Free Alice's Girls by Julia Stoneham

would be one less mouth for him to feed. He was, at that time, ignorant of the reputation Land Army girls were acquiring.
    Hester, brought up to fear her maker, had left home for the hostel with her father’s harsh voice ringing in her ears, reminding her of his rules on modest apparel, no paint, and hair which must never be cut and should always be coiled out of sight. She knew better than to consort withstrangers, would say grace before she ate, and go down on her knees night and morning. On Sundays, her father told her, members of the Brethren would collect her from Post Stone farm and convey her to their nearest meeting place for prayer and supplication.
    As the weeks passed, Alice had witnessed a change in Hester. When she had first arrived she had flinched at the language she heard at the supper table and at the raucous laughter that greeted jokes which she didn’t initially understand. But soon she began to respond to the warmth and good humour of her companions. Eventually she yielded to the temptation to try on the clothes they offered to lend her, and sometimes, when the girls were out dancing with soldiers or drinking with them in pubs, she experimented with the make-up which cluttered their dressing tables. Then, one Saturday afternoon she went into Exeter with Georgina, visited a hairdresser for the first time in her life and had returned to the hostel, transformed and almost unrecognisable, with her hair floating around her head like Lizzie Siddal’s in a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
    ‘You wouldn’t credit how that girl’s come on since ’er got yer!’ Rose exclaimed to Alice on the first occasion when, after a lot of persuasion, Hester finally agreed to go with the land girls to a local hop.
    It was a Saturday evening and Edward John was sitting at the kitchen table dipping fingers of bread into the yolk of the boiled egg that was his favourite supper. Rose hadbrought Alice a snapshot she had just received in which her son Dave was the centre of a group of khaki-clad conscripts who were peeling their way through a mound of potatoes.
    ‘I’m that glad he’s in the caterin’ corps! Be worried sick if they’d given ’im a gun! It’s his feet, see, too flat for the marchin’ they said!’ Rose paused, sliding the snapshot back into its already dog-eared envelope and comforted by the thought of Dave’s comparative safety. ‘You reckon young Hester’ll be all right, do you? Gaddin’ about with our lot?’
    Alice was well aware of the influences that were affecting Hester but she had confidence in the common sense of most of the other girls who, she rightly believed, would make sure the youngest and least experienced of the group came to no harm. They would keep an eye on her much as they would have protected a younger sister from unwelcome advances.
    Over the preceding months, on the evenings when Hester had refused to go out and about with the other girls, she had begun to confide in the warden. Often confused, and even occasionally shocked, by the land girls’ behaviour, she had confessed that her father, given the chance, would have consigned them all to the everlasting flames. But Hester soon came to understand that her fellows were, despite their sometimes brash manners, both good and kind, and that they were innocent of most of the evils her father had warned her of. She began to question his rules.Why was cutting her hair and wearing coloured frocks a sin? Whether or not her frock was blue and her hair floated prettily around her head, she knew right from wrong and would behave herself accordingly. When she asked Alice if she should go to the hop with the girls, Alice, knowing that both Georgina and Annie would be with her, had encouraged her to. She left, having been astonished and slightly disconcerted by her reflection, in a dress borrowed from Annie and shoes borrowed from Evie. She had even been persuaded to wear a trace of lipstick.
    Then, at a cricket match – a