Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
a dice-box, and laughing excitedly. His mother was sitting
opposite him and also laughing.
It must have been about a month before she disappeared.
It was a moment of reconciliation, when the nagging hun-
ger in his belly was forgotten and his earlier affection for
her had temporarily revived. He remembered the day well,
a pelting, drenching day when the water streamed down
the window-pane and the light indoors was too dull to read
by. The boredom of the two children in the dark, cramped
bedroom became unbearable. Winston whined and griz-
zled, made futile demands for food, fretted about the room
pulling everything out of place and kicking the wainscot-
ing until the neighbours banged on the wall, while the
younger child wailed intermittently. In the end his mother
said, ‘Now be good, and I’Il buy you a toy. A lovely toy—
you’ll love it’; and then she had gone out in the rain, to a
little general shop which was still sporadically open nearby,
and came back with a cardboard box containing an outfit
of Snakes and Ladders. He could still remember the smell
of the damp cardboard. It was a miserable outfit. The board
was cracked and the tiny wooden dice were so ill-cut that
they would hardly lie on their sides. Winston looked at the
thing sulkily and without interest. But then his mother lit a
piece of candle and they sat down on the floor to play. Soon
he was wildly excited and shouting with laughter as the tid-
dly-winks climbed hopefully up the ladders and then came
slithering down the snakes again, almost to the starting-
point. They played eight games, winning four each. His tiny
sister, too young to understand what the game was about,