Radio Girls

by Sarah-Jane Stratford

  Maisie realized she hadn’t registered anything he’d said during his first reading. Now that he was talking to her, she was fascinated and full of questions, many of which he answered as he went along. But more kept cropping up, questions that had nothing to do with his script. You couldn’t have something like the League before, could you? Gather people from around the world in one place and talk about things? If we’d had it before, would it have prevented the war? What . . . ?

  “Very well-done, Bartlett,” Hilda crowed, treating him to a small applause. Even Billy nodded in approval. “Do you want to try once more for luck?”

  He did, and was so engaging this time, Maisie had to bite her tongue to stop herself from entering into dialogue. I’d look an imbecile besides getting sacked. What’s wrong with me?

  After Bartlett left, Hilda commanded Maisie’s attention.

  “I think that went rather decently. Didn’t have to bully old Bartlett too badly, did I?”

  “Er, I don’t think so?”

  “You should have seen his original script, dear, oh dear.” Hilda shook her head. “As if some people couldn’t happily ignore the League enough. Very sporting of you to act as audience. I appreciate it.”

  “Oh, certainly,” Maisie said.

  “Some of them will insist on declaiming. You’d think they were doing Euripides in the Parthenon,” Hilda mused. “Mind you, the worst ones are usually the actors.” She drew several neat lines down interoffice memos to indicate they were read and handed them to Maisie. “DG-bound, these. What say we go through some fresh scripts this afternoon, shall we? You can get your first glimpse of the sausage ingredients at their most raw!”

  “Er, well, I don’t think I’m really, that is—”

  “Not so much fun typing up revisions if you don’t see from whence they began. And that’s the best way to learn how to help make them better. Oh I know, that’s not in your job manifest, but I like all my staff to have opinions and feel free to air them.”

  “But I don’t know how—”

  “Not yet, certainly, but you’ll learn. Onwards and upwards! And on up to the DG for now.”

  “At one of those rehearsals, were you?” Miss Shields sniffed when Maisie entered the office a few minutes later. More points for the Savoy Hill buzz. “Rehearsals!” Miss Shields went on. “Give that woman an inch and she takes the entire British Isles. Honestly, just because reviews of Talks have been so good, she thinks she can dictate terms. What, pray tell, was the subject?”

  “Mr. Bartlett was talking about the work of the League of Nations.”

  “I see. Well, I suppose someone must like that sort of thing.”

  Maisie was hard-pressed to imagine what sort of thing Miss Shields would like.

  “Dull, was it?” Miss Shields asked hopefully.

  “Well, I, er, I don’t think so, actually. I mean, I sort of thought—”

  Miss Shields sniffed again and pointedly turned back to her desk. Maisie scuttled to her own little table. She rolled fresh paper and a carbon sheet into the typewriter and got to work. She didn’t miss a key, even as her mind was roving through other Talks scripts, wondering what was in them. It seemed so odd, Hilda suggesting she should do anything more than type and file and take dictation.

  Maybe I really did look interested? Good grief. I think I am.

  Saturday morning. A half day. The end of her first week.

  Maisie stirred sugar into the cup of tea she was clutching tightly enough to absorb via osmosis. Sometime today, she was going to be paid. The bottom was not going to be hit. The floor would not be fallen through. The abyss was not going to have her to swallow. Not today.

  Three pounds. Five shillings. These would be counted among her possessions this evening. Her room, her board, her lunches, pennies toward shoes, some small savings. All hers.

  Lola swanned into the kitchen, carrying two dresses.

  “Another audition today! I can’t decide between the green and the yellow. I don’t know if I should look refined or sultry, you see.”

  “The green,” Maisie advised, not sure which category it fell into.

  Lola gave the green an approving pat and helped herself to tea.

  “Ooh, end of your first week. You’re getting paid today!”

  “I suppose I am,” Maisie acknowledged. “I’ve been too busy to think of it.”

  “We’ll get a celebratory drink if the audition doesn’t run too late,” Lola promised.

