“I bet that’s not true,” he said, taking her hand.
Twenty seconds later, she asked if she could call in that bet.
“We didn’t set the terms,” he said, laughing. “Actually, Miss Musgrave, you move rather nicely. You just need a few lessons. And you really need to relax.”
“I never relax. It’s the New York in me.”
He laughed again and adjusted his arm more firmly around her waist. Her feet got a vague sense of how they were supposed to move, and she found herself doing something that approximated dancing.
“There, you see?” he asked.
Unfortunately, she did. Over his shoulder, she saw that Siepmann had connived Hilda into a dance. Something about seeing Hilda letting herself be touched by him made Maisie’s skin crawl. She wanted to run over and pull him away. No, she wanted to rip his arms from his torso.
She stumbled, and she and Cyril knocked right into Phyllida and Billy.
“Maisie, are you all right?”
She wasn’t sure which of them asked. She shook her head.
“Sorry. I . . . I think I need something to drink, actually.”
It was Cyril who took her over to the bar.
“It’s still quite hot. You do look very flushed. A lemonade should refresh you.”
“Thank you,” she said, not hearing him.
It was all too much. The late-summer heat lying so heavily all around them like a gas cloud. She preferred the cooler weather, trusted it more. This blaze was too blinding, encouraging them all to let loose. And she had meant what she said. Relaxing was treacherous.
“Feeling better?” Cyril asked after she downed the lemonade in one gulp. He looked genuinely solicitous.
“I think so. Thank you.”
But there was Siepmann, talking to Reith again, and he had inveigled Hilda into the conversation. His hand was clutching her elbow possessively.
“You know, Miss Musgrave, you . . . ah . . . you’re really very—”
“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, a wave of dizziness overwhelming her. She was not going to faint or scream, not where anyone could see. “I’ve got to . . . I’ll be back in a minute. Thanks.”
She wandered through the dusk, trying to think, yearning for silence and solitude. She found herself back at the croquet set, now abandoned—the sound effects men were just as Dionysian as she was when it came to the buffet.
She seized a mallet and began thwacking wooden balls, hitting each of them so they soared into the air and bounced away, lost until tomorrow’s sunrise in the neatly mown grass.
EIGHTEEN
As soon as Hilda saw Maisie, she turned into the chapel outside Savoy Hill.
“Or should we perhaps be strolling down the Embankment, feeding the ducks?”
Maisie didn’t smile. She told Hilda everything she had overheard between Reith and Siepmann, words tumbling out all over but more or less comprehensible.
Hilda hoisted herself onto the altar. She crossed her ankles and stroked her onyx necklace.
“Funny, really, that there are so many greater things for people’s energy and this is how they spend it. Ah well, what can you do?”
“Miss Matheson, I think it’s quite serious. We’ve got to be on guard.”
“We can’t be on guard and do good work, and the work must not suffer. As I see it, Siepmann would like to be the next DG, and I daresay he’ll succeed. I would be most surprised if Reith isn’t grooming him thusly. No doubt there are whispers of a new position for Good Sir John, something quite high somewhere or other. The mind reels. In any event, he’s likely trying to persuade the governors to give him a deputy, thus creating a clear line of succession.”
“But—”
“I know. The DG has long since lost love for me. But he can’t sack me without cause. That would create the sort of publicity that would end up with his own head on the grass. Besides, much though some of our content makes the governors nervous, I think they would argue for me rather than against.”
Maisie didn’t want to admit what she knew—didn’t even want to hint at the name “Vita”—but she thought that Hilda was afflicted with a rare case of shortsightedness. The DG had perfect cause, if he ever came to know of it. The question would only be who would prevail in public—Hilda, because she was so widely extolled for her brilliance, or Reith, because whatever went on among the Bloomsbury Bohemia, someone had to take a stand somewhere.
“I think you’ve got plenty else to worry you, Miss Musgrave,” Hilda said, with a fond smile. “No point taking on something that isn’t anything. We’ll just carry on doing excellent work, and no one can fault us, can they?” She gave her necklace a final pat and hopped down from the altar.
“Miss Matheson?” Maisie asked as they headed for the BBC. “Your necklace, was it a gift?”
“It was, as a matter of fact. From me to me.” She grinned and held the door open for Maisie. “It was the first thing I bought when I could afford myself a small luxury.”
A luxury. Once all the needed things were in place, and a new home settled, a woman who earned her own money could give herself a small something, just because.
Mine will be a jade brooch, I think.
Such thoughts didn’t banish all the cobwebs, but they didn’t hurt.
Though Hilda had warned her to stop attending meetings now that she was snooping on a higher plane, Maisie couldn’t resist. It was fun, seeing the Fascists so aerated now that Labour was in power. The fact that no one had advocated the closing of churches, the stripping of titles, or nobility sent to salt mines didn’t mitigate their apoplexy one iota.
“That infernal BBC is poisoning the minds of the British youth!” Lion insisted.
Maisie checked her watch. Four minutes before a mention of the BBC; he seemed a bit off his game tonight.
