Radio Girls (21 page)

There it was, in the next issue. Shiny and bold and bright. And a lesson in one of the pitfalls of ambition: Even getting something you wanted might not be satisfactory.

“Bert certainly likes to edit. It's half the original length, and I think only every third word might still be hers.” Maisie sighed.

“Quite an achievement for a first effort,” Hilda told her firmly. “But you obviously have a touch, Miss Musgrave. You ought to try again. And then again.”

“And more after that,” Maisie agreed, returning to her desk with a kinetically imperfect but emotionally exuberant pirouette.

“Y
ou ought to let me buy you a drink tonight. Say you can,” Lola begged.

“I've got to work late,” Maisie said between bites of toast. “We're so busy.”

“But it's your birthday!”

“It's nothing to fuss about,” Maisie muttered. If Georgina had her way, her daughter wouldn't even know her birthdate. As it was, May first always rendered Georgina defensive, embarrassed at having any child at all, but particularly Maisie, whose insistence on growing was beyond vexing. But once, in one of her occasional fits of communicativeness, she told Maisie her name derived from her birthdate, a choice that seemed fraught with romanticism and so must have come from her father.

Her father. In a blue cardboard box under her bed was the long-awaited letter from the General Register Office, a terse response to her query about Edwin Musgrave's birth and life, informing her that if she could provide a place, or at least an area, or an exact year of said birth, they might be able to assist. She couldn't, so they couldn't.

“You work too much,” Lola scolded. “I never see you anymore,
and now I'm going on this European tour and won't see you at all for who knows how long!”

Even though Maisie knew that Lola wouldn't give her another thought from the moment she stepped on the boat at Folkestone, her throat tightened. Lola was always so kind to her, and while it was the benevolence of the worldly who adored the dark opposite, it was still kindness, and genuinely meant.

“I'm sorry,” Maisie said. “Let's do meet up after your show. A drink would be swell. And we're toasting your soon-to-be-diva status in Europe, too!”

Lola struck a dramatic pose. “What do you think? Constance Worth? A prettier Gracie Fields, maybe?”

“Your own unique self, wherever you are,” Maisie insisted.

Lola smiled broadly. “Here. Happy birthday.” She handed Maisie what looked like a folded handkerchief and proved, on unwrapping, to contain a white silk rose on a slide, for her hair.

“Oh, Lola! It's perfect. Thank you!” She set it in place before the hall mirror, blinking hard and regretting the decision to apply her new mascara. Lola reached over and adjusted the rose. It looked better. Maisie blinked at her reflection. Brighter eyes blinked back from a rounder face. She hadn't known her hair and skin could shine. Even her nose and chin seemed interesting, as opposed to just oversized. She was never going to be the sort who was called “pretty,” but that didn't matter. Even she could admit that she now had a quality which might be called “striking.”

“I thought that would look well.” Lola nodded approvingly. “See you tonight!”

Hilda was at a breakfast with Lady Astor and “a few other political women; I wanted to bring you, but they'd already booked the table to bursting point.” A year ago, the prospect of joining would have chilled Maisie to the bone. Now she was disappointed not to be there.

“Morning, Miss Musgrave,” Alfred trilled, wheeling in the correspondence as Maisie hung her hat and coat on the rack. “Good Lord, is that all for you?” He stared at the gargantuan iced cake on
her desk, which was doing battle for space—and dimension—with the typewriter.

“Er, I think Miss Matheson might have left it for me,” Maisie said. She barely managed to snatch the fork and napkin lying in the in-tray before Alfred tossed in the morning's first haul. It was a beautiful cake. That mascara was definitely a bad idea.

“If it's not awfully impertinent for me to say so, miss, you look rather well today,” Alfred complimented her. “Hardly recognize you from when you started.”

“Gosh. Thank you, Alfred,” she replied, touched.

She was about to offer him some cake when he continued. “Never imagined you'd last, working in the DG's office and all. You're more suited here.” He nodded and wheeled away, whistling the tune of a song Maisie had heard emanating from some of her local pubs—the one about a late-blooming girl and where she bloomed. Maisie dug into the cake (butter and vanilla cream sponge with lemon icing) as she worked through the correspondence.

The morning took a decidedly less pleasant turn when Fielden, feeling his power with Hilda away, and finding no page immediately at hand, ordered Maisie to take an interoffice memo to Miss Somerville in Schools. It was a place she tried to avoid, as it contained Cyril—but she had no choice. She strongly suspected Fielden had arranged this on purpose.

“Ah, thank you, Miss Musgrave,” Miss Somerville said. “Bit beneath your position, doing the deliveries, isn't it? Awfully good of you, though,” she amended, so as to be clear no offense was meant.

“It's nothing, Miss Somerville,” Maisie said. She hadn't realized the woman knew her name. She ducked out, pleased to have evaded Cyril, and ran headlong into Charles Siepmann.

“Oh, you!” he said, adjusting his glasses to study her more intently. “Thither and yon! You're quite the industrious little thing, aren't you?”

She longed to observe that she wasn't so little, but Siepmann was quite senior in Schools, deeply admired by Reith, and described by the rest of Savoy Hill as an eel, “only more slippery.”

He smiled. Damn, he could look awfully attractive.
Unpleasant people should look unpleasant.

“Just doing my job, sir.”

“Yes, and making an effort to look pretty, too, which is also your job. Bright flowers, that's what you girls are, and don't think we gents don't appreciate it.”

Oh, lucky us.

“I'm only concerned with doing well for the Talks Department, sir,” she told him, with as much asperity as she dared.

