“The letter got posted, but someone was definitely following me last night,” Maisie told her. “And Simon came to meet me, which can’t have been coincidence.” She still felt queasy. Maisie had upgraded the headache to the age-old excuse of “women’s complaints,” which rendered her free from any chance of supper or his flat. Simon had been repelled.
“Yes, I got wind of something along those lines, never mind how. I’ve arranged with Vita and Harold. We’re going to go there tonight and practice for your appearance at the drinks tomorrow. You’ll have to be ready for all possibilities.”
Fowler leaped right beside them, catching a ball. Torquhil leaped at it with an enormous bark, and they both crashed to the ground. And still Maisie and Hilda didn’t move.
“These people wouldn’t be following us if they weren’t worried, would they?” Maisie asked.
“That’s a fair assessment.”
“Which means you’re right, and they really are playing a big game. A nasty one, too.”
“It’s not always pleasant, being right,” Hilda said, as Torquhil circled her, with what looked like a gramophone arm in his mouth.
“I’m learning that.”
Despite the circumstances, it was quite pleasant to be in the Belgravia home of Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Harold Nicholson, on Ebury Street. They seemed hugely fond of each other, and Harold plainly adored Hilda.
“Miss Matheson says you’re a very good egg, Miss Musgrave, but I hope this level of Bohemian immorality doesn’t put you out.” Harold Nicholson handed Maisie a drink.
“Not at all. My mother is an actress.”
The other three burst out laughing, and Maisie felt she was part of the circle.
They had a superb meal, with Vita and Harold complimenting Maisie on her gastronomic capacity and discerning taste, but all the while the real reason for their visit hovered over the proceedings, twinkling in the chandelier.
“I have a few men on watch, just in case any of your friends think they can pay a visit here tonight,” Harold told Maisie, as she helped herself to roast chicken. “Part of the advantage of being in the diplomatic service, what? And my man Vaughn is an old hand with this sort of thing. Have some celery sauce. It’s a rather cunning little taste. I don’t think we’ll be troubled. I think they are hoping to take you by surprise. They may not know you know they know, that sort of thing.”
“Do you know how to fight at all, Miss Musgrave?” Vita asked with polite curiosity.
“I can run,” Maisie answered, making the company laugh again.
“Stoker—er, Hilda—tells me you’re engaged to Simon Brock-Morland. I’ve met his family a few times. How well do you know him?”
“I think not well enough. And too well, obviously.”
“I’m going to be blunt and tell you I don’t think much of him. It’s not my business, of course, but I like you and know Hilda does as well, and since your own mother sounds perfectly useless, someone needs to advise you on these things.”
“Miss Musgrave has a very sharp mind,” Hilda put in.
“I am well aware of it.” Vita grinned. “But we all know how the heart can interfere with the mind. Have you slept with him?”
Maisie fumbled her fork, sending leeks jetéing across the table.
“Now, Vita, really!” Harold shook his head at her.
“I have,” Maisie answered, locking eyes with Vita.
“And he was your first. Yes, we know how it can be. But you’re a levelheaded young woman, aren’t you? Not the type to go all moony and thinking it must have very great meaning and what?”
“I suppose it doesn’t mean anything at all,” Maisie said, rhythmically stabbing a potato.
“Well, maybe it did and maybe it didn’t. Can’t ever know with the fellows—sorry, Harold dear.”
“No, no, quite true,” Harold agreed.
“And you’re not an old-fashioned sort, thinking you’re now ruined or anything ridiculous like that?”
“Vita!” Hilda admonished her.
“No,” Maisie whispered. “I don’t think that.”
“Good. Because I’m going to be very impertinent, Miss Musgrave—”
“There’s a belated warning,” Hilda muttered.
“And tell you that you can do a great deal better.”
It was said with prim matter-of-factness, and whether it was the honesty of it, or Maisie’s own confused feelings, or the enormity of whatever she was about to face, she found her eyes welling with tears.
“Miss Matheson says you do great justice to puddings,” Harold said, and almost as if it had been conjured, an enormous dish of sticky toffee pudding was placed in front of her.
And it did help.
It was like playacting, working out all the possible scenarios, and what Maisie might say, and how she was going to get the contract and get away safely. Hilda would have her car at the ready, and Vaughn was being deputized to assist, but the main work was Maisie’s alone.
Harold leaned back, lighting a cigar.
“And then what happens? Bring the stuff to me? Or your man, Ellis? Bit of an anticlimax, that. I suppose you’re putting together enough to print it all in the papers and make them look fools?”
“Nothing like seeing something in black-and-white,” Hilda said.
“But people should hear it first,” Maisie said.
“Sorry?” Hilda asked.
“Yes! Yes, that’s it. Miss Matheson, it’s equal suffrage all over again! They’re meeting at six, and surely by the time I get whatever it is, we can get back to the BBC by seven, and that’s prime listening time. We’ll just read it out, the whole of it. Sort out some sort of script—that can’t be hard. And it doesn’t matter if they say it’s all a load of codswallop, because announcing it during peak listening time will mean maybe four million people or more get it all at once. Good luck countering that, right?”