  “That sounds super,” Maisie agreed, cringing at the thought of what sort of Armageddon must be befalling them if an audition of Lola’s didn’t run late.

  An hour later, as she was hanging her hat on the rack, she realized she had no idea when, or where, she was to collect her pay. Rusty must have told her on their breakneck tour, but no friendly syllable of “salary” came to mind.

  “Miss Musgrave, I do hope you’re planning to start soon. I know that many Americans don’t work on a Saturday, but here we are keen on being industrious.”

  She hadn’t planned on asking Miss Shields anyway.

  It will be in the buzz. It must be.

  Saturdays had a lighter broadcasting schedule. Apparently, it was bad form to think that people might use their increased leisure time to listen to the wireless. Or maybe the idea was not to encourage them. Maisie wasn’t sure.

  The buzz certainly didn’t care about the listeners. Today it was full of the ineffable sense of the self. Any evening held the potential for adventure, but a Saturday evening was portentous. It was stuffed with hours in which things could happen and could keep rolling on and on and on. Unblocked time—provided you weren’t obliged to attend church in the morning—in which a whole life could unfold. Worlds could turn. The weight of everyone’s anticipation was making Maisie a little nauseous.

  The tearoom’s happy chatter felt like an insult, especially when snippets of plans to spend money arrowed into her ears.

  “Can you believe it? I’ll finally pay off that dear silk frock! I can’t wait to see Maurice’s face when he sees me in it.”

  “I’m taking Doris dancing at that new spot everyone’s been rabbiting on about.” (Billy? A date? Poor Doris.)

  “We’re getting our fittings for that masquerade ball. What an absolute hoot!”

  Maisie reminded herself she didn’t care. She would keep herself fed and sheltered and could start improving herself and become someone that a man (not Billy) would want to take dancing at the new spot. Provided I learn how to dance.

  Any moment now, someone would say something. She was so sure she was about to hear Cyril’s voice saying, “Hallo, New York. Payday, what? Come along and pick up your pennies,” that she stopped hearing the rest of the din and was only roused when she took a sip and saw her cup was empty. The room was empty, too. She ran back to the executive offices.

  “Now, see here, Miss Musgrave. I can excuse your foreignness only so long. You ought to have been back three minutes ago, and please tell me you are not panting.” Miss Shields sniffed.

  “No . . . I . . . Sorry,” Maisie muttered, backing to her table.

  She typed, hardly knowing what keys she was hitting. Would Alfred or another mail boy come in with an envelope? It was ridiculous not to ask, but questions were verboten for Maisie long before she met Miss Jenkins. Lorelei had no interest in any granddaughter, much less an inquisitive one. Georgina felt the same about a daughter. Librarians welcomed questions, but Maisie had already learned to be cautious with her curiosity, hugging information as it was provided, but letting her wondering mind explore the stacks alone, satisfied to stumble upon scraps of knowledge in her quest for whatever she originally sought.

  Sister Bennister hadn’t been one for encouraging questions, and all Maisie really wanted to ask in the hospital was why this war had had to happen, and the opinions on that front flew at the same rate as the b
ullets on the Western front.

  But no one was as violently opposed to questions as Miss Jenkins. “You must appear from day one to know your work intimately. Never give anyone reason to query your capacity. If there is something you don’t know, up to and including where the ladies’ room is, simply keep your eyes and ears open and figure it out.”

  Maisie plucked the correspondence from Hilda’s in-tray. Her eyes and ears were open, but all she could see or hear was Hilda, on the phone.

  “Oh, certainly,” Hilda was saying. “I haven’t got any quarrel with his politics. We’re all allowed to hold whatever opinion we wish. That’s the beauty of a free country . . . Precisely, even if it’s irretrievably silly . . . No, no, my hesitation with inviting him to broadcast is that his work is painfully dull . . . Yes, the BBC is committed to airing all points of view, but we’re also very keen on keeping listeners awake. No, I assure you . . . If it were bad work, that would at least be a conversation point. Dull is simply pointless.”

