Radio Girls(77)

“Excellent work, Miss Musgrave,” Hilda said half an hour later, handing it back to her. Covered in blue writing. Hilda had made several dozen more revisions—all of them perfect.

“Sometimes I wonder why any of us even bother,” Maisie murmured to Phyllida, who was reading the script over her shoulder.

“Hers is better,” Phyllida said unhelpfully.

“I’m aware of that.”

“And next time you’ll do better, too,” Phyllida said, bopping Maisie on the shoulder.

Maisie looked forward to getting her hands dirtier with Questions for Women Voters, which was an instant success. So much post came in asking follow-up questions, they had to run an extra five minutes at the end of each broadcast just to address a tenth of them.

“We need a daily program, frankly, and an hour long,” Maisie told Simon, as they strolled through the National Gallery. He was keen to show her what he considered all the best art.

“If the ladies have so many questions, maybe they’re not ready to vote,” Simon said, laughing in the face of Maisie’s lightning-bolt glare. “Joking! Rights for one should be rights for all, certainly. And it’s far better than having women protesting on the streets, yowling like banshees and creating all kinds of mess. I remember seeing it as a lad, grim stuff.” He pretended to shudder.

“If equal rights were just given from the beginning, then no one would have to fight for them on the street and create a mess,” Maisie said.

“Ah, there’s no arguing with the radical ladies.”

“Not radical; reasonable, I think.”

They laughed, and Maisie tried not to feel too pleased with herself. She couldn’t entirely believe it, believe this was her, the former Mousy Maisie, exploring the National Gallery with a charming and handsome and honest-to-goodness aristocrat, who seemed to like her. She still felt a bit awkward around him. Even after an acquaintanceship of several months, she hadn’t seen much of him. Indeed, their only contact over the last few weeks had been letters.

“Can you forgive me, dearest?” he asked. “I’ve been working at it like a family of beavers. The words, the words, eh? Well, you know, you do a bit of writing yourself. Awfully satisfying when it comes out right and is printed, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she agreed, thinking it was high time she tried to write something for print again.

“But I can’t help wishing for a larger readership,” he complained. “Pinpoint is doing such fine work, but so few know it.” They stopped before The Hay Wain. “Ah, Constable. A great beauty, isn’t it? He really knew how to capture the best of Britain, the country life, the ordinary worker. Now, you see, that’s the sort of man I’d like my work to reach.”

“Constable?”

“The worker, darling. Provided he can read. Ah, I suppose that is the advantage you have over me. With radio, it doesn’t matter if the people are illiterate; you can still present them with useful facts and thus shape their minds.”

“Well, we actually try to—”

“Wouldn’t it be grand if the newspapers and BBC worked together, after a fashion? Get the most important information to the people, make sure no one missed it?”

“But news does get everywhere,” Maisie said. “Every town and village has a paper, and there’s Reuters and—”

“Of course, of course. But it’s not the same as a really brilliant editor, putting together all the best stories, not just facts but essays, opinions. Think of it, darling. A good, strong voice, clear of all the other dross that ends up in papers, that would provide some real meat for the man. Or woman,” he added graciously.

“I don’t know,” Maisie said. “It sounds like it waters things down an awful lot.”

“Not if the writing is masterful. Besides, isn’t that rather what your BBC does? It is only a single entity, based in London and so not unreasonably viewed as London-centric, and travels unaltered all through the country.”

“But that’s what makes us so democratic,” Maisie argued. “Anyone anywhere can hear a poem or a debate or a play and they don’t have to be able to read or be in London and they can enjoy it equally.”

“They don’t have to be bothered with a lot of different views.”

“But we do present different views! Miss Matheson says that’s one of the most important—”

“Oh, Miss Matheson, Miss Matheson. Honestly, darling, she begins to sound like a deity. Come, let’s pay obeisance to Vermeer.”

He took her hand to pull her along. She was sure his argument was flawed and wanted to think about it, but when he touched her, the ability to think fell out of her ears. She just wanted to follow that touch wherever it went.




“If that’s true, you’d best be careful,” Phyllida warned. They were cranking out mimeographs, so they could steal a moment for a private conversation. “At least go to one of those clinics.”

“Those . . . Oh!” Those sorts of clinics. She had come a long way from Cyril. She wasn’t sure if she was in love, but she wasn’t sure she cared. When she was with Simon, she just wanted . . .

“But what do you think when you’re not with him?”

“Mostly about the BBC.”