Radio Girls (8 page)

The grim head of Lionel Fielden swooped around the door.

“Mr. Bartlett for his rehearsal, Miss Matheson.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you.” She turned to Maisie. “I assume you can take notes whilst being discreet?” She didn't wait for Maisie's answer. “Of course you can. Come along! It's high time you saw our studios properly.”

“I hope your shoes and hands are clean,” Fielden muttered into Maisie's ear.

“Was there something else, Mr. Fielden?” called Hilda, already at the stairs. Maisie, pad and pencil pressed to her chest, scuttled after her, eyes fixed on her shoes.

A sign on Studio Five's door warned against bringing in any outside dirt. Vernon Bartlett, MP to the League of Nations, was obediently attempting to brush what looked like half of London off his hat.

“It's very nasty out,” he apologized. “It would take an industrial Hoover to make me suitable.”

“Quite all right, Mr. Bartlett. The sign is ultimately a suggestion. Only don't tell the engineers I said so,” Hilda confided, sweeping them all inside.

“Oh!” cried Maisie, an outburst that would result in a string of demerits from Miss Jenkins. Billy, busy with something or other at the big black boxes with all the intriguing buttons and dials, squinted at her and turned away, smirking.

She hadn't expected such a friendly space. Presenters sat in a pale green upholstered chair, comfortable enough to feel relaxed, firm
enough to remind one of the gravitas of the event and thus remain regally upright. Beside the chair was a stuffed bookcase. Notes and elbows rested on a writing desk. And at the top of the desk was the microphone.

The microphone was oblong, tapered inward at the top, not unlike a tiny coffin, which seemed inauspicious. It bore the legend
BBC
, a presumably unnecessary but highly photogenic label. Maisie longed to touch its mesh exterior, run her fingers over the wires. Take it apart to see what was inside. She had to force herself to turn to Bartlett and take his hat and coat.

He gave Maisie a polite nod. Like Reith, he had a fatherly quality. Unlike Reith, Bartlett's rumpled suit and impish grin gave him a cheerful, rather than imposing, mien. He was the type to give hair an affectionate tug and feign surprise at the discovery of a peppermint in his coat pocket. He eyed the microphone with nervous amusement. “I really can't fathom how I've let you talk me into this,” he said to Hilda.

“Because you'll be marvelous and you know it,” Hilda answered. She had a way of saying something that made it sound patently obvious, with further argument impossible. “People want the horse's-mouth view from the League, if you'll excuse the rather rank-sounding metaphor.”

“I think the six people interested in the League are the sort to prefer a newspaper,” he pointed out.

“Scores of people are interested and don't know it. That's where we come in. And anyway, not all the papers would print your columns. This is going to be far more riveting, trust me. After a good rehearsal, of course.”

Rehearsals for Talks were one of Hilda's new policies. Maisie had heard Miss Shields sniffing about the “waste of time.” But as Mr. Bartlett ran through his first attempt, in a tone both prattling and ponderous, leaning so close to the microphone he was in danger of swallowing it, she could see where a rehearsal might be useful.

“A very fine first attempt,” Hilda said, sounding sincere.

“That's what you said about this script you rewrote three times,”
he said, laughing as though they were old friends. Which Maisie realized they might be.

“I meant it, too!” Hilda grinned. “Now, the easy part is to mind the mike—get too close or make any sort of noise like coughing or even rustling paper and you deafen all our listeners. And then those afraid of technology are allowed to be smug, and we can't have that.”

“Oh, come.” He laughed again. “Since when do you indulge in hyperbole?”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” Billy broke in. “But Miss Matheson's quite truthful, sir. It creates a dreadful bit of interference that's a nasty thing to hear.”

“Almost as much as ‘there's a bit of trouble with your taxes,'” Hilda added.

“It's why we keep the room so clean, sir,” Billy went on. “Got to control dust.”

“Sensitive little device, isn't it?” Bartlett observed.

“But powerful,” Hilda said, smiling fondly at the mike.

“All right, so not too close and no paper rustling. What's the tricky bit?”

“The actual reading. Because you don't want to sound like you're reading, you see?” (He didn't, as far as Maisie could tell, and neither did she.) “No one likes a declamation. Turns them right off. I'll bet the best speechmakers in the League sound as though they're extemporizing—am I right? Think of yourself as speaking to a friend. They're genuinely curious and want to know all about the work of the League and its goings-on. Try addressing yourself to Miss Musgrave here, if it helps.”

Maisie almost fell off her chair. She just caught sight of Billy shaking his head, sneering at the idea that looking at her could ever help anyone.

“That won't make you uncomfortable, Miss Musgrave?” Bartlett asked.

Desperately! Horribly! Completely! I'd rather eat this pencil, type a thousand pages of Miss Matheson's writing, ask Miss Shields for a pay raise!

“No, not at all, Mr. Bartlett,” she murmured.