“I hear of boys thinking that a coal miner should be treated with the same respect as a landowner! And my own younger sister hopes to go to university and study medicine! She doesn’t even wish to get married! These are the spoils of the so-called progressive mind.”
I love being spoiled.
“We must defend our small island against those who would attempt to call it home, while having no right to it. We are the true Britons! I was born in Windlesham. Where were you born?” He pointed to a man near the front.
“Shepherd’s Bush!”
“And you?” A woman with a spray of peacock feathers flowing over her ear.
“Holland Park!”
Shouts everywhere, even before the question was asked. “Stow-on-the-Wold,” “Berkshire,” “Leigh-on-Trent,” “Selby!”
Maisie, at the back, heard more ferocity than pride in each voice. The whole room had become a sing-along and the song was a macabre tour of Britain.
“You!” A young man grabbed her by the shoulders and glared straight into her face. “You’re awfully quiet. Where were you born, Big Nose?”
“Jew Nose, more like,” his friend sniggered.
She looked down her nose at them very hard. Be Beanie.
“Savoy Place!” she said, in an accent she didn’t know she could emulate.
“Oh. Well, that’s all right, then,” he said, releasing her.
“I’m so pleased,” she told him, wishing the acid in her voice were enough to burn him as she pushed past and outside.
Hilda was, as usual, right. Maisie called a moratorium on the meetings.
The DG’s hedging on my promotion, Maisie wrote Simon. But at least he hasn’t said no. Nothing’s changed since that chat I overheard with Siepmann, so I’m hoping it was just a lot of sound and fury.
She bit the tip of her pencil, then wrote:
It’s been the most beautiful September. The skies are such a brilliant blue, and all the Georgian buildings look like paintings in the afternoon light. You ought to see i
t. Will you be home soon?
Then she crossed that out. She didn’t want to sound needy. Hilda and Vita, if Maisie’s calculations were correct, must have enjoyed only a few weeks together before Vita went to Berlin with Harold. Maybe they, too, felt their love grow stronger in the absence. Maisie was sure it was Vita who had given the gift that was Torquhil. It was probably just as well Simon didn’t give gifts.
He’ll allow the promotion, I’m sure, Simon wrote back. Who’s more right for it than you? And this is just the sort of program we should have more of, good, solid information about the intricacies of government, so that we dispel ignorance. Ignorance is quite passé, very nineteenth century. We want a capable public, strong minds, strong bodies. That’s how we retain our glory, and aren’t you just the right sort of person to be one of the leaders thereof?
Sometimes he was the one who sounded like a Communist.
The Week in Westminster had, at least, been approved. “Another political program, really?” was Reith’s initial squall. “Lady Astor will be a regular contributor, and Megan Lloyd George. All the best women,” Hilda promised in her most soothing tones. “And it will be at eleven in the morning, when workingwomen are drinking their tea.” This example of the stalwartness of British women charmed him enough that he forgot the crumpets would be served with politics.
“But he doesn’t want to pass around promotions,” Phyllida said, with a sigh both supportive and selfish, because Maisie and Hilda were angling to have her made Talks assistant when Maisie stepped up.
“That would be three women in vital positions in the most important department in the BBC,” Reith fretted. “I think we had at least be sure this new women’s fare is a success before we risk anything so radical.”
“I’m not sure how making me a producer is ‘radical,’” Maisie said to Phyllida, who reported all the details of every meeting with a thoroughness that made Maisie think she should apply to MI5 herself.
“To be fair, this is a man who still thinks women riding bicycles is radical.”
Reith’s hedging notwithstanding, Maisie was involving herself more and more deeply in the preparations for the program. Broadcasters were already giving them scripts, discussing assorted minutiae about days spent in Parliament. Maisie huddled over a cup of tea and a script by Megan Lloyd George, the sole female MP for the Liberal party. A fascinating story, but one that read like a dry news report.
No, no, you’ve got to talk to us, Miss Lloyd George. Talk to us like we’re good friends and just as clever as yourself. Every word counts, and then it will be your delivery. But if I just shift this and change that, and let’s make the story of a first day in Westminster after an election more personal. That will make everyone just love you, and then I think . . .
Two hours later, she presented it to Hilda, who read it straight through.
“Very good work, Miss Musgrave. I can’t add anything. You’ve done it most satisfactorily.”
“I know,” said Maisie. Then she blushed. “I mean, thank you.”
Hilda grinned. “You meant what you said the first time.”
Maisie grinned back. “I know.”
Planning to break into Nestlé was more difficult than Siemens. Maisie made several reconnaissance visits and confirmed Hilda’s observation that, British arm or not, being beholden to their Swiss overlords subsumed the company with a penchant for high order and exactness, which didn’t allow for deviations and unauthorized visitors. But she had to get in. She wanted the evidence of Grigson’s lack of ethics, at least, and if he was found to be engaged in anything worse, so much the better.
After the morning tea break, Maisie knocked on Hilda’s door for their meeting. Hilda was sitting bolt upright in her chair, hand pressed to her heart, staring at a mountain of telegrams.
“Miss Matheson?”
Hilda didn’t look up.
“The American stock market crashed yesterday.”
