Radio Girls(89)

“The trouble is, Miss Musgrave, if you get caught, it’s not going to speak particularly well for the BBC, is it?”

“It won’t be official BBC business,” Maisie argued. “It’ll just be me.”

“Yes. I suppose. All right, these are the sorts of papers you want to look for . . .”

She wasn’t to start until after Election Day. Maisie was out the door in record time on May 30 to run to her polling station, and found a long queue already. Half those waiting to vote were women.

Maisie was bouncing on her toes, counting the heads in front of her, when a man’s voice sounded in her ear: “Pardon me, miss. Might I ask you a few questions?”

“You mean me?” she asked the eager reporter, blinking at her from behind smeary glasses. He was so young, he still had spots.

“Yes, please. How did you decide whom you would vote for?” he asked, licking his pencil and holding it poised over his pad.

“Ah! The BBC series Questions for Women Voters was a great help,” she told him, not lying. Then realized she was in trouble if he asked her name and printed it.

“You’ve got a bit of a peculiar accent,” he told her.

“Thank you.”

He frowned, but was too eager to get to his next question to dwell on her accent. “Tell me, did the appearance of the candidates sway you at all?”

“Appearance? I’m not sure what you mean.”

He leaned toward her with a superior grin and winked.

“Maybe you’re voting for a particular party hoping a good-looking representative will take the seat?”

“Do male voters make their decisions that way?” She was genuinely curious.

“We’re just wondering what’s driving so many women to the polls. Do you think this is something you’ll do again, or is it just a bit of a fad?”

He was very reedy-looking. It wouldn’t be hard to overpower him, seize his pad, and write a proper story for him.

“Voting isn’t a new hairstyle,” she told him in a withering tone.

A stringy young woman behind her, pushing a baby in a pram and holding a yawning toddler at her hip, leaned around Maisie to glare at him. “It’s just right we all get our say, is what it is. We work, too, in case you didn’t know.”

He gaped at her, possibly not realizing she had the capacity to be articulate.

Maisie was next, and stepped up to vote. She wondered how many hands had trembled already today, holding their pencils over the ballots, with all the little boxes. Did most women take to their new, belated right with aplomb, or did they take their time, marveling over the beauty of it all, the silent speech that would be heard?

Or did they think, like she did, that there was a long queue behind her and she had to get to work.

She wrote a thick X, drew over it twice, and dropped the paper in the ballot box.

That’s how you spell a shout. With an X.




“Just you wait until we’re allowed to report our own news,” Hilda greeted Maisie. The day’s programming was like a thrilling tease of what such reporting would be like, as it was all in reference to the election, and they were being granted a special report, an expansive twenty-five minutes long, that evening.

Reith strode into the office, unannounced and in such a bluster that they had to clamp their hands down over papers to keep things from flying into the fire grate. Hilda blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth and smiled up at him. Maisie noted the twist in his mouth as he watched her take another puff, but he said nothing.

“I realize it’s a busy day for us, but as we’re on the subject, I want you to coordinate with Siepmann to do a series suited to young people on politics.”

Hilda started to interject, but he was far from done.

“I hear Labour is poised to win, with all these women voting,” he moaned. “I read and hear the most appalling stories everywhere and now discover it is happening even under my own aegis. I understand that Mr. Eckersley is getting a divorce. He has been . . . involved . . . with another woman, a married woman, and she, too, is getting a divorce. It’s not to be believed.”

Maisie was inclined to disbelieve right along with him. Peter Eckersley? The grim and stuffy chief engineer? What must this poor woman have already been married to that she’d upend her life for an endless series of monologues on sub-mixers and oscillators and frequencies?

“Yes, I’m afraid I heard something to that effect,” Hilda said, grinding out her cigarette.

“Is there anything that happens here you don’t know about?” Reith asked.

“I hope so,” Hilda said fervently. “Awfully dull otherwise.”

“And why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m devoted to broadcasting, Mr. Reith, but draw the line at gossip.”

“Well, I can’t see allowing him to stay on. It sets a bad precedent.” Reith sighed, shaking his head.

“He’s a very fine chief engineer,” Hilda said. “And it’s not as if his personal—”

“He oversees men, young men, and they look up to him,” Reith snapped. “I sometimes wonder what we fought a war for.” He sighed again and stalked away.

“Well, that’s certainly a fair question.” Hilda sighed herself. “Poor old Peter.”