Radio Girls (14 page)

“What about a series of Talks on Russia?” suggested Collins. “So many people are so aerated about Bolshevism and spies and what, but maybe if we—”

“Get accused of supporting Bolshevism?” Fielden interjected. “Won't that do wonders for our reputation?”

“I agree that the more people know about Russia and the Russian people, the less afraid they might be,” said Hilda, ever the diplomat. “Though a series would require a bit of finessing before the DG would accept it.”

Less afraid. There were moments when Maisie felt the chill of walking shadows, all those vanished people under poppies. Sometimes, she was sure others felt them too, even the brightest and most beautiful, glancing nervously over their shoulders.
Maybe we're all trying to outrun something, like me outrunning the kids in Toronto.
They'd wanted to beat her till she broke, and not just her bones. The suffragettes had put themselves forward for breakage, hadn't they? That would be something, being the person who could put herself in harm's way, for a cause.

“There's meant to be an election, isn't there, in twenty-nine?” Maisie heard herself ask.

“Unless it gets called sooner,” Fielden said.

“Maybe there can be Talks about aspects of the election, the candidates' platforms, what people hope—”

“Spoken like the American.” Fielden sniffed.

“Canadian!” the entire Talks Department chorused.

“Go on, Miss Musgrave,” Hilda encouraged. It was still alien, seeing someone look interested in her thoughts.

“I suppose, now that women vote, things must be different.”

“Three general elections in almost as many years,” Fielden said. “Hardly auspicious.”

“I think it's something to think about,” Hilda said, following the script, but Maisie believed her. “We'll give it a bit of a thrash.”

After the meeting, Maisie heard Collins express his surprise that “the little occasional girl has a thought in her head. Who would have thought, a thought?” The others hadn't.

I can't blame them. I wouldn't have imagined it myself.

“If you could type up the minutes now, Miss Musgrave, that would be very useful,” Hilda said. “Or do you need to get back to the DG?”

“Oh. I can do them now, yes,” Maisie said, confirming from the carriage clock that she had ten minutes to spare. She lingered, turning the pad over and over.

“Was there something else?” Hilda looked up, surprised at the sudden lack of industry.

“Oh. No. Yes. Er, I was wondering . . .” The question was there, bouncing on her tongue, but it fell right back down her throat. Instead she asked, “Could I take your newspapers home to read, when you're done with them? The ones in English,” she added, unnecessarily. Hilda came to work with an upholstered holdall in addition to her handbag, in which she carried newspapers, magazines, and at least three books in rotation. She also had the principal newspapers from Germany, France, Italy, and America sent to the office every week, and read them through. In the evenings, she went to the theater, concerts, salons, lectures, and, more nebulously, “events.” When did she sleep? She always had more energy than all the rest of them.

“Of course,” Hilda said. “Though I rather thought you read the papers on your tram ride.”

Over men's shoulders, yes, but Hilda thought she bought at least one paper in the morning. Maisie was surprised to realize she knew something Hilda didn't: what it was to be poor. Hilda didn't know what it meant to have to mind each literal penny. Pennies were important, one after another meant a bun, soap, toothpaste. A penny spent on a newspaper might be the difference between being able to buy thread to mend stockings, and allowing a hole to show meant your status plummeted, even among the poor. Maisie was slowly rising out of penury, but all her savings now were for a dress. One
good dress fixed your status. But she wanted to read more of the papers. That would change her status, too, if only at the BBC.

Reith was also a devotee of the papers, and assigned a phalanx of staff to mark every one of the articles on the BBC for his delectation.

“Ah, Miss Musgrave!” he greeted Maisie one afternoon as she brought in his tea. “Here's a fine thing. The
Times
writes that the BBC is ‘doing good work in bringing more education to the British public.' And they don't just mean the Schools broadcasts. They mean music and the Talks. Very good, very good.”

He continued to read aloud as he stirred in sugar.

“‘Whilst many still think the wireless a fad of this peculiar modern age in which we live'—peculiar, indeed. I saw a couple dancing the other night and was of half a mind to call for an exorcist—‘it cannot be denied that the BBC is presenting programming of an overall informative, enlightened, and elevating matter that is a credit to its purported mission.'” He raised his tea in a salute to the paper, though more likely to himself, then favored Maisie with his warmest scowl.

