"Farrell turned up, on time. He was somewhat agitated, and I
suspect--yes, in the light of later events I strongly suspect--he had
picked up a drink somewhere on the way. I got into his taxi, and we
swung up Rupert Street, and out of Rupert Street into what the
novelists, when they haven't a handy map or the energy to use it,
describe as a labyrinth leading to questionable purlieus. I am
content to leave it at purlieus. The driver, as it seemed to me, had
as foggy a notion as I of what, without infringing Messrs. Swan and
Edgar's _lingerie_ copyright, we'll call the 'Catalafina's'
whereabouts. Farrell spent two-thirds of the passage with his head
out of window. I don't mean to convey that he was seasick: and he
certainly wasn't drunk, or approaching it. He kept his head out to
shout directions. He was pardonably excited--maybe a bit nervous in
a channel that seemed to be buoyed all the way with pawnbrokers'
signs. But he brought us through. We alighted at the entrance of
the 'Catalafina'; Farrell paid the driver, and I advised him to find
his way back before daylight overtook him.
"I will not attempt to describe the interior of the 'Catalafina.'
Farrell saved me that trouble on the threshold. 'Twenty years or
so,' he said, pausing and inhaling garlic, 'often makes a difference
in these places. One mustn't expect this to be quite what it used to
be." . . . Well, I hadn't, of course, and I dare say it wasn't.
It had sand on the floor, and spittoons. It was crowded, between the
spittoons, with little cast-iron tables, covered with dirty
table-cloths spread upon American cloth and garnished with artificial
flowers and napkins of Japanese paper. Farrell called them
'serviettes.' He also said he felt 'peckish.' I--well, I had taken
the precaution of dining at Boodle's, and responded that I was rather
for the bucket than the manger. He considered this for some time and
then laughed so loudly that all the anarchists in the room looked up
as if one of their bombs had gone off by mistake. . . . Oh, I omitted
to mention that all the space left unoccupied by cigarette-smoke and
the smell of garlic was crowded with anarchists, all dressed for the
part. They wore black ties with loose ends, fed with their hats on,
and read Italian newspapers--like a musical comedy. The waiters
looked like stage-anarchists, too; but you could easily tell them
from the others because they went about in their shirt-sleeves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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