I was so more than glad to hear from you yesterday…. Yes, indeed I appreciate what Xmas cares are yours and I didn't really expect a letter (though I longed for one).

M. and the Mountain have just gone off to the Foreign Office, armed with medical certificates enough to ensure one a State Burial. The Mountain has to come, too, and knock down the English and French policemen on the page 91 way. ¹ She has a month's leave from her factory for the purpose—and by the end of that time I really shall be well enough to run about the farmyard and pick up grain for myself again. It's an absurd situation—

I shall miss you. I shall be awfully lonely at times—wanting a talk with you and wanting to have you there in the sunlight away from this hideous, evil England.

If it would not be too much trouble may I come down to Garsington on Tuesday for a few days? The doctor wants me to go away before I ‘make the journey’ and my flat has to be dismantled and done with next week. I should hate to go anywhere except to you—if you will have me—and then I thought my passport will be ready in a few days time and I could come up to London just for one night with M. before I go away. I am not an invalid really—I am up and ‘bobbish.’ Would I worry you too much?

It is extraordinary how changed life feels to me now that I know that this life in England will not be mine, even as little as it has been. I simply don't feel that I shall ever come back if only they let me go. But perhaps that is partly because it is winter and because I have sat so long in this studio listening to the rag-and-bone man and the man crying coals….

This is not a letter—I am still gasping rather after trying to move the Mountain in time.