Today, an extract from a major new novel

Now that 1984 is out of date, we have computerised a fictional projection of the next really big year…

 

         It was a bright cold day in April, and Winston’s Smith’s watch was chiming thirteen. He must get it mended, he thought, but he knew he wouldn’t; when you buy a watch for £1.99 from a service station, it’s cheaper to throw it away and buy a new one than pay for it to be mended. Not, he thought wryly to himself as he turned into the block where he lived, not that he knew of any watch mender to go to; they all seemed to have vanished these days.
         Victory Mansions was a smart apartment block in what the estate agents called West Chelsea but was really Hammersmith. Because of the recent bomb outrages, security at the entrance was very tight. Winston could not enter his own home until he had spoken into the voice grille for speech identity, place his hand on the printplate for fingerprint identity and put his personal homecard into the slot provided. As if to make sure that he was not a dangerous terrorist, a TV camera was angled towards him above the door and above that was a small hole which, Winston was convinced, contained the nozzle of a machine gun. The owners of Victory Mansions had no intention of seeing their investment blown up; they would rather blow up the intruder first. There was a rumour that a flat-owner in Maida Vale had recently been shot to death by a security device in his own front door, merely because he had mistakenly put a credit card in the homecard slot, but like all such rumours it had been hushed up or simply not been followed up by the media.
         The entrance hall to Victory Mansions was plush, lined with mirrors and deadened by a red carpet. This is a comfortable, spacious block, was the message it intended to convey, in which it lied, because the entrance hall was the only spacious and elegant room in the building. Accommodation was now so expensive in London you were lucky to find anything bigger than one room for £250,000. Winston’s flat was actually half of an old, large sitting room and on the other side of the partition wall he could hear his neighbour, Kimble, moving about. Sometimes, when it was very quiet, he could hear him breathing.
         The lift opened, and Kimble came out. He nodded at Winston without smiling.
         ‘Off to Mincom?’ said Winston. ‘On a Saturday.’
         ‘Something else blown up,’ said Kimble. ‘Have to go and deal with it.’
‘Don’t tell me Mincom is dealing with bombs now!’ said Winston mockingly.
         ‘That’s not very funny,’ said Kimble. ‘In any case you know I couldn’t possibly tell you what Mincom is working on at the moment. It’s secret.’
         Primly he swept out of the building. What a prat, thought Winston. Ever since the new Secrets Act had come in, penalising breaches of confidentiality, nobody who worked for the government ever talked about their job. This was a blessing in some ways, insofar as you were spared many a tedious conversation, but it also meant that nobody had any idea what the government was up to any more, unless they were in the know. Winston was in the know enough to remember that Mincom (the Ministry of Commerce) was the result of a merger of the old Department of Trade with the Foreign Office. Our Blessed Leader, as she was always referred to, had decided that the choice of our enemy should no longer be left to diplomats, but was far better practised by businessmen.
         It made sense, actually. History showed that the country which was your natural military enemy was often one of your biggest trading partners as well, which meant that wars could be costly business errors. When we went to war with Germany in 1914, we were attacking one of our biggest export markets. Not very clever. Fighting Argentina in 1982 had been much better as Argentina was no great shakes as a trading partner; unfortunately, it had not been a good military target either, and Winston privately thought it had been a complete waste of time to fight a war 7,000 miles away.
         It was the sort of thought that was best kept private these days. Our Blessed Leader repeatedly came on television to tell us how free we were, before announcing the withdrawal of another freedom. It was getting to the state where you could think whatever you liked, as long as it was more or less what the government thought. Millions of people wanted their troops out of Northern Ireland, but nobody dared say so. Millions also wanted to be out of the EC, but it was not a thought you heard much in 1992, the glorious year of Free Europe. People never talked about the bombings any more. Unfortunately the bombings increased year by year.
         As Winston let himself into his room, he could hear the telly droning on in the corner. It was Our Blessed Leader, live from Parliament.
         ‘…therefore, in order to safeguard our precious freedom, it is necessary that for a limited period only we withdraw the right of those arrested…’
         It was quite extraordinary, thought Winston, how people swallowed the loss of freedom when it was described as protection of freedom. A surge of hatred for Our Blessed Leader came over him and he reached for the remote control to switch her off. Then he remembered. It was broken. And there was no on/off switch on the telly. He was condemned to 24 hour television until he got it mended, with absolutely nothing else to listen to.
         In the distance there was an explosion.
         ‘Except the bombs’ he thought ironically.

Independent Jan 2nd (1993)

(More from George Orwell’s 1992 at some future date)