Radio Girls(118)

Maisie put the ring in a safe-deposit box at the bank. Provenance notwithstanding, it was nice to feel cushioned. Georgina wrote an almost plaintive letter, detailing the difficulties of finding a new sponsor and a new job as the Depression set in and asked if Maisie might think of “coming home.”

“I am home,” Maisie wrote back. But she enclosed twenty pounds.

She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Simon, about those strange final moments, trying to make sense of it and succeeding only in disturbing her sleep.

“He probably meant it, you know, that bit about making Britain great again.” Hilda said as they strolled the Embankment. “Fantasists usually do.”

He might really have loved her. She was both the things he wanted—clever, with the capacity to be pliable, though that last was changing apace. And as to the suddenness of his return and proposal, she need only bear in mind that a wife couldn’t testify against a husband.

“Not that I think he expected to be caught, but might as well hedge the bet. The whole family seems to have gone a bit mad after the crash. I’m inclined to agree with Vita. You can do better.”

“I don’t want to get married until I’m sure I can keep working.”

Hilda’s answer was lost with the arrival of Nigel, the new messenger boy, who’d come running to find them and chivvy them back to Savoy Hill, where there were twenty new crises to contend with.




Maisie allowed herself to believe that peace would reign in the BBC, despite the presence of Siepmann. He was so determined to make his own work superior, he primarily left Hilda’s team to its own devices. Besides which, there was so much excitement about the rapidly rising new Broadcasting House and the steady expansion of operations that there was far less time for petty squabbles. But Reith won a strange battle. Someone, somewhere, agreed that content should be controlled in these more difficult times. More conservative, more measured, more quiet. More music, more light entertainment, much less to challenge tired listeners. It meant almost daily battles for Hilda, who was starting to look pale and drawn.

And there was nothing the rest of them could do about it.

Harold Nicholson—of all people—was set to come in to broadcast about James Joyce’s Ulysses. Hilda and Vita had gone their separate ways, but they all remained good friends.

“Who the devil does that woman think she is?” Reith spluttered to Siepmann as they were climbing the stairs to the executive suite just as Maisie, having delivered a set of proposals for upcoming debates, was going down them. She shot back up the stairs and attempted to melt into the wall.

“I’ve said no Joyce, no Ulysses. All disgusting stuff. Bonfire’s too good for it, and that poofter Nicholson! Nicholson! By God, she lives to provoke, and I won’t bear it another minute.”

“I think if you just delete a few lines in the script, it should be all right,” Siepmann said in his oily, soothing tones. “I’ve marked the most offending passages.”

“They are all offending,” Reith insisted, but Maisie could hear the scratching of a pencil even from up the stairs, which they were still climbing. She cast her eyes around desperately, edging herself along the wall.

Reith and Siepmann came up the stairs just as Maisie closed the nearest door behind her—the door to the men’s lavatory, which was thankfully unoccupied.

“Shall I go and give her the revised script?” Siepmann asked, hopeful.

“No. I’ll ring her and tell her to come and get it herself,” Reith growled. “Get me Matheson, will you?” he shouted to his secretary.

Maisie listened hard. She could only get the gist, but it was enough. Hilda must be shouting back just as vigorously as Reith. And Siepmann, that worm, was enjoying all of it.

She peeked out the door. The corridor was empty. They were all in the office. Hilda had taught her well; her footfall was silent as she ran down the stairs and all the way back to Talks.

Hilda hadn’t gotten far, only halfway down the corridor. She saw Maisie but didn’t break stride.

“Miss Matheson, please. It’s just his insane vendetta. It’ll burn out eventually, and all the criticism about how Talks aren’t as good as they were will force his hand. And it’s Siepmann, you know, that spider on his shoulder. We just need—”

“Miss Musgrave, they’ve won at nearly every turn. I want to work, not battle. And I will not work in a place that advocates censorship.”

“No, of course, but you can’t face him like this.”

“I bloody well shall.”

Maisie tried again to stop her, but they only ended up going into Reith’s office together.

“What do you mean by this?” Reith demanded. “That Harold Nicholson is a poof, and his lady just as unnatural, and that repulsive Joyce novel is banned! How dare you allow such a thing to be discussed?”

“Who are we to be banning books?” Hilda shouted. “My God, you moralists are such a pack of hypocrites. You decry Communism, screeching that it forces all its peoples into the narrowest of strictures, and then impose much the same in a presumed democracy! Why can’t any man, woman, or child try to read Ulysses if they wish to? And if they like it, grand, and if they don’t, fair enough, and if they find it disturbing to their morals, they can soothe themselves with some appropriate balm, and if they find it a stimulant to mind and heart, then they will carry that with them all their days and be always seeking out new books to treasure, and isn’t this the whole point of the society we supposedly fight for and value?”