Radio Girls(13)

“Have you met Miss Musgrave, my new secretary?”

“Hallo.” He nodded, and shook his head all the way back out the door.

Hilda moved to tidy the letters. Maisie hoped that wasn’t going to be one of her assignments. It looked as though it would be lethal simply to breathe too close to the pile.

“You look alarmed, Miss Musgrave. Correspondence comes in by the veritable hogshead all day long. Didn’t Miss Shields tell you?”

It seemed rude to say no.

Hilda gave the now-symmetrical mound an approving pat. “I call it my Tower of Babble. Though in fact nearly all of it is interesting. Or useful. And some of the criticism is downright entertaining.”

The white-and-pink guilloche enamel carriage clock perched in pride of place on top of the desk sang out the hour. Hilda glanced at it and tossed back the last of her ginger beer.

“Time to face the DG! Director-general,” she clarified, seeing Maisie’s blank face. “Our master, Mr. John Reith, director-general of the British Broadcasting Company. But nearly everyone here calls him ‘the DG.’ Are you finished?”

Maisie nodded, her longing to see Mr. Reith eclipsing her desire for another biscuit.

Hilda plucked the green leather diary from her desk and glanced at a bookmarked page. Maisie shifted her gaze downward, noticing Hilda’s smart mahogany shoes, low-heeled, with three straps and a double-stitched edge. They gleamed like new, though they might have been several years old. This was what Georgina meant about buying good quality. Hilda, though she obviously had money, didn’t seem the extravagant type, or one to buy every latest thing, leaving still-good items to languish in a cupboard or be dispatched to a church’s charity box. Perhaps she rubbed saddle cream into the leather every night to keep her shoes so fresh.

I’ll do that with my new shoes, from the first night.

For a fairly petite woman, Hilda walked fast. Maisie gave full leash to her own speedy walk (not very feminine), and noticed, even above the din of people thundering all around them, that Hilda’s footfall was almost silent.

“Apologies for the lack of girlish heel clicks,” Hilda said, seeing Maisie’s puzzled face staring at her feet. “Just trying to set a good example. However good the soundproofing is, that’s no excuse for carelessness.”

Maisie thought Hilda was fighting a losing battle there. Carelessness seemed to run amok in the corridors.

“Mind you,” Hilda continued. “I learned to walk quietly some time ago. It’s quite useful, not being heard when you approach. Or leave. In my experience, it suits rather a few situations.”

They reached Miss Shields’s office, and Hilda sailed in.

“Good afternoon, Miss Shields. Here we are. Is he ready?”

“Mr. Reith is always very punctual, Miss Matheson, as you well know,” Miss Shields informed her. Now Maisie understood the sneer when Miss Shields mentioned the director of Talks. She glanced at Hilda, who, if she even registered Miss Shields’s electric dislike, was wholly untroubled by it.

The inner door opened, and Maisie involuntarily stepped back. The imposing figure of Mr. Reith towered in the frame, heavy eyebrows drawn together, dark eyes boring into the women assembled before him.

Resplendent in Harris Tweed, a gold watch chain glittering across the dark fabric, shoes so polished he could inspect himself in them, Mr. Reith could not have been more what Maisie had hoped for than if she had crafted him herself out of the same fine cloth that made his suit.

The fierce eyes settled on her, the one unknown amid the familiar.

“Ah, you are the new girl,” he told her, scowling, though his voice, upstanding King’s English laced with a Scottish burr, wasn’t without warmth. “The one who is fond of the Old World.”

Maisie reeled. Miss Shields hardly seemed the sort of person to repeat such information.

“I’m—I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Reith,” Maisie stammered, hoping all the words came out in the right order.

“We’re pleased to have you here, Miss . . . ?”

“Musgrave,” Hilda put in.

“Ah, yes.” Reith nodded, brows drawing together again. “Well, do come in, ladies.”

It was the grandest room Maisie had ever entered. The heavy pile of the carpet tickled her feet through the newspapers in her shoes. Velvet drapes, heavy enough to suffocate her, were looped back to allow for a view of the Thames. The ceiling seemed to stretch up for miles, appropriate to accommodate both the immense rosewood bookshelves and a man of Reith’s stature, as well as helping Maisie feel minuscule.

Reith settled himself into a chair behind an oak desk that nearly spanned the width of the room. Once he ascertained that they were all waiting on his preamble, he drew some papers toward him and began.

“Your programming schedule for next week is most satisfactory,” he told Hilda. “The series on winter gardening sounds very pleasant. I will be sure to alert Mrs. Reith to it.”

“Oh, excellent. Do tell me how she likes it. I’m quite pleased with our speakers, though I haven’t managed to get anyone from the Botanical Society to agree to broadcast. I think they find us a bit shocking.”

“Hm. You wrote to Charlie Simms? Old Gresham’s chum of mine; should be game.”

“Yes. Here was the reply, from his secretary.” She handed him a small square of paper. “She sounds the dragonish sort, guarding the gate against all comers.”