Radio Girls (9 page)

The buzz certainly didn't care about the listeners. Today it was full of the ineffable sense of the self. Any evening held the potential for adventure, but a Saturday evening was portentous. It was stuffed with hours in which things could happen and could keep rolling on and on and on. Unblocked time—provided you weren't obliged to attend church in the morning—in which a whole life could unfold. Worlds could turn. The weight of everyone's anticipation was making Maisie a little nauseous.

The tearoom's happy chatter felt like an insult, especially when snippets of plans to spend money arrowed into her ears.

“Can you believe it? I'll finally pay off that dear silk frock! I can't wait to see Maurice's face when he sees me in it.”

“I'm taking Doris dancing at that new spot everyone's been rabbiting on about.” (
Billy? A date? Poor Doris.)

“We're getting our fittings for that masquerade ball. What an absolute hoot!”

Maisie reminded herself she didn't care. She would keep herself fed and sheltered and could start improving herself and become someone that a man (
not
Billy) would want to take dancing at the new spot.
Provided I learn how to dance
.

Any moment now, someone would say something. She was so sure she was about to hear Cyril's voice saying, “Hallo, New York. Payday, what? Come along and pick up your pennies,” that she stopped hearing the rest of the din and was only roused when she took a sip and saw her cup was empty. The room was empty, too. She ran back to the executive offices.

“Now, see here, Miss Musgrave. I can excuse your foreignness only so long. You ought to have been back three minutes ago, and please tell me you are not panting.” Miss Shields sniffed.

“No . . . I . . . Sorry,” Maisie muttered, backing to her table.

She typed, hardly knowing what keys she was hitting. Would Alfred or another mail boy come in with an envelope? It was ridiculous not to ask, but questions were verboten for Maisie long before
she met Miss Jenkins. Lorelei had no interest in any granddaughter, much less an inquisitive one. Georgina felt the same about a daughter. Librarians welcomed questions, but Maisie had already learned to be cautious with her curiosity, hugging information as it was provided, but letting her wondering mind explore the stacks alone, satisfied to stumble upon scraps of knowledge in her quest for whatever she originally sought.

Sister Bennister hadn't been one for encouraging questions, and all Maisie really wanted to ask in the hospital was why this war had had to happen, and the opinions on that front flew at the same rate as the bullets on the Western front.

But no one was as violently opposed to questions as Miss Jenkins. “You must appear from day one to know your work intimately. Never give anyone reason to query your capacity. If there is something you don't know, up to and including where the ladies' room is, simply keep your eyes and ears open and figure it out.”

Maisie plucked the correspondence from Hilda's in-tray. Her eyes and ears were open, but all she could see or hear was Hilda, on the phone.

“Oh, certainly,” Hilda was saying. “I haven't got any quarrel with his politics. We're all allowed to hold whatever opinion we wish. That's the beauty of a free country . . . Precisely, even if it's irretrievably silly . . . No, no, my hesitation with inviting him to broadcast is that his work is painfully dull . . . Yes, the BBC is committed to airing all points of view, but we're also very keen on keeping listeners awake. No, I assure you . . . If it were bad work, that would at least be a conversation point. Dull is simply pointless.”

Hilda hung up a few minutes later, and Maisie handed her a sheaf of letters.

“Thank you, Miss Musgrave. Been a good first week, wouldn't you say?”

“I suppose so, Miss Matheson.”

“Many more to come, I hope,” Hilda said. Maisie nodded absently,
trying to control her nerves. She was dizzy, and couldn't feel her fingers anymore.

Hilda looked over the next week's schedule, her pencil running a steady gauntlet through all the broadcasts, each name provisionally knighted as she went along.

“It's horribly impertinent of me, I'm sure,” she said suddenly, eyes still on the schedule, “but I'm given to understand that this is about the usual time for a weekly employee to collect pay at the cashier window.”

“The cashier window?” What—and where—on earth was the cashier window?

Hilda's smile was infuriatingly kind.

“I'm sure you've passed it a dozen times without noticing. On the fourth floor, the little cage at the south end of the corridor.” She paused, grinning. “Looks not unlike the sort of jail cells you see in Western films.”