“It's a very satisfying thing, seeing this validation in the newspapers.” Reith sighed happily, reading through the piece again. “Though they do say ‘enlightened.' I often worry about that word. It sounds like a euphemism for ‘too modern.'”

Maisie had been at the BBC long enough to learn that when the newspapers wanted to be critical of radio, euphemism was the last thing they employed.

“I'm sure they only mean in relation to the Enlightenment, sir.”

“Hum.” (Possibly he wasn't too keen on the Enlightenment either?)

“It's a fine testament to Miss Matheson,” she said, hoping to restore his cheer. She thought she saw a shadow cross his face, but whether it was an ongoing meditation on the intricacies of Enlightenment or something else, she couldn't be sure. It might just have been the light.

“Yes, this piece singles her out for mention. Apparently she is ‘the
linchpin that makes the BBC more than just frivolous,'” he said, putting down the paper to stir more sugar in his tea. “And it congratulates me for being so visionary as to entrust a woman in such a critical post. Though not me by name, but the BBC. We're quite the avatars of daring, apparently.”

“Yes, sir! Onwards and upwards,” Maisie crowed. His scowl chilled. Maybe because it was Hilda's expression? “Oh, I only mean . . . everyone says the BBC is one of the few places where women can have more than clerical jobs.”

“Yes. I daresay it is,” he said. “Do go and file this newspaper, Miss Musgrave, and ask Miss Shields to come in.”

Maisie obeyed, berating herself in a manner to do Georgina proud. Why didn't she say the article was a testament to him? That was what he wanted to hear, and it would have been so easy to say. Men loved compliments. Lola always quoted the glossies on this point. Maisie glanced through the open door, but could only see the back of Miss Shields's head, radiating triumphant disapproval at her.

They were indebted to him, all of them. Hilda, too. And no one more than Maisie. She hoped she hadn't given him any reason to regret it.

Hilda never seemed to mind what the papers wrote about the BBC, or her. If it was a compliment, she declared it “jolly decent,” and if it was excoriation, she laughed and said, “Well, we can't please everyone and would probably be a horrid bore if we even tried.” Articles were duly filed, fulfilling Hilda's particularity about order, but her real interest was in letters sent by the general public, and especially librarians. Literature and poetry were becoming mainstays of Talks, with a combination of reviews and readings, and librarians wrote with the enthusiasm of matinee-idol devotees to gloat about their increased circulation and even the formation of book and poetry circles. “Good Lord, there's one in Bradford, and I believe nearly the entire town left school at age twelve.”

Maisie viewed poetry as one of those things you were supposed to like. A jumble of words, jazz without music, with a rhythm she couldn't follow. The poetry readings on the BBC didn't do much to enhance her understanding, but she enjoyed them more. Hilda engaged terrific readers and bullied them to her will. Maisie still preferred her words linear and clear, sword-sharp and a direct hit to her brain. But the general thrill that ran through Talks when a poem transfixed the listening audience was contagious. And these literary societies mattered. She wasn't sure what they meant, only that she was as ebullient as Hilda at their creation.

“Even though I've got nothing to do with it,” she confessed to Phyllida on their tea break.

“You're there, aren't you?” Phyllida pointed out. “Keeping the wheels turning. That's plenty to do with it.” She had Hilda's knack for pronouncing something as though it simply was, and there was no argument.

Maisie—the whole department—still gave all the credit to Hilda. She was so persuasive and adamant in securing broadcasters. It was getting harder and harder for anyone to say no to her.

“Excellent!” Hilda erupted, slamming down the phone and jumping for her hat. “I'm having a drink with T. S. Eliot.” She wolfed down a scone and tossed a cup of lukewarm tea down her throat. “I think he's a bit of a champion with the drink. Best I don't go in with an empty stomach.”

It was disturbing to see Hilda throw her things in her bag—Hilda being disorderly could only signal the apocalypse. Maisie glanced outside.
Oh good. It's only raining water. Not blood
.

“Wish me luck!” Hilda called, racing out the door. A pamphlet dropped. “Doesn't matter!” She was already halfway down the stairs.

