We can just see Julia through the hedge between our gardens. She has positioned one of her chairs in the sunshine by her open French doors and she has on her large brimmed hat. Once in a while she coughs.
The sky is more than blue. It is blue without the green, it is blue like clean laundry, the blue that you see over the sea. Our faces, shaded tigers, under the greengage tree. The garden, in the early afternoon, another room, adorned with the cluttery entrails of inside to out.
The angle of the large brim suggests she has lowered her head and is listening. Cedar takes her mouth from the recorder, arranges her music in the brief breeze, and calls over the hedge.
Scarborough Fair!
And in the openness the notes ask more than they tell. Can we be here, too, please? Iris answers, resting her quiet cello against her thigh, by singing the words she knows. And Julia, from between the scrappy branches of last year’s privet, calls in her perfect, plummy tone,
Can one sing, too?
And we are all singing a bit, though the words are flowery and forgetful.
Are we going…
Parsley, (new and nibbled in the pots)
Sage, (a wishful thought)
Rosemary, (pale violet flowering)
and Thyme, (yet dusty and brittle on the south side)
Remember me…
And remember now: the clearness of a day when everyone stayed home, the recorder calling across the divide, Julia resting in the sunshine concert, glad to be feeling better.
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