Phyllida shut the book.
“Lot of maungy nonsense,” she pronounced, and blew a raspberry at the cover for extra emphasis. Maisie whipped out her handkerchief to wipe the book clean of spittle before replacing it on the shelf. “Means sod all these days, and they know it,” Phyllida added, folding her arms in satisfaction.
“Someone like Miss Matheson deserves to be in a book like this, doesn’t she? There’s Who’s Who, but that doesn’t seem illustrious enough,” Maisie said, her finger still resting on the spine.
Phyllida drew her away. “Miss Matheson will earn her way into something much better, you’ll see.”
The Chelsea pub definitely attracted a Bohemian crowd. Maisie glanced around it in satisfaction. However much she might dislike Georgina, she always felt right surrounded by people who wrote and made art. Maybe Simon did, too?
“Maisie!” he cried, reaching for her hand. “Absolutely topping of you to join me. Quaint little snug this, isn’t it?”
That seemed an abuse of synonyms, but he winked, and she noticed his eyes had flecks of gold in them. That tingle danced across her neck again, and she was glad to swallow her sudden heat in the gin-and-tonic he offered her.
“So! Have there been any great new adventures in Savoy Hill since we last met?” he wanted to know.
“Every hour is an adventure there,” she said, not mentioning that there were some adventures the Talks Department could do without. She still hadn’t had a moment to tell Hilda about the meeting. She hadn’t even had time to think about Simon. Or not too much, anyway.
“Every time you mention your BBC, your eyes dance a little reel,” he said.
She grinned, feeling herself blush.
“That’s an awfully old-fashioned dance.”
“I’m an awfully old-fashioned fellow.”
Another wink belied the assertion, as did the achingly on-trend cuffed trousers, Fair Isle jumper, and two-tone brogues he wore. And of course there was his job, one of the few respectable lines for aristocrats. If he was old-fashioned, he’d have to work a bit harder to prove it. He kept smiling, and her hand slid to the banquette, clutching her holdall in an attempt to keep herself from tossing the gin down her throat in one go.
“Your Miss Matheson certainly sounds modern enough,” he said, leaning back and lighting a cigarette. “Got rather a name for herself, hasn’t she? ‘Making the BBC,’ and all that.”
“Have you met her?”
“Not had the honor, tragically, but one does hear stories.”
“I’m glad to report they are all true.”
He laughed. Eyes twinkling, he reached out a hand as though to touch her hair. But Maisie, staring at his approaching fingers, didn’t find out what he was about to do because her grasp on her bag was too tight and the cheap fastener snapped open, sending pencils, pad, several Radio Times, and a Cadbury Nut Bar tumbling to the grubby floor.
“I say, it’s the great flood!” Simon laughed, helping her gather her things. Maisie lunged for the pad. Not so long ago, the Cadbury would have been her first priority for rescue.
“I hope they’re paying you extra to ferry these around,” Simon said, dangling a copy of the Radio Times between his thumb and forefinger.
“You don’t have to treat it like radium,” said Maisie, snatching it from him. “Actually, I write for it sometimes,” she added, realizing as she said so that this was a slight exaggeration.
“Do you?” Simon regarded the magazine with increased interest. “And do these issues have something of yours inside?”
“Oh, no. No, I just—”
“No false modesty here, Maisie dear! I see writing of yours indeed.”
Her notes, scribbled in the margin by the ad. Only not scribbled enough, because they were perfectly legible.
Maybe that’s why Miss Matheson writes like she does?
“That’s nothing, really, just—”
“I do believe you’ve tricked me, my dear! You’re not a secretary. You’re an investigative journalist! Or are you in MI5? No, I oughtn’t ask. You might be able to have me killed.”
“Don’t you like living dangerously?”
He laughed. “I say, if you are an investigative journalist, do let a fellow in, man-to-man, will you? I’ve been longing to show up all our so-called papers, show them what a real media can be.”
“What’s wrong with the newspapers?” Maisie demanded. Simon threw back his head and laughed so hard, she worried he might burst a blood vessel.
