down a side-street (Julia would never speak when
they were away from the main streets) when there was a deafening roar, the
earth heaved, and the air darkened, and Winston found himself lying on his
side, bruised and terrified. A rocket bomb must have dropped quite near at
hand. Suddenly he became aware of Julia's face a few centimetres from his
own, deathly white, as white as chalk. Even her lips were white. She was
dead! He clasped her against him and found that he was kissing a live warm
face. But there was some powdery stuff that got in the way of his lips.
Both of their faces were thickly coated with plaster.
There were evenings when they reached their rendezvous and then had to
walk past one another without a sign, because a patrol had just come round
the corner or a helicopter was hovering overhead. Even if it had been less
dangerous, it would still have been difficult to find time to meet.
Winston's working week was sixty hours, Julia's was even longer, and their
free days varied according to the pressure of work and did not often
coincide. Julia, in any case, seldom had an evening completely free. She
spent an astonishing a