again. After he had devoured the chocolate he
felt somewhat ashamed of himself and hung about in the streets for several
hours, until hunger drove him home. When he came back his mother had
disappeared. This was already becoming normal at that time. Nothing was
gone from the room except his mother and his sister. They had not taken any
clothes, not even his mother's overcoat. To this day he did not know with
any certainty that his mother was dead. It was perfectly possible that she
had merely been sent to a forced-labour camp. As for his sister, she might
have been removed, like Winston himself, to one of the colonies for
homeless children (Reclamation Centres, they were called) which had grown
up as a result of the civil war, or she might have been sent to the labour
camp along with his mother, or simply left somewhere or other to die.
The dream was still vivid in his mind, especially the enveloping
protecting gesture of the arm in which its whole meaning seemed to be
contained. His mind went back to another dream of two months ago. Exactly
as his mother had sat on the dingy whitequilted bed, with the child
clinging to her, so she had sat in the sunken ship, far underneath him, and
drowning deeper every minute, but still looking up at him through the
darkening water.
He told Julia the story of his mother's disappearance. Without opening
her eyes she rolled over and settled herself into a more comfortable
position.
'I expect you were a beastly little swine in those days,' she said
indistinctly. 'All children are swine.'
'Yes. But the real point of the story--'
From her breathing it was evident that she was going off to sleep
again. He would have liked to continue talking about his mother. He did not
suppose, from what he could remember of her, th