Hilda just stared at her, cigarette dripping ash onto the carpet.
“And the DG will have left by then, too,” Maisie remembered happily. “So we’re clear of him.”
“Mr. Burrows would never announce it,” Hilda said slowly, shaking her head. “He’d be too likely to be sacked. I suppose I could do it, but—”
“You need a man,” Vita said. “Authority and what. Harold, perhaps you can do it?”
“Not me, darling. They’ll say I’m part of some homosexual plot. Look here, Hilda. I can have some chappies from the diplomatic service ring Reith afterwards and say you’re spot-on and doing a great service,” Harold said. “And your Ellis may well do the same. It won’t necessarily prevent sackings, but it won’t hurt. So then it hardly matters who presents it.”
“Of course it does. Don’t be silly,” Vita scolded. “There’s Lady Astor, if we can’t find a man,” she went on. “But it oughtn’t be a politician, I think. Still, it’s got to be someone with a very crisp, authoritarian voice. The sort that just commands respect and attention.”
“May I use the telephone?” Maisie asked, though she was already halfway there.
The men were meeting at the Ritz, which must chafe at Simon’s affection—or perhaps it was just affectation—for Bohemia.
Maisie was alone in the lavatory. She combed her hair and applied mascara and a lipstick lent by Vita. She slid her hat—new, a rosy pink with a mulberry trim—over her hair and gave herself a battle-ready smile.
As Vaughn was attending them, he waited at Hilda’s car and Hilda herself chose a position near the front door of the Ritz so as to be nearer at hand if a distraction was needed. “Or something of that sort.”
“I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to do or how,” Maisie confessed.
“Yes, that’s the general way of espionage,” Hilda said. “Journalism, too. Life, certainly.”
So Maisie threw back her should
ers and went upstairs.
The Ritz might have been the most beautiful hotel in the world—though probably not—but Maisie saw nothing of it. She walked with steady purpose to the bar and scanned the leather and wood and consequence until her eyes rested on them. Hoppel had joined the party, creating a genteel circle of hostility. He wasn’t German, any more than Grigson was Swiss. Why were they ultimately so happy to twist and bend Britain to make their companies more money? But perhaps they saw their own personal swelling bank balances as a sort of patriotism, and the rest was fluid.
Two other men, leaning against the bar and smoking, looked at her, impertinent grins and unmasked sneers. A woman in a place of men, she wasn’t allowed to expect anything else. She fixed her eyes forward and crept toward her quarry.
“No, it’s we who are grateful to you,” Grigson was assuring Simon, his gravelly voice simultaneously toady and condescending. “I believe this will be a most fruitful alliance.”
“Ooh, my goodness, is this another marriage you’re making?” Maisie asked, approaching Simon and laying a hand over his, the ring he’d given her glinting in the somber lighting.
Either Simon was an actor to flatten Barrymore, or he was genuinely delighted to see her.
“Most clever dearest! How on earth did you know to find me here? I’m just closing a contract that will do more for me—for us—than even I could have imagined.”
His companions evinced no delight at all—quite the opposite. Simon came in for his share of glares once he started to speak.
“Oh no, gentlemen, let’s not get any silly ideas. This is Maisie Musgrave, my fiancée and a very bright girl. She will be a most able assistant in this venture if I can tempt her away from the BBC.”
“What a lot of papers!” Maisie exclaimed, attempting to bely Simon’s assertion of her cleverness. “What’s in all of them?”
“Complicated bit of business, beloved. Nothing that need worry you too much.”
“BBC?” Hoppel interrupted, gaping at Maisie. “Brock-Morland, I appreciate your industry, but you didn’t have to compromise yourself.”
“What do you mean?” Simon asked. “Maisie’s all right. I liked her even before I knew she was so beholden to a beast.” He turned to Maisie and winked. “And once we’re married, you’ll be beholden to another, you know.”
“Simon,” Maisie said, looking into his eyes, trying to read him. “You haven’t signed these yet, have you?”
“Of course I have. We have plans, far bigger than anything in any storybook you’ve ever read. We’ll get married and I’ll tell you all about them.”
“You.” Grigson was staring at Maisie. “You are one for papers, aren’t you?” He breathed slowly, lips twisting in a sour smile.
Simon turned to Grigson in surprise.
Maisie had hoped to use more elegance, but she saw the recognition in those oily eyes and there was no more waiting. A long contract, a letter. She slapped her hands over both, snatched them to her, and ran.
The men yelped and shouted, busily untangling themselves from the table. Maisie zigged and zagged through the bar and into the lobby.
A hand latched around her wrist, jerking her almost to the floor. It was one of the men who had sneered at her as she came in.
“Well, well. I think you’ll be giving those papers back now, won’t you?”
“No!” She twisted away from him and this time made it out the door and almost to Hilda. The man’s companion was there, sneer on full display, and a nudge of his jacket displayed a pistol as well.
Maisie curled the papers more tightly in her fist. There were so many people around. He couldn’t possibly think he could do her real harm in so public a place?
“Put the papers in your bag, then, and let’s go for a little stroll,” the other man whispered behind her. “Make it look all very natural.”