“Do I go now?” Maisie asked, half standing. “I'm not done with this.”

“We will never be done with the post. Go and get your money. You don't want the cashier to run out before your first pay.”

She laughed at Maisie's traumatized face.

“I'm pulling your leg, Miss Musgrave. Run along and collect your wages.”

Maisie was a fast runner. She could have leapfrogged anyone who had a five-minute start on her. But she walked, forcing sedateness into her stride. She wasn't going to let anyone laugh at her eagerness.

There was a queue for the cashier's window, a retired corner that Maisie had indeed never noticed.

A clutch of typists was queued ahead of Maisie, headed by Phyllida. She smiled on seeing Maisie, took a luxuriant puff of a cigarette in a pink Bakelite holder, and nudged the others.

“Pah, I told you it was just a gentlemen's bet.” She turned back to Maisie. “We didn't think you knew how to collect your wages.”

I'm so sorry to have disappointed you
.

“Oh,” Maisie said, hoping it was enough to end the conversation.

“I suppose someone told you.”

Maisie couldn't see how that required a response.

“Would you have asked if they hadn't?” Phyllida asked, her expression uncomfortably shrewd.

“I'm sorry?”

“I'm not trying to be impertinent.” (Though she was succeeding admirably). “You just don't seem the asking sort.”

A point to Miss Jenkins! But the crease between Phyllida's brows made Maisie feel guilty.

“I guess I don't know what sort I am,” she told Phyllida.

That made Phyllida laugh, a deep, boisterous laugh that echoed centuries of raising tankards in the remote countryside on a rare night off. She muttered something, and Maisie realized Phyllida's usual voice struggled to tamp down a strong Yorkshire dialect, the sort that was generally sneered at in London.

Maisie was still thinking about Phyllida's accent when, at last, it was her turn at the barred window.

“Oh, yes. Miss Musgrave,” the cashier, Miss Mallinson, responded when Maisie gave her name. She wore round spectacles and a masculine tie and worked with brisk purpose, but gave Maisie a wide smile as she slid the brown pay packet under the bars. “Welcome to the BBC.”

Maisie half nodded and tiptoed away, not hearing the whispers and ill-suppressed giggles her trance accorded.

It was real.

Pound notes. Her previous pay packets had been so small, she had never received paper, only coins. Which she liked. Coins had heft, and history. Their value was irrefutable. She liked the way they jingled in her purse. That was the song of solvency. The cheerful assurance that there would be food and comfort through the day. It was better than any hymn.

Paper had no such assurance, and far less romance. But Maisie
knew it imparted its own power. There were many working people, far more deserving than herself, who never saw paper wages. She was still poor, but in the last twenty seconds, she had entered a new class.

She hadn't thought it was possible to walk sedately when really she was running, skipping, bounding. But she managed it just fine.

February 1927

“N
ew sign, new letterhead, new memos, new everything; who's paying for this, I ask you?” Fielden grumbled at no one in particular.

Maisie rolled a piece of the offending letterhead and carbon into her typewriter. She didn't pretend to understand the significance, but as of January 1, the BBC was now the British Broadcasting Corporation, not “Company” any longer, and vast quantities of paper were sent to be pulped into something else. Hilda would explain it to her if she asked, but Maisie didn't ask. She did, however, think that the new name looked even more impressive on paper, and this pleased her.

By now she knew that grumbling was the standard form of communication for Fielden, and though he was senior to the two producers and Talks assistants wedged into two rooms across from Hilda's office, they mostly ignored him.

“Spend a king's ransom on stationery and can't spare a penny for the gas fire,” Fielden went on, and here Maisie agreed with him. A rainy January had turned into a rainy February, and the fires were not holding up their end.

Hilda was blithely untroubled by the weather. She strolled in at
seven minutes to nine every morning with a punctuality that would have intimidated a naval officer. Just as the carriage clock sang the hour, her coat and hat were hanging on the rack, galoshes discreetly behind the stand, drying on an oilcloth, and she was at her desk looking over the day's schedule, sipping coffee. She had already read the papers but brought them in to annotate.

“Why bother?” Fielden asked. “The Reuters fellows give us our news report.”

