Radio Girls

by Sarah-Jane Stratford

  “And I were only having a bit of fun with my chum here,” Phyllida said, her voice steely. “I’ve nae read of any laws against having fun.”

  On hearing her accent, it was clear the woman was astounded Phyllida could read at all. The waitress hovered, hoping she would not be called upon to mediate or, worse, adjudicate.

  Whether it was evident from the breadth of Phyllida’s shoulders that she could thump a person soundly and return to her meal without missing a breath, or a general unwillingness to be one of those who caused a scene she could not control, the feathery woman merely harrumphed.

  “You girls these days. So keen on your fun. Just you wait and see; you’ll pay for that fun good and proper.”

  It was certainly a fine exit line—Georgina would have adored it—but she lost some ground as she was leaving because Maisie called after her:

  “At least we’ll pay with money we’ve earned ourselves!”

  After which Maisie and Phyllida found it prudent to pay and leave as well. They each gave the waitress an extra penny, and congratulated themselves on being able to do so.

  “I lost my eldest brother in Passchendaele,” Phyllida said as they walked toward the cinema in the heavy blue twilight. “And not a day goes by I wish I didn’t know how to spell that bloody name. But these are better times, whatever anyone says, and I like being able to work and if I don’t want to marry, I won’t, and I will not go back to a time when someone says otherwise.”

  A brother. Phyllida didn’t tend to talk about her family, which Maisie well respected. She knew that nearly everyone they passed on the ten-minute walk had lost someone. Father, brother, son, uncle, nephew, cousin, friend. But these were better times. Weren’t they? She was seized by an impulse to stop and ask everyone in Piccadilly Circus what they thought and write it all down. She linked her arm through Phyllida’s to stop herself.

  “I’m so sorry.” Her mind wandered once again to the unknown Edwin Musgrave. Likely too old to have fought, she hoped. But he had family here; he must. Had she lost cousins, uncles, perhaps even half brothers? Lost before found. How would she ever know? “Why the heck did so many have to die to make these better times? It’s a damn crying shame.”

  Phyllida squeezed her arm.

  “Do you know, I can always tell when you’re a little hotted up—you use American slang.”

  “Do I? Gads, but I’m years out-of-date.”

  “Or you’re starting the trends here,” Phyllida said, unfailingly loyal. “I shouldn’t have joked on being a Bolshie, though. Not where stupid people could hear.”

  “Stupid is right. What’s the matter with them, anyhow?”

  “Pah. Nowt queer than folk, is what my people say. A bit pat, but does the job. Want to share a chocolate bar?”

  Maisie did. But neither the chocolate nor Buster Keaton could stop her mind from asking questions.

  The questions were still flowing as bountifully as the tea in The Cosy Rosy, where Maisie ignored the silly name and spent half her Sunday afternoons reading and working through two pots of tea and a mountain of Cosy’s special digestives. The Radio Times, she found, was a great balm to the buzzing mind. She read it cover to cover every week, exulting in its perky nothingness and her own part in its existence. The same general advertisements ran in each issue. Bert likely found it both boring and convenient. There were also a few personal advertisements, and these Maisie couldn’t resist reading. It felt like eavesdropping. She had technically outgrown the glossies, but she still pored over Lola’s discards and found plenty of personals with which to sympathize. The personals in the Radio Times were less drenched in bathos but still intriguing. “If you love the evening Talks and want someone to sit and listen with, please write.”

  It felt like taking Hilda’s notion of the radio as a form of creating connection to an absurd extreme.

  Maisie glanced around the shop to be sure no one was looking, dunked a digestive into her tea, and transferred the whole thing into her mouth. She skimmed the last few pages of the Radio Times and turned to the Independent. Deep into an article about BBC listening groups (and another digestive), something clicked in her brain. She sat there, the digestive melting into her tongue, trying to figure out what she was trying to figure out. Something about listening, radio, meetings . . .

