Page 371 - 1984

prevent his keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind
that he would accompany her as far as the Tube station, but
suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed
pointless and unbearable. He was overwhelmed by a desire
not so much to get away from Julia as to get back to the
Chestnut Tree Cafe, which had never seemed so attractive
as at this moment. He had a nostalgic vision of his corner
table, with the newspaper and the chessboard and the ever-
flowing gin. Above all, it would be warm in there. The next
moment, not altogether by accident, he allowed himself to
become separated from her by a small knot of people. He
made a halfhearted attempt to catch up, then slowed down,
turned, and made off in the opposite direction. When he
had gone fifty metres he looked back. The street was not
crowded, but already he could not distinguish her. Any one
of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers. Perhaps
her thickened, stiffened body was no longer recognizable
from behind.
‘At the time when it happens,’ she had said, ‘you do mean
it.’ He had meant it. He had not merely said it, he had wished
it. He had wished that she and not he should be delivered
over to the——
Something changed in the music that trickled from the
telescreen. A cracked and jeering note, a yellow note, came
into it. And then—perhaps it was not happening, perhaps
it was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound—a
voice was singing:

‘Under the spreading chestnut tree

0 1984