“For now,” Hilda corrected him. “Besides, I'm marking items that could be fodder for Talks. Or potentially useful broadcasters. Contrary to popular opinion, I don't in fact know
every
one.” She gave them a broad music-hall wink.

“Don't you believe it,” Fielden warned Maisie later as she was headed to Sound Effects. “Our Lady would be a brilliant gossip if she weren't so above that sort of thing.”

When Maisie first heard Fielden refer to Hilda as “Our Lady,” she assumed he was being sarcastic and mocking, as he was about everyone. Now she knew that Hilda was, in fact, the only person in the BBC whom he respected. Even worshipped. She wondered if Hilda knew his term for her. Probably. Hilda knew everything.

It was universally agreed that Sound Effects was more in need of soundproofing than the recording studios. Maisie tapped politely on the door, next to the sign that read: E
VERYONE
M
UST
K
NOCK
B
EFORE
E
NTE
RING.
NO E
XCEPTIONS,
N
OT
E
VEN
YOU
!
There was no answer, which didn't wholly surprise her, as it sounded like dinosaurs were having a boxing match inside. She knocked harder.

“That's not likely to work, miss,” Rusty advised as he ran past, bearing a lumpy package. “Most just go on in.”

“The sign says not to,” Maisie argued, though he was halfway up the stairs. She pounded on the door, ignoring giggles from passersby, till Phyllida, on her way to the favored ladies' lavatory, reached under Maisie's arm and flung the door open.

“Spares you bruising your hand,” Phyllida called behind her.

Maisie stepped to the edge of a blazing battle. Billy and another
engineer were apparently unimpressed with the planned effects for some upcoming program.

“It has far too much range; it's going to burst eardrums,” Billy yelled.

“Aren't your machines fine enough to accommodate whatever we create?” The lead effects man, Jones, was fiercely protective of his creation.

“Aren't
you
able to work within parameters?”

“See here, you're not creative people—”

“And you have no brains for technology!”

The other three sound effects men were busy with designs and tests, unruffled by the conflagration. Maisie recognized the wild-eyed glee of theater people, even in men who were respectably married and not so very young—although young in the way everyone in Savoy Hill was young, except Reith.

“Did you knock?” one of them challenged her. She was fairly sure he was called Fowler; they all looked alike. “Oh, you're Matheson's girl, aren't you?” he went on, gaining animation. “Anything good?”

“We've got three pilots coming in, talking about planes and the future of flight, but they'd like to give a sense of what flying sounds like—”

“I say, that sounds difficult!” Fowler purred happily.

“They all flew in the war, and wouldn't mind re-creating the sound of a dogfight for a portion of the Talk, if that's possible?”

“Gunfire!” Fowler clapped his hands. “That's one of the hardest effects to get right! And for a Talk, too, not just a play. By Jove, that'll be rough!”

“They'd like to come and hear it first. They're scheduled to rehearse on Wednesday.”

While Fowler pondered the calendar, Maisie glanced around the room. The shelves were sagging with all manner of objects. It looked as though the men had looted every shop imaginable—and a few that weren't.

“Wednesday at two would be splendid,” Fowler said.

Maisie nodded and hurried out of the room to the sound of something smashing against a wall and the cry, “Oi, that's my abacus!”

“Go all right?” Hilda asked when Maisie returned to the office.

“Mr. Fowler said Wednesday at two. He's very keen.”

“Well, the lads like a challenge.”

Half the BBC liked a challenge, Hilda especially. What Maisie liked were all the small details that composed her work. She liked the way the words
DO NOT WRITE ON T
HIS SIDE
were printed on the backs of BBC internal memo forms three times, cascading down the paperlike steps. She liked the bright harvest-moon orange of the Talks Department memos. She liked her typewriter. Each click of the keys sang with the crispness of Beanie's heels tapping down the corridor. The clatter, the ping, the neat rolls as the carriage was reset—she understood the passion of the sound effects men. Sound was visceral; she'd never realized it before.

No wonder the wireless is becoming so popular
.
It's capturing imaginations and holding them ransom.

