Radio Girls(7)

But Rusty was decidedly solid, standing in the light spilling from the open door, beckoning to her with the impatient exasperation of boys universal, and was only mollified when Maisie finally walked back toward him. Her heart was behaving in a most peculiar fashion, as though it were holding its breath, wondering if it should crumple completely or take a leap of hope.

Miss Shields was descending the steps into reception. Her expression was resigned, with a soup?on of fury, and her words sounded rehearsed.

“Ah, Miss Musgrave, that is convenient. It has been decided to offer you the position. You may begin on Monday. Be here promptly at nine.”

Maisie knew she should close her mouth or say something, but she was thoroughly incapable of doing either.

“Are you interested in the position?” Miss Shields snapped.

“I . . . yes, that is, yes, abso . . . Thank you!”

“I will allow for your surprised enthusiasm, but do know that Mr. Reith expects clear-spoken decorum in his presence at all times. As to—” She pursed her lips and appeared to change her mind. “The position pays three pounds, five shillings a week, and we are not accustomed to negotiating. Is that understood?”

It would never have occurred to Maisie to negotiate. This woman had just offered her life. She only hoped she wasn’t, after all, hallucinating.

“Thank you. Thank you so much. I can start tomorrow, if you like?”

“Monday, Miss Musgrave. You’ll report directly to me and we can begin. I expect you to be fully prepared.”

“Yes, Miss Shields.” Maisie nodded fervently. She had a bad feeling “fully prepared” meant better clothes. It was tempting to hop a tram to Oxford Street right that minute. But she wasn’t the sort of person to whom the shops gave credit. Shoes and clothes would have to wait. She would just be prepared to do a good job.

A squeal escaped her as she bounced back to the street, which seemed much brighter. What had turned the cards in her favor? Miss Shields hadn’t seemed to like her much. Maybe she was one of those people who were hard to read. Lots of people were like that. Maisie hoped to be one of them someday.

Her Charleston-dancing heart reminded her that she would get to see Mr. Underwood again, too. Those eyes, that smile . . . I’ll go to the library first thing tomorrow and catch up on all the papers. New York ones, too, if they have any. I most definitely want to have something new to say about New York.





TWO




Monday morning Maisie tumbled out of frantic dreams and into the uneasy darkness of the predawn hours. Trepidation marched down her arms and shoulder blades, pinning her to the iron bedstead. The short gasps of breath allotted her lungs pounded in her ears and felt loud enough to endanger the sleep of the other boarders. Except Lola, who wouldn’t wake up if a biplane crashed into the house.

Maisie crawled out of bed, wishing she had slippers and a dressing gown. Instead, she wrapped the thin, fraying blankets around her like a Roman senator and tiptoed across the equally thin rag rug to the window. Everything in Mrs. Crewe’s house was worn and thin, though impeccably clean. Including Maisie.

The view was moderately improved by being in shadow. This sliver of London insisted it was for the respectable working poor, not a slum, but the rows of identical dingy Victorian terrace houses to which people clung by their fingernails were hardly the stuff that was featured on a picture postcard.

More like the cover of a penny dreadful.

Maisie hugged her knees to her chest and watched the sky slowly grow lighter, waiting, wondering what the day was going to bring her.




In the hospital, Maisie had changed bandages on men whose eyes had been destroyed by poison gas. She dressed wounds on nubs of wrists, no longer extending into hands. She was doused in blood, in vomit, in tears. And not a bit of it prepared her for the rigors of the BBC.

Miss Shields spared her one critical glance, clearly displeased that she still looked like a companion to Oliver Twist, but waved her into her work space, a cramped closet with a typewriter and a hook for her coat and hat. There was no swivel chair, just a straight-backed spindly terror, but nor was there any sitting. Rusty was deputized to give her a “general tour” of the premises. He did so at a near run, Maisie tracking his bright red head while trying to absorb something of her surroundings.

“That’s the Schools Department, miss. They broadcast to classrooms specially. And down here is the Music and Drama Departments, thems that do plays. Some of them quite funny they are, too, miss, sometimes. There’s a control room in the basement. Ripping machines they’ve got in there, too, but the engineers, and Mr. Eckersley who heads them, they don’t like anyone messing about near them, nor asking questions.”

On and on his buoyant speech ran them around the L-shaped corridors, so fast that a place was no sooner mentioned than lost in a tangle of syllables. The artistes’ waiting room, the sound room, the offices of this man and that one, Department of Whatsit, Office of Whosit, the typing pool, the room where broadcasters stored the evening dress suits worn when they were on the air—the tumult slowed just enough to allow Maisie to be beguiled—then on and on. The rabbit-warren building seemed much larger on the inside than it looked from the street. The only room whose location she was able to commit to instant memory was the tearoom, from which emanated the most enticing scent of buttered toast.

Throughout Savoy Hill was that glorious—terrifying—noise and rush and whirl and people who must be delighted in their importance and glamour. It was a heady cloud around her. The accents, the chat, the speed. Despite their varied ages, they possessed a glow of youth that eluded Maisie, even at twenty-three.