She did as he suggested, hoping Hilda could see all of it. This was something they hadn’t rehearsed. The men didn’t even touch her, just flanked her almost politely and walked with her around the corner, into an alley.
“Maisie, what on earth are you doing? My friends seem to think you’re in league against me.” Simon had caught up to them.
“Your ‘friends’ are out to amass fortunes to surpass the king and don’t care what they hurt along the way,” Maisie told him.
“No, you don’t understand,” he said. “They’re giving me the opportunity I’ve always wanted, to really help the ordinary man and restore Britain to its greatest glory. Strengthen the empire—people think it’s waning, but we’ll prove otherwise.”
“You are a Fascist,” she breathed in sudden recognition.
“I prefer not to use labels, Maisie. You must know that,” he said.
One of the sneering men yelped and fell to the cobbled ground—hit by a rock.
“Run!” Hilda shouted.
And Mousy Maisie burst through the gang of street thugs and into the light.
Not that they were giving up easily. Hoppel, it seemed, was not such a gentleman that he couldn’t give chase. He went after Hilda, while the other sneerer, the one who had so politely indicated his pistol, pursued Maisie. She could hear it, even as she vaulted over a pair of Yorkshire terriers, a cheetah in double-strap heels, and tore along the pavement. The click, ready to hurt her and anyone else, all to get these papers back. But she was well ahead of him.
Hilda could run hard herself. She was barely ahead, but ahead nonetheless.
Hoppel reached out. He grabbed her by the neck—and a shower of onyx stones shot into the air and fell in black rain on the concrete.
Vaughn saw them and had the presence of mind to hop in and start the engine. Maisie dove into the backseat and Hilda vaulted over the door, yelling at Vaughn to move over. He did, and Hilda slammed her foot on the accelerator.
Her eyes were flaming. She shot them through the traffic as though they were thin as an arrow and fifty times as fast.
“Does this car run on rocket fuel or something?” Maisie screamed.
“It’s a very good car,” Hilda yelled back, swerving around a corner.
They bulleted down a narrow road. Faint blurs of shocked faces and surprised, frightened cries bounced once and disappeared.
Another tight swerve and they were bearing down on a traffic stop.
“Miss Matheson!” Maisie squeaked.
But Hilda had it well in hand. She pulled up the brake with gentle ease, as though they’d simply been going on a Sunday drive.
Maisie panted. Sweat was pooling in her shoes and dripping from under her hat. Hilda was as cool as if she were ice-skating. But she was also a coiled mass of eager tension, a mongoose ready to spring on a snake. Maisie knew that as soon as they were clear of this intersection, the mad dash would begin again.
“Where did you learn to drive like this?”
“Italy.”
The way was cleared and they jumped past two cars. Angry honks chorused after them as they rounded hard, plummeting down to the Embankment with a fury that had Maisie wondering if they were going to end up in the Thames. She wouldn’t be surprised if Hilda would simply propel the car along the water, primarily through force of will.
Maisie cast a quick glance behind them.
“I don’t think we’re being followed. I think we lost them ages ago.”
“We did,” Hilda agreed, a half smile playing on her lips. “But we’re behind schedule.”
Maisie dug in her bag, flipping over the notebook, and wrote, attempting to keep her hand steady as Hilda wove in and out of cars.
Maisie leaped from the car as Hilda pulled up before Savoy Hill and pelted through reception, knocking through a waiting choral group like ninepins.
“I say!” one of them exclaimed in delight. “It really is the jungle they say it is in here.”
The cheetah soared up th
e stairs, two at a time, Hilda just a few steps behind her.
Beanie was waiting for them, eyes wide and mad as if she, too, had torn halfway across London bearing a story fit to shock the nation. Phyllida was there, too, prepared to guard the door.
“Is the script legible?”
“We’ll write it as we go,” Hilda promised.
“You’ll what?”
Cyril came out of the studio, escorting his broadcaster. He stared at the deputation in astonishment.
Maisie seized him. “Is Siepmann still here?”
“Yes, but—”
“Get him into a meeting. Give him any old story. We only need ten minutes.”
His mouth opened. Then something seemed to click and she saw a spark in his eyes, something that reminded her of the day she came for her interview, a lifetime ago. He nodded and ran off.
“Go!” Phyllida yelled.
Billy watched with great interest as Beanie settled herself to the microphone.
“This isn’t exactly a planned broadcast, is it?” he asked, grinning.
“No,” Maisie told him. “And yes. Give it your best, Billy.”
He grinned and gave her a big thumbs-up.
Hilda was scribbling the whole time. She set the first of the pages before Beanie.
Beanie leaned forward and began to speak.
And this, Maisie thought, was the purpose of the aristocracy. Beanie’s voice could pitch deep, and those plummy tones, round and sharp, warm yet brisk, were effortlessly commanding. Beanie was young, but she sounded like a woman who had sat upon the throne for twenty years. She was awakening something atavistic in the nation’s core, even among the staunchest republicans. To not listen to her might mean decapitation. But it wasn’t fear. Not really. It was reverence.
“The BBC has discovered action and business that we felt the public ought to know and understand.”
Radio Girls Page 35