Radio Girls(51)

“Honestly, I was happy never to talk to him again. What the heck was that for? ‘Hallo, New York,’ indeed, that beastly, blasted blackguard—”

“And we’re still just in the ‘Bs,’” Phyllida said. “You’ve certainly learned to talk like a Briton.” She smiled and sipped tea from a flask. It wasn’t really warm enough to eat outside, but it was the first bright day they’d had in weeks and they wanted the feel of sun and air, the tease of summer and country, even though the wind down the Embankment still had a pinprick chill that coaxed tears from their eyes and the mixed odors off the Thames were decidedly urban. They felt hardy and outlandish, the best of what flappers should be, though neither of them could afford to properly look the part.

“I told him I forgave him, or just as well,” Maisie said, the injustice still stinging as much as the air. “It was more than a year ago, and he’s the one who said it was trivial!”

“Maybe that wasn’t so true?”

Maisie hooted with laughter and only stopped when she had to clamp her mouth over the bottom of her chicken pie to stop it oozing gravy.

“I know what the lads think of me,” she said, grinning at the silliness of it.

“Thoughts can change.” Phyllida shrugged, refusing for once to grin back. “You haven’t run and hid, you’re doing good work in Talks, and you’re looking well.”

Maisie hooted again, but Phyllida was not to be deterred.

“It’s true! You’re less scrawny now, and you’ve got nice color in your cheeks.” She leaned closer to examine Maisie. “You’ve even got cheeks! And you don’t look so frightened anymore. You look more . . . Well, you’re still hungry,” she said, breaking out the grin. “Have a banana.”

Maisie finished her pie and took the banana. She knew she’d filled out and she liked it. A boyish look was fashionable, perhaps, but no one wanted to look unhealthy. Her new dress—still plain wool, but better quality—didn’t hang like a rag on the line. Instead, it skimmed what was belatedly but unquestionably turning into a figure. The dress was a nice pale green. “Garland Green,” the shopgirl had informed her in a proud, breathy swoon, as though she’d invented it. “And the trim is Briar Rose.” Maisie still just called it pink.

“Hallo. Would you like company?” The women looked up, Maisie’s cheeks bulging with banana, to see two young men walking their bicycles, grinning at them. Or anyway, at Phyllida.

“D’ye nae see we have each other’s company?” Phyllida asked.

“Ah, go on,” the bolder one persisted. “How’s about we give you a lift on the bikes, hm? You’d make a fine figurehead,” he complimented Phyllida.

“When I feel like having my bones broken, you’ll be the first one I call,” she promised.

“And we have to get back to work,” Maisie added. “Some of us work, you know.”

“Oh Lord,” the other man groaned. “Northerners, Americans, working girls. A trifecta of misery. Come on,” he urged, pedaling off. The bold one gave Phyllida another longing glance, but followed his friend.

“Which trait do you think was our gravest offense?” Maisie asked, though she assumed the men had only included her by way of convenience.

“Working, no contest,” Phyllida said.

“I suppose it’s not such an awful thing, fellows liking you,” Maisie ventured, handing Phyllida a cake.

“Pah. They like that I’ve got blond curls, long legs, and an enormous chest,” Phyllida scoffed.

She was very lovely. Tall and plumper than was fashionable, her dairy-farm roots evident even in her urbanity. The long legs were wonderfully sculpted, so it looked like she still hiked the hills after the cows every day, though she hadn’t since she was seven. And despite her strident efforts, the loose fashions and flattening corsets failed to conceal her ample bosom.

“I thought I’d find a man to marry me in Savoy Hill,” Maisie said. She concentrated on picking a currant out of her cake, glad her cheeks were already pink from the cold.

“Lots of lasses come in thinking that,” Phyllida consoled her. “And I daresay it happens.”

“What sort of man would you like to marry?”

“O-ho, no, thank you. No, I had quite enough being under the thumb of my father. I won’t be subjected to any other man and that’s that. One way or another I’m going to end up in Parliament. Is that the church bell?”

They braced themselves against the wind for the short walk up Savoy Place.

“Do you think there are Bolshevist spies in Britain?” Maisie shouted, her words buffeted on the wind. It was the perfect weather for asking such questions—you were lucky if the person right next to you could hear.

“If there are, they must feel right at home. Siberia’s got to be warmer than this.”

“But really, do you think so?” Maisie persisted.

“Communists believe in equality for women, so they aren’t all bad, I’d say.”

“If they believe in a single-party state, though, then no one would be allowed to vote.”

“Mad way to cut down on paperwork, isn’t it? And that’s exactly why it’s silly to be afraid of communism gaining a hold here. Even the illiterate know we British love paperwork.”