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[Page 127]
November 23
only a Picardian peasant – all her world was in that note – from some lousy Billet or candle lit dugout. .. I should like to have seen her face… and his.
A Tram straight away to Wimereux – and a meeting in the tram of Tom Gale: he expecting an early return to Australia. A short year has changed and aged him as ten of old whiles.
Then to the Café – and an ordering of Cherry Brandies.. then to the Little Café – for omelette and 'ot Rolls and Coffee – but 'ot Rolls were of the past six months ago: so it was bread and butter… That cost us 14 F., last year it would have been 8 at the most. New faces and people at the souvenir shop.…the dear little woman of the rich talking has gone…and ugly efficient shopwomen fill her place.
So to the old home,.. and a meeting of old 1st chaps, men looking years younger & well. [indecipherable] fuller if possible, and Mac., Basil Mac full of light laughing and lounging grace, and a Bath and the seeing again of the old home…
Jake has been wounded a second time, all the muscle of his left thigh blown away. This rich lovely bodies beauty broken.. lithe loveliness gone, an offering to bloody horror… And I saw the new Jake there… and there's been tormenting in my mind since, to visualise him, to see and know his beauty…shorter than Jake, more stockily built, a grace of sensuousness, rather than of litheness and of wood pagan gods….
The horrible desire to possess, to absolutely own and know mine, to always have in sight… to passionately possess… to utterly destroy in a madness of lust and to entirely absorb till the uttermost beauty is known and realised and is part of self… The desire for a beauty that may not be thine… and that can never in any case be known…
To Merridens and a buying of Tagore's Stray Birds, of a sketch book and the "Book of Artimis… a walk around, coffee and cakes, and a Malaga.. so to the tram, to Pont de Brique.,, Dinner there, and a trip back along misted roads and faint lines of tree silhouettes.