The Bubble Bursts — 139
It took three days to telegraph money from England.
It was utterly humiliating to walk about Naples. We
felt that we were being pointed at as the comic relief
in a very low-class type of film.
We borrowed enough money to get on with, and,
of course, we had only one use for it. We stayed in
our room in a little hotel unfrequented by English,
and crawled out by night to try to buy drugs.
That in itself is a sordid epic of adventure and mis-
adventure. The lowest class of so-called guide was
our constant companion. Weary in spirit, we dragged
ourselves from one dirty doubtful street to another;
held long whispered conferences with the scavenger
type of humanity, and as often as not bought various
harmless powders at an exorbitant price, and that at
the risk of blackmail and other things possibly worse.
But the need of the stuff drove us relentlessly on.
We ultimately found an honest dealer, and got a small
supply of the genuine stuff. But even then we didn’t
seem to pick up. Even large doses did hardly more
than restore us to our normal, by which I mean, our
pre-drug selves. We were like Europe after the war.
The worst and the best we could do was to become
utterly disgusted with ourselves, each other, Naples,
and life in general.
The spirit of adventure was dead—as dead as the
spirit of love. We had just enough moral courage
after a very good lunch at Gambrinus, to make up our
minds to get out of the entire beastly atmosphere.
Our love had become a mutual clinging, like that of
two drowning people. We shook hands on the definite
oath to get back to England, and get back as quick
as we could. .
I believe I might have fallen down even on that.
But once again Lou pulled me through. We got into
a veittura and took our tickets then and there.
We were going back to London with our tails between
our legs, but we were going back to London
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