not actually be
abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their
children, in almost the old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand,
were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them
and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension
of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be
surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately.
Abruptly his mind went back to Katharine. Katharine would
unquestionably have denounced him to the Thought Police if she had not
happened to be too stupid to detect the unorthodoxy of his opinions. But
what really recalled her to him at this moment was the stifling heat of the
afternoon, which had brought the sweat out on his forehead. He began
telling Julia of something that had happened, or rather had failed to
happen, on another sweltering summer afternoon, eleven years ago.
It was three or four months after they were married. They had lost
their way on a community hike somewhere in Kent. They had only lagged
behind the others for a couple of minutes, but they took a wrong turning,
and presently found themselves pulled up short by the edge of an old chalk
quarry. It was a sheer drop of ten or twenty metres, with boulders at the
bottom. There was nobody of whom they could ask the way. As soon as she
realized that they were lost Katharine became very uneasy. To be away from
the noisy mob of hikers even for a moment gave her a feeling of wrong-
doing. She wanted to hurry back by the way they had come and start
searching in the other direction. But at this moment Winston noticed some
tufts of loosestrife growing in the cracks of the cliff beneath them. One
tuft was of two colours, magenta and brick-red, apparently growing on the
same root. He had never seen anything of