Page 171 - Animal Farm and 1984

He did not look at her. He unpacked his tray and promptly began eating. It was all-important to speak at once, before anyone else came, but now a terrible fear had taken possession of him. A week had gone by since she had first approached. She would have changed her mind, she must have changed her mind! It was impossible that this affair should end successfully; such things did not happen in real life. He might have flinched altogether from speaking if at this moment he had not seen Ampleforth, the hairy-eared poet, wandering limply round the room with a tray, looking for a place to sit down. In his vague way Ampleforth was attached to Winston, and would certainly sit down at his table if he caught sight of him. There was perhaps a minute in which to act. Both Winston and the girl were eating steadily. The stuff they were eating was a thin stew, actually a soup, of haricot beans. In a low murmur Winston began speaking. Neither of them looked up; steadily they spooned the watery stuff into their mouths, and between spoonfuls exchanged the few necessary words in low expressionless voices.
“What time do you leave work?” “Eighteen-thirty.”
“Where can we meet?”
“Victory Square, near the monument.” “It’s full of telescreens.”
“It doesn’t matter if there’s a crowd.”
“Any signal?”
“No. Don’t come up to me until you see me among a lot of people. And
don’t look at me. Just keep somewhere near me.” “What time?”
“Nineteen hours. ”
“All right.”
Ampleforth failed to see Winston and sat down at another table. The girl finished her lunch quickly and made off, while Winston stayed to smoke a cigarette. They did not speak again, and, so far as it was possible for two people sitting on opposite sides of the same table, they did not look at one another.
Winston was in Victory Square before the appointed time. He wandered round the base of the enormous fluted column, at the top of which Big Brother’s statue gazed southward toward the skies where he had vanquished the Eurasian airplanes (the Eastasian airplanes, it had been, a few years ago) in the Battle of Airstrip One. In the street in front of it there was a statue of a