Radio Girls(12)

“Er . . .”

For heaven’s sake, at least use a different syllable!

Hilda grinned.

“Can a person ever go wrong with egg and cress in one hand and ham and cheese in the other? Do sit down.” She waved at the room as she pressed a button to summon a page, another brisk and eager adolescent boy.

Hilda’s office was larger than Miss Shields’s, more militantly well ordered, but also more inviting. Slivers of gold-and-blue walls peeked around bookshelves, which were stuffed with the sort of books Maisie had always wanted to own. It was a struggle not to reach out and run her finger across them, feeling each embossed leather binding sing under her skin. What wall space remained was decorated with pictures; an Italian landscape, the Scottish Highlands, Paris on a lavender spring evening. A water jug and two glasses sat on one trestle table, the tea tray on another, next to a tempting plate of biscuits. Maisie wanted to hug the room, kiss it, swallow it whole.

“Why are you standing on ceremony?” Hilda asked. “I wasn’t intending for you to sit on the floor, you know, though of course you’re very free to do so.”

Maisie sank into a chair. A fat round cushion with a red-and-blue Italian print cover nestled into her back. Its fellow was on the floor, having performed its good service for Hilda. Just as Maisie was reaching for it, Hilda caught it up, set it on her own chair, and turned to Maisie.

“I don’t want a fetch-and-carry sort of secretary. We’re far too busy. Now, then, I’ve been organizing Talks into series. I think regular programming is useful and builds an audience, but of course we don’t want anything so routine that it becomes dull. I like to keep things in categories. So, literary Talks, political, scientific, educational, artistic, household, general, those are what I’ve put into motion thus far, and I think will form a useful frame within which to operate, but of course it’s really only just the springboard for launching any manner of interesting broadcasting. From one person speaking, to interviews, to a series of debates, wouldn’t that be splendid?”

Maisie nodded, concentrating on her shorthand as Hilda rattled off names of people she was hoping to persuade to broadcast. Maisie recognized some of them—T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw. But she was soon drowning under the scientists, mathematicians, writers, artists, politicians, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers. Hilda talked as if she knew every one of them, her giddiness catapulting her from her chair so she paced the room, both it and Maisie shrinking to accommodate her expansive vision.

The sandwiches arrived, along with two bottles of ginger beer.

“Ah, excellent,” Hilda crowed, pressing a large coin into the happy page’s hand. “Bit outlandish, sending for victuals from the pub when it’s just our little meeting, but first days must be marked.” She busied herself finding napkins.

Maisie’s gratitude mingled with mortification. Hilda shouldn’t be spending her own money like this. It made Maisie feel indebted to her before she’d earned a penny.

“I mean to make ‘efficiency’ our byword here in Talks.”

Hilda was so efficient as to be able to eat while talking and somehow remain elegant. Maisie’s attempt at combining efficiency with elegance was far less successful. She wrote with her pad balanced on her knee, leaving her other hand free to shovel in food, and hoped Hilda was too absorbed in her soliloquy to notice.

Women notice everything, though. I bet she’s seen every mend in my stockings. I bet she knows I have to cut my hair myself. I bet she thinks she’s drawn a straw so short, even Thumbelina couldn’t drink out of it.

Hilda dabbed her lips.

“Terrific challenge, talking about new art on the radio. Let’s schedule a meeting with Sir Frederic at the British Museum and Charles Aitken at the Tate—very able man, Aitken. We’ll explore some possibilities . . . I think it might be really compelling to have a curator or art historian speak with an artist about a current piece. Wouldn’t that be thrilling? Paint a picture, if you see.” She smirked.

The glossies also said that men didn’t like women making jokes, but perhaps it was different when there were no men present. Maisie didn’t want to laugh. That would imply she was relaxing.

“You’ve done fine justice to those sandwiches, Miss Musgrave.” (Was that a compliment?) “Before we segue to biscuits, do tell me something of yourself.”

“Er, well, there’s nothing much to tell,” Maisie demurred.

“Nonsense. And if you don’t mind me saying so, that’s a very bad habit, playing yourself down. We all have a life story, age notwithstanding.”

Maisie didn’t want to talk about herself. She did, however, badly want biscuits.

“What made you apply to work here?” Hilda asked.

“There was an advertisement,” Maisie answered, surprised.

“There are always advertisements. Why the BBC?”

“I . . . er, well, I . . . It was a job I thought I could do. And it, er . . .”

Blissful distraction wheeled in with the basket post. Hilda glowed with Christmas joy.

“Ah! The second round!”

“Here you are, Miss Matheson. Enjoy it.” Alfred balanced another foot-tall pile of papers in Hilda’s in-tray. He started even more violently than before on seeing Maisie again, and she was too busy inhaling a biscuit to greet him.