  She flipped back through the Radio Times and stopped at the Siemens ad, extolling its most popular wireless. No, it wasn’t the ad; the ad was the same they’d run for months (the stupid one the boys loved to quote around the typists: “She turns the knob and music wells out”). Maybe it was the text beside it:

  “Listen in a like-minded crowd! If Siemens is your favorite wireless, opt to gather ’round with us. News of a real sort and refreshments, too!”

  It looked like it could be part of the ad. There was an address in New Bond Street, probably a shop. Nothing to excite interest. Quite the opposite. Still, something was nudging her. She had two previous Radio Times in the battered holdall she’d bought in a secondhand shop. The magazines were wrinkled, crushed, and covered in crumbs. Hilda would be aghast. Maisie silently apologized as she opened the magazines to compare pages.

  It had to be nothing, really. This must be the effect of all the constant certainty of Russian spies, or Hilda’s interest in German propaganda, making her see things in the most innocuous of places. Or her prejudice against Siemens, brought on less by the propaganda than by her dislike for Mr. Hoppel, Reith’s friend at the company. But the longer she looked at the listings, the more something seemed odd. Nothing might, in fact, be something.

  Hilda’s laughing, encouraging voice sounded in her head: Why don’t you go find out and let me know?

  Maisie wrote Hilda’s words again. “Siemens?” “Nestlé?”

  Oh.

  Siemens, at least, was German. Perhaps the largest German company to have a presence in Britain?

  Maisie circled the address in the magazine. What’s life without a little adventure? And it does promise refreshments.

  TWELVE

  Maisie was unreasonably disappointed to find the address in New Bond Street was, after all, a shop selling wireless sets. The shopkeeper, a Dickensian wisp of a man with pince-nez and a cravat, guided her to the favorite sets for “the young ladies.”

  I’m an idiot. It’s just a listening party. Plenty of people still do that. Much cheaper than buying your own wireless. Her eyes caressed the wood and Bakelite radios, so pretty, so past her price range. Even if her room was wired for electricity.

  “It is nearly closing time, miss,” the shopkeeper said with a pointed cough.

  “But I saw an advert, for a listening party?” She was here, after all. Might as well ask.

  “I think you must be mistaken,” he said.

  “No, it’s right here,” she argued, digging in her bag for the Radio Times. As she did so, a young man strolled in.

  “Have you got a Lion by any chance?”

  “A very good choice, sir, one of our finest!” the shopkeeper answered. “Right this way, sir.”

  It was possible anyone else would shrug, or storm off in a huff. But no one else had suffered through any number of overwrought melodramas in which Georgina starred. Maisie immediately discerned an embarrassingly crude setup and the stagiest of poor line readings—and her body reacted with its usual automatic shudder. She tagged after the men.

  “So you’ll guide a gentleman to the Lion, but not a lady?”

  “Begging your pardon, miss,” the shopkeeper said, flustered. “I quite misunderstood you.”

  And she and the young man stepped into the back room together.

  She was nearly knocked back by a man’s booming voice. If it had been a listening party, they would have been intent on Vernon Bartlett’s Talk about the League’s plans for a constitution in Syria. But it wasn’t. It was a meeting. Maisie cloaked herself in Invisible Girl and drif
ted into a corner.

  “. . . it is not just about our own good political fortune,” the speaker said. He was quite handsome, with golden hair and a gentle smile. His accent was at once patrician and friendly. “We must and can do a great deal to advance the fortunes of our fine friends in Germany. They are most grateful for all our advice and assistance, and I am convinced they will repay us for it most handsomely. It will be an easy thing, convincing the British to admire Germany once again. But we must hurry. We must do more today, every day, to convince our local MPs of the urgency.”

  “Well, Lion, I find that donations to a pet cause go a long way towards currying favor with a politician,” a woman in evening dress advised. Maisie was outraged on Lady Astor’s behalf.

  “But will they go far enough to close up all this openness we’re seeing in society?” a blustery old man demanded. “Young people aren’t being properly molded. It is appalling.”

  “Quite so,” the handsome speaker—apparently the Lion—acquiesced with a shake of his golden head. “But all that will change once we have exerted our influence upon the BBC.”

  That fist in Maisie’s chest nearly flew out of her mouth.

