About the Book
In the small Yorkshire town of Cottenly – dominated by the steel works and surrounded by beautiful countryside – Isaac Stanford lives with his wife Emily and their three lovely daughters, known locally as the Stanford lasses. Alice, the eldest, lives only for her work as a secretary and chapel on Sunday. Fair and loving Lizzie is content with her job making umbrellas – until she falls in love. And headstrong Ruth, the merry one, is intent upon marrying a handsome charmer despite warnings from friends and family.
Already emotionally damaged by a traumatic childhood, Alice struggles to lead a normal life. Poor but happy with her ever-increasing family, the onset of war means Lizzie must face the threat of losing all she holds dear. And Ruth soon realises she has made a terrible mistake in her marriage as she becomes trapped in a life of poverty and violence. As the years pass, each sister is forced to confront her greatest challenge …
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446455951
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Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books in 2006
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Copyright © Glenice Crossland 2006
Glenice Crossland has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in the United Kingdom in 2006 by William Heinemann
Arrow Books
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099504245 (from Jan 2007)
ISBN 0 09 950424 3
For my husband, with love and apologies for all
the hours spent with The Stanford Lasses.
Also for my son, Peter, for Elizabeth, Joseph,
Adele, Stephen, Liam and Sadie. Love you all.
The Stanford Lasses
Glenice Crossland lives in Sheffield. She has loved writing from an early age, only taking it seriously after early retirement from her job in a leisure centre. She has read one of her poems on BBC2, had several read on Radio Sheffield, and more published in various anthologies. She is well known locally for her watercolours of churches and local traditions. Married with one son and grandchildren, she still lives a few hundred yards from the house in which she was born. The Stanford Lasses is her first novel.
With thanks to Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, without her this book would never have seen the light of day.
Chapter One
‘I’m going to tell our dad on thee, our Lizzie.’
‘Don’t you dare.’ Lizzie brushed her hair vigorously, counting subconsciously with every stroke. ‘… eighty-eight, eighty-nine …’
Young Ruth paused from straightening the feathers on Lizzie’s brown felt hat, to stick out her tongue at Alice. ‘Just like you to tell tales,’ she said, glaring at her eldest sister.
‘I don’t tell tales, except when I’ve good reason to, and when it’s for our Lizzie’s own good. She’ll end up in trouble if she’s not careful.’
‘No I won’t. I only want a bit of fun, that’s all. It’s only once in a blue moon I ask to stop at Annie’s for the night. Our dad wouldn’t let me stay to the end otherwise.’ Lizzie couldn’t help thinking what a sanctimonious old misery their Alice was sometimes.
‘You’re just jealous,’ Ruth said, glowering, ‘because nobody ever asks you to go anywhere.’
Alice coloured. ‘No I’m not, and if they did, I wouldn’t dream of telling lies.’
‘I’m not really telling lies.’ Lizzie flushed. ‘I just said I was going with Annie Hampshire and staying at her house for the night. That’s the truth. It’s just that her dad won’t make us be in by half past nine. Why, it isn’t worth going at all if I’ve to leave at nine. The dancing will only just be starting by then.’
‘But tha didn’t mention that tha’ll be going with George Crossman as well.’
‘No, but there again, nobody asked me, so I didn’t lie.’ Lizzie glared at Alice, becoming more and more exasperated. ‘Oh, come on, Alice,’ she pleaded. ‘It isn’t many people from our end of Cottenly who receive an invitation to the Hall, and it is a special occasion. It isn’t every day they throw a dinner dance to celebrate a new reservoir.’
‘And that’s another thing. There’ll be all those loud-mouthed contractors there as well, not at all fit company for two innocent girls. Half past nine would be quite late enough.’
Lizzie couldn’t help but giggle at hearing herself described as innocent. Not that she had let George do anything really bad, but she wondered what Alice would say if she knew how George made her feel when he kissed her on a Sunday evening on the way home from chapel. Sometimes she even wished he would do something other than kiss her, but George respected her far too much to attempt anything like that.
‘I won’t be with the contractors, I shall be with George. Besides, Annie knows all the contractors by name. After all, she does work at the Hall – that’s why she’s been invited.’ Lizzie wondered if Alice was jealous because Annie hadn’t given her one of the tickets. But no, Alice wasn’t interested in that sort of thing. A social at the chapel was much more in her line.
‘Annie’s sister told me all about working at the Hall,’ young Ruth piped up. ‘All about the food they serve in silver dishes – hams and salmon, and a pig’s head set out on a tray for fancy. She says they can eat all the leftovers and take some home on their days off. I wouldn’t
mind working somewhere like that, except that poor Annie has to empty thirty po’s every morning and she says that when the contractors have been on the beer, they’re absolutely full to the brim, sometimes with sick an’ all.’