Maisie picked up the pamphlet and hunted for a resting spot. The desk was, as ever, covered in neat stacks of papers, with several pages of a script filling the rest of the surface. Maisie set the pen back in its holder and straightened the correspondence so nothing peeked out from under the top pages. She could just fit the pamphlet in the bottom corner of the desk, but it didn't look right.

Have I always been this compulsive about order myself, or is it contagious?

The bookshelves were full. It would be scandalous to lay something on any other surface.

I'll just take it home
.
A little more reading for the tram.

Her initial disappointment on finding the pamphlet was in German was mitigated when she saw Hilda had made ample notes in English. Hilda's handwriting was still aneurysm-provoking, but Maisie was getting better at deciphering it.

Not that it made any of this any clearer.

One of the notes was torn from a German newspaper. Hilda had written in red: “equity drop!!! (disaster).” They'd had speakers on finance and economy, but Maisie didn't know what an equity drop meant, or why it was a disaster. If it hurt the Germans, she was satisfied—all those broken bodies, all those poppies, all the “Surplus Women,” as the papers had it.

But why would Hilda be reading one of their pamphlets?

It was called
The Road to Resurgence
. Maisie could just make out the author's name, Adolf Hitler. Hilda's annotation said this wasn't meant for proper publication but was just to be distributed on the sly to leading German industrialists. So how had Hilda gotten it? Apparently, the contents were meant to assuage said industrialists about their fear that the Nazi party was anti-capitalist. Underneath that note were two tiny questions in writing even more illegible than usual: “Siemens?” “Nestlé?”

Maisie rubbed her forehead. Siemens. That man Hoppel was an executive at Siemens's British branch and Reith's good friend. And he had exhorted Reith to do . . . something; she couldn't remember what. As to the “Nazi party,” she remembered reading that name over some man's shoulder. An article dismissive of Germans, but what article wasn't? Hilda's robot brain would remember all this information and put it all together, but that was the brain that was reading German publications.

Another question: “Socialists?” Socialists didn't like industrialists. You only needed to spend one evening listening to men in a pub to learn that.

Germany was a mess, the papers and pub patrons cheerfully agreed. Its economy tattered, government ineffective. Mussolini was said to laugh at Germany, he having taken a mess and turned it into a model.

“Miss? Miss!”

“What? I'm reading!” Maisie snapped. The tram conductor was glaring down at her.

“End of the line, miss. I called three times.”

She had missed her stop.

“Oh. Er. Sorry,” she murmured, closing the pamphlet. She slunk off, trying to ignore an exchange between the conductor and the driver about the flightiness of women.

N
aturally, Hilda had secured T. S. Eliot for a broadcast and was celebrating with a pile of cakes for the whole department. Fielden glanced at it, then back at Maisie.

“I suppose you're wondering what the rest of us are having?”

I must remember to trip and spill tea on him sometime
.

At last she found a quiet moment to return the pamphlet, feeling like she was passing over contraband.

“Ah, is that what I dropped?” Hilda said, taking it. “I'd ask you to type the notes, but it's not for the BBC. Or, I should say, not yet. What was your opinion of it?”

“I didn't read it,” Maisie lied, outraged at the assumption.

“Really? That's disappointing.” Hilda didn't frown, exactly, but her mouth was neutral, an expression so much more chilling than anything Miss Shields could accomplish. Then her eyes twinkled. “If you're going to attempt subterfuge, Miss Musgrave, which has its attractions, you must exert care and caution. You didn't put all the pages back in their original order, and this one is bent.” She held out the page with the note “disaster” for Maisie's delectation. “You read my translations? Of course you did. What is your opinion?”

She looked both expectant and challenging.

“I . . . don't really know what to think,” Maisie said.

“What rot!” Hilda snorted. “You need to mimeograph our guidelines for Talks, yes? Good. I'll join you.”

“You don't have time.” Maisie knew Hilda's schedule perfectly. “You've got to do the voice test of that fellow from Afghanistan, and—”

Hilda was not to be dissuaded. The mimeograph machine, crammed in its own room, was loud and slow and allowed for a private conversation. While Maisie set up the stencils, Hilda swung herself onto the table bearing the machine and crossed her ankles.

