Get it up while it's fresh on your stomach,
like.'
She revived, turned to have another look at Winston and seemed
immediately to take a fancy to him. She put a vast arm round his shoulder
and drew him towards her, breathing beer and vomit into his face.
'Wass your name, dearie?' she said.
'Smith,' said Winston.
'Smith?' said the woman. 'Thass funny. My name's Smith too. Why,' she
added sentimentally, 'I might be your mother!'
She might, thought Winston, be his mother. She was about the right age
and physique, and it was probable that people changed somewhat after twenty
years in a forced-labour camp.
No one else had spoken to him. To a surprising extent the ordinary
criminals ignored the Party prisoners. 'The polits,' they called them, with
a sort of uninterested contempt. The Party prisoners seemed terrified of
speaking to anybody, and above all of speaking to one another. Only once,
when two Party members, both women, were pressed close together on the
bench, he overheard amid the din of voices a few hurriedly-whispered words;
and in particular a reference to something called 'room one-oh-one', which
he did not understand.
It might be two or three hours ago that they had brought him here. The
dull pain in his belly never went away, but sometimes it grew better and
sometimes worse, and his thoughts expanded or contracted accordingly. When
it grew worse he thought only of the pain itself, and of his desire for
food. When it g