Behind his back he could feel everyone eyeing his blue overalls.
A game of darts which was going on at the other end of the room interrupted itself for perhaps as much as thirty seconds.
The old man whom he had followed was standing at the bar, having some kind of altercation with the barman, a large, stout, hook-nosed young man with enormous forearms.
A knot of others, standing round with glasses in their hands, were watching the scene.
'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man, straightening his shoulders pugnaciously.
'You telling me you ain't got a pint mug in the 'ole bleeding boozer?'
'And what in hell's name IS a pint?' said the barman, leaning forward with the tips of his fingers on the counter. ''Ark at 'im!
Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is!
Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon.
'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'
'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and half litre--that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the shelf in front of you.'
'I likes a pint,' persisted the old man.
'You could 'a drawed me off a pint easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding litres when I was a young man.'
'When you were a young man we were all living in the treetops,' said the barman, with a glance at the other customers.
There was a shout of laughter, and the uneasiness caused by Winston's entry seemed to disappear.
The old man's white-stubbled face had flushed pink.
He turned away, muttering to himself, and bumped into Winston.
Winston caught him gently by the arm.
'May I offer you a drink?' he said.
'You're a gent,' said the other, straightening his shoulders again.
He appeared not to have noticed Winston's blue overalls. 'Pint!' he added aggressively to the barman. 'Pint of wallop.'
The barman swished two half-litres of dark-brown beer into thick glasses which he had rinsed in a bucket under the counter.
Beer was the only drink you could get in prole pubs.
The proles were supposed not to drink gin, though in practice they could get hold of it easily enough.
The game of darts was in full swing again, and the knot of men at the bar had begun talking about lottery tickets.
Winston's presence was forgotten for a moment.
There was a deal table under the window where he and the old man could talk without fear of being overheard.
It was horribly dangerous, but at any rate there was no telescreen in the room, a point he had made sure of as soon as he came in.
''E could 'a drawed me off a pint,' grumbled the old man as he settled down behind a glass.
'A 'alf litre ain't enough.
It don't satisfy. And a 'ole litre's too much.
It starts my bladder running.
Let alone the price.' 'You must have seen great changes since you were a young man,' said Winston tentatively.
The old man's pale blue eyes moved from the darts board to the bar, and from the bar to the door of the Gents, as though it were in the bar-room that he expected the changes to have occurred.
'The beer was better,' he said finally. 'And cheaper!
When I was a young man, mild beer--wallop we used to call it--was fourpence a pint.
That was before the war, of course.'
'Which war was that?' said Winston.
'It's all wars,' said the old man vaguely.
He took up his glass, and his shoulders straightened again. ''Ere's wishing you the very best of 'ealth!'
In his lean throat the sharp-pointed Adam's apple made a surprisingly rapid up-and-down movement, and the beer vanished.
Winston went to the bar and came back with two more half-litres.
The old man appeared to have forgotten his prejudice against drinking a full litre.
'You are very much older than I am,' said Winston. 'You must have been a grown man before I was born.
You can remember what it was like in the old days, before the Revolution.
People of my age don't really know anything about those times.
We can only read about them in books, and what it says in the books may not be true.
I should like your opinion on that.
The history books say that life before the Revolution was completely different from what it is now.
There was the most terrible oppression, injustice, poverty worse than anything we can imagine. Here in London, the great mass of the people never had enough to eat from birth to death.