Page 114 - 1984

don’t satisfy. And a ‘ole litre’s too much. It starts my bladder
running. Let alone the price.’
‘You must have seen great changes since you were a young
man,’ said Winston tentatively.
The old man’s pale blue eyes moved from the darts board
to the bar, and from the bar to the door of the Gents, as
though it were in the bar-room that he expected the chang-
es to have occurred.
‘The beer was better,’ he said finally. ‘And cheaper! When
I was a young man, mild beer—wallop we used to call it—
was fourpence a pint. That was before the war, of course.’
‘Which war was that?’ said Winston.
‘It’s all wars,’ said the old man vaguely. He took up his
glass, and his shoulders straightened again. ‘’Ere’s wishing
you the very best of ‘ealth!’
In his lean throat the sharp-pointed Adam’s apple made
a surprisingly rapid up-and-down movement, and the beer
vanished. Winston went to the bar and came back with two
more half-litres. The old man appeared to have forgotten
his prejudice against drinking a full litre.
‘You are very much older than I am,’ said Winston. ‘You
must have been a grown man before I was born. You can
remember what it was like in the old days, before the Revo-
lution. People of my age don’t really know anything about
those times. We can only read about them in books, and
what it says in the books may not be true. I should like your
opinion on that. The history books say that life before the
Revolution was completely different from what it is now.
There was the most terrible oppression, injustice, poverty

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