down with a sort of fascination at the sturdy figure below. As he
looked at the woman in her characteristic attitude, her thick arms reaching
up for the line, her powerful mare-like buttocks protruded, it struck him
for the first time that she was beautiful. It had never before occurred to
him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by
childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work till it was coarse in the
grain like an over-ripe turnip, could be beautiful. But it was so, and
after all, he thought, why not? The solid, contourless body, like a block
of granite, and the rasping red skin, bore the same relation to the body of
a girl as the rose-hip to the rose. Why should the fruit be held inferior
to the flower?
'She's beautiful,' he murmured.
'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia.
'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.
He held Julia's supple waist easily encircled by his arm. From the hip
to the knee her flank was against his. Out of their bodies no child would
ever come. That was the one thing they could never do. Only by word of
mouth, from mind to mind, could they pass on the secret. The woman down
there had no mind, she had only strong arms, a warm heart, and a fertile
belly. He wondered how many children she had given birth to. It might
easily be fifteen. She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of
wild-rose beauty and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit
and grown hard and red and coarse, and then