Radio Girls (33 page)

“Oh, I don't know,” Ellis mused. “It does at least keep them down.”

“Only until they get up again, at which point they want more revenge,” Maisie said, remembering all her plans to destroy the Toronto gang kids. And Georgina, too.

I bet all those kids ended up dead anyway. Or in prison. Here's hoping
.

“I've no doubt that Siemens, being German, wishes to see Germany rich and powerful again,” Ellis conceded. “Patriotism costs nothing. But these are still businessmen, and they want to do business in England and wherever else they can. They won't be so patriotic as to interfere with business. And any number of corporations despise unions and want to see them excoriated in the newspapers. So if they wish to publish their own paper to do as much, they can, but they can't force anyone to read it.”

“What if they buy up all the other papers?” Hilda asked.

“Oh nonsense, that would never be allowed,” Ellis scoffed. “We've laws against that sort of thing, and it's just not the British way besides.”

“It happened in Italy,” Hilda reminded him.

“Not exactly a journalistic paragon prior to Mussolini, was it, though?”

“See here, my dear God,” Hilda said, tapping the German papers. “This is very good propaganda, well considered and awfully compelling. Didn't Mussolini prove how useful that could be?”

“Certainly, but the idea that a few wealthy men would take such ludicrous steps all to maximize their profits is the stuff of high melodrama. Tell me, Miss Musgrave, do any of them twirl their mustaches?”

“Oh for heaven's sake, will you please help?” Hilda snapped.

“Seems to me what you need is a good investigative journalist, not me.” He turned to Maisie, pointing at her with his cheroot. “Which are you more interested in becoming, Miss Musgrave? Journalist or spy?”

“Truth seeker,” said Maisie.

Ellis fell about laughing and Hilda beamed like a proud favorite aunt.

“And truth teller,” Maisie added. Just so everything was clear.

“I suppose in the best of worlds, journalists and spies do both those things,” Hilda said. “That might make an awfully good Talk, now I think of it. But really, Ellis, will you help?”

“I'll see what I can do,” he promised. “But I still think it's an enormous waste of your enormous brains.”

“Ah well, it wouldn't be the first time,” Hilda said.

Hilda and Maisie left soon after.

“I don't feel like going straight home. Fancy a stroll?” Hilda asked.

They got out of the cab near Piccadilly and walked through the crowds of people leaving the theaters and streaming toward
restaurants and nightclubs. It was strange, being in the midst of so much finery and happy chatter and thinking of attempts to clamp down on most of it. Strange, too, having a deeply private conversation in such a place, but no one could hear them.

“Miss Matheson, how did you know about Siemens and Nestlé, specifically? Did you know Hoppel and Grigson were friends?”

“I have a number of friends in a number of places and they know I like information that might look esoteric. So they send me things. And then other people tell me other things, and I ask questions. But you're the one who's really done the, if I may, lion's share of the work here. I would never have had the time. I'm most grateful.”

“But it's not just via friends, is it?” Maisie pursued. “You got some of that information through more official channels?”

“Ah. You're asking about a certain organization, of which very few people know the membership?” Hilda grinned and blew a smoke ring. “It's possible that a person whom you know has had something or other to do with said organization. As it happened, that person became known to T. E. Lawrence, just before the war—”

“Lawrence of Arabia?” Maisie gasped.

“He prefers to be called ‘Ned,' actually,” Hilda said, then grinned fondly. “Unless it's a formal occasion. Well, so, he was looking for a person who spoke Italian and German and was good with organization and whatnot to help set up an office for that said organization in Rome during the war, and so it went.”

“And . . . are you still . . . ?”

Hilda shook her head. “I'm telling you what I'm telling you because you've more than earned my trust, but understand I've not really told you anything. I only want to show you I trust you, because you are playing quite a dangerous game, and I'm afraid I've led you into it. You should at least be assured you are playing for the right side. Now, then, I think the next step is to hook in one of my journalist friends, someone to do a bit of snooping, get some real dirt to stick. Someone who doesn't mind something a touch illegal, so long as the real crime is exposed.”

“How illegal?”

“Oh, just going into some offices and looking at files,” Hilda said, shrugging.

“That sounds like something a secretary could do. Isn't it?”

“Miss Musgrave, I know you're quite a young woman, but that sort of work is a bit out of your line.”

“Maybe not. Miss Jenkins, the teacher at my secretarial school, said all offices are arranged more or less alike. Know the system, and you can find whatever you need, on your first day. Then you look competent and you don't have to ask too many irksome questions.”

“It's far more complicated than that. There's a great deal you'd have to learn. We don't know how long it would take.”

“Can we try?”

Hilda took another long drag on her cigarette. “All right.” She smiled. “We can try.”

Maisie supposed she ought to be leery, or frightened. Instead, she was exhilarated. She did, however, hate keeping it all from Phyllida. Hilda's warnings hung heavy on her, and Phyllida, though she was good at keeping secrets, would be even more enraged about the Fascists than Maisie and would have a harder time controlling it. There was some irony, Maisie thought, in withholding information for safety's sake, but until they knew more, it felt the wisest move.

There was no keeping it from Phyllida, though, when a letter arrived for Maisie postmarked from Germany. Maisie had the wild thought that someone had found her out and was warning her off. Excited, she ripped open the letter. And shrieked. It was from Simon.

