Radio Girls(50)

Hilda, along with Arthur Burrows, the premier presenter, was becoming synonymous with the BBC. It was possible, Maisie conceded, that Reith’s absence from the parade of praise was the problem, but he could hardly fault Hilda for that. Besides, he wasn’t without recognition—he had been awarded the Knight Bachelor and was now “Sir John Reith.” With the grace he decided came of being ennobled, he insisted the staff continue to address him as “Mr. Reith.”

“Yes, well, you no longer have to nudge,” Reith acceded. “But not every broadcast has to be challenging.”

Maisie wasn’t sure what Reith meant by “challenging,” but her own opinion, born of Hilda’s, was that a Talk should always have something new to say, in some new way.

Onwards and upwards, and all that.




It was a miserable cold spring in 1928, and the Talks Department was huddled on the floor again, everyone vying for a place nearest the fire. In the six months Maisie had been the proper Talks secretary, she felt her greatest skill was securing a prime spot with the most frequency.

“At this rate, we’ll all have chilblains in June,” Fielden muttered. He never cared that no one responded.

“We’re going to expand the poetry and book discussions,” Hilda announced, reading from her green diary. “Virginia Woolf is coming in for a few readings, and Rebecca West, but it looks as though Vita Sackville-West will be our permanent fiction reviewer.”

“With so many bluestockings, we could compete with Selfridges’ hosiery department,” Collins hissed. Only Fielden heard him, and gave him a withering glare. He allowed no one to impugn Our Lady.

“We’re fixed very nicely with political and household Talks, and Talks on the arts and sciences. But I think we could do with more in the way of general interest. And perhaps the occasional foray into light absurdity. Any thoughts?”

It started to rain, fat drops tapping at the windows. Maisie snapped a biscuit in half, liking the swishy crunch sound. She thought of something Hilda had written in her notes on broadcasting, that it was “a capturing of sounds and voices all over the world to which hitherto we have been deaf. It is a means of enlarging the frontiers of human interest and consciousness, of widening personal experience, of shrinking the earth’s surface.” Such a lovely way to describe this curious creature they were continually inventing. The stranger inviting itself into a silent home, asking to become a friend.

“Miss Matheson, what about a Talk on memorable sounds?” Maisie burst out, watching the drops splatter against the glass. “Sounds that mean something to people, something about their personal experience? A scythe in the harvest, or typewriter keys?”

“She would say typing,” Collins again, more sotto, still voce.

“Marvelous,” Hilda congratulated her. “We could thrill the Sound men for days. Of course, what would be really delightful would be to take a microphone up and down the country, asking people about sounds and perhaps recording those sounds in real time. Wouldn’t that be evocative?”

Hilda sighed, momentarily despondent at radio’s limits. There were valiant attempts at broadcasting outside the studio—the sports announcers were very keen on it—but it was a deeply cumbersome affair that thrilled and vexed the engineers equally and whose results were not quite on the cusp of satisfactory.

How do you choose just one gorgeous sound? Children laughing. Bees in a summer garden. The rattle of beads on a dancer’s dress. A kiss.

“Why are you blushing?” Fielden asked her, not even trying to be sotto.

“I have tuberculosis,” Maisie confided. Everyone laughed. Another nail in Invisible Girl’s coffin. And she’d had another Talk idea accepted. She hummed as she headed to the mimeograph room, her cheerfulness compensating for lack of tune, when Cyril loped into place beside her.

“Hallo, New York. How are you?”

Cyril. She felt a rush of nostalgia for all the days he hadn’t entered her thoughts. He had the nerve to still be deliriously good-looking, hair flopping over his temples, freckles, dark blue eyes. That high-voltage smile, so contagious as to almost make her smile back. She clenched her jaw.

“I’m doing very well, Mr. Underwood. How are you?” she asked, affecting what she hoped was a professional tone awash in detachment, sparing him only one curt nod as she continued to stride down the corridor.

He kept pace with her. “Never a dull moment—more’s the pity. A chap could sit down then. The DG expects a great deal from Schools, you know. Minds of the youth, and all that.” He gave a vague gesture to indicate all those minds.

“Yes, indeed. And how are you liking Mr. Siepmann as a superior? Awfully clever, isn’t he?” she asked, hoping the question would annoy him. She was rewarded with a frown.

“Well . . . yes, actually. Likes details. We call him the devil in the details,” he confided, eyes twinkling, inviting a laugh.

“Do you?” She nodded gravely. “I’m sure he’d appreciate that.” Another prize: the flash of alarm turning him pale, his freckles poppy seeds in a milk pudding.

“You, er, you wouldn’t mention that, would you? I was only joking.”

“Of course you were,” she agreed in a chirp. “I know better than to assume you’re in earnest. Ah, here’s my stop. Cheerio!” She bid him goodbye with a flick of her pinkie, swung into the mimeograph room, and set up stencils at record speed. Her ears were getting very good at picking up sounds, and she sensed him hesitate, swaying at the door, before he went on to wherever he was going.