Radio Girls(38)

“End of the line, miss. I called three times.”

She had missed her stop.

“Oh. Er. Sorry,” she murmured, closing the pamphlet. She slunk off, trying to ignore an exchange between the conductor and the driver about the flightiness of women.





SEVEN




Naturally, Hilda had secured T. S. Eliot for a broadcast and was celebrating with a pile of cakes for the whole department. Fielden glanced at it, then back at Maisie.

“I suppose you’re wondering what the rest of us are having?”

I must remember to trip and spill tea on him sometime.

At last she found a quiet moment to return the pamphlet, feeling like she was passing over contraband.

“Ah, is that what I dropped?” Hilda said, taking it. “I’d ask you to type the notes, but it’s not for the BBC. Or, I should say, not yet. What was your opinion of it?”

“I didn’t read it,” Maisie lied, outraged at the assumption.

“Really? That’s disappointing.” Hilda didn’t frown, exactly, but her mouth was neutral, an expression so much more chilling than anything Miss Shields could accomplish. Then her eyes twinkled. “If you’re going to attempt subterfuge, Miss Musgrave, which has its attractions, you must exert care and caution. You didn’t put all the pages back in their original order, and this one is bent.” She held out the page with the note “disaster” for Maisie’s delectation. “You read my translations? Of course you did. What is your opinion?”

She looked both expectant and challenging.

“I . . . don’t really know what to think,” Maisie said.

“What rot!” Hilda snorted. “You need to mimeograph our guidelines for Talks, yes? Good. I’ll join you.”

“You don’t have time.” Maisie knew Hilda’s schedule perfectly. “You’ve got to do the voice test of that fellow from Afghanistan, and—”

Hilda was not to be dissuaded. The mimeograph machine, crammed in its own room, was loud and slow and allowed for a private conversation. While Maisie set up the stencils, Hilda swung herself onto the table bearing the machine and crossed her ankles.

“Now, come, Miss Musgrave. Let’s hear it. You read my notes on that wretched thing. What did you make of it?”

Maisie didn’t have an opinion yet, just a thousand questions.

“How did you get a German pamphlet that’s not meant for distribution?”

“Excellent question,” Hilda congratulated her. “I can’t answer it just now.”

“Why not?” Maisie asked, frowning. “What’s so important about it?”

“Is this distrust or bad temper?”

“Maybe it’s distemper,” Maisie said, unable to help herself.

Hilda’s laugh almost drowned out the noise of the machine.

“Tell me, Miss Musgrave, if, just for fun, you thought I was a German spy, how would you go about ascertaining it?”

The question was posed like it was a party game.

“But I don’t think you’re a spy.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t be. You’re too busy.”

While she waited for Hilda to stop laughing, Maisie thought about espionage. Sensationalist literature was more abundant than sandwich shops, bursting with tales of Russian spies. I don’t know what Bolshevism’s done for politics, but it’s certainly feeding the creative mind. Maisie envisioned cloaks and daggers, even though, of course, it was overcoats and pistols. Or perhaps poisoned darts? Why would Russians spy in Britain anyway? What on earth did they hope to learn?

They wanted to conquer; that was the prevailing wisdom. Even most of the better newspapers thought the Bolshevist threat was real.

Hilda wiped her eyes. “God, I love your logic. Now go on, really. You must have made something of that bit of propagandistic dross.”

“Not really,” Maisie admitted. “I don’t know what an equity drop is, or why it matters. I definitely don’t see why socialists want to please industrialists, or what Siemens has to do with anything. Unless it’s that they make wirelesses?”

“Very astute.” Hilda nodded. “So! How would you answer any or all of these?”

“I’m asking you,” Maisie said, liking the snap in her voice. Clearly, so did Hilda.

“And if you didn’t have me to ask?”

“I don’t know,” Maisie cried. “I . . . Well, I suppose I would try to find a clever reporter on one of the better newspapers and ask him to help.”

“You could do that, yes.” Hilda nodded. “I think you’ll find, though, that even clever reporters don’t know things right away.” She gathered the mimeographs and smoothed them into a neat stack.

“Miss Matheson . . . what is an equity drop?”

Hilda looked down at the pages in her lap and ran a finger under the words: Suggestions for Writing an Excellent Talk. When she glanced back at Maisie, her expression was almost rueful. “Probably nothing I ought to fuss about. I’ve sometimes been told I read too much. Think too much. Perhaps there’s something to that.” She chuckled, and slid off the table. “But one thing I do know for a fact is propaganda costs money, if it’s going to work. A lot of money.”