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in the portrait. Was it conceivable that the
second arrow did not even exist?
His interest flagged again. He drank another mouthful of gin, picked
up the white knight and made a tentative move. Check. But it was evidently
not the right move, because--
Uncalled, a memory floated into his mind. He saw a candle-lit room
with a vast white-counterpaned bed, and himself, a boy of nine or ten,
sitting on the floor, shaking a dice-box, and laughing excitedly. His
mother was sitting opposite him and also laughing.
It must have been about a month before she disappeared. It was a
moment of reconciliation, when the nagging hunger in his belly was
forgotten and his earlier affection for her had temporarily revived. He
remembered the day well, a pelting, drenching day when the water streamed
down the window-pane and the light indoors was too dull to read by. The
boredom of the two children in the dark, cramped bedroom became unbearable.
Winston whined and grizzled, made futile demands for food, fretted about
the room pulling everything out of place and kicking the wainscoting until
the neighbours banged on the wall, while the younger child wailed
intermittently. In the end his mother said, 'Now be good, and I'Il buy you
a toy. A lovely toy -- you'll love it'; and then she had gone out in the
rain, to a little general shop which was still sporadically open nearby,
and came back with a cardboard box containing an outfit of Snakes and
Ladders. He could still remember the smell of the damp cardboard. It was a
miserable outfit. The board was cracked and the tiny wooden dice were so
ill-cut that they w