  Hilda hung up a few minutes later, and Maisie handed her a sheaf of letters.

  “Thank you, Miss Musgrave. Been a good first week, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I suppose so, Miss Matheson.”

  “Many more to come, I hope,” Hilda said. Maisie nodded absently, trying to control her nerves. She was dizzy, and couldn’t feel her fingers anymore.

  Hilda looked over the next week’s schedule, her pencil running a steady gauntlet through all the broadcasts, each name provisionally knighted as she went along.

  “It’s horribly impertinent of me, I’m sure,” she said suddenly, eyes still on the schedule, “but I’m given to understand that this is about the usual time for a weekly employee to collect pay at the cashier window.”

  “The cashier window?” What—and where—on earth was the cashier window?

  Hilda’s smile was infuriatingly kind.

  “I’m sure you’ve passed it a dozen times without noticing. On the fourth floor, the little cage at the south end of the corridor.” She paused, grinning. “Looks not unlike the sort of jail cells you see in Western films.”

  “Do I go now?” Maisie asked, half standing. “I’m not done with this.”

  “We will never be done with the post. Go and get your money. You don’t want the cashier to run out before your first pay.”

  She laughed at Maisie’s traumatized face.

  “I’m pulling your leg, Miss Musgrave. Run along and collect your wages.”

  Maisie was a fast runner. She could have leapfrogged anyone who had a five-minute start on her. But she walked, forcing sedateness into her stride. She wasn’t going to let anyone laugh at her eagerness.

  There was a queue for the cashier’s window, a retired corner that Maisie had indeed never noticed.

  A clutch of typists was queued ahead of Maisie, headed by Phyllida. She smiled on seeing Maisie, took a luxuriant puff of a cigarette in a pink Bakelite holder, and nudged the others.

  “Pah, I told you it was just a gentlemen’s bet.” She turned back to Maisie. “We didn’t think you knew how to collect your wages.”

  I’m so sorry to have disappointed you.

  “Oh,” Maisie said, hoping it was enough to end the conversation.

  “I suppose someone told you.”

  Maisie couldn’t see how that required a response.

  “Would you have asked if they hadn’t?” Phyllida asked, her expression uncomfortably shrewd.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m not trying to be impertinent.” (Though she was succeeding admirably). “You just don’t seem the asking sort.”

  A point to Miss Jenkins! But the crease between Phyllida’s brows made Maisie feel guilty.

  “I guess I don’t know what sort I am,” she told Phyllida.

  That made Phyllida laugh, a deep, boisterous laugh that echoed centuries of raising tankards in the remote countryside on a rare night off. She muttered something, and Maisie realized Phyllida’s usual voice struggled to tamp down a strong Yorkshire dialect, the sort that was generally sneered at in London.

  Maisie was still thinking about Phyllida’s accent when, at last, it was her turn at the barred window.

  “Oh, yes. Miss Musgrave,” the cashier, Miss Mallinson, responded when Maisie gave her name. She wore round spectacles and a masculine tie and worked with brisk purpose, but gave Maisie a wide smile as she slid the brown pay packet under the bars. “Welcome to the BBC.”

  Maisie half nodded and tiptoed away, not hearing the whispers and ill-suppressed giggles her trance accorded.

  It was real.

  Pound notes. Her previous pay packets had been so small, she had never received paper, only coins. Which she liked. Coins had heft, and history. Their value was irrefutable. She liked the way they jingled in her purse. That was the song of solvency. The cheerful assurance that there would be food and comfort through the day. It was better than any hymn.

  Paper had no such assurance, and far less romance. But Maisie knew it imparted its own power. There were many working people, far more deserving than herself, who never saw paper wages. She was still poor, but in the last twenty seconds, she had entered a new class.

  She hadn’t thought it was possible to walk sedately when really she was running, skipping, bounding. But she managed it just fine.

  FOUR

  February 1927

  “New sign, new letterhead, new memos, new everything; who’s paying for this, I ask you?” Fielden grumbled at no one in particular.

