Radio Girls(58)

“And here I always thought I was observant.” He sighed, weighty with drama.

The watch, still cool on her wrist and heavy with newness, reminded her it was a short lunch. She wasn’t overly sorry.

“Ah, of course.” He nodded. “But do please tell me your name?”

“Maisie Musgrave,” she said, shaking his extended hand.

“Simon Brock-Morland. Perhaps our paths will cross again?”

“I suppose people have written stranger scenarios.” She smiled. She couldn’t help it.

“That almost sounds like a challenge.” He grinned back.

“It was very nice to meet you, Mr. Brock-Morland,” she told him. “Good day.”

The tingle lingered on her neck as she walked up Savoy Place. But she wrestled the feeling down, shoving it somewhere the fist inside could beat it till it broke. She wasn’t going to fall for another handsome man, even if he thought she was funny, and clever. She wasn’t going to run from anyone else again. Not ever.




Loyal to Maisie’s request, Phyllida hadn’t spread the word about her birthday. Not that anyone cared, but Maisie remembered her idea of where she would be by this age. All those carefully wrought plans, little boxes in the back of her mind, each labeled and filled with some segment of life. Love. Marriage. Home. All amounting to security. Though she knew now that they didn’t. She’d seen illnesses, injuries, work shortages strip households bare and send whole families into the streets, where even the other poor wanted to pretend they didn’t exist. Both Phyllida and Hilda were advocates of a better system of helping “unfortunates.” It sounded Utopian. Maisie found most people would rather not care than care, and not help if they could help it.

She blinked away the cobwebs and rejoined the tearoom, where Phyllida was presenting her with a walnut cream cake and a jug of chocolate to pour on top provided by Mrs. Hudson, who regarded Maisie’s appetite as a glorious challenge.

Phyllida was rapturous over the watch. Her Yorkshire flowed like the chocolate.

“Yon Miss Matheson is the most gradley . . . nae, champion . . . topping woman in Britain, nowt finer. I knew she thought the world of you, and why not, but this is really super.”

“Shh, don’t let it get ’round,” Maisie insisted. “I don’t think she got Mr. Fielden anything for his birthday, and he’s her deputy.”

“Yes, but you can’t buy a sense of humor in Selfridges.”

“Or even Harrods.”

Their giggles attracted the ire of the sound effects men, huddled in the corner.

“Do you mind?” Jones growled. “We are discussing how to create a tennis party.”

Which only made them laugh harder.

“Hallo, oh, I say, that looks scrumptious.” Beanie sat down with them in a great rustle of crepe de chine and a swish of her Sautoir necklace, whose tassel nearly took out Maisie’s eye.

“It’s special for Maisie,” Phyllida put in quickly so as to allay any trespasses. She liked Beanie; they all did, generally because of, rather than in spite of, her rudeness, it being so wholly without malice or awareness. But Phyllida, an advocate of the classless society, was keenly aware of the breadth of Beanie’s privilege and determined to shield that which was emphatically not hers from any reach.

“What for?” Beanie asked, but promptly forgot to wait for an answer in the wake of her desire to communicate. “Great scandale a-brewing—have you heard?”

They hadn’t.

“Only just announced; quite a shock to the poor DG.”

“Siepmann’s a Russian spy?” Phyllida asked, ever hopeful.

“Wouldn’t that be odd? No, the Great Shields is leaving to get married.”

Maisie choked, sending crumbs sputtering.

“Good Lord, so now we know what it takes for you to lose some of your food,” Phyllida said, thumping her on the back.

“Miss Shields?” Maisie asked, her head spinning much harder than the effect of four cakes in one day could ever manage. “But she’s so . . . rigid.”

“Oh, I don’t know. She did have that torrid affair with the married man a few years back.”

Now both Phyllida and Maisie were choking.

“If you’re going to make that ghastly noise, you should at least do so where we can record it,” Fowler shouted at them.

“Beanie, you can’t be serious,” Maisie said, almost imploring.

“Mama often says so, too, but I’ve proven her quite wrong, I think.”

Miss Shields, straight-backed and straitlaced, slavish to Mr. Reith (“Sir John”). Inflexible tweeds, even more inflexible features. Engaged to be married.

“You wouldn’t have thought a woman her age could manage it,” Beanie went on, helping herself to Phyllida’s cigarette lighter.

“I don’t think she’s much more than thirty-five,” Phyllida said.

“Yes. Perhaps her fiancé’s not very strong, or doesn’t want children. But good on her. Not one of the ‘Surplus Women’ anymore!”

“You shouldn’t use that phrase. It’s ghastly,” Maisie chided Beanie.

“Apparently the DG is devastated,” Beanie continued, ignoring Maisie. “Silly man. Wants everyone to get married, but not if it means they’ll stop serving him. Ah well. Cheerio!” She ground her cigarette in Phyllida’s saucer and skipped off.