“Now, come, Miss Musgrave. Let's hear it. You read my notes on that wretched thing. What did you make of it?”

Maisie didn't have an opinion yet, just a thousand questions.

“How did you get a German pamphlet that's not meant for distribution?”

“Excellent question,” Hilda congratulated her. “I can't answer it just now.”

“Why not?” Maisie asked, frowning. “What's so important about it?”

“Is this distrust or bad temper?”

“Maybe it's distemper,” Maisie said, unable to help herself.

Hilda's laugh almost drowned out the noise of the machine.

“Tell me, Miss Musgrave, if, just for fun, you thought I was a German spy, how would you go about ascertaining it?”

The question was posed like it was a party game.

“But I don't think you're a spy.”

“Why not?”

“You can't be. You're too busy.”

While she waited for Hilda to stop laughing, Maisie thought about espionage. Sensationalist literature was more abundant than sandwich shops, bursting with tales of Russian spies.
I don't know what Bolshevism's done for politics, but it's certainly feeding the creative mind.
Maisie envisioned cloaks and daggers, even though, of course, it was overcoats and pistols. Or perhaps poisoned darts? Why would
Russians spy in Britain anyway? What on earth did they hope to learn?

They wanted to conquer; that was the prevailing wisdom. Even most of the better newspapers thought the Bolshevist threat was real.

Hilda wiped her eyes. “God, I love your logic. Now go on, really. You must have made something of that bit of propagandistic dross.”

“Not really,” Maisie admitted. “I don't know what an equity drop is, or why it matters. I definitely don't see why socialists want to please industrialists, or what Siemens has to do with anything. Unless it's that they make wirelesses?”

“Very astute.” Hilda nodded. “So! How would you answer any or all of these?”

“I'm asking you,” Maisie said, liking the snap in her voice. Clearly, so did Hilda.

“And if you didn't have me to ask?”

“I don't know,” Maisie cried. “I . . . Well, I suppose I would try to find a clever reporter on one of the better newspapers and ask him to help.”

“You could do that, yes.” Hilda nodded. “I think you'll find, though, that even clever reporters don't know things right away.” She gathered the mimeographs and smoothed them into a neat stack.

“Miss Matheson . . . what
is
an equity drop?”

Hilda looked down at the pages in her lap and ran a finger under the words: Suggestions for Writing an Excellent Talk. When she glanced back at Maisie, her expression was almost rueful. “Probably nothing I ought to fuss about. I've sometimes been told I read too much. Think too much. Perhaps there's something to that.” She chuckled, and slid off the table. “But one thing I do know for a fact is propaganda costs money, if it's going to work. A lot of money.”

She took the mimeographs and headed back to the department, leaving Maisie to think dark thoughts about enigmatic statements.

And wish
she
were the clever reporter she needed to find.

How would they start, anyway? The library, I guess. And then a banker, maybe, or someone in finance? Someone like that Mr. Emmet we had in.
He'd be easy enough to get on the phone or meet with. And then maybe talking to someone in the Labour Party, asking about—

Oh.

One universal instruction Maisie had always been given was not to break rules. Her one great moment of disobedience was her lie—the false age that had brought her here, to her father's homeland, far away from Georgina and to work that seemed worthwhile. Despite the success of the venture, Maisie, unwilling to tempt fate, remained reluctant to try rule-breaking again. Certainly, no one else ever encouraged her to do so.

Neither had Hilda, or not openly. But the unanswered question pushed her past all the mountains of work she was meant to do and reaching into the wastebasket for discarded paper, which she sneaked into the lavatory with her to make a few notes in privacy.

Siemens. What was Hilda wondering about Siemens?
They're German, they're big, and they've got a huge operation here. All perfectly right as rain
. Maisie chewed on her pencil. That man Hoppel had said something to Reith, something Maisie wanted to hear, because she liked when people thought highly of Reith. Something about being right-thinking. An alliance, with the BBC. And some sort of meeting.

Two secretaries came in, chatting. The pencil fell out of Maisie's mouth. How long had she been in there? She flushed the toilet and ran back to the office, shoving the papers into her sleeve.
Please let Miss Shields be away from her desk. Please let Miss Shields be away from her desk
.

