Poppies and songbirds on a calf

The poppies have come up through the cracks in the old chapel floor again, the way they did the summer you left, and I have stopped pulling them. The steward says they are weeds. I say they are the only tenants Halsworth Keep has left who pay their rent in colour. Yesterday I found a siskin dead against the north wall, its yellow gone the colour of weak tea, and I buried it under the nettles because the ground was too hard for anything deeper.

Mr Ambrose came up from the village with his cart and asked whether we would sell the lead off the roof before winter. I told him the roof has leaked since the Cromwell men left it open, and a little more rain will not hurt the hall. He laughed and said I sounded like Father. I did not tell him that Father was the one who taught me to bind twigs for the swallows' nests in the gatehouse, and that the swallows have not come back this year either.

Here is the thing I meant to write. Last week a boy from the railway survey stood under the arch and sketched the ruin for an hour, then came over and asked if he could draw the birds. I said the birds would not sit for him. He drew the poppies instead and gave me the page before he left. In the margin he had written, very small, 'for when the wall is gone'. I have pinned it above the kitchen sink where the damp cannot reach it.

Come in July, if you can. Bring your good scissors. The yellow finch has nested in the ivy at last, and I think she means to stay.

Love, Margaret