Radio Girls(61)

Billy gave the sign they were off the air, and everyone applauded. The debaters were shiny pink with sweat, and Mrs. Strachey looked cheerfully harassed.

“Goodness!” she exclaimed. “That was stimulating! And here I always thought blood sports a lot of nonsense. I could moderate one of these every day of the week. Marvelous exercise.”

Maisie wished the debates would answer the questions they asked, but she agreed with Mrs. Strachey. The constant asking was a thrill. She wanted to be even deeper in the midst of it. She’d certainly rather not keep asking herself about Simon.

“Why did I agree to this?” Maisie asked Phyllida, staring into the mirror in the favorite ladies’ lavatory.

“Because he’s handsome and witty and said you were clever, which means he’s not stupid, so you’ll go and have this tea, and then you’re meeting me for chips and croquettes and the pictures after,” Phyllida told her firmly.

Maisie had deliberately made no effort to look smarter, though the Garland Green dress had been given a careful brushing, and she wore Lola’s white rose in her hair. Phyllida supervised a light dab of pink lipstick, laid a tissue on Maisie’s lip and instructed her to blot, then barreled her off to the tram.

This is nothing. It’s just tea. I have plans afterward. And he wasn’t that handsome, not really, I think, or clever. He probably just—

“I don’t know what the BBC’s playing at, allowing that sort of talk.” A man’s complaint cut across her thoughts and captured her attention.

“Can’t agree with you there. I thought it was rather useful. Good luck finding a paper that will ask those questions.”

“Haven’t we got more to worry about than Bolsheviks?”

“That’s the point! Why worry about something that isn’t going to happen?”

“I’m not sure that was the point at all.”

On and on, as white-hot as the debate itself, though less eloquent and occasionally unbroadcastable. Maisie had to force herself off at her stop. It was one thing to read the correspondence. It was quite another to hear, live and in person, how much the BBC was engaging the public. Hilda was right; radio might not change anything. But she was also right in that it was forging a connection with people.

She was still smiling as she entered the poky teashop and Simon sprang up from his seat and smiled back. He wasn’t as handsome as she remembered—he was quite a bit more so. That tickle on her neck ran all the way down her spine.

“Miss Musgrave! I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you again. Do sit down. What would you like to drink?”

“Well, it is a teashop,” she said, feeling an obligation to state the obvious.

“They have coffee, too,” he said, mock defensively. “And some sort of lemon fizz thing, probably for kiddies.”

He ordered a pot of tea and a tray of sandwiches and scones.

“Shall we be wholly bourgeois and get cake as well? You like cake, if I remember.”

“I wouldn’t trust someone who didn’t,” she said, meaning it.

“I read that we’re having a great revival of cake; it’s our glorious new era. From Shakespeare to Donne to Hardy . . . to cake.”

“The Bloomsbury crowd, the BBC, and cake? I’d say we’re doing all right.”

“Ah, I see that cunning hat tip to your employer!”

“They are changing the world, you know. They deserve a nod.”

“Oh, certainly, certainly. And giving all you young ladies a chance at some interesting work,” he said, winking.

“A few of us, anyway.”

“So I must ask, Miss Musgrave, are you perhaps American?”

Is that why I’m here? Was that light touch of “other” really so alluring? Her accent, never definitive anyway, was much softer than it once had been. She didn’t sound British, but she certainly didn’t sound like she came from New York. Or Toronto. I sound like someone who doesn’t belong anywhere. Which might have been what made her appealing—a cipher upon which to draw. The reverse image of Eliza Doolittle, but just as much clay.

“I’m Canadian, but I spent a lot of my childhood in New York.”

“Oh, New York! Father took us in 1920. Ostensibly to look at some property he owns—or anyway has holdings in—but I think really it was to chastise the Yanks for taking their time helping us thump the Boche.” He shook his head, chuckling. “Ah, you do have to wonder what it was all for. But never mind. I did my bit and it’s sunny days now.”

“Your father owns property in New York?” Maisie tried not to gulp. She could tell his accent was upper-class, but now she wondered just how high up it went.

“Owns a bit in Trinidad, too, but primarily it’s the old seat here,” Simon said with a shrug. “Matters nary a whit for a spare second son, so I’m just thrown an afterthought title and off I go to make my own way in the world.”

Title? All of Maisie’s deepest girlhood fantasies poked their heads from their box and sniffed hopefully. It seemed churlish to press the subject, though, so she forced herself to pretend disinterest and instead asked how he’d liked New York.

“Very much. I was twenty-one. I was decorated at Cambrai. I liked everything.”

And just like that, she liked him.