10 1984
haven’t seen a brass candlestick in years.’
The tiny interior of the shop was in fact uncomfortably
full, but there was almost nothing in it of the slightest val-
ue. The floorspace was very restricted, because all round
the walls were stacked innumerable dusty picture-frames.
In the window there were trays of nuts and bolts, worn-out
chisels, penknives with broken blades, tarnished watches
that did not even pretend to be in going order, and other
miscellaneous rubbish. Only on a small table in the corner
was there a litter of odds and ends—lacquered snuffbox-
es, agate brooches, and the like—which looked as though
they might include something interesting. As Winston
wandered towards the table his 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. There was a
peculiar softness, as of rainwater, in both the colour and
the texture of the glass. At the heart of it, magnified by the
curved surface, there was a strange, pink, convoluted 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 appreciatively. ‘But
there’s not many that’d say so nowadays.’ He coughed. ‘Now,