Drink and Dine
Laying the table.
On the island, books to the ceiling
The Writers Bar
Bar
The books go up two storeys, and a spiral staircase in dark timber turns up to reach the ones you cannot.
The shelves are lit from behind, so after dark the room reads as bands of warm light with the parquet shining under them.
It is furnished the way a house is. Mother-of-pearl inlaid chairs, a tufted leather wing chair, a Persian rug thrown over the herringbone, low reading lamps, and a gramophone on a console with the horn open.
One end is glazed to the full height of the room, an arched window with green velvet drawn back from it. Sit there in the late afternoon and the Aravallis go dark while somebody at the other end turns a page.
Sit there in the late afternoon and the Aravallis go dark while somebody at the other end turns a page.