‘Ruth, shut up,’ Alice demanded, causing Ruth to stick out her tongue once again.
‘Anyway, I’m going to bed. I don’t want black under my eyes for the big night, and we’ve to be up at half past five, don’t forget.’ Lizzie went to the clothes closet for the umpteenth time and peered in, admiring the dress hanging there.
Ruth skipped around the large iron bed and stood beside her. ‘Oh, Lizzie, it is lovely. You’re going to look beautiful, I know you are.’
Lizzie closed the door reluctantly. She could stand admiring the dress all night. Not that it was completely new – nobody ever had brand new except Alice, and that was only since she was set on in the offices and had begun earning more. But nor did they ever go shabby either – their mother saw to that.
Emily Stanford prided herself on being able to make something out of nothing. An excellent needlewoman, she was often called upon to sew for the people up on the hill: everything from curtains to layettes for expected babies and ball gowns for the spoiled daughters of the business folk and managers from the mills and factories. Most of them lived on the hill overlooking Cottenly and were usually referred to by the townspeople as ‘the posh folk’. The majority of ordinary mortals never saw beyond the ornate iron railings and tall poplars surrounding the gardens, but Emily Stanford often had the opportunity to admire the interiors whilst measuring windows, or people, in readiness for curtain or dress making. The ladies of the houses would often pass on cast-off garments to Emily, and it was one of those that had been altered beyond recognition and was now hanging in the closet ready for Lizzie’s big night.
Emily accepted that her sewing for the posh folk was a thorn in the side of her husband Isaac, who considered it demeaning for his wife that she had to work. Unfortunately Isaac’s income as a plate layer on the railroad to the works in Cottenly didn’t quite match the family outgoings, and though at one time Emily had been forbidden to lower herself by offering her services, the opportunity had arisen for her to make use of her talents a few years ago, when Isaac went away to fight. On Isaac’s return he found a more dominant Emily, already established and according to her clientele indispensable. With three daughters rapidly approaching womanhood Isaac had accepted the extra income grudgingly, but without much persuasion.
‘I’m getting in bed.’ Ruth leaped on to the high patchwork-covered bed, dived down below the sheets and snuggled into the centre. She had realised long ago that the middle was the warmest place with Lizzie on one side and Alice on the other, even if it had the disadvantage of being between the pillows. Though tonight, with her hair bound in white cotton curling rags, she was able to manoeuvre them into the gap in such a way that they wouldn’t stick into her head quite so much.
‘Hurry up, Lizzie, I’m cold,’ she called, and Lizzie pulled down the sheets and followed her into the lumps and bumps of the flock mattress. Ruth smoothed the front of her white starched nightdress so that no creases would dig into her skin when she cuddled up to her sister, and noticed with a shock that her nipples hardened as her hand cupped each in turn. And the swell of her breasts was more obvious, she was sure of it. At last it seemed the long-awaited development was beginning to happen. For a couple of years Ruth’s main ambition had been to have breasts like Lizzie, or even Alice, except that Alice’s were always tightly encased in concealing black dresses, and so were almost invisible, except to her sisters when they were undressing. Ruth decided that when her breasts did develop she would wear pretty, tailored blouses to make the most of them. She shifted closer to Lizzie and pressed her knees in behind her sister’s. ‘Come on, our Alice. It’s all right for you, but we’ve to be at work for six.’ But Alice was still on her knees beside the bed, deep in prayer.
‘I’m going to blow out the candle if you don’t hurry,’ Lizzie grumbled. ‘God knows why your prayers take so long every night.’
Ruth giggled. ‘Well, if God doesn’t know there’s not much point in praying, is there?’
Alice blew out the candle, used the chamber pot from under the bed and joined her sisters beneath the blankets. She smoothed her nightdress and lay straight and stiff on her edge of the bed. Ruth wondered as she did every night how two sisters could be such complete opposites, Lizzie so soft and cuddly and Alice so cold, as though she was afraid of anyone’s making the slightest contact with her body. No wonder she was never invited anywhere except the Bible class or the chapel socials. She was too cold and miserable. Then Ruth suddenly felt mean. Perhaps Alice really did want someone to cuddle her but didn’t know how to show it. Reluctantly, she turned over, rearranging her curling rags in the nick between the pillows, and placed her arm round her eldest sister’s waist, but Alice still lay there stiff and cold as an icicle. Ruth stuck out her tongue in the darkness, turned back towards Lizzie, placed her cold feet on Alice and drifted into sleep.