It wasn't just the sounds, or the music, or the drama. She was growing more enchanted by the Talks daily. It was like coming out from under ether when she started to really hear them. From the morning Talks, like
England as Viewed by a Frenchwoman
and
Old Arts in Modern Villages,
taking a pickax to ignorance she didn't know she had, to
Mechanics in Daily Life
,
A Week's Work in the Garden
,
A Brief History of Highway Robbery
, it was better than her so-called education, gained wholly in libraries. A series called
Straight and Crooked Thinking
made her brain hurt, but Dr. Thouless, the presenter, was an exuberant speaker with a booming voice Hilda struggled to keep from blowing the transmitter, and Maisie soaked up every bizarre word.

And the counterpoints! Hilda was keen on political Talks, such as the effect of trade unions. In fifteen minutes, Maisie was convinced that unions were the best thing to have happened to the working classes since the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and a great boon to modern
life. But then another speaker neatly laid out all the ways in which unions were a danger to society. Maisie was surprised to feel her own opinion hold firm, but she could see how these discussions could force a person to consider things from a variety of views and
that
, she was starting to understand, was something new.

“This is how it ought to be,” Hilda said, signing letters. “Even the illiterate can receive a range of information and form opinions. Of course, there's affording a wireless and license fee, but access is increasing daily.”

“How do you know for sure you're providing that range of information, though?” Maisie asked. Miss Jenkins would be appalled at Maisie's open inquisitiveness.

“Oh, we can never be absolutely sure!” Hilda was gleeful. “That's part of the challenge! But we do our due diligence and research and work our damnedest, and you can hear it yourself when it sounds right, can't you?”

Increasingly, she could. And she wanted to hear more.

Though the Talks provided more excitement, Maisie remained devoted to Reith. And in fact, there were things to hear in the executive offices as well. Things she only heard as Invisible Girl, which made them more enticing.

Today, unfortunately, it was only the irksome Mr. Hoppel, an executive at Siemens-Schuckert, the company who made wireless sets, among other things. He was haranguing Reith on one of his favorite topics.

“I tell you, Reith, that's what it's going to be, you want our partnership. Proper advertising on the radio. Make us all a fortune.”

“I don't disagree with you, but you must know the BBC is overseen by a board of governors. Accountable to Parliament and meant to represent the public. Very keen on the BBC being a public entity, quite different from the American model. Independent and what.” Reith shrugged in a “What can you do?” sort of gesture.

“Oh, public, public, public.” Hoppel grinned, leaning over Miss
Shields to tap the contents of his ivory pipe into the ashtray on her desk. “I'll say this for the interminable public. Not only are they dreary, but they fail to know their own interest. Besides which, who appoints those governors? I warrant it's the government, yes? So all the more argument for a government more sympathetic to business interests.”

“Ah, it's a bit trickier than that,” Reith said, chuckling and shaking his head. It was impossible to tell if he agreed or was simply trying to end the discussion. Maisie suspected this was the technique he employed when meeting with the governors themselves, and wished she could see it in person. She couldn't resist tagging after them into the corridor, seizing a folder to lend credence to her activity.

“See here, Reith,” Hoppel went on, undeterred. “You've got to come to one of our political meetings. You keep saying you're keen, but you don't follow through.” He sucked on his pipe and blew a smoke ring.

“Yes, I do apologize,” Reith said. “My schedule is a barely tamed beast, for one, but I do need to be a little mindful, too. I can't be seen supporting a nontraditional political party. Must maintain the proper image.” For punctuation, he pulled out his pocket watch, shook his head at the time, then tucked it back in his waistcoat.

“Exactly,” said Hoppel. “The image of a right-minded man, the sort to make sure this country runs as it ought to. Ah, Reith, I know you're not your own master entirely—I suppose few of us are—but it comforts me, having a man like you in a place like this. Bodes well for the future.”

Reith laughed agreeably and shook Hoppel's hand as he called for the lift. Maisie hurried downstairs to avoid being seen when Reith turned, and then struck a circuitous route back. She passed Sound Effects just as Fowler was leaving. He brightened on seeing her. “Hullo. Have you got something for us?”

“Oh, I . . . No, actually. Sorry.”

He frowned. “You in Talks need to put on a better show. Drama
and Schools are constantly giving us marvelous challenges. Yours are the best when they happen, but they are far too rare.”

“I'll let Miss Matheson know.”