Radio Girls(23)

“The sign says not to,” Maisie argued, though he was halfway up the stairs. She pounded on the door, ignoring giggles from passersby, till Phyllida, on her way to the favored ladies’ lavatory, reached under Maisie’s arm and flung the door open.

“Spares you bruising your hand,” Phyllida called behind her.

Maisie stepped to the edge of a blazing battle. Billy and another engineer were apparently unimpressed with the planned effects for some upcoming program.

“It has far too much range; it’s going to burst eardrums,” Billy yelled.

“Aren’t your machines fine enough to accommodate whatever we create?” The lead effects man, Jones, was fiercely protective of his creation.

“Aren’t you able to work within parameters?”

“See here, you’re not creative people—”

“And you have no brains for technology!”

The other three sound effects men were busy with designs and tests, unruffled by the conflagration. Maisie recognized the wild-eyed glee of theater people, even in men who were respectably married and not so very young—although young in the way everyone in Savoy Hill was young, except Reith.

“Did you knock?” one of them challenged her. She was fairly sure he was called Fowler; they all looked alike. “Oh, you’re Matheson’s girl, aren’t you?” he went on, gaining animation. “Anything good?”

“We’ve got three pilots coming in, talking about planes and the future of flight, but they’d like to give a sense of what flying sounds like—”

“I say, that sounds difficult!” Fowler purred happily.

“They all flew in the war, and wouldn’t mind re-creating the sound of a dogfight for a portion of the Talk, if that’s possible?”

“Gunfire!” Fowler clapped his hands. “That’s one of the hardest effects to get right! And for a Talk, too, not just a play. By Jove, that’ll be rough!”

“They’d like to come and hear it first. They’re scheduled to rehearse on Wednesday.”

While Fowler pondered the calendar, Maisie glanced around the room. The shelves were sagging with all manner of objects. It looked as though the men had looted every shop imaginable—and a few that weren’t.

“Wednesday at two would be splendid,” Fowler said.

Maisie nodded and hurried out of the room to the sound of something smashing against a wall and the cry, “Oi, that’s my abacus!”

“Go all right?” Hilda asked when Maisie returned to the office.

“Mr. Fowler said Wednesday at two. He’s very keen.”

“Well, the lads like a challenge.”

Half the BBC liked a challenge, Hilda especially. What Maisie liked were all the small details that composed her work. She liked the way the words DO NOT WRITE ON THIS SIDE were printed on the backs of BBC internal memo forms three times, cascading down the paperlike steps. She liked the bright harvest-moon orange of the Talks Department memos. She liked her typewriter. Each click of the keys sang with the crispness of Beanie’s heels tapping down the corridor. The clatter, the ping, the neat rolls as the carriage was reset—she understood the passion of the sound effects men. Sound was visceral; she’d never realized it before.

No wonder the wireless is becoming so popular. It’s capturing imaginations and holding them ransom.

It wasn’t just the sounds, or the music, or the drama. She was growing more enchanted by the Talks daily. It was like coming out from under ether when she started to really hear them. From the morning Talks, like England as Viewed by a Frenchwoman and Old Arts in Modern Villages, taking a pickax to ignorance she didn’t know she had, to Mechanics in Daily Life, A Week’s Work in the Garden, A Brief History of Highway Robbery, it was better than her so-called education, gained wholly in libraries. A series called Straight and Crooked Thinking made her brain hurt, but Dr. Thouless, the presenter, was an exuberant speaker with a booming voice Hilda struggled to keep from blowing the transmitter, and Maisie soaked up every bizarre word.

And the counterpoints! Hilda was keen on political Talks, such as the effect of trade unions. In fifteen minutes, Maisie was convinced that unions were the best thing to have happened to the working classes since the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and a great boon to modern life. But then another speaker neatly laid out all the ways in which unions were a danger to society. Maisie was surprised to feel her own opinion hold firm, but she could see how these discussions could force a person to consider things from a variety of views and that, she was starting to understand, was something new.

“This is how it ought to be,” Hilda said, signing letters. “Even the illiterate can receive a range of information and form opinions. Of course, there’s affording a wireless and license fee, but access is increasing daily.”

“How do you know for sure you’re providing that range of information, though?” Maisie asked. Miss Jenkins would be appalled at Maisie’s open inquisitiveness.

“Oh, we can never be absolutely sure!” Hilda was gleeful. “That’s part of the challenge! But we do our due diligence and research and work our damnedest, and you can hear it yourself when it sounds right, can’t you?”

Increasingly, she could. And she wanted to hear more.

Though the Talks provided more excitement, Maisie remained devoted to Reith. And in fact, there were things to hear in the executive offices as well. Things she only heard as Invisible Girl, which made them more enticing.