Sworn to F. that I will keep this Agenda going. But have been occupied all season with our wall, not easy. I never built a wall before, but Georges and Marc give expert help, especially with the stones; too heavy for me. F. covered in cement and dust and loving our ‘security’ as she calls it. I will call the house Jericho because there is a little hamlet high on the top of the cliffs which survived all the attackers through the centuries, from the Saracens to the Germans, I gather. F. says I am crazy, that the walls of Jericho were brought down to rubble just by the blowing of a trumpet! I reckon a bulldozer couldn’t touch our effort here. Cherry trees brown, leaves spiralling down in the still of noon, the fig all spotty-yellow, mists start in the mornings. The swallows are leaving … have gone! B. M., and etc., leave for Parts. No grief.

And that was that. He never wrote again, at least in this Agenda, save for one final entry just before Christmas which I nearly overlooked.

Bitter today. Can’t paint for some reason. Can’t write either. Restless, cold, hands and feet frozen, light gone in the studio, shadows fall across the wooden floor, the cliffs scowl, mists drift like ragged strips of muslin. I must get away to a milder, a kinder place, the coast perhaps? F. says that she will come with me wherever I go. I think that I am deeply in love now, and only that fact keeps me from crushing despair. Her lips and arms, her sweetness, her gentleness. The house is lonely. I wander from room to little room, all inspiration gone. If I could only hear her singing in the kitchen, banging a tray, clattering spoons, calling my name. If we were married she could be here and do all those things and give me joy: but we are not married and the bloody village would be shocked! Bugger the village and the narrow bourgeois minds. Because of them she must leave here before dusk. As if one only lay together after dusk!

Does a marriage last? Shall we try? Can I ask her? Would she come away with me? Would I grow bored once I got her? The light has almost gone, grey as an alley cat, the mists drip off the windows in little beads. And what of D.? I’ll close this wretched book.

The end of the Agenda.

Who is ‘D.’? and who are ‘B. M., and etc.’, who leave for Paris, causing no grief? Curious indeed.