“But that’s happened before,” Maisie said, remembering her vague attempts to understand the wilderness that was nineteenth-century American banking.
“It appears to be rather bad,” Hilda said, struggling to light a cigarette. Her hands were shaking. Maisie moved to help her just as Phyllida came in with a brandy.
“The whole business of stocks never made much sense to me anyway,” Phyllida said. “Unless they’re talking about cattle.”
Maisie read a few of the telegrams. Whatever a “run on the banks” was, it didn’t sound good.
“So people will get their money, and—”
“There is no money,” Hilda interrupted, her voice hollow. She threw back the brandy in one gulp. Phyllida hovered uncertainly, the bottle cradled in her arms.
“You, er, didn’t have money in American stocks, did you?” she asked.
Hilda glanced at her and shook her head. Then she fixed her eyes on Maisie.
“America was doing a great deal to prop up the Weimar Republic.”
Germany was still struggling. And if there was to be no more American money, and Mr. Keynes and other economists urging the end to reparations weren’t heeded, Germany might become desperate. And here was the example of Italy, who had neatly turned its desperation into a thriving dictatorship. And here were these German patriots, building their agenda, helped by corporate money and ideologues.
“What’s Germany got to do with anything?” Phyllida asked.
“God, I hope nothing,” Hilda said, staring into space. “I really, really hope nothing.” She slipped the bottle from Phyllida’s grasp and poured herself another drink.
The story of the disappearing American money—a magician’s greatest feat—was the only tale told in all the papers. In some there was gloating, because the bounty of American cash had been a source of some irritation in a Britain struggling with its own sluggish economy. In others, there was worry, but only because the crisis was being handled so poorly. There was no whisper of Germany.
“We can’t be the only ones who know, can we?” Maisie asked.
“No. We might be the only ones who care,” Hilda said.
Which wasn’t particularly encouraging.
“Bit of a poor show our homeland’s puttin’ up, wouldn’t you say?” Lady Astor greeted Maisie when she came to broadcast the inaugural Week in Westminster. “Terrible mess. I can’t imagine what the boys were thinkin’, but I daresay they weren’t, and that’s how messes get made. Shouldn’t be surprised if it’s mostly women who do the cleanin’ up, or would, if they’re allowed in.”
Hilda came in to lend further gravitas to the occasion. Billy was finishing the setting up, and the presenter, Miss Hamilton, prepared the introduction. Maisie’s old friend, the fist inside her chest, was the size of a boulder and doing serious damage.
“I find every new program gives me butterflies on its maiden voyage,” Hilda whispered. “You as well?”
“Swap butterflies for pterodactyls,” Maisie said through short breaths.
“You’ve done marvelous work, and I’ve told the DG so.”
Billy signaled, and Maisie and Hilda gripped hands.
“Good morning, and welcome to our new program, The Week in Westminster,” Miss Hamilton greeted the listeners. “Every week we will hear from different female members of Parliament, who will explain the workings of Parliament and the business before the House of the previous week. Our inaugural presenter is Lady Astor, MP for Plymouth, of the Conservative Party. Good morning, Lady Astor.”
“Thank you. I’m terrifically honored to be here and to assist in educating all the young ladies who have just enjoyed their first vote as to the workings of our system. I’ve talked to far too many ladies who think politics sounds too confusin’ to manage, or just a dreadful bore. I assure you, nothing is further from the truth. A lady does require a powerful voice, though, and some very serious backbone. Now, then . . .”
Fifteen minutes later, Maisie exhaled.
“Marvelous!” Lady Astor said, though it was hard to be sure if she was congratulating them or herself. “And not a moment too soon. Some of the letters I’ve gotten lately . . . Gracious, there are a multitude of muttonheads out there. Honestly thinking that America’s example shows too much democracy leads to scrapes. ‘The firm few, not the muddled many, are what’s needed for a strong nation.’ That’s what one imbecile wrote. Do hope this helps sort people out.”
Which seemed a lot of pressure for fifteen minutes a week. But Maisie was keen to try.
By that afternoon, they had early notices from papers and a number of congratulatory telegrams.
“There, you see? I knew it would be a success,” Phyllida said, giving the telegrams an approving pat.
“Surely the more people care about our political system, the more they’ll fight to maintain it, right?” Maisie sought confirmation.
“What idiot would look around the world and think anything’s better than what we have here?” Maisie just looked at her. “Oh, all right. Plenty, but they’re not going to do anything except make fools of themselves shouting in a pub.”
Maisie smiled. But for once she thought Phyllida might be overly optimistic.
By the time she left that evening, her brain felt so full, her hat was tight. It wasn’t a train of thought; it was King’s Cross Station. The damp cold was a relief. It tugged at some of the threads in her mind and unspooled them so they floated behind her as she headed up to the Strand.
“Pardon me, miss.” A hand tapped her on the arm.
She screamed.
It was Simon.
“Easy, easy. We’ll be arrested if we keep on like this,” he said, finally managing to pry her away. But he kissed her again, too.
“Were you waiting for me out here? You could have come inside, you know.”
“But that wouldn’t have been as romantic.”
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