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 shapely body seemed to relapse naturally into stillness. For
hours at a time she would sit almost immobile on the bed, nursing his young
sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of two or three, with a face made
simian by thinness. Very occasionally she would take Winston in her arms
and press him against her for a long time without saying anything. He was
aware, in spite of his youthfulness and selfishness, that this was somehow
connected with the never-mentioned thing that was about to happen.
He remembered the room where they lived, a dark, close-smelling room
that seemed half filled by a bed with a white counterpane. There was a gas