by Ivy Ferrari
‘Oh,’ gasped Tina. ‘Wild forget-me-nots!’
And forget-me-nots there were, a wide smother of them under the rough wall, so that even the iron-rusted pool was invisible. Tina gazed at the delicate blue cloud, like specks of fairest sky trapped in a lake of green.
‘I promised you, didn’t I?’ Adam’s aim was about her. ‘I promised you that in June there’d be forget-me-nots at Coventina’s Wall. Exactly the colour of your eyes.’
Tina stood radiant, her gaze roving northwards to the many-coloured moor, to the dark ridge where the Wall looped and climbed eternally into a lavender haze of distance. ‘I never knew your country could look like this.’ she said. ‘When I came, it was so bleak and cold—and I was so unhappy ... I wonder what kind of a text Isa would find for this.’
‘Oh, I can tell you that, but only if you’ll stop batting your eyes at me like that, young woman. The text is—’ He hesitated, said softly: ‘For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone—’
Tina smiled up into his face. ‘And the time of the singing of birds is come,’ she finished.
