In the old days, the rich people, the people at the top—”
“The ‘Ouse of Lords,” put in the old man reminiscently.
“The House of Lords, if you like. What I am asking is, were these people able to treat you as an inferior, simply because they were rich and you were poor? Is it a fact, for instance, that you had to call them “Sir” and take off your cap when you passed them?”
The old man appeared to think deeply. He drank off about a quarter of his beer before answering.
“Yes,” he said. “They liked you to touch your cap to ‘em. It showed respect, like. I didn’t agree with it, myself, but I done it often enough. Had to, as you might say.”
“And was it usual—I’m only quoting what I’ve read in history books—was it usual for these people and their servants to push you off the pavement into the gutter?”
“One of ‘em pushed me once,” said the old man. “I recollect it as if it was yesterday. It was Boat Race night and I bumps into a young bloke on Shaftesbury Avenue. Quite a gent, ‘e was—dress shirt, top ‘at, black overcoat. ‘E was kind of zig-zagging across the pavement, and I bumps into ‘im accidental-like. ‘E says, ‘Why can’t you look where you’re going?’ ‘e says. I say, ‘Ju think you’ve bought the pavement?’ ‘E says, ‘I’ll twist your bloody ‘ead off if you get fresh with me.’ I says, ‘You’re drunk. I’ll give you in charge in ‘alf a minute,’ I says. An’ if you’ll believe me, ‘e puts ‘is ‘and on my chest and gives me a shove as pretty near sent me under the wheels of a bus. Well, I was young in them days, only—”
A sense of helplessness took hold of Winston. The old man’s memory was nothing but a rubbish-heap of details.
“Perhaps I have not made myself clear,” he said. “What I’m trying to say is this. You have been alive a very long time; you lived half your life before the Revolution. In 1925, for instance, you were already grown up. Would you say from what you can remember, that life in 1925 was better than it is now, or worse? If you could choose, would you prefer to live then or now?”
The old man finished up his beer, more slowly than before. When he spoke it was with a tolerant philosophical air.
“I know what you expect me to say,” he said. “You expect me to say as I’d sooner be young again. Most people’d say they’d sooner be young, if you arst’ ‘em. You got your ‘ealth and strength when you’re young. When you get to my time of life you ain’t never well. You ain’t got the same worries.”
Winston sat back against the window-sill. It was no use going on. He was about to buy some more beer when the old man suddenly got up and went into the stinking urinal at the side of the room. The extra half-litre was already working on him. Winston sat for a minute or two, and hardly noticed when his feet carried him out into the street again.
When he looked up, he was in a narrow street, with a few dark little shops. Of course! He was standing outside the junk-shop where he had bought the diary.
Fear went through him. He had sworn never to come near the place again. And yet his feet had brought him back here of their own accord.
The owner had just lighted a hanging oil lamp. He was a man of perhaps sixty, with a long, benevolent nose, and mild eyes distorted by thick spectacles. His hair was almost white, but his eyebrows were bushy and still black. He was wearing an aged jacket of black velvet. His voice was soft.
“I recognized you on the pavement,” he said immediately. “You’re the gentleman that bought the young lady’s keepsake album. That was a beautiful bit of paper, that was.” He looked at Winston over the top of his spectacles. “Is there anything I can do for you? Or did you just want to look round?”
“I was passing,” said Winston. “I just looked in. I don’t want anything in particular.”
“It’s just as well,” said the other. “Between you and me, the antique trade’s just about finished. No demand any longer, and no stock either.”
The tiny interior of the shop was uncomfortably full, but there was almost nothing in it of the value. The floorspace was very restricted, because all round the walls were stacked picture-frames. In the window there were trays of nuts and bolts, worn-out chisels, penknives with broken blades, watches that did not even pretend to be working, and other rubbish. Then Winston’s eye was caught by a round, smooth thing that gleamed softly in the lamplight, and he picked it up.
It was a heavy lump of glass, curved on one side, flat on the other, making almost a hemisphere. At the heart of it was a strange, pink object that recalled a rose or a sea anemone.
“What is it?” said Winston, fascinated.
“That’s coral, that is,” said the old man. “It must have come from the Indian Ocean. They used to kind of embed it in the glass. That wasn’t made less than a hundred years ago. More, by the look of it.”
“It’s a beautiful thing,” said Winston.
“It is a beautiful thing,” said the other. “But there’s not many that’d say so nowadays.” He coughed. “Now, if it so happened that you wanted to buy it, that’d cost you four dollars.”
Winston immediately paid over the four dollars and put the thing into his pocket. It was very heavy, but fortunately it did not make much of a bulge.
“There’s another room upstairs that you might care to take a look at,” said the owner. “There’s not much in it. Just a few pieces.”
He lit another lamp, and, led the way slowly up the stairs, into a room. Winston noticed that the furniture was still arranged as though the room were meant to be lived in. There was a strip of carpet on the floor, a picture or two on the walls, and an arm-chair next to the fireplace. An old-fashioned glass clock was ticking away on the mantelpiece. Under the window, and occupying a quarter of the room, was an enormous bed with the mattress still on it.
“We lived here till my wife died,” said the old man. “I’m selling the furniture off by little and little.”
He was holding the lamp high up, so as to illuminate the whole room, and in the warm dim light the place looked inviting. The thought came to Winston that it would probably be quite easy to rent the room for a few dollars a week, if he dared to take the risk. It was a wild, impossible idea; but the room had awakened in him a sort of nostalgia. It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in a room like this.
“There’s no telescreen!” he could not help murmuring.
“Ah,” said the old man, “I never had one of those things. Too expensive. And I never seemed to feel the need of it, somehow.”
There was a small bookcase in the other corner, and Winston went towards it. It contained nothing but rubbish. The destruction of books had been done with the same thoroughness in the prole quarters as everywhere else.
“Now, if you happen to be interested in old prints at all—” began the old man.
Winston came across to examine the picture. It was a steel engraving of an oval building with rectangular windows, and a small tower in front. There was a railing running round the building, and at the rear end there was what appeared to be a statue. Winston looked at it for some moments. It seemed familiar.
“I know that building,” said Winston finally. “It’s a ruin now. It’s in the middle
