Radio Girls(8)

Rusty deposited her back with Miss Shields, who stacked an Everest-sized pile of papers on Maisie’s desk—“typing and filing and familiarizing yourself”—and ordered her, in a tone that suggested a lengthy quiz would follow, to read and memorize the week’s programming schedule and Mr. Reith’s packed diary.

Maisie started reading, her lips curling into a grin. Nearly her whole childhood had been spent in windowless corners, reading. Now she was getting paid for it.

“Miss Musgrave!”

The grin vanished and Maisie scurried to her mistress. Miss Shields pointed a pencil at a chair and began dictating a memo. It was understood that Maisie had, of course, snatched up her own steno pad and pencil.

Miss Shields didn’t pause in her remorseless dictation, not even when a slim, spotty young man with a crooked grin wheeled in a basket threatening to shatter under the weight of envelopes. He deposited a leaning tower of correspondence in a wire in-tray on Miss Shields’s desk, nodded to her politely, and turned, untroubled by a lack of acknowledgment. He started on seeing Maisie and glanced back at Miss Shields, who roused herself enough to say, “Was there something else, Alfred?”

“No, miss, that’s all for now,” he said. “Good luck,” he whispered to Maisie as he maneuvered the basket out.

“And that’s to go to all the men of the Engineering Department,” Miss Shields finished with a snap. “Read back the last line.”

Maisie skirted from the glinting eyes to her shorthand.

“‘I expect this investment means we will not see so many technical errors in the future and that I may assure the governors thereof.’”

“Yes.” Miss Shields nodded, a vaguely disappointed frown creasing her forehead. Maisie wondered what technical errors there were—with radio so new, how could there be mistakes? Or perhaps the opposite, and it was rife with error?

Miss Shields beckoned Maisie to the in-tray.

“We are most exact in our handling of correspondence. Everything is stamped and dated properly.” She pressed a large rubber stamp into Maisie’s palm. The word “RECEIVED” was cut into it in neat capital letters, and underneath were tiny wheels for setting the date. “This is yours to keep at your table.” As if it were a prize. “Set the correct date every morning upon arrival.” Her tone insinuated that failure to do so would result in an apocalypse to make the destruction of Pompeii look inconsequential.

Maisie turned the wheels carefully, Miss Shields’s eyes circling along, to “29 Nov. 1926.”

Miss Shields continued her lecture.

“When you have ascertained a letter has been read, you are to draw a pencil line down the page. You will be very neat.” A cocked brow queried Maisie’s capacity for neatness. “Well, get started, then, and mind you type the memo promptly.”

Maisie gathered the correspondence and bore it back to her little desk. She wasn’t sure which she was supposed to do first, though the typewriter, a gleaming black Underwood with sleek rounded keys, was a seductive siren. It’s like Miss Jenkins said at the secretarial school. Don’t ask anyone’s opinion or assistance. Just find a way to do everything at once.




By midmorning, when she was dismissed to a cup of tea, Maisie was exhausted. Perhaps those afraid the radio would turn everyone into robots had a point—the staff of the BBC seemed tapped into the very transmission wires, able to buzz along without even pausing for breath.

“Well, hello, New York!”

Maisie’s spine seized up and that pestilent hot flush danced over her neck and cheeks. She supposed controlling one’s color was part of the privilege of gentility. Certainly, they never seemed to get embarrassed.

Mr. Underwood (eyes, grin, freckles) swung a leg over a chair and sat down opposite her.

“The old battle-ax brought you on, eh? Well-done. You must be a good one. Or perhaps they’re trying to diversify?”

He seemed to be joking, and Maisie risked a smile.

“Cyril Underwood,” he announced, extending a hand in the manner of one taught how to do so shortly after mastering a rattle. “Yes, like the typewriter, but not our branch of the clan.”

Cyril. It could not have been more perfect.

“Maisie Musgrave,” she said, wishing her voice sounded less wobbly.

“How d’ye do? So! Are you from New York, then?”

“No, not . . . I suppose I grew up there, mostly.”

“How do you mean, ‘mostly’?”

“Er, well, I was born in Toronto . . . That’s Canada, I mean.”

“I’m familiar with its work,” he assured her.

If I blush any harder my hair might catch fire.

Cyril supplied his own laugh and persisted. “But New York, that’s something, if the stories are to be believed. If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t seem to be quite the sort of New Yorker they describe.”

Maisie yearned to point out that this might be why she was in London instead. Those sorts of thoughts always charged into her brain unbidden and had to be subdued. Men didn’t like sarcastic girls. The glossies all said so.

“Well, that might be the effect of Toronto? But I . . . I prefer it here.”

“Clever girl, then. The grapevine was a bit unclear. You’re with the Great Shields and the typing pool—is that it?”