Radio Girls(35)

“Couldn’t.” Phyllida snorted. “If a lass is to shift from typing, she’s got to be asked, not ask herself. That’s just not the done thing. Besides, I’m a Northerner, officially uneducated, and nobody. So goes the assessment.”

“But I’m not educated, and I’m nobody,” Maisie said. “Why would—”

“Ah, but you’re foreign,” Phyllida pointed out, as though that answered everything. “Never mind. We’re all here; that’s what matters.”

Back in the office, Hilda was radiating so much glee, the chilly summer felt almost warm.

“No, I shan’t tell you until the meeting,” Hilda teased. Her excitement was contagious, and Maisie tore through correspondence with hungry impatience.

The Talks staff usually held their meetings around a large table in the room that housed their files. It was the only room where the staff was guaranteed to sit still for an hour at a time, and so had the perversity to be the draftiest in the department.

Hilda sailed in, took a brief gauge of the temperature, and threw up her hands.

“Oh, this is just too absurd. Into my office, everyone, and settle by the fire. Room enough for all. Budge up, budge up,” Hilda fussed, chivvying the staff into place. “Come along, we’re all friends.”

“Not all,” Fielden muttered. He was sitting next to Maisie, but his disparagement was generously general.

Hilda’s cheerfulness, as well as the novelty of holding a meeting on the floor, sparked a campfire mentality. Maisie thought they might open the meeting with a song.

“We’ve got weeks of business to discuss in one hour,” Hilda warned them, the usual start of a Talks meeting. “But I have some rather ripping news to share. ‘News’ news, if you like.” Enjoying the sight of their bemused faces, she plunged on. “We’re finally starting a News section in Talks!”

“Won’t we be prosecuted?” Fielden asked, looking almost perky.

“This comes down from the governors,” Hilda assured him, eyes twinkling. “We can do things like in-depth analyses of events, and other such, and thus show off our capacity. It’s a beginning!”

The BBC’s governors, simultaneously dictatorial and distant, were Reith’s benefactors and the thorns penetrating his tweed waistcoat. He bowed before their every whim, even as he cursed them fluently from a safe distance. But it was less the governors than the actual government that tied the BBC’s hand when it came to news reporting.

At the BBC’s birth, Fleet Street newspapers had banded together in an unheard-of camaraderie to insist that radio not be allowed to do original news. As certain as they were that radio was a silly fad that wouldn’t last and no one except a few eccentrics was going to buy a license and who could afford a wireless anyway, if the BBC reported news, it would put the papers out of business. And Parliament, always keen on good press, agreed, so the BBC could only read news after seven p.m. and that was only the prepared Reuters bulletin.

“If we can prove anyone listens to those bulletins, I’ll eat my hat,” Fielden said. Maisie had never hoped so much that the bulletins garnered interest and decided they’d have to rent a cine-camera to record the meal.

“The ban is not lifted,” Hilda told them, and they all wilted, even Maisie, who had never given news a thought. “But Talks such as Mr. Bartlett’s broadcasts can be expanded and increased. So! Let’s have some ideas!”

It was understood that Hilda had enough ideas to fill the Talks slots for the next seven years, but she expected her department to be a place where everyone had a dozen thoughts at any one time and should express them.

Fielden began, as usual. As second-in-command, he felt his position keenly. He rattled off eight ideas at a speed that made Maisie suspect he was testing her shorthand.

“Of course, that’s just off the top of my head,” he finished, giving Hilda a reverent nod.

“Very good indeed,” she congratulated him. Always the same script, but always sounding so sincere. “Anyone else? Let’s really thrash this all out.”

“What about a series of Talks on Russia?” suggested Collins. “So many people are so aerated about Bolshevism and spies and what, but maybe if we—”

“Get accused of supporting Bolshevism?” Fielden interjected. “Won’t that do wonders for our reputation?”

“I agree that the more people know about Russia and the Russian people, the less afraid they might be,” said Hilda, ever the diplomat. “Though a series would require a bit of finessing before the DG would accept it.”

Less afraid. There were moments when Maisie felt the chill of walking shadows, all those vanished people under poppies. Sometimes, she was sure others felt them too, even the brightest and most beautiful, glancing nervously over their shoulders. Maybe we’re all trying to outrun something, like me outrunning the kids in Toronto. They’d wanted to beat her till she broke, and not just her bones. The suffragettes had put themselves forward for breakage, hadn’t they? That would be something, being the person who could put herself in harm’s way, for a cause.

“There’s meant to be an election, isn’t there, in twenty-nine?” Maisie heard herself ask.

“Unless it gets called sooner,” Fielden said.

“Maybe there can be Talks about aspects of the election, the candidates’ platforms, what people hope—”