Part II — Chapter IV

Winston prepares the rented room above Mr Charrington’s shop, aware that seeking privacy is suicidal under the Party. The absence of a telescreen and the prole woman’s song outside heighten the room’s allure. Hate Week preparations have limited meetings, pushing Winston to propose this risky sanctuary.

Julia arrives with a tool-bag filled with Inner Party luxuries—real coffee, sugar, white bread, jam, milk, and tea—and asks Winston to turn around while she applies makeup. Her deliberately non-Party femininity transforms her presence; they undress and make love in the large bed, reveling in ordinary intimacy denied to Party members.

After a brief sleep, domestic talk reinforces their longing for normalcy. A rat appears from the wainscoting, triggering Winston’s profound terror and hinting at a recurring nightmare. Julia comforts him and promises to block the hole, restoring a tentative calm as they brew real coffee and savor sugar.

Exploring the room, they handle the coral paperweight and discuss the old church engraving of St Clement’s Dane. They trade fragments of the “Oranges and Lemons” rhyme, linking Julia’s vanished grandfather to a half-remembered past. The rhyme and objects underscore their hunger for unaltered history.

As dusk falls, Winston contemplates the paperweight as a microcosm of their refuge—the room as a sealed world and the coral as their lives, suspended in a timeless bubble. The moment crystallizes both the deepening of their relationship and the inevitability that their secret haven cannot endure.