  Maisie rolled a piece of the offending letterhead and carbon into her typewriter. She didn’t pretend to understand the significance, but as of January 1, the BBC was now the British Broadcasting Corporation, not “Company” any longer, and vast quantities of paper were sent to be pulped into something else. Hilda would explain it to her if she asked, but Maisie didn’t ask. She did, however, think that the new name looked even more impressive on paper, and this pleased her.

  By now she knew that grumbling was the standard form of communication for Fielden, and though he was senior to the two producers and Talks assistants wedged into two rooms across from Hilda’s office, they mostly ignored him.

  “Spend a king’s ransom on stationery and can’t spare a penny for the gas fire,” Fielden went on, and here Maisie agreed with him. A rainy January had turned into a rainy February, and the fires were not holding up their end.

  Hilda was blithely untroubled by the weather. She strolled in at seven minutes to nine every morning with a punctuality that would have intimidated a naval officer. Just as the carriage clock sang the hour, her coat and hat were hanging on the rack, galoshes discreetly behind the stand, drying on an oilcloth, and she was at her desk looking over the day’s schedule, sipping coffee. She had already read the papers but brought them in to annotate.

  “Why bother?” Fielden asked. “The Reuters fellows give us our news report.”

  “For now,” Hilda corrected him. “Besides, I’m marking items that could be fodder for Talks. Or potentially useful broadcasters. Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t in fact know everyone.” She gave them a broad music-hall wink.

  “Don’t you believe it,” Fielden warned Maisie later as she was headed to Sound Effects. “Our Lady would be a brilliant gossip if she weren’t so above that sort of thing.”

  When Maisie first heard Fielden refer to Hilda as “Our Lady,” she assumed he was being sarcastic and mocking, as he was about everyone. Now she knew that Hilda was, in fact, the only person in the BBC whom he respected. Even worshipped. She wondered if Hilda knew his term for her. Probably. Hilda knew everything.

  It was universally agreed that Sound Effects was more in need of soundproofing than the recording studios. Maisie tapped politely on the door, next to the sign that read: EVERYONE MUST KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING. NO EXCEPTIONS, NOT EVEN YOU! There was no answer, which didn’t w
holly surprise her, as it sounded like dinosaurs were having a boxing match inside. She knocked harder.

  “That’s not likely to work, miss,” Rusty advised as he ran past, bearing a lumpy package. “Most just go on in.”

  “The sign says not to,” Maisie argued, though he was halfway up the stairs. She pounded on the door, ignoring giggles from passersby, till Phyllida, on her way to the favored ladies’ lavatory, reached under Maisie’s arm and flung the door open.

  “Spares you bruising your hand,” Phyllida called behind her.

  Maisie stepped to the edge of a blazing battle. Billy and another engineer were apparently unimpressed with the planned effects for some upcoming program.

  “It has far too much range; it’s going to burst eardrums,” Billy yelled.

  “Aren’t your machines fine enough to accommodate whatever we create?” The lead effects man, Jones, was fiercely protective of his creation.

  “Aren’t you able to work within parameters?”

  “See here, you’re not creative people—”

  “And you have no brains for technology!”

  The other three sound effects men were busy with designs and tests, unruffled by the conflagration. Maisie recognized the wild-eyed glee of theater people, even in men who were respectably married and not so very young—although young in the way everyone in Savoy Hill was young, except Reith.

  “Did you knock?” one of them challenged her. She was fairly sure he was called Fowler; they all looked alike. “Oh, you’re Matheson’s girl, aren’t you?” he went on, gaining animation. “Anything good?”

  “We’ve got three pilots coming in, talking about planes and the future of flight, but they’d like to give a sense of what flying sounds like—”

  “I say, that sounds difficult!” Fowler purred happily.

  “They all flew in the war, and wouldn’t mind re-creating the sound of a dogfight for a portion of the Talk, if that’s possible?”

  “Gunfire!” Fowler clapped his hands. “That’s one of the hardest effects to get right! And for a Talk, too, not just a play. By Jove, that’ll be rough!”