So he began again, looking right at Maisie. “‘We know it's shocking to consider an ongoing slave trade in 1926,'” he told her, “‘but the traffic in human lives is a tragedy still occurring in some areas of the globe. The League's successful treaty to end this shame once and for all begins implementation in March. This is how . . .'”

Maisie realized she hadn't registered anything he'd said during his first reading. Now that he was talking to her, she was fascinated and full of questions, many of which he answered as he went along. But more kept cropping up, questions that had nothing to do with his script.
You couldn't have something like the League before, could you? Gather people from around the world in one place and talk about things? If we'd had it before, would it have prevented the war? What . . . ?

“Very well-done, Bartlett,” Hilda crowed, treating him to a small applause. Even Billy nodded in approval. “Do you want to try once more for luck?”

He did, and was so engaging this time, Maisie had to bite her tongue to stop herself from entering into dialogue.
I'd look an imbecile besides getting sacked. What's wrong with me?

After Bartlett left, Hilda commanded Maisie's attention.

“I think that went rather decently. Didn't have to bully old Bartlett too badly, did I?”

“Er, I don't think so?”

“You should have seen his original script, dear, oh dear.” Hilda shook her head. “As if some people couldn't happily ignore the League enough. Very sporting of you to act as audience. I appreciate it.”

“Oh, certainly,” Maisie said.

“Some of them will insist on declaiming. You'd think they were doing Euripides in the Parthenon,” Hilda mused. “Mind you, the worst ones are usually the actors.” She drew several neat lines down interoffice memos to indicate they were read and handed them to Maisie. “DG-bound, these. What say we go through some fresh scripts this afternoon, shall we? You can get your first glimpse of the sausage ingredients at their most raw!”

“Er, well, I don't think I'm really, that is—”

“Not so much fun typing up revisions if you don't see from whence they began. And that's the best way to learn how to help make them better. Oh I know, that's not in your job manifest, but I like all my staff to have opinions and feel free to air them.”

“But I don't know how—”

“Not yet, certainly, but you'll learn. Onwards and upwards! And on up to the DG for now.”

“At one of those rehearsals, were you?” Miss Shields sniffed when Maisie entered the office a few minutes later. More points for the Savoy Hill buzz. “Rehearsals!” Miss Shields went on. “Give that woman an inch and she takes the entire British Isles. Honestly, just because reviews of Talks have been so good, she thinks she can dictate terms. What, pray tell, was the subject?”

“Mr. Bartlett was talking about the work of the League of Nations.”

“I see. Well, I suppose someone must like that sort of thing.”

Maisie was hard-pressed to imagine what sort of thing Miss Shields would like.

“Dull, was it?” Miss Shields asked hopefully.

“Well, I, er, I don't think so, actually. I mean, I sort of thought—”

Miss Shields sniffed again and pointedly turned back to her desk. Maisie scuttled to her own little table. She rolled fresh paper and a carbon sheet into the typewriter and got to work. She didn't miss a key, even as her mind was roving through other Talks scripts, wondering what was in them. It seemed so odd, Hilda suggesting she should do anything more than type and file and take dictation.

Maybe I really
did
look interested? Good grief. I think I am.

Saturday morning. A half day. The end of her first week.

Maisie stirred sugar into the cup of tea she was clutching tightly enough to absorb via osmosis. Sometime today, she was going to be paid. The bottom was not going to be hit. The floor would not be
fallen through. The abyss was not going to have her to swallow. Not today.

Three pounds. Five shillings. These would be counted among her possessions this evening. Her room, her board, her lunches, pennies toward shoes, some small savings. All hers.

Lola swanned into the kitchen, carrying two dresses.

“Another audition today! I can't decide between the green and the yellow. I don't know if I should look refined or sultry, you see.”

“The green,” Maisie advised, not sure which category it fell into.

Lola gave the green an approving pat and helped herself to tea.

“Ooh, end of your first week. You're getting paid today!”

“I suppose I am,” Maisie acknowledged. “I've been too busy to think of it.”

“We'll get a celebratory drink if the audition doesn't run too late,” Lola promised.

“That sounds super,” Maisie agreed, cringing at the thought of what sort of Armageddon must be befalling them if an audition of Lola's didn't run late.

An hour later, as she was hanging her hat on the rack, she realized she had no idea when, or where, she was to collect her pay. Rusty must have told her on their breakneck tour, but no friendly syllable of “salary” came to mind.

“Miss Musgrave, I do hope you're planning to start soon. I know that many Americans don't work on a Saturday, but here we are keen on being industrious.”

She hadn't planned on asking Miss Shields anyway.

It will be in the buzz. It must be.

Saturdays had a lighter broadcasting schedule. Apparently, it was bad form to think that people might use their increased leisure time to listen to the wireless. Or maybe the idea was not to encourage them. Maisie wasn't sure.