Radio Girls(64)

It felt like taking Hilda’s notion of the radio as a form of creating connection to an absurd extreme.

Maisie glanced around the shop to be sure no one was looking, dunked a digestive into her tea, and transferred the whole thing into her mouth. She skimmed the last few pages of the Radio Times and turned to the Independent. Deep into an article about BBC listening groups (and another digestive), something clicked in her brain. She sat there, the digestive melting into her tongue, trying to figure out what she was trying to figure out. Something about listening, radio, meetings . . .

She flipped back through the Radio Times and stopped at the Siemens ad, extolling its most popular wireless. No, it wasn’t the ad; the ad was the same they’d run for months (the stupid one the boys loved to quote around the typists: “She turns the knob and music wells out”). Maybe it was the text beside it:

“Listen in a like-minded crowd! If Siemens is your favorite wireless, opt to gather ’round with us. News of a real sort and refreshments, too!”

It looked like it could be part of the ad. There was an address in New Bond Street, probably a shop. Nothing to excite interest. Quite the opposite. Still, something was nudging her. She had two previous Radio Times in the battered holdall she’d bought in a secondhand shop. The magazines were wrinkled, crushed, and covered in crumbs. Hilda would be aghast. Maisie silently apologized as she opened the magazines to compare pages.

It had to be nothing, really. This must be the effect of all the constant certainty of Russian spies, or Hilda’s interest in German propaganda, making her see things in the most innocuous of places. Or her prejudice against Siemens, brought on less by the propaganda than by her dislike for Mr. Hoppel, Reith’s friend at the company. But the longer she looked at the listings, the more something seemed odd. Nothing might, in fact, be something.

Hilda’s laughing, encouraging voice sounded in her head: Why don’t you go find out and let me know?

Maisie wrote Hilda’s words again. “Siemens?” “Nestlé?”

Oh.

Siemens, at least, was German. Perhaps the largest German company to have a presence in Britain?

Maisie circled the address in the magazine. What’s life without a little adventure? And it does promise refreshments.





TWELVE




Maisie was unreasonably disappointed to find the address in New Bond Street was, after all, a shop selling wireless sets. The shopkeeper, a Dickensian wisp of a man with pince-nez and a cravat, guided her to the favorite sets for “the young ladies.”

I’m an idiot. It’s just a listening party. Plenty of people still do that. Much cheaper than buying your own wireless. Her eyes caressed the wood and Bakelite radios, so pretty, so past her price range. Even if her room was wired for electricity.

“It is nearly closing time, miss,” the shopkeeper said with a pointed cough.

“But I saw an advert, for a listening party?” She was here, after all. Might as well ask.

“I think you must be mistaken,” he said.

“No, it’s right here,” she argued, digging in her bag for the Radio Times. As she did so, a young man strolled in.

“Have you got a Lion by any chance?”

“A very good choice, sir, one of our finest!” the shopkeeper answered. “Right this way, sir.”

It was possible anyone else would shrug, or storm off in a huff. But no one else had suffered through any number of overwrought melodramas in which Georgina starred. Maisie immediately discerned an embarrassingly crude setup and the stagiest of poor line readings—and her body reacted with its usual automatic shudder. She tagged after the men.

“So you’ll guide a gentleman to the Lion, but not a lady?”

“Begging your pardon, miss,” the shopkeeper said, flustered. “I quite misunderstood you.”

And she and the young man stepped into the back room together.

She was nearly knocked back by a man’s booming voice. If it had been a listening party, they would have been intent on Vernon Bartlett’s Talk about the League’s plans for a constitution in Syria. But it wasn’t. It was a meeting. Maisie cloaked herself in Invisible Girl and drifted into a corner.

“. . . it is not just about our own good political fortune,” the speaker said. He was quite handsome, with golden hair and a gentle smile. His accent was at once patrician and friendly. “We must and can do a great deal to advance the fortunes of our fine friends in Germany. They are most grateful for all our advice and assistance, and I am convinced they will repay us for it most handsomely. It will be an easy thing, convincing the British to admire Germany once again. But we must hurry. We must do more today, every day, to convince our local MPs of the urgency.”

“Well, Lion, I find that donations to a pet cause go a long way towards currying favor with a politician,” a woman in evening dress advised. Maisie was outraged on Lady Astor’s behalf.

“But will they go far enough to close up all this openness we’re seeing in society?” a blustery old man demanded. “Young people aren’t being properly molded. It is appalling.”

“Quite so,” the handsome speaker—apparently the Lion—acquiesced with a shake of his golden head. “But all that will change once we have exerted our influence upon the BBC.”

That fist in Maisie’s chest nearly flew out of her mouth.