[AC]

time earlier, how much earlier he
could not remember. He remembered better the rackety, uneasy circumstances
of the time: the periodical panics about air-raids and the sheltering in
Tube stations, the piles of rubble everywhere, the unintelligible
proclamations posted at street corners, the gangs of youths in shirts all
the same colour, the enormous queues outside the bakeries, the intermittent
machine-gun fire in the distance -- above all, the fact that there was
never enough to eat. He remembered long afternoons spent with other boys in
scrounging round dustbins and rubbish heaps, picking out the ribs of
cabbage leaves, potato peelings, sometimes even scraps of stale breadcrust
from which they carefully scraped away the cinders; and also in waiting for
the passing of trucks which travelled over a certain route and were known
to carry cattle feed, and which, when they jolted over the bad patches in
the road, sometimes spilt a few fragments of oil-cake.
When his father disappeared, his mother did not show any surprise or
any violent grief, but a sudden change came over her. She seemed to have
become completely spiritless. It was evident even to Winston that she was
waiting for something that she knew must happen. She did everything that
was needed -- cooked, washed, mended, made the bed, swept the floor, dusted
the mantelpiece -- always very slowly and with a curious lack of
superfluous motion, like an artist's lay-figure moving of its own accord.
Her large sh