She was a stately, straight-backed woman in livery, graying hair worn in a thick roll on the nape of her neck.

She was a slim, cold-eyed, straight-backed woman who would be- and presumably often was- not out of place on the deck of a warbird.

The straight-backed old woman beside her said nothing to her.

Maev Ring at forty was still a handsome woman, straight-backed and tall.

At the sink a gaunt, straight-backed woman of sixty, hair and eyes jet black, a cigarette dangling from her lips, was methodically dicing vegetables with a lethal-looking knife.

The food stores were run by a tall, straight-backed woman called Sarah with clear eyes, long hair and a seraphic countenance.

One room was dominated by a massive typewriter of the kind that in a film would have been presided over by a straight-backed woman with horn-rimmed spectacles and ropes of fake pearls.

She walked towards the stage, a thin, grey-haired, straight-backed woman, smartly dressed and projecting a vitality she no longer felt.

In the midst of the court's glitter and plush, the straight-backed women looked like so many daggers of ice.

She was a large, straight-backed woman with graying hair, a bluff face, and a suspicious mind, but she was not a villainous sort.