“Oh my, Maisie,” he gasped. “I would need such a lot more gin to answer that. But come, you must see most of them are no better than this silly rag your BBC puts out.”
“The Radio Times is listings and supplements. You can’t compare it to the actual Times.”
He wasn’t listening, but amusing himself by flipping through her other copies of the magazine until they were all open to the page with the Siemens ad, all of which she had circled. So much for her stint as a stealth artist.
“Are you shopping for a Siemens wireless set, or are these listening parties good fun?”
“More like bad theater,” she told him, attempting to slide the magazines from his grip. “Silly meetings, really. Lots of babble about . . . about nothing.”
“So you’ve been!” Simon cried. “Now you must take me. We can acquire rotting fruit to throw at the poor players.”
“I think we’d need something more lethal,” she said, though it was nonetheless tantalizing. Simon didn’t seem to hear her; he was riveted on the ad in the new Radio Times.
“Maisie,” he said slowly, studying the ad. “If I’ve cottoned on to this correctly, a bit of your bad theater is happening tonight. Quite near here—look. Moving locations around, how divinely medieval of them, a veritable traveling troupe!”
“Simon, really, I’d so much rather us just chat here, or perhaps over supper?”
He tossed back the last of his whiskey.
“Supper there will be, I promise, but it’s always best after the show. This, my dear, is what we call ‘kismet.’ Let’s go!”
“Well, the thing is, I—”
He was out the door, and she had to catch his arm to stop him.
“There was a man when I went before, a fellow I recognized, and I would rather he not see me if I can avoid it, is the thing.”
“Curiouser and curiouser!” Simon cried. “All right, then. Let’s have a squint, and if the blackguard is there and is too big for me to knock down, we’ll make our great escape, shall we?”
Simon’s smile was terrifically convincing. He ought to be in advertising. He could sell people on anything. Probably even arsenic.
“Well. All right. But we have to be careful,” she pleaded. She cursed every circle she’d drawn around those absurd ads.
“Certainly. But there’s such a thing as too much caution. Look at me. A second son, with no property to inherit, just a modest sum to live on. I could manage on the interest, but I wanted to do something useful. I want to always write what I think and perhaps make people cross by it. Make a real name for myself, speaking out. But I knew from the start I couldn’t be afraid. Fear is for the weak-minded.”
“Aren’t you afraid of anything, Simon?”
“I try to leave fear behind and look to the future. Making Britain more glorious than ever and all that, what?”
“Didn’t people think that before the war, though?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that Britain was so strong and glorious and everyone was certain there was nothing but a great future to keep on coming, because all those treaties meant war wasn’t possible anymore. But then it happened anyway and now—”
“Yes, yes, you’re quite right,” he agreed with blunt but easy politeness. “But I prefer to think it’s the sort of thing that makes us stronger going forward.”
She hoped so. It was hard, though, not to feel a little trepidatious. Maisie didn’t believe in ghosts, thought the obsession with spiritualism absurd, but could understand it, too. It was hard to walk through London and not feel the occasional shadow.
She looked at Simon. Tall, handsome, burnished gold and bronze, a man tanned from rough play, not work, sporty, beloved, educated, wealthy, and aristocratic. Born to be feared, not feel it. Not that most people feared aristocrats anymore. Except maybe Lady Astor. A little fear in general can’t be a bad thing, though, can it?
“Maisie, if your head buzzes any louder, you’ll be mistaken for a beehive,” Simon chided.
“Yes. It does that,” she apologized, shaking off the various thoughts.
“Doesn’t it create interference at work?”
Maisie laughed until she saw his confusion.
“Sorry. I thought you meant . . . ‘interference’? Because of the technical . . . ? Never mind. Anyway, it’s good to think at the BBC. They like that sort of thing.”
“Even from secretaries?” he teased.
“Would you want a secretary who couldn’t think?”
“I daresay that would depend on her thoughts. But fair enough. My compliments to the BBC for welcoming thoughts, even from secretaries.”
Then he bent down and kissed her on the lips. Lightly. Then not so lightly. Then she wasn’t sure, because time stopped.
