A sad break in my letters, but in the words of a Hancox, I’ve been on a journey, for three days, and I’m back this evening to collect a handpicked team of sixteen men and a lorry and a water-trailer and a don. R., and away again on a journey tomorrow.  I am lucky, its been great fun, I’m hunting billets and a Mess and so on, all, in new territory. But letters suffer. However.

                        But when I got back there was your letter about Nonie saying it was a swizz Dickie winning and Mrs. Jeavons and the housewife for liberated women and all that. A nice letter,  bless you. And also the book, for which a hundred thanks, and your sonnet, for which a thousand, no, ten thousand. My dear, it is good and so precious, I admire it and am honoured by it.  Thankyou so very much. Its. . . .its very good.

                        We have a tame black rabbit in the company office.  I don’t know. All goes well here, the sun shines, but it rained most violently yesterday. I didn’t get back until six or so, I had the jeep, and I’m off tomorrow and have much administration to do, accrued and accruing, and for the journey tomorrow. A nice jounrey, and a smitten town to move about in.

Towns directly after a battle are very sad, not for the smashed shelled and bombed houses, not for the little streets between innocent houses wherein you walk delicately because of the mounds which are mines, not for the homeless people, but for the town itself, dazed and  deserted except for shy citizen in ones and frightened twos walking about.  Shops are open; – – the front blown in, and the contents strewn over the floors. I walked through the Ministry of Agriculture and all was left as the staff had gone. Houses are pock marked with machine gun fire, grenade holes or shell holes. Some are still and untouched, but gardens are trampled on. As the weeks pass life stirs, military organisation settles down, civilians creep back, with their barrows and trucks, there is fierce squabbling between poor people who have moved in to rich party men’s villas when relatives of the owners come, and then shops open, ruins are tidied up, drains work, water comes on, electricity, trams… bridges are built, a train comes careully along the line, blackout relaxes opera starts and gradually, through a long convalescence, the town comes to life. I’ve seen all those stages. The town I am in now, or go to tomorrow, is still very very sick, and takes only a little nourishment. But it will revive.

                        Peaches peaches everywhere, one gets tired of them and wants an English apple.  Grapes and peaches don’t make the nation apples and plums make.

                        It is terrific about Dickie and the Show. Sort of proof, and you did the mill half of the milk round, good for you.  Of course heads popped out of windows would look pleased at you.

                        Two years is a good interval between an elder son and a daughter, isn’t it ? Give him a chance at being equal in wits.  That bracelet for her will have come by now. Bless us all.  BLESS us all.  I can think of no nicer prospect for the next twenty years than living in the company of your children, I shall try so hard not to be Old and Miserable. Your last letter but one, the baby show letter, shewed me how Dickie is with a dear drawing.  I love those sketches, quick though they are they are very good.

                        I’ve only had time to skim and dip into Wavell’s book, but it seems to me to be very very good.  I love his comments and remarks all. I’ll take it on my journey and read it in the Casa Bonnyfeather.  I tried to find that, ideal for billets, but alas. Not to be found.

I rejoice now and again deeply when a book idea or feeling stirs in my mind and heart; it is there and will come out all right. I am as full of confidence as ever, and the miracle of miracles is your confidence when I consider how much you stake on my perfomance; bread and butter, house and home, children’s clothes and doctors’ bills, all stakes on me, and thus I cannot fail, nor will not, nor will I become over conscious of the load I carry and jib within myself.  Together we shall make a good colourful home, with music and laughter and friends, and be generous and hospitable, and love each other, and watch these sweet tricksters of ours.  As for Richard John, how much I want to know him and to see if he will approve of me. Does he know, d’you think that we are three and not two ? He will, he must.

                        I’ve sent off some comic photographs, of Allan Peter and I, Peter and I, and of the hills, part of them, at this camp. Also a group of my company office staff, rogues the lot of them and all mad. Quite mad. There are tales about them all. And they, maybe, have tales of me.

                        Let your mother stroke the linen, bless her. She can stay of course, for a spell, but not the first two or three weeks after I come home, no-one but you is needed. Absolutely no-one, and I doubt if I want anyone in the village to know or see me.  Oh no. Because I am a fond father, husband and lover and want to have to jealously to myself, with Richard playing his ninth fiddle in the back.