A mild gentle waning evening, the sun cooling down in the sky and now dusk settling like a mantle over all, and the sounds of traffic on the dlfetant road sharper than in daylight. The others are at the camp cinema, I have been sitting in front of the house in a basket chair in the evening sun reading Barnaby Rudge, and then came to this my room and finished it. Then I ate a large and very splendid peach Pietro gave me this evening, in leaves he presented it, and now, having necessarily washed ray hands I am writing to you.

                        Dickens’ boisterously Imaginative tales excite me. His superb abandonment of carping rules such as coincidence and consistency are glorious, and it is the tale and his people he glories in. I have recently read, hired from the Club, Great Expectations, David Coperfleld and now Barnaby Rudge. Now I have Silas Marner and Eugenie Grandet to read, and still my peaceful polished and brilliantly honest Trevelyan.

                        I am happy these days, for I have the feelings stirring deeply in me for a novel ! Real this time. Ussish. Not about the war or Italy, or these times or reform, I must not lose it. I may sketch a synopsis and send it, keep me to it, it is in the full train of them, a follower on from the last two. The scene a small town, not Alcester as Preston Prior was not Great Alne, I have the house, narrow and tall, flush with the pavement, I have some of the people, and I have, best of all, the story. The time covered need be no more than six months, winter months this time, and I have, I thinks something unique, real genuine shattering crime. Not, mark you, for sleuths and flying squads, not a murder and everyone being quite normal about dreadful things, but what should be the astonishing, startling, embarasslng, talk provoking effect of a well-esteemed local man, with wife and children, friends and position in the little town, embezzling public funfls, and the effect makes me feel pale. Its amorphous as yet, but I think its genuine, and mustn’t spoil it by displaying it before it has the strength to be separated from the maternal protection of my mind. But it is there or could be there. Dear me, how I need you, and Candy too, to walk with and lean on the footbridge over the stream, and the chickens to look at too. But I have found, yesterday with Allan, a most pleasant and private little rocky cove half an hours drive away with a cave to myself and deep clean blue-green water, and rocks to dive off, and two stupid little fishing boats to lie in and be rocked and maybe I will take some long afternoons there and lie in the sun and swim around alone and think  it out. I can see a cloudy pageant of people waiting to be set in motion, and smells and sound and shops and door knockers and pairs and trios and quartettes of people all changing and interchanging, to talk our story out. Pray this doesn’t melt away into sour disappointment.

                        My doings these past two days, Yesterday in the afternoon Allan and I went to this little bay and bathed and lay in the sun and drank lemonade and talked, and in the evening I went to the Family and was eagetfly received and I studied Italian by reading aloud to Giorgio Mazzanini’s essay on Palmerston and later we listened to the radio and had La Cena together and so home later. This morning auditing and to Group and this afternoon auditing and finished it, and went down with a gift of sugar at half past four and drank tea with lemon at the Family and talked to Mama and Giorgio until six, back to dinner and here I am.

                        I loved my borthday card which came two days ago, my so charming household! A brilliant likeness, that of Mother Anne, and Orsachiotto is handsome too, and quite grown up. Candy is the best portrait and dear Victoria seems as companionably as ever she did, my oldest member as it were. The six birds look fey and daft and is that Julian with Emily ? You were anxious about him some  months aback and I interpretted absence of comment as confirmation of a manly huntin’ finish to a gallant. bucanneering life. Tell me. And we have a picture to come of Ricardino ! HOOOray. Hurry with it. Academy award portraitor, too. And let him do you, yes do.

                        Talking of sugar the civilian price is now 700 lire a kilo ! That’s 17/6d a pound, and hard to get too. Being cornered by someone or other in the Government. They are busy here now with communists. The set-up seems to be that many young people who did well as Fascists, i.e. were clothed and fed without having to work are tired of inactivity and are now called communists, and so are setting up in business by holding up other people, calling them Fascists, and taking their money and or lives. The police get badly treated for being Fascists, and the pre-war communists have to be either communists or something else to make a living. Its very bewildering. Nothing happens here but little towns have out breaks. We keep strictly out of it. Odd.

                        So the vatican card came after all this time. Just shows, it was a curio. I sent one to Frank Sadgrove and one to Christopher.

                        Time for my truckle bed. How nice not to have to arrange as bedside companions one steel helmet, one revolver, loaded, one torch and one whistle as I used to do this time last year at Piombino.

                        Bless you, and the months pass. A letter from Auntie this evening saying that Mother was left at Kettering much better. Hope she won’t squander her new found health too quickly. She should learn to hoard it.

Dear me, I do love you. And want to know your small son who is also, my small son, mirabile dictu.