“Well, look at us,” Simon breathed, his mouth still close to hers. Whiskey and cigarettes on his breath. She wanted to weave the scent into a cocoon coat. “We Britons don’t behave like this, I’ll have you know. Even in Chelsea.”
Her laugh came out in a shuddering gasp, and he stroked her cheek.
“I think we may have arrived,” he said, his tone a mix of regret and excitement.
They stood before the gaudy front window of a fortune-telling establishment.
“Inauspicious, to say the least,” Simon said, chuckling. “Shall we venture in?”
Now that they were upon the meeting, Maisie was uneasy. She tugged her hat down as far as it would go. At the mention of “Lion,” they were waved into the pink-and-purple shop’s spacious back room without question.
She didn’t see Mr. Hoppel, but it was otherwise much the same crowd. The golden-haired speaker—Maisie felt silly thinking of him as Lion—continued to detail their plans. His pleasant lilting tones, so perfect for broadcast, were somehow more disquieting than the expected roar.
“Of course, it’s best that we prevent all women working, aside from servants. But we must better instruct them in the care of children.”
Simon nudged Maisie. “Ah, you naughty workingwomen!”
Maisie knew he meant her to smile, but she couldn’t.
“We can perhaps engage one woman for the BBC under the new regime, to broadcast solely to women, guiding them appropriately. An aristocrat, perhaps, so she commands authority and need only volunteer.”
“Ah, they mean to put you out of work, methinks!” said Simon, chuckling. “This is capital.”
“It’s not funny,” Maisie whispered.
“And we will certainly see that the press is more responsible as well. Some of what these so-called journalists are allowed to publish is virtually obscene.”
Rather depends upon how you define the word, I think.
“I think the blighter means to insult me,” Simon whispered, delighted.
Maisie saw a teapot-shaped man in a bowler hat gazing at them with an intent frown. Her heart chilled. People of a certain class knew their own, and a City man might recognize members of the aristocracy. And Simon had a face one remembered.
“We are going to save our country, and we will begin by insisting that the truth be told,” the Lion assured everyone with a warm smile.
The truth. Their truth. So different from the truth as Hilda saw it. As Maisie saw it. As most, she hoped, saw it. But she didn’t know.
Maisie’s fingers twitched. She needed a pencil. She needed to write. It wasn’t going to wait. And that man was still looking at them, with the look of one who wanted to introduce himself.
“I’ve got a merciless headache,” she whispered, reflexively pleased by her first usage of the standard women’s social maneuver. “I think I’ve got to get home.”
Simon promptly proved what it meant to have been inculcated in gentlemanly gallantry since the swaddling stage. Within seconds they were on the street and he had hailed a cab, though she insisted she could manage with the tram.
“I’m grateful to you, Maisie, really. Another minute and they’d have stoned me to death.” He laughed, then took her hand and kissed it, gazing into her eyes.
The treacherous fist in her chest clawed its way to her brain and nearly made her say, “I feel better now. Let’s go anywhere, everywhere, now, forever.”
But she was too dazed to form words, and he skillfully handed the driver some money and her into the cab and, with one lingering look, was gone.
The fist inside settled down and her fingers closed around her pencil. Words flowing across the blue lines in her boxy, conscientious script.
“Could the Fear of Communism Lead to Something Worse? Would the British People Willingly Sacrifice Hard-Won Freedoms for This False Fear? Thoughts from a Canadian.”
She stared at that for a moment and amended:
“A Canadian-American.”
She had no idea where she meant these words to end up. It didn’t matter. She just kept writing, and writing, and was still writing when she got out of the cab, as she walked through the door, and by the dim light in the sitting room, not noticing that her fingers were growing cramped and she hadn’t even taken off her hat.
THIRTEEN
Maisie was pacing outside Savoy Hill when Hilda sauntered up.
“I’ve got to speak with you. Can we go inside the chapel a minute?”
“My goodness, Miss Musgrave, how very cloak-and-daggerish!” Hilda, always delighted with novelty, was glad to accommodate. They were as alone as Maisie hoped; the chapel’s only other occupant was a red squirrel, genuflecting over an abandoned sandwich.
