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men in shabby greenish uniforms were squatting, jammed
close together. Their sad, Mongolian faces gazed out over
the sides of the trucks utterly incurious. Occasionally when
a truck jolted there was a clank-clank of metal: all the pris-
oners were wearing leg-irons. Truck-load after truck-load of
the sad faces passed. Winston knew they were there but he
saw them only intermittently. The girl’s shoulder, and her
arm right down to the elbow, were pressed against his. Her
cheek was almost near enough for him to feel its warmth.
She had immediately taken charge of the situation, just as
she had done in the canteen. She began speaking in the
same expressionless voice as before, with lips barely mov-
ing, a mere murmur easily drowned by the din of voices and
the rumbling of the trucks.
‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you get Sunday afternoon off?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then listen carefully. You’ll have to remember this. Go
to Paddington Station——’
With a sort of military precision that astonished him, she
outlined the route that he was to follow. A half-hour railway
journey; turn left outside the station; two kilometres along
the road; a gate with the top bar missing; a path across a
field; a grass-grown lane; a track between bushes; a dead
tree with moss on it. It was as though she had a map inside
her head. ‘Can you remember all that?’ she murmured fi-
nally.
‘Yes.’