Miss Shields was at her desk. She looked up as Maisie entered, glanced at the clock, and made a notation in her pad.

Maisie rolled paper and carbons into the typewriter. She typed, she filed, she took dictation, she typed some more. But her mind wanted to think, to ask and answer questions. That fist in her chest swelled through her skin, pushing a grin onto her face.

She was typing: “I do not think Schools is managing to achieve its full potential as of yet. There is far more we can do to inform the youth
of Britain,” when something Hoppel had said sprang into her head. She yanked the papers from her sleeve and scribbled: “Right-minded man, making sure the country runs as it ought.”
Funny thing for a businessman.
Or is it? I suppose the right-minded should manage things, anyway. But who says what's right-minded? I suppose someone thought Nero . . .

“What exactly are you doing?” Miss Shields asked. She stood over Maisie, arms folded, nose in full declension.

Maisie yelped, and the pencil cartwheeled out of her hand.

“Nothing. I—”

“Yes, I can see that. You certainly aren't finishing that memo. What is this you're writing?”

One arm unfurled and extended to its full length, palm full of expectation.

“It's just personal—” Maisie began in a squeak.

“Personal?” Miss Shields repeated, making the word seven syllables long.

“No! Not . . . That is, I mean, it's for Miss Matheson, but . . .” She trailed off, remembering too late that “being for Miss Matheson” was a graver offense.

“I see. Something for Miss Matheson. Even though you are on executive duty at this time. To which you have been late returning from Talks eight times this month. I have kept track.” The arm was still extended. The fingers gave one insistent twitch and Maisie, defeated, surrendered the paper. Miss Shields glanced at the shorthand notes and sucked in her breath. “Who are you to be giving opinions about Mr. Hoppel?”

“I wasn't. It's not—”

Miss Shields raised an eyebrow, then turned and marched into Reith's office.

That fist inside punched all the way up Maisie's throat and nearly leaped out of her mouth.
Damn her, damn her, damn her
. A curse that worked for both Miss Shields and Hilda, with whom Maisie was equally furious. How dared she get Maisie interested in anything beyond the strict parameters of her work? How dared she . . . ?

“Miss Musgrave? Come!” Miss Shields barked.

Maisie walked slowly, feeling like Anne Boleyn on the way to her execution. She finally stepped inside Reith's office, and he nodded to Miss Shields.

“Thank you, Miss Shields. If you would close the door, please? Leaving Miss Musgrave and myself alone, I meant,” he clarified, when Miss Shields tried to stay inside. Maisie refused to turn and see her expression, merely waited for the footsteps to fade and the door to click shut.

Her first instinct was to plunge to her knees—Anne Boleyn's last pose—and beg for clemency. But she stayed upright. “Sir, I can explain—”

“Sit down, Miss Musgrave.” Reith waved her to the club chair with a flourish of his cigarette. “Miss Shields informs me you have committed a series of minor infractions, and all against your duties to this office, which is to say, to Miss Shields and myself. Infractions are not acceptable for someone so low on the ladder as yourself. I am most strict about duty and tasks, as you know, and I am quick to remove anyone unable to conform to these standards.”

“I'm very sorry, sir. I really am. But they said, in one of the Talks meetings, it might be interesting to have someone who manufactures radios give a Talk. And I remembered Mr. Hoppel. It just came to me so suddenly. I had to make the note. I couldn't wait. I knew Talks wanted a right-thinking, right-minded sort of person to speak, someone who understands about managing things, and who would be better than someone intimate with yourself?”

Reith took a long drag of his cigarette, and as he exhaled, she was overjoyed to see his warmer scowl behind the smoke.

“I had a feeling it was something like that,” he assured her. “And I daresay Hoppel will be glad to broadcast should his schedule allow. You may tell Miss Matheson so. But remember, each of your duties belongs in its own place. And . . .” He paused, pondering his cigarette before looking deep into Maisie's eyes. “I might warn you—not that you need it, I should think—but working for a girl like Miss Matheson,
Bloomsbury type and all that, you might start thinking you'd like to do something more than just secretarial work.”