“Miss Matheson, I’ve been reading the Radio Times every week, cover to cover—”
“Oh, and here I thought you liked yourself,” Hilda said, eyes dancing.
Maisie refused to smile.
“The thing is, I’ve been noticing these, well, adverts of sorts, for meetings. I’ve typed them all up so you can see.” Hilda glanced at the notes and back at Maisie, encouraging her to go on. “And I went along, and it seems to be a branch of the Fascists. Or a splinter, perhaps. Anyway, the DG’s friend Mr. Hoppel was there, and he works for Siemens, and you had once thought . . .”
Hilda exhaled heavily and leaned against the baptismal font.
“Well, well, well. You’ve been having quite an extracurricular time of things.”
“What do you make of it?” Maisie asked.
“What do you make of it?” Hilda countered.
“Oh, don’t do that, Miss Matheson, not this time, please!”
“I certainly shall! You’ve not taken up spying as a lark. You know there’s likely something afoot. So? What are your instincts suggesting?”
“They were your instincts. They came from that German pamphlet you had.”
“I’m well aware. Go on.”
“All right. Well, last night, I was out with, well, a fellow—”
“The Honorable Mr. Brock-Morland?”
Maisie nearly toppled into a pew. “How on earth did you know?”
“He sent you that letter with the Pinpoint copies, and at least one other note besides. Remember, I was a secretary, too. Political, not clerical, but nonetheless, we see everything.”
Maisie had a sudden flash on Miss Jenkins instructing them to be the eyes and ears of whatever busine
ss they were so fortunate as to gain employ with.
“Oh. Well, I . . . Well, they want to take over the BBC. Or at least influence, but it’s the same, because they want to stop all women working here, all women working anywhere, and they want to take over newspapers too, so they ‘tell the truth,’ as they call it. But mostly the BBC.”
“Ah! So they see what we’re worth, do they? That’s most gratifying. Almost compensates for the lack of original thinking.”
“Miss Matheson, they’re awfully serious, and most of the people there looked quite posh and important, the sort who can influence things. And if that man Hoppel is involved, and he’s so high up in Siemens, and Siemens is one of the companies you thought those Nazi people were trying to get support from, and—”
“Miss Musgrave—”
“If MI5 is concerned, then—”
“Be quiet!” For once, Hilda looked enraged and, possibly, a little alarmed. “Some things you just don’t say in some places.” She stroked her onyx necklace. “We’ve got to go in. I’m three minutes late. Mr. Fielden has likely already rung Scotland Yard.”
“But—”
Hilda held up a warning finger. “Later.” Then she smiled her biggest Bonfire Night smile. “I promise.”
It wasn’t that Maisie didn’t trust her, but “later” had a way of stretching into weeks in Savoy Hill. Despite Hilda’s organization and Reith’s dictatorship, things spiraled out of control almost hourly. Just that morning, the well-rehearsed Mrs. Lonsdale, discussing her champion border collies, meant to say, “I breed them,” and instead said, “I bleed them.” Hilda instructed Fielden to have the mailroom set up a temporary holding tent for the coming deluge of complaints. Billy forgot to give Mr. Wallis his cue to begin, leaving thirty-two seconds of dead air, and “Beaky” Brendon’s “easy-to-train” singing parrots got loose of their cage in the corridor. Which might have been less of a problem if the string quartet hadn’t opened the door to Studio One just as Rusty thundered down the corridor with a butterfly net procured from Sound Effects (people had long since given up asking why the effects men had certain objects). Eckersley could be heard baying for blood over the “destruction” of the studio (“Just a few feathers and droppings; you’d think it was a zeppelin air raid,” Maisie said). Beaky Brendon himself had hysterics when Samson the cat got involved in the roundup, but since only a few tail feathers were sacrificed, no one else was particularly ruffled. The parrots were wrangled, Hilda slung some brandy down Beaky Brendon’s throat, and he recovered after she offered to give the parrots some as well. Samson went back to scouring Savoy Hill for mice, and everyone else went back to being several days behind in their work, a complaint so often stated, no one, including the complainants, paid any attention.
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