“Just Talks? Not the whole BBC?” He smiled again, but there was a hiss, a whetstone preparing for the knife.

“I—well, of course the whole BBC,” she stammered, hoping he didn't see her gulp. His eyes were dancing. Was he teasing her or testing her loyalties? She remembered how much Reith liked him and was suddenly cold. “I'm the Talks secretary, though, so of course I want to do well there,” she said, hoping to paper over any mess. “Doing well by one is doing well by all, isn't it?”

“Ah, that's nicely said, dear,” he complimented her. A host of not-nice comments paraded through her brain as she stalked back to her typewriter. Only Hilda's pointed cough roused her from her assault upon the poor Underwood.

“Oh, excuse me, Miss Matheson. I didn't realize you'd be back.”

“It was a very fine breakfast. And I see you enjoyed yours as well.” She indicated the empty cake plate.

“It was delicious, thank you,” Maisie said, wishing there was one last bite.

“You're most welcome. Many happy returns. Twenty-five is a pivotal time. Now, then, Miss Fenwick has just popped 'round to say they've been inundated and will have to take lunch much nearer the tea break, but she hopes I will allow you a longer break this afternoon, and I think that can be arranged.”

“Thank you. I can take a short lunch.”

“Well, to do that you'll have to keep track of the time,” Hilda
warned. Then she smiled. “This ought to help,” she said, handing Maisie a cardboard box.

Perplexed, Maisie opened it to find a lilac-colored hard case. And inside that was a little enameled watch with a lilac face. It was already set to the right time. Maisie stared down at it, as though it were a face that could gaze back. She'd never received a proper birthday present in her life, and now she had gotten two . . .

“Oh! Miss Matheson!” The mascara was inching down her cheeks.

“I said twenty-five was a pivotal
time
, didn't I?” Hilda smiled. “And this will save you always having to check the clock. What did I tell you your first day? Efficiency. We run on efficiency. Now put it on and remember to wind it every night. It should run for years, I hope. Have you got that letter for Mr. Wells?”

Hilda was continuing to work her charms on H. G. Wells, who was blunt in his opinion that broadcasting was far sillier than anything he could ever write. Hilda's latest letter to him was a masterstroke, telling him that while of course she respected his position, he was robbing Britain of a special experience. She signed it in her firm hand, then asked for the morning's correspondence, simultaneously demanding Maisie take dictation on her observations from the breakfast meeting, because it was possible most of what had been said could be worked up into some very fine Talks. The chaotic normalness restored Maisie's face to some order.

It was, finally, a bright day, with the sky a pagan celebration blue and the flowers in the potted plants hanging from lamps along Savoy Street giving full vent to their bliss. Maisie, armed with a steno pad and a notebook full of Hilda's thoughts on broadcasting, headed to the Tup, warm thoughts of Mrs. Holmby's lamb chops putting a skip in her step, but the glory of the day and the majesty of her new watch turned her to the sandwich bar on the Strand. Laden with sandwiches, chocolate from Miss Cryer's, and, despite the promise of a long tea, two cakes, she strolled down to the Embankment.

She rolled a pencil through her fingers, staring at the Thames as it bubbled along.
I wonder how far it goes? I'd love to travel the whole length of it someday. And then out through the estuary and on and on
.

“I say, would you mind awfully if I shared the bench? Rotten impertinent of me, but this is the only one I've passed for the last half mile that's not overflowing with squawking children and snapping nannies. Gosh, doesn't ‘Squawking Children and Snapping Nannies' sound like a music-hall ditty? I might be in the wrong business.”

Maisie looked up at the tall young man hovering by the bench. His derby was set well back on his head, showing off waving brown hair, slicked back enough to be neat, but not so much as to be dandified. Chocolate-brown eyes, soft and puppyish, with a cheery snap around the edges. Crinkles under his eyes that went deep as he smiled. She felt as if someone had lightly brushed the back of her neck—a tickle she felt all the way to her toes.

“Well, it's a public bench, so I really can't lay claim to the whole of it.”

“I can't know. You might have given money for it,” he pointed out.

“Wouldn't that be a sight, miles of us all on our own benches? That takes entitlement a bit far.”

“It could sound like free enterprise,” he ventured.

“It doesn't sound like free anything,” she told him with finality.

“Wise words,” he said, sitting down and unwrapping a sandwich. Maisie sneaked one last glance at him and turned back to her own food.

“I must say,” her uninvited companion piped up, “I'm a bit surprised to see a young girl out on her own like this.”

She bristled. “You think I should have a chaperone?”

“Nothing so bourgeois as that,” he said, chuckling. “I only meant that you modern girls usually go 'round in pairs, or a gag—er, group.”

“You were about to say ‘gaggle,' weren't you?” She was surprised by her own sharpness. It was so easy to talk to someone you weren't sure you wanted around, tickle or no. He was handsome, and perhaps clever, but she knew now that handsome young men were lethal.

He threw back his head and laughed, just like Hilda.

“Caught but corrected. And contrite.”

“I like eating alone,” she told him. She didn't want it to sound like a hint, but her hackles were rising. She refused to be seen as easy prey.

“Ah, but you're not alone. You've got a notebook. Do you write?”

She closed the book, protective of Hilda's privacy.

“A little.”

“For business or pleasure?”

“Isn't most writing always both?”

He laughed again.

“You're a funny thing,” he told her. “I'm a writer as well, journalism, some essays—well, they bleed together.”

“Oh!” Interest flowered. “Do you write for one of the Fleet Street papers?”

“No. Far too bourgeois for me. I write for
Pinpoint
. Do you know it?”