Radio Girls(26)

“I hope you don’t devote yourself too much to work that you don’t try to seize a good chance,” he advised. “There are still some sound chaps out there for a working-class girl, even if you’re not British, so long as you aren’t too particular.”

“Thank you, sir,” Maisie whispered, still blushing when Eckersley, the chief engineer, strode in.

“Ah, Eckersley!” Reith barked. “Good, good, do come in. Spot of something?”

“No, thanks, sir. I’m all right.”

They disappeared behind the door of the inner sanctum. Maisie lingered, twisting her hands together, and inadvertently glanced at Miss Shields, who was frowning at her left ring finger. She felt Maisie’s gaze and looked up, angry triumph lighting up her face.

“Loafing, are you? I’ll report that to Mr. Reith. People get sacked for less.”

Maisie slunk away. For the rest of the day, their typewriters battled to see which was loudest.




Miss Shields’s report went unmentioned and the secretary’s snubs continued. Maisie thought more about Reith’s warning (or was it encouragement?) regarding marriage. But who am I kidding? Look at me. Not pretty, no money, an actress mother and an unknown father. Her attempts to make her father less unknown continued to fail. She had written to the General Register Office, hoping Edwin Musgrave’s birth was in their records, but there was no reply.

Family. A home. Love. All the things she’d dreamed of as a child. It was hard not to still want them. Desperately.

At least her work here kept her so busy, and interested, she had less time to want things she wasn’t likely to get.

“Hallo, New York!” Cyril’s usual greeting sounded over her thoughts—and set them into a tumult—as she navigated the corridor.

The ever-shifting schedules and constant crises made it impossible to count on seeing anyone at any given time, even tea breaks. Several days could pass without seeing Cyril. Even when she did, each of them was always rushing somewhere else.

But he does see me. That’s more than anyone’s ever done. And a man like that, intelligent, interesting, charming, handsome . . .

She shook it all out of her head, reminding herself that he just liked the idea of New York, and called her that because he couldn’t remember her name.

Still. She wished she could ask someone’s opinion, get advice. If nothing else, she might stop jumping and twitching like a rabbit when she saw him. She envied the easy camaraderie among the typists and other secretaries. How did a person make friends with someone?

“Ah!” Hilda cried as Maisie entered her office. “More typed scripts, wonderful.”

Maisie half wished she could ask Hilda’s advice on how to speak more with Cyril. Or at least find out if he already had a girl. But she never would. Hilda, able to speak to anyone, about anything, was on a different plane. Maisie was, however, watching the way Hilda gleaned information. The woman had a remarkable way of framing a question that didn’t seem to be probing at all. She knew the birthdays of everyone in the Talks Department, and it was understood she had not presumed upon the office manager, Miss Banks, for the personnel files. She also knew everyone’s favorite cake. It was considered unfortunate if one’s birthday fell on a Sunday, though Hilda was admirable about day-after cakes.

“It’ll be a ghastly day if she ever gets married and leaves us,” Collins, one of the Talks assistants, said through a mouthful of his vanilla sponge birthday cake, courtesy of Hilda. Fielden stared the stare of a man who had never beheld such inanity, which Maisie thought a bit harsh, even for Fielden. Probably it was because Hilda was senior, and the BBC one of the few places in Britain that allowed senior women to work after marriage. Or maybe because the man to woo and win her was hard to fathom? Or maybe, simply, there was no one who could run Talks like Hilda.




By the calendar’s estimation, it was summer, but the weather had its own opinion on the subject. Despite the damp and chill, the young men of Savoy Hill regressed to school holiday deportment, heralding the change in season with a raucousness that threatened to shatter the windows.

Maisie, tucked in a corner, heard nothing. She was comparing Georges Lema?tre’s original script against Hilda’s revisions. The priest’s upcoming broadcast rendered Hilda giddy, though Reith insisted she have another priest denounce his big bang theory. “A name as repugnant as the concept!” the DG fumed. Hilda argued it was important that science have its say, and much of Oxford and Cambridge agreed, which silenced Reith.

Lema?tre himself insisted the real revelation was Hilda’s revised script, and Maisie agreed. There was never enough time to study the scripts she typed—the Talks assistants were the ones who enjoyed that privilege—but even when she was able to read them thoughtfully, she had yet to understand how Hilda was able to take a treatise and turn it into a conversation, every time. This man had seen something transformative in the stars and Hilda had figured out how to tether his words back to earth for all the ordinary Britons having their tea.

Maisie sighed and shifted her mind to Cyril, across the room.

Maybe he’ll shout, “Hallo, New York. Come tell us what you have for tea over there. And it’s not tea, is it? It’s coffee.” And I’ll go over, and say how the puddings aren’t as good as they are here, and he’ll say something, and I’ll say something . . .