Free Poppies at the Well by Catrin Collier Page B

bet he did, men always do. There, there, don’t take on so. Listen girl, watch your manners and say nothing. I’ll warrant they’ll not be too hard on you.’
    The Mistress’s charity was as rigid as her tightly-corseted body.
    â€˜Bad blood will out, Kitty. I regret now that I ever thought otherwise. You will be returned to the Institution tomorrow. The Master’s decision is final. You may go and pack. That is all.’
    Kitty went, with hot tears coursing down her pale cheeks. She had nothing to pack. The fine uniforms were to stay for the next girl. All she owned were two yellow winceyette frocks. Institution clothes. Hairbrush, flannel, soap, towel – even her underclothes, all belonged to the mistress. She lay on her bed and wept. The children whom she’d loved the most were kept from her goodbyes, and her fellow servants dared not comfort her, lest they too be tarred with her brush.
    Then she thought of another. One as lonely as she. She would go to him. She made a bundle of her spare dress, lacking even a cloth to tie round it. There was harlot’s blood in her veins; she would not give them cause to call her a thief too. She slipped out of the house into the night. The darkness held no terrors for her that could match those of the Institution. She found the Well, and rested by the flowing water. The sound soothed her, the first lullaby sung for her and for her alone.
    He rose as the first fingers of dawn stretched out into the sky. She heard him stir, saw the casement opening, smelt his bacon frying on the fire. Timidly she crept to the door and knocked. He opened it, his dark eyes lighting at the sight of her in her bedraggled state.
    â€˜If you still want me, I’ve come,’ she murmured fearfully. ‘But I must warn you, I’ve bad blood in me. That’s why the Mistress won’t have me at the hall any longer.’
    â€˜Want you?’ His arms reached out to take her. ‘Oh yes, Kitty. I want you.’
    They were married that morning. They walked from the Well to Rhossili Church and told the vicar that as they were already living under the same roof there was no time for banns, and he, taciturn, silent man that he was, asked no questions. Instead he read the service over their heads, motioning the verger and his wife to stand witness.
    No one in Reynoldston knew the identity of the strange young man, and the vicar of Rhossili church was famed for his refusal to speak a word out of God’s house.
    The Mistress never discovered Kitty’s fate.
    â€˜Are you happy, my love?’ It was autumn. The poppies had long since withered, but Kitty had not missed them.
    â€˜Happier than I ever believed possible,’ she smiled. ‘I expected nothing, and you have given me the world.’
    Ellis lay back on the downs and gazed out to sea. He too was used to happiness now. The meal waiting on the table when work was finished for the day. Clean, darned clothes where once there had only been yesterday’s dirt-encrusted cast-offs. Thoughts, work, walks over the downs … lives shared.
    Kitty lay close to him, marvelling at her summer memories. Of the time that Ellis had left her alone at the Well, and how she, proud of the trust he placed in her, had worked as she’d never worked before. His glorious return from Swansea laden with presents. The first she’d been given. Clothes that would have graced the Mistress’s wardrobe. Hairbrushes, not wooden and chipped, but silver and gleaming. Trinkets, jewels, ornaments for the mantelshelf, but most of all, his love. He had changed her. The lost ,hungry look had left her face, and sometimes when she looked in his glass she felt almost beautiful.
    â€˜I never did walk over the causeway to Worm’s Head,’ she said as they watched the first of the winter breakers crash against the cliffs.
    Ellis took her hand into his own. ‘October’s not the time. We’ll go