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pavement and which were somehow
curiously suggestive of ratholes. There were puddles of filthy water here
and there among the cobbles. In and out of the dark doorways, and down
narrow alley-ways that branched off on either side, people swarmed in
astonishing numbers -- girls in full bloom, with crudely lipsticked mouths,
and youths who chased the girls, and swollen waddling women who showed you
what the girls would be like in ten years" time, and old bent creatures
shuffling along on splayed feet, and ragged barefooted children who played
in the puddles and then scattered at angry yells from their mothers.
Perhaps a quarter of the windows in the street were broken and boarded up.
Most of the people paid no attention to Winston; a few eyed him with a sort
of guarded curiosity. Two monstrous women with brick-red forearms folded
across thelr aprons were talking outside a doorway. Winston caught scraps
of conversation as he approached.
'"Yes," I says to 'er, "that's all very well," I says. "But if you'd
of been in my place you'd of done the same as what I done. It's easy to
criticize," I says, "but you ain't got the same problems as what I got."'
'Ah,' said the other, 'that's jest it. That's jest where it is.'
The strident voices stopped abruptly. The women studied him in hostile
silence as he went past. But it was not hostility, exactly; merely a kind
of wariness, a momentary stiffening, as at the passing of some unfamiliar
animal. The blue overalls of t