Radio Girls (20 page)

“We're very honored to have you broadcast, Lady Nicholson,” Hilda said.

“‘Vita,' please. Let us begin by being informal. Your reputation well precedes you, and I know I am going to be run absolutely ragged with rehearsal, so we may as well be the friends we're so evidently meant to be.”

“Then you must call me Hilda.”

“Good! Now, I'm absolutely longing to see the studio and get to work.”

Maisie tagged behind, watching them. Hilda was always delighted to greet a speaker, but there was something different in her reception of Vita. She was radiating warmth and excitement, more than usual, but that wasn't quite it.

She almost seems nervous
.

Hilda was never nervous. So it had to be something else.

The rehearsal was hardly needed. Vita was a born speaker. She had of course been given elocution lessons, but plenty of actresses weren't as readily engaging as she was. She simply understood at once what it was to give a compelling broadcast and employed her warm, elegant tones to perfection. She was someone who had expected to be listened to her whole life, and so spoke with total ease, knowing attention would be paid. And of course it would. No one who heard her would turn away from the broadcast. Hilda was tap-dancing on the ceiling again.

Rather than the usual bullying—or teaching, as Maisie preferred
to call it—Hilda focused on making Vita as comfortable as possible. Which seemed unnecessary. The woman could be comfortable on an ice floe. But Hilda fussed to be sure her script was laid out so the pages would move with even more seamlessness than usual—she seemed to feel Vita should not have to handle her script herself. The great lady felt otherwise, and laid a steadying hand over Hilda's, holding it there while she assured her that such ministrations weren't needed.

“You are very kind, Hilda, but truly, these reviews are my honor.”

“I think, Vita, we shall have quite a set-to deciding who is doing whom the greater honor.”

“I suspect you might be the loser there. I'm quite a bit bigger than you.”

“Ah, but I'm small and scrappy.”

Vita's throaty laugh would have made the sound effects men swoon.

“I knew we should be great friends.” Vita grinned at Hilda. “Miss Woolf said you were quite the tyrant, perhaps not realizing I appreciate a bit of tyranny. Well, I'm glad you think my efforts are up to scratch. I do hope you're not withholding any criticism due to some ceremony or other.”

“Not a bit of it. Miss Musgrave can tell you there's little I despise more than a terrible broadcast. I won't have it, not on my watch. And I certainly won't have it from my friends, for my sake or theirs.”

“Exactly as I would have thought of you. If I don't disgrace the BBC after my broadcast, you must come to dine. Will you?”

“You shan't disgrace us, so we may consider it a date.”

“Jolly good!”

When Maisie stood to show Vita out, Hilda waved her aside.

“I'll escort our reviewer, Miss Musgrave, thank you.”

Hilda often walked the more important broadcasters, or the ones she really liked, back to the main door. Which meant nearly all of them.

But she's never done so blushing
.

“How did the great and powerful Vita Sackville-West get on?”
Fielden asked gloomily when Maisie returned to the Talks Department.

“She was superb,” she raved. “People will just
have
to read whatever she recommends.”

“Aristocrats. They still want to be dictators.” Fielden sighed, shaking his head.

“I didn't mean it like that,” Maisie snapped.

“I did,” he said, with a shrug. “Did Our Lady bully her a good deal?” he asked in a more hopeful tone.

“Not a bit,” Maisie said, rolling in a sheet of fresh letterhead and typing with extra force to drown him out. It was always nice to disappoint Fielden, and if he thought she was the type to tell that sort of story, he didn't know her at all.

Which was also nice.

“I don't suppose the
Radio Times
would like a little story on Vita Sackville-West's upcoming broadcast?” Maisie asked Bert when she dropped off listings.

“I don't suppose we would, no,” Bert said, not bothering to stifle a yawn.

So she took her overflowing energy to the library, the place it had always found relief.

Neither the stack of books on Germany nor the backlog of newspapers distracted her from chewing on her pencil and staring at the ceiling. A passing librarian glanced at her.

“You've been in the exact same position over an hour,” she whispered. “Are you all right?”

“How might someone in England get a piece of German propaganda not meant even for the general public in Germany to see?” Maisie asked, though she hadn't realized that was the question that had been plaguing her.

The librarian's black eyes sparkled with pleasure.

“Ooh, that's a tricky one! I would think he must be German himself, with close ties to whoever generated the work,” she began. “He might be serving in an advisory capacity. Or he got it via an underground network, if he is engaged in some form of espionage activity.”

“You mean a German spy? Here?” Maisie's stomach turned over. The unthinkable thought, the fly that had buzzed in her brain and eluded smacking. Hilda, so dedicated to informing the British, the world, about everything—it couldn't be a lie, could it?

“Not necessarily,” the librarian saved her. “I daresay German spies exist, silly idiots, and Russians, too, but your man might well be in MI5 or MI6.”