  “That may yet take a great deal of doing,” a man called from the other side of the room. “Things are well entrenched there. Although I believe the election will mean a new board of governors and the opportunity to replace the director-general, should that be necessary, though I do hope not. The current man is, I think, amenable.”

  “I am most pleased to hear it,” the Lion said. “We can have our own Five-Year Plan, you know, only ours will be accomplished more quickly. The BBC will be far easier to manage, once we have barred all women from working there.”

  What?! Maisie fought to retain the cloak of Invisible Girl. Who were these lunatics?

  “And don’t forget the newspapers,” another man piped up in a gruff voice. “I am still arranging to purchase a number of newspapers, and searching for the right man to manage them.”

  “Yes, I daresay it is useful to have outlets for those who still read,” the other man said, to much laughter. “But with sales of less expensive wirelesses growing apace, the BBC will allow us to make the Britain we want, and in good time.”

  Maisie spotted a table laden with sandwiches, coffee, and cakes, but had no appetite. Although she could only see his nose and avuncular smile, there was no question: The man with the plan for the BBC was Hoppel, of Siemens. Siemens, who also offered less expensive wireless sets. She slithered to the door. Dollars to doughnuts he’d never recognize me, but what a damn waste of a doughnut if he did.

  Which wasn’t going to stop her from calling again, after she’d raided Lola’s trunk for a wig and some stage makeup. She wasn’t Georgina’s daughter for nothing.

  Maisie was bursting with communicativeness the next day and was thwarted at every turn—it was simply too typical a day for a conversation in Talks.

  “Mary Cartwright needs to be rescheduled again—so much for bankers having regular hours—and we’ve got to sort out Rebecca West, fine writer but my goodness, she doesn’t understand broadcasting at all. Oh, and that mathematician at Oxford wouldn’t change his script, insisting that women aren’t capable of higher maths, so we’re just going to replace him. That’s censorship of me, isn’t it? Very poor form, but a lesser crime than putting ladies off numbers. I am looking forward to telling him we’re getting someone from Manchester instead; that should get him counting to ten a few times, and were you able to make any progress on getting us more storage space for files?”

  Hilda sat on the floor, a cheery volcanic island in a sea of red-inked scripts and the week’s schedule. Maisie sat at the edge of the papers, rearranging and taking notes as Hilda talked, as though she were dealing three-card Monte.

  “I think we can manage Miss Cartwright for next Wednesday after Mr. Bartlett. We can push Life in Roman Britain to the following week. I’ll draft the letter before lunch, and the only way we’re getting more space is if we branch out onto the roof. We’re growing so much, there’s some real concern about the joists. Miss Matheson, if I may, I had a rather extraordinary experience last night that I think is not unrelated to the—”

  “Miss Matheson, what the devil are you doing?”

  Reith was standing in the door, glaring down at them. Just behind him was the despondent figure of Fielden, the messenger who had failed to warn them in time. Maisie wondered how much Reith had heard.

  “Ah, Mr. Reith, welcome,” Hilda said with the warmth of a hostess at a garden party. “Do join us. Would you like a biscuit? They’re lemon-flavored, very nice.”

  “You are a senior member of this staff. You ought to be showing some decorum,” Reith snarled. He looked ready to seize Hilda and jerk her to her feet. Despite their almost comical difference in size, Maisie could easily see Hilda pushing Reith back. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised to see Hilda thump him.

  “Sitting on the floor helps me think, I’ve told you,” Hilda reminded him airily. “It’s hardly indecorous.”

  “What if an important guest were to walk in?”

  “I’ve got extra cushions and plenty of biscuits,” Hilda answered.

  Maisie hid her laugh in a fake sneeze.

  “This is hardly a moment for levity, Miss Matheson. I’m very troubled . . . Will you take a proper seat, please?”

  “Of course,” Hilda said, ever gracious, and swept herself up and into her chair. Reith, however, chose to remain standing.

  “Miss Matheson, I need you to replace Sir John Simon in the talk on Lord Birkenhead.”

