Page 192 - Animal Farm and 1984

because she was still holding the tool bag.
“Half a second,” she said. “Just let me show you what I’ve brought. Did
you bring some of that filthy Victory Coffee? I thought you would. You can chuck it away again, because we shan’t be needing it. Look here.”
She fell on her knees, threw open the bag, and tumbled out some spanners and a screwdriver that filled the top part of it. Underneath were a number of neat paper packets. The first packet that she passed to Winston had a strange and yet vaguely familiar feeling. It was filled with some kind of heavy, sandlike stuff which yielded wherever you touched it.
“It isn’t sugar?” he said.
“Real sugar?” Not saccharine, sugar. And here’s a loaf of bread—proper white bread, not our bloody stuff—and a little pot of jam. And here’s a tin of milk—but look! This is the one I’m really proud of. I had to wrap a bit of sacking round it, because—”
But she did not need to tell him why she had wrapped it up. The smell was already filling the room, a rich hot smell which seemed like an emanation from his early childhood, but which one did occasionally meet with even now, blowing down a passageway before a door slammed, or diffusing itself mysteriously in a crowded street, sniffed for an instant and then lost again.
“It’s coffee,” he murmured, “real coffee.”
“It’s Inner Party coffee. There’s a whole kilo here,” she said.
“How did you manage to get hold of all these things?”
“It’s all Inner Party stuff. There’s nothing those swine don’t have, nothing.
But of course waiters and servants and people pinch things, and—look, I got a little packet of tea as well.”
Winston had squatted down beside her. He tore open a corner of the packet.
“It’s real tea. Not blackberry leaves.”
“There’s been a lot of tea about lately. They’ve captured India, or something,” she said vaguely. “But listen, dear. I want you to turn your back on me for three minutes. Go and sit on the other side of the bed. Don’t go too near the window. And don’t turn round till I tell you.”
Winston gazed abstractedly through the muslin curtain. Down in the yard the red-armed woman was still marching to and fro between the washtub and the line. She took two more pegs out of her mouth and sang with deep feeling: