Radio Girls(15)

“I absolutely shall,” Hilda almost sang as they trooped out.

Back in Miss Shields’s office, Maisie hovered, waiting to be dismissed so she could type the minutes. She was eager to relive every second of that meeting.

Hilda turned to Miss Shields. “Have I got Miss Musgrave again now?”

“Not just yet,” Miss Shields said, snap and chill fully restored. “I have quite a bit of typing for her to complete. Weight must be mindfully distributed.”

“Well, indeed, but—”

A brilliantined man burst in, straightening his tie.

“He ready for me?”

“Do go in, Mr. Eckersley.” Miss Shields indicated Reith’s office. “Was there anything else, Miss Matheson?”

“No, thank you,” Hilda said. She turned to Maisie. “Welcome aboard, Miss Musgrave. I hope you can be spared a few more hours this afternoon.”

“Yes, Miss Matheson,” Maisie murmured politely. Having basked in the glory that was Mr. Reith, she wanted to stay as close in his circle as possible. But she wasn’t forgetting the sandwiches.

Hilda nodded briskly and was gone, her footfall so silent, she might as well have evaporated.

Miss Shields took Maisie’s pad and examined her shorthand. Despite her scrutiny, she didn’t find any errors. Again, she looked disappointed.

“You could be tidier. You will type the minutes for our office from my notes, and I daresay Miss Matheson will request a copy.”

“Yes, Miss Shields.”

Half an hour later, Miss Shields’s voice rang out over the typewriter.

“Miss Musgrave!”

The secretary was still seated, her chair fully turned to face Maisie’s cupboard.

“I have nearly had to shout,” she scolded Maisie.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” and she was, but it was only seven steps across the room to the threshold. Which Maisie herself now crossed to hear instructions.

“Mr. Reith needs his tea. He’s asked that you fetch it, rather than a boy.” Her voice was crisp, her face irritated. “I am assuming you can manage that.”

“Yes, I can,” Maisie answered proudly, and set off at a sprint. If Reith needed tea, he must have it, and she was going to run faster than Mercury to bring it to him.

The tearoom proprietress, neat and busy with graying hair coiled in an austere knot at her neck, nodded at the request and wheeled out a tea tray.

“Mr. Reith’s only,” she warned.

Maisie was prepared to guard it against all comers during the return trek to the executive offices, but she was unaccosted. Miss Shields sighed and waved her through, and she entered the throne room again, alone.

“Ah, Miss Musgrave,” Reith greeted her. “Very nice, thank you.”

It would have been easier to lay out his tea things if her hands weren’t shaking, but he continued to nod approvingly as she set the pot, cup, milk, sugar, and—a pang of longing—two iced buns before him.

“I can manage from here,” he assured her, though she would have been so much happier to keep waiting on him.

“Yes, sir,” she said, trying not to sigh. She edged toward the door.

“Sit down a moment, Miss Musgrave.”

She’d never known an invitation could be barked. She perched on the club chair he indicated. The leather was probably repelled by her cheap wool dress.

Reith devoted himself to the pouring of tea and adding milk in a manner only slightly less ritualized than the preparing of Communion, and Maisie’s respect for him grew. He was unhurried, comfortable in his silence, allowing Maisie to drink him in at leisure. He was balding and had a cleft in his chin thick enough to hold a cigarette. Something that would be an amusing parlor trick for his children, but the heft of his eyebrows, drawn together into one, indicated that Reith was not a man given to whimsy.

He raised the lid of a teak box with an ivory inlay design and drew out a cigarette.

“Do you smoke?”

“No, sir.”

Couldn’t possibly afford it.

“Glad to hear it!” he barked. “I don’t like seeing a female smoke. It’s unseemly. Modern girls,” he said, sighing as he lit the cigarette, “so uninterested in decorum.”

He scowled at her again, and she wondered if it would be inappropriate to say that she was a devotee of decorum.

At least my skirt covers my knees when I’m sitting.

“You’re a nice girl,” he announced. “I heard what you said to Miss Shields in your interview. I don’t have anything to do with the hiring of the girls, generally, but in this instance I thought it best to have a small hand in.”

He was still scowling, and now she discerned that the creases around his eyes turned up slightly, creating his version of a smile.

This man was responsible for hiring me.

Her fingers were gouging into her knees, preventing her from sliding to the floor in obeisance.

If Reith noticed her naked gratitude, he hid it under his scowl as he stirred sugar into his tea.

“There are two questions I like to ask of potential BBC staff,” he said, taking a sip of tea and sniffing in approval. He leaned closer to her, eyebrows tight, chin jutted. “Are you a Christian, and have you any character defects?”

Maisie’s jaw unhinged. Since the true answers were “no” and “countless,” there was nothing to do but stare at him hopelessly.