  Hilda turned white. “But, Mr. Reith, we’ve invited him. He’s accepted. It’s all arranged.”

  “Yes.” He helped himself to one of her cigarettes. “You’ll have to disinvite him. He’s not appropriate for broadcast—his personal life, you see.”

  “I’m afraid I very much do not see.”

  Neither did Maisie. Sir John was married to an activist of some sort, but that was as much as she knew of him. Reith rolled his eyes.

  “Well, with the girl present, I can’t say more. Just see to it at once. This isn’t pleasant for me, you know. Do you realize I had MPs on the phone after that Bolshie debate, worried we might be creating panic? Panic, Miss Matheson!”

  “Oh, what tosh,” Hilda said, ignoring the disappearance of Reith’s eyebrows. “The papers are constantly screeching any amount of dross about Russians, radicalism, revolution, probably even roller skates. We create a space for dialogue, and that calms things down rather than stirs them up. The more people understand—”

  “You’re not going to argue that radio forges connection again, are you?”

  “I don’t have to. I think it’s been quite proven.”

  She was going too far. Maisie wanted to throw herself between them.

  “Miss Matheson, I admire your hard work, but you must be more temperate. I see, for example, you are allowing Lady Nicholson to review that filthy Mead book?”

  “Oh, it’s not filthy at all, Mr. Reith. It offers an extraordinary insight into the Samoan culture! Remarkable people. Here . . .” She produced the book from her stack. “Do read at least some of it.”

  Reith shied from the book in more alarm than Maisie guessed he ever had from mustard gas.

  “You’ll disinvite Sir John, and I don’t like the sound of this fellow talking about our oil interests in Persia. The Persians are lucky to have our business, you know.”

  “That’s not really what—”

  “You must be politic as well as political,” he said. Feeling the impression of the exit line, he nodded to Hilda and Maisie and strode away.

  Fielden stuck his head in. “Shall I reschedule the oil talk, then?”

  “I suppose so,” Hilda said. “I’ll try to winkle more of what’s troubling him. Do draw up some names to replace Sir John Simon, will you?”


  Fielden almost smiled. Catastrophes and unpleasant tasks stimulated him.

  Maisie flipped to a fresh sheet in her pad. “Do you want to draft the letter to Sir John now?”

  “No,” said Hilda. “I most emphatically do not. He must have crossed Reith. If everyone with a dodgy personal life were barred, there’d be no one left to broadcast.” She lit a cigarette, leaned back in her chair, and glared up at the leaf-and-dart cornice. “Very silly, panicking about panic. Dangerous, too, really.”

  “Yes!” Maisie burst in. “It’s funny you should say that, because—”

  Rusty ran in, bearing aloft an urgent telegram for Hilda, just as the phone rang and Maisie jumped to answer it. One emergency turned into another, and somehow the entire week disappeared in a flume of radio waves.

  Alfred handed her a card with the last round of correspondence. “Funny, people writing to you,” he said, winking. Maisie ignored him and tore open the envelope. It was just one line, from Simon, asking if she was free to meet for a drink the next evening.

  “Ooh, someone fancies himself a Bohemian,” Phyllida said when she saw the part of Chelsea he was suggesting for their rendezvous.

  “Maybe he is and the aristocrat suggestion was just a joke?” Maisie ventured.

  They left their tea and ran down to the BBC’s library—a grand appellation for what was basically a converted airing cupboard. Squeezed together at the single bookcase, they turned the pages of Debrett’s straight to “B.” And there it was. Simon’s father, Charles Brock-Morland, was the Earl of Banbury. His older brother, Nigel, was the principal heir. Simon himself was an Honorable. A thrill of excitement ran through Maisie as she read this. Damn, I thought I’d outgrown my Lady Astor fantasies.

  “‘Honorable,’ eh?” Phyllida drawled. “And do we suppose he is?”

  “The evidence is in his favor thus far,” Maisie said. She started to close the book, but instead flipped to “W.” “Well! Look at that. Beanie’s an Honorable, too. ‘Hon. Miss Sabine Eugenia Warwick.’ It certainly is a refined name, isn’t it?”