The intelligence agencies. Maisie had read about them. Spies, yes. But for Britain.

“How would someone know if a person was in one of those, though?”

“I should hope they wouldn't!” The librarian laughed at the idea—a totally silent laugh, mostly in the eyes. “A secret agent is hardly secret if people know who he is.”

“Could she . . . he . . . He would have to have another job, wouldn't he? So no one would guess?”

“A man employed by MI5 might, perhaps, as that's the domestic agency. Must keep up appearances at home,” the librarian agreed. “We have some books if you'd like—”

“What sort of person works for MI5?” Maisie interrupted eagerly. “She, er, he couldn't be too ordinary, could he?”

“I really couldn't say. All sorts, most likely. But a good agent would have to be enormously clever, know a great deal about the world, probably speak a few languages—”

“And care about the truth,” Maisie murmured.

“As much of it as he's allowed to disseminate,” the librarian warned. “Which I imagine is not a great deal.”

But Maisie wasn't listening. She knew what she had meant. She
knew, too, that if Hilda got that propaganda via MI5, it must have even greater implications than Maisie had thought.

And she's trusting
me
to be a small part of this.

The ambition of writing for the
Radio Times
was, Maisie now decided, silly and embarrassing. She had wanted to prove to herself that there was something she could do without Hilda's hand at her back, but why not quietly help answer the question of what giant companies like Siemens and Nestlé were up to? Why should they be invested in Germany's “road to resurgence” as led by a fringe would-be political party?

Ridiculous thing, the
Radio Times.
Who cares if all the writing in it is virtually illiterate? Who cares if—

“Heigh-ho, no trampling of the broadcasters!” Beanie's cry brought Maisie back to the corridor, and the mortifying discovery that she'd nearly trod on an actress. A sleek, beautiful actress with chocolate-brown eyes and skin. Wisteria Mitterand, from Lady Astor's salon.

Hilda had brought the idea of a Talk by Miss Mitterand to Reith, who had duly—and very fluently—shot it straight down. But given the hint that Miss Mitterand would be a fine performer, Beanie had sought her out. And lo, here she was.

“Miss Mitterand!” Maisie grinned, shaking her hand. “How lovely to see you again.”

“Goodness, Miss Musgrave,” she said, smiling. “I hardly recognize you. In the best way. You're absolutely blooming.”

“Do you know,” Beanie broke in, studying Maisie, “it's true. You're no Gainsborough, but you're not as Picasso as you were. All those harsh lines,” she added helpfully. “Isn't that extraordinary?”

“It is,” Maisie answered, which pleased Beanie. Maisie turned back to Miss Mitterand. “I wish I could come see you broadcast, but—”

“Maisie is quite the slave to the Talks Department,” Beanie blithely informed her, with no thought for what that word might mean beyond her own idiom. Miss Mitterand's expression didn't vary
by so much as a twitch, and Maisie thought again how excellent it would be to have her give a Talk. “But we must dash. Come along, come along.”

“Glad to see you, Miss Musgrave,” Miss Mitterand said, meaning it.

Maisie watched her go, wondering if her elegance was natural, like Beanie's, or if she had learned it from observation, like Georgina.

“What did her hand feel like?” Billy moved from his customary stance of hugging the wall when he spotted Maisie and into her circle of vision, curiosity overcoming his discomfiture.

“I beg your pardon?” Maisie wondered if Billy had developed a fixation about hands, after having injured his own.

“It's just, I've heard that Negresses' skin feels different, as well as being black, and I was wondering. Oh, but she was wearing gloves.” He answered his question in crushing disappointment.

Mr. Eckersley may expect all his engineers to be clever, but that doesn't stop them being appallingly ignorant.

An hour later, Maisie was in the midst of a telegram flurry with John Maynard Keynes, whom they wanted for a series and whose schedule was making even a single broadcast impossible to set up. The economist was more popular than Charlie Chaplin. It was infuriating, both because she wanted to ask him about Germany and because she had to meet the man who had said: “Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.”

“We should emblazon that around the office, shouldn't we?” Hilda said.

“He's so clever and seems charming. Why do you suppose he's not married?” Maisie asked, risking presumption for curiosity.

Fielden, overhearing, doubled over laughing. Hilda looked a little amused herself.

“Possibly he's married to his work. Anyway, here's luck. Alexander Fleming's agreed to a series of interviews. That will be fun, won't it?” Hilda said. “Bit different.”

Interviews. Maisie's fingers froze on the typewriter keys. A nice little interview, with one of the prettier ladies.

She bolted from the office and ran at top speed all the way down to reception. Miss Mitterand was just shaking Beanie's hand.

“Miss Mitterand!” Maisie gasped. “Are you free for a drink later?”