Radio Girls(22)

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.





FOUR




February 1927

“New 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 everyone.” 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: EVERYONE MUST KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING. NO EXCEPTIONS, NOT EVEN 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.”