It was always very much the same.
He was standing in front of a wall of darkness, and on the other side of it there was something unendurable, something too dreadful to be faced.
In the dream his deepest feeling was always one of self-deception, because he did in fact know what was behind the wall of darkness.
With a deadly effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own brain, he could even have dragged the thing into the open.
He always woke up without discovering what it was: but somehow it was connected with what Julia had been saying when he cut her short.
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'it's nothing.
I don't like rats, that's all.'
'Don't worry, dear, we're not going to have the filthy brutes in here.
I'll stuff the hole with a bit of sacking before we go.
And next time we come here I'll bring some plaster and bung it up properly.'
Already the black instant of panic was half-forgotten.
Feeling slightly ashamed of himself, he sat up against the bedhead.
Julia got out of bed, pulled on her overalls, and made the coffee.
The smell that rose from the saucepan was so powerful and exciting that they shut the window lest anybody outside should notice it and become inquisitive.
What was even better than the taste of the coffee was the silky texture given to it by the sugar, a thing Winston had almost forgotten after years of saccharine.
With one hand in her pocket and a piece of bread and jam in the other, Julia wandered about the room, glancing indifferently at the bookcase, pointing out the best way of repairing the gateleg table, plumping herself down in the ragged arm-chair to see if it was comfortable, and examining the absurd twelve-hour clock with a sort of tolerant amusement.
She brought the glass paperweight over to the bed to have a look at it in a better light.
He took it out of her hand, fascinated, as always, by the soft, rainwatery appearance of the glass.
'What is it, do you think?' said Julia.
'I don't think it's anything--I mean, I don't think it was ever put to any use.
That's what I like about it.
It's a little chunk of history that they've forgotten to alter.
It's a message from a hundred years ago, if one knew how to read it.'
'And that picture over there'--she nodded at the engraving on the opposite wall--'would that be a hundred years old?'
'More.
Two hundred, I dare say.
One can't tell.
It's impossible to discover the age of anything nowadays.'
She went over to look at it.
'Here's where that brute stuck his nose out,' she said, kicking the wainscoting immediately below the picture. 'What is this place?
I've seen it before somewhere.'
'It's a church, or at least it used to be.
St Clement Danes its name was.' The fragment of rhyme that Mr Charrington had taught him came back into his head, and he added half-nostalgically: "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's!"
To his astonishment she capped the line:
'You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's, When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey----'
'I can't remember how it goes on after that.
But anyway I remember it ends up,
"Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head!"'
It was like the two halves of a countersign.
But there must be another line after 'the bells of Old Bailey'.
Perhaps it could be dug out of Mr Charrington's memory, if he were suitably prompted.
'Who taught you that?' he said.
'My grandfather.
He used to say it to me when I was a little girl.
He was vaporized when I was eight--at any rate, he disappeared.
I wonder what a lemon was,' she added inconsequently. 'I've seen oranges.
They're a kind of round yellow fruit with a thick skin.'
'I can remember lemons,' said Winston. 'They were quite common in the fifties.
They were so sour that it set your teeth on edge even to smell them.'
'I bet that picture's got bugs behind it,' said Julia. 'I'll take it down and give it a good clean some day.