Emily normally had the fire well alight by the time Lizzie and Ruth rose for work but today was Friday, the day for blackleading the range. Ruth shivered as she washed at the sink. ‘It’s not fair,’ she moaned. ‘Our Alice never has to get up to a cold kitchen. We shall have been on our feet for two hours by the time she opens her eyes.’
‘Shut up moaning, our Ruth, and be thankful you’ve a job to go to.’
Emily poured milk into two cups. She had long since stopped trying to persuade her daughters to take breakfast, not that she blamed them at this unearthly hour. Instead she made certain the pair had a substantial lunch, already wrapped the night before in squares of damp linen.
‘Some job,’ Ruth muttered in between gulps of the cold milk they were drinking instead of the hot sweet tea they would have had if the fire had been lit. ‘Making umbrella frames, day in day out.’
Lizzie took not the slightest notice. She knew the job wasn’t exciting, but neither was it heavy; it was more tedious than anything else. In fact once all the girls got together in the mill they quite enjoyed themselves, laughing and singing as they worked, Ruth assembling the ribs and Lizzie lacquering them.
‘Trust our Alice to land on her feet.’ Ruth was off again.
‘Your sister’s done well for herself. There’s not many would have spent all those hours labouring over a Pitman’s home study course. Surely you don’t begrudge it to her?’ Emily asked as she shook the tin of blacklead on to the brush.
‘Oh, no, I don’t begrudge it her, but we all know why she’s done well. It’s because she’s a Sunday school teacher and the office manager likes to keep well in with the chapelgoers, that’s why.’
‘Well, if that’s the case you should have gone to chapel more often and then he might have put you a good word in too.’
‘No thanks,’ Ruth sniffed. ‘If it makes one as miserable as our Alice I’d rather be a heathen.’
‘That’ll do, Ruth,’ Emily snapped, though she couldn’t argue with her young daughter’s comments. Her eldest daughter was a constant worry to Emily. Not that she ever set a step wrong, oh no, it would have been more normal if she had. It was just not natural for a young girl to be so involved in religious activities. Oh, well, she supposed Alice had been influenced by Isaac to some extent. He had always been on at the girls to join the Bible class, to help with Sunday school and read the lesson in chapel, though it was doubtful if he expected to be taken quite so seriously. Even Isaac didn’t eat, drink and breathe religion. In fact when he first returned from France, she sometimes wondered whether he still believed in God at all. Where once he would have read a passage from the family Bible each night before retiring, Emily had noticed that the book had remained unopened for many months, except by Alice.
It was only when she questioned him that he revealed the horrors he had witnessed in the trenches, and his doubt that a compassionate God could have allowed them to take place. Then gradually,
through Emily, he had relived the nightmare battles he and his comrades had fought, and had finally reached the conclusion that, since he was one of the fortunate few who returned, God must have been guiding him in his fight for survival.
Emily sighed. It was sometimes a strain residing in the same house as two fervent chapelgoers. Not that Isaac wasn’t a good man: a kinder, more thoughtful one it would have been difficult to find, but sometimes Emily would have liked to let her hair down, do something frivolous, like making a joke on a Sunday, if she hadn’t known that Isaac would be shocked to the core by such behaviour. Poor Isaac. Emily knew it wasn’t his fault, any more than it was Alice’s. The blame lay at the feet of Isaac’s mother if anywhere. It was Grandmother Stanford who had hammered religion into her son’s brain, as sure as if she’d used a mallet. Yet was it not Emily herself who was to blame in Alice’s case? Should she have allowed her daughter, at the tender age of ten, to become companion to such a cantankerous old woman? Isaac had stressed that it wouldn’t be for long: only a matter of weeks. That had been the doctor’s opinion when the old woman had lost her legs to gangrene.
Two years, two whole years for a child in the dark, gloomy house with a slowly dying woman. Not that Alice had complained: a little angel, she had been. Reading from the Bible every night, sitting by the four-poster bed with the picture of Grandfather Stanford on the wall at its foot – the picture of Grandfather Stanford in his coffin. Emily cringed with shame, shame that she had not intervened and brought her child home from that house of waiting death. Yet Alice bore her burden bravely. ‘I don’t mind, our mam. It won’t be for long and Grandmother’s no bother.’ No bother! To a child who should have been laughing, and playing in the sunshine. No wonder Alice was so dour and lacking in warmth. Why, the lass even talked like an old woman.
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