Leskovik
21 Nov.
My dear Gertrude.

This form me to you at Damascus or wheresoever – How are you my dear? buying camels watching the bargains with the old amusement – feeling the desert & the journey & the adventure on you – but well I hope & stronger –

Here its foul – cold as the ice circle or so it seems to me for I can’t have a fire [?] fireplace – I have just come out at nearly 80 miles an hour )an Italian driver & a nailer) in a Fiat from Yanina where went to bury Bilinski – He died on us there.

I never liked the man but I did like his courage & capacity & a gift of talking, and I am very sorry for his wife left with £1000 all told – left too with his body which she doesn’t like to bury – for they have a hideous habit of defiling the graves of their enemies, these highly civilised Greeks – so Bilinski’s mortality foes to Austria at great cost - & she sits and sells her good for nothing to crowds of haters & has to thanks them for the crocodile tears. I left Judith there – well able for such a situation – to pack to fight to nurse to pull a bad thing out of a worse fire – she is at her best – and the other women stand afar off –

And so you start – God go with you – and the luck of the world –

And my frontier - do you know I don’t know yet – I haven’t heard one word good or bad from the F.O. which would show that they approve or disapprove – they have not sent one despatch & only about a dozen telegrams – still it moves – if they did not like it (and they know everything) it would be easy to say no – But it gives to think – still I go on – I know there is only one thing to do, except hold up impotent hands – that is to make an accord, to get it accepted – to push it through – to keep the Greeks, the Albanians, the Italians, the Austrians, not such deadly enemies - & to try but feebly to keep Xtian & Moslem from cutting throats.

Still I should be so glad to hear something. When I have had to send men to do difficult & dangerous things I didn’t leave them without a word of any sort – However it may be handy because they van blame you better afterwards –

And you go – I am nervous about you somehow lest things go wrong. And I tell myself I am a fool – why should they go wrong? Why should you not have an ever victorious journey – and come back wiser more far travelled than ever – for me to see and listen to – and to be friends with – yes – it was more than that – is more than that – but there are things that don’t say themselves easily – for all I am so fond of you –

Instead of writing to you – there is my half written plan of keeping here Greek troops until the Spring to go early tomorrow – I feel its the only thing – but then there is the F.O. silence – they don’t want any more local prophets – however they shall have it – liberati animam meam.
The 21st – you’ll be now at Beirut – but you won’t stay there – I’ll write to Damascus, where camel buying will keep you until you impatient soul begins first to burn - & then to take a little of the desert patience, that once you start is with you like the sound horizon –

Yes – I’m very fond of you – I think, I have though for a long time, that you are delightful and wise and strong and such as my soul loveth – And in thought on a swifter haffin [?} into the desert I go with you.

Write to me when you can – this thing finishes for winter – Cox’s Bank will find me – but where I will be is in the hands of God – even as with you – Thesiger writes – he is going to have babies & going to East Africa - & so on - & the frontier has all gone sideways out there etc etc./

I shall go on writing – but for tonight goodbye my dear – keep well 0 be happy – get a really easy camel - & don’t make too long stages of it - & take something to eat – and not only theodolites - & when it snows & is foul, god send you find a valley - & don’t get taken for a witch for writing down the “beled” - & don’t forget me and our talks at Rounton – and even if you do, keep – oh well! I won’t forget anyway –

Now for Greeks – but I want to go on talking to you –

Dick.