all
the possible ways of communicating with her had occurred to him within five
minutes of reading the note; but now, with time to think, he went over them
one by one, as though laying out a row of instruments on a table.
Obviously the kind of encounter that had happened this morning could
not be repeated. If she had worked in the Records Department it might have
been comparatively simple, but he had only a very dim idea whereabouts in
the building the Fiction Departrnent lay, and he had no pretext for going
there. If he had known where she lived, and at what time she left work, he
could have contrived to meet her somewhere on her way home; but to try to
follow her home was not safe, because it would mean loitering about outside
the Ministry, which was bound to be noticed. As for sending a letter
through the mails, it was out of the question. By a routine that was not
even secret, all letters were opened in transit. Actually, few people ever
wrote letters. For the messages that it was occasionally necessary to send,
there were printed postcards with long lists of phrases, and you struck out
the ones that were inapplicable. In any case he did not know the girl's
name, let alone her address. Finally he decided that the safest place was
the canteen. If he could get her at a table by herself, somewhere in the
middle of the room, not too near the telescreens, and with a sufficient
buzz of conversation all round -- if these conditions endured for, say,
thirty seconds, it might be possible to exchange a few words.
For a week after this, life was like a restless dream. On the next day
she did not appear in the canteen until he was leaving it, the whistle
having already blown. Presumably she had been changed on to a later shift.
They passed each other without a glance. On the day after that she was in
the canteen at the usual time, but
.
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