My dearest Maisie,

Can it really be three months since we spoke? I am sorrier than I can possibly say, especially as I was so boorish with you. And for no reason other than my concerns for family affairs and, I daresay, my own absurd ego. Only I do think of you, your cleverness and your devotion
to the BBC. I do know you are determined to help make it something important, and this says more of you than I think you even know. My darling, I hope someday you'll want to extend that same energy to me. I confess I've thought a few times over these dreary weeks of what you and I could do, were our energies combined. Conquer the world, I should think! Truly, you are so much more than I know you've imagined. But know that I have seen it and that I cherish it. I hope to be home soon and beg your forgiveness properly for all my stupidity and silence and begin to do the real work of winning your most invaluable heart.

That heart had become a jazz quartet in her rib cage.

“You'll be careful though, won't you?” Phyllida asked. “Don't give away your heart without getting another in return.”

“Well, I never.” Maisie laughed. “Phyllida Fenwick is becoming romantic.”

“No,” Phyllida said, shaking her head and refusing to smile. “Not in the slightest.”

“It's just one letter,” Maisie said. “We'll see if he writes again.”

She had noticed Hilda, in those rare spare minutes, using Talks and BBC memos to scribble more and more letters, all to Vita. She wanted to warn her, lest someone else see, too. But to warn her would be to mention it, which she couldn't do.

The love that dare not speak its name indeed. Good grief.

But it wasn't just that. Maisie was starting to understand very well that the heart just had to go where it wanted to go. She hoped Hilda was happy. She didn't know anyone who deserved it more.

“L
adies! The election is the thirtieth of May. Are you registered to vote?”

“We most certainly are,” Phyllida told their questioner, though with more politeness than the last one who accosted them on their stroll through Hyde Park, as this man's red boutonniere spoke him for Labour.

“Good on you! Embracing your hard-fought right, as you should. And only one party is determined to uphold the freedom and independence of all young women, be they single or married—”

“Labour, yes, though in fact the Liberals claim to be our champions as well. And the Conservatives, too, though I sense they wish to be seen as protectors.”

“But you wish your interests protected, not your person, of which you can tend yourself, I think,” the party man said.

“Oh! You are good!” Phyllida complimented him. “Give us a pamphlet, then, and we'll read it over with care.”

Phyllida pawed through it as she and Maisie ambled on down the path.

“Really, Phyllida, that's got to be the fifteenth pamphlet you've taken.”

“Yes, I'm hoping to paper a wall with them soon.”

It was hard not to be excited. All the newspapers, noticeboards, and public walls were emblazoned with the upcoming election and aimed particularly at this enormous new crop of voters, courteous of their intelligence and thoughtfulness and pleased for their independence of mind and spirit—and determined to win them to a particular party and hold them there forever.

Maisie and Phyllida claimed a free bench by the lake, with a good view of boys staging a race between paper sailboats.

“I feel as though we ought to be doing something ourselves, not frivoling like this,” Phyllida said, lighting a cigarette.

“Resting up, that's what we're doing,” Maisie said, though she felt the same. The election fever was high, and even women who would never have called themselves political were buzzing about it. They could hear snips of conversations all around them, and discovered the sailboats were christened “Labour” and “Liberal.”

“I can't wait till I'm running in an election,” Phyllida said, stretching out her legs and crossing her ankles.

Maisie reached into her bag and pulled out another letter from Simon.

“Practice your political acumen by telling me what you think of this.”

My dearest Maisie,

The beauty of this part of Germany is extraordinary. The food and wine are nothing to what one gets in France, but the people are far more fine than I imagined and I think they have learned their lessons well. I do miss all the beauty of home, of course, but business must be done and things must be put right before I can return. Be well and be good, and think of me.

“Still busy trying to renew the family fortune by exploiting the flattened German economy somehow or other, is he?”

“I hope not,” Maisie said, biting her lip. “But somehow, the way he's always saying how keen he is on beauty—”

“Call yourself plain and I'll punt you into the lake.”

“I wouldn't say that about me anymore. It's that, all right, he lives and works in London, and loves it, but he's always joking about his love of that other life: the great house, the manor, riding his horse every day. And I don't know that it's joking, really, and . . .”

“And you're wondering where you fit into that life?”

Maisie sighed. “Sometimes I imagine a . . . wild sort of world, I guess, me in a long dress and cloak, long hair, wandering through the countryside . . .”

“And after the five minutes are up, what do you think of?”

“A flat in Mecklenburgh Square, where I can read as late as I like and listen to the wireless and no one says boo about the electricity.”

“And is Simon there, too?”

“I guess I can't help hoping so.”

“Hmm. Well, no good getting mithered till he's back in Britain anyhow,” Phyllida said with finality. “Come on, let's hire some mallets and join the croquet.”

“I don't know how to play.”

“I'll teach you. It's great fun. You just pretend the ball is the head of someone you despise and give it a solid whack.”

“You're a champion at it, aren't you?”

“With the ribbons to prove it.”

The spring of 1929 might have been beautiful or miserable, but no one in Savoy Hill could know for sure, because in those few weeks from the announcement to the election, the staff worked at a fever pitch. The broadcasting day was still short, but the preparations for each election-related broadcast took hours. And where there was
time, Hilda swept Maisie off in the evenings to instruct her in the finer details of snooping through a stranger's office.

“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.”

The fate of Peter Eckersley, like the next installment of
The Perils of Pauline
, would have to wait another day. It was time for the final broadcast of
Questions for Women Voters
. Hilda had insisted that a coda on Election Day would be fitting.