought of making any physical effort was 
unbearable.  He  could  not  run,  he  could  not  strike  a  blow. 
Besides, she was young and lusty and would defend herself. 
He thought also of hurrying to the Community Centre and 
staying there till the place closed, so as to establish a partial 
alibi for the evening. But that too was impossible. A deadly 
lassitude  had  taken  hold  of  him.  All  he  wanted  was  to  get 
home quickly and then sit down and be quiet.
It  was  after  twenty-two  hours  when  he  got  back  to  the 
flat. The lights would be switched off at the main at twenty-
three thirty. He went into the kitchen and swallowed nearly 
a teacupful of Victory Gin. Then he went to the table in the 
alcove, sat down, and took the diary out of the drawer. But 
he did not open it at once. From the telescreen a brassy fe-
male voice was squalling a patriotic song. He sat staring at 
the  marbled  cover  of  the  book,  trying  without  success  to 
shut the voice out of his consciousness.
It was at night that they came for you, always at night. The 
proper  thing  was  to  kill  yourself  before  they  got  you.  Un-
doubtedly some people did so. Many of the disappearances 
were  actually  suicides.  But  it  needed  desperate  courage  to 