Radio Girls (30 page)

Beanie laughed, looking much more like herself.

“I told you. Shocking one's family is all the thing.”

Georgina would certainly be shocked if she saw Maisie using stage makeup to good effect, and especially if she saw the disguised Maisie entering a secret meeting of Fascists.

Except she probably doesn't know what Fascists are
.

This time, the Lion was dismissing any effect women voting might have, as he assumed most women were too featherbrained to even find their way to the polling booths. Maisie ignored him and inched her way to Hoppel, who was having a whispered conversation in the back corner. She was so intent on her quarry, she didn't notice his companion until she was upon them. The teapot-shaped man who had looked at Simon with such interest. His bowler hat was tipped back and a cane hung over his arm in a parody of Charlie Chaplin. Neither man noticed her.

“Your friend at the BBC really must try and control that impossible woman,” the teapot-shaped man said in a gravelly voice. “She is making every attempt to see Labour win the election. I am convinced it's the fault of the BBC, and that ghastly
Manchester Guardian
drivel, that trade unions are allowed to thrive. Total disaster for business—we'll all be paupers if this carries on. Appalling state, might as well be living in Moscow.”

“‘Appalling' is the only word,” Hoppel agreed. “I tell you, Grigson, plenty of men are willing to work for whatever they're offered, but then those damn unions give them notions. And these book clubs! That's the sort of thing that makes a workingman think he's better
than he is. More of that dreadful woman's influence. The sooner we see the back of her, the better.”

“Another who thinks she's better than she is,” Grigson said with a disparaging sniff. “But here's good news. I have purchased a newspaper and think I have found the man to run it. Might have a bit of a time finding a few more sound fellows to write for it, but I think we'll manage.”

“I know some writers,” Maisie burst in. Good spies listened, yes, but better ones seized opportunities.

Both men turned to look at her, surprised. Grigson laughed in what he clearly intended to be a fatherly manner. It grated on Maisie like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Do you now? And I suppose these ‘writers' are in fact brothers or cousins in need of a good job?”

“Well, perhaps,” she said, trying to speak in Lola's accent. “But truly, they are very talented and eager.”

“Ah, that's very nice too,” Grigson said. “I tell you what, dear. Take my card, and if you'd like to have these writers drop through their stuff to me, I'll have a look at it.”

“That's very kind of you, sir. Thank you so much.”

“Not at all, not at all. But, ah, I say, dear, have the boys just leave off envelopes addressed to me and not saying anything about what it's regarding, all right? You can manage that, can't you?”

“Certainly, sir. Thank you, sir.”

She had a feeling they were the sort of idiots who liked to see a girl so elated by a nothing sort of promise, there was a skip in her step as she walked away. She skipped, they laughed, and she smirked. Then the old thought floated through her contempt, the question, wondering if she had in fact told the truth, and Edwin Musgrave had provided her with brothers and cousins.

On the tram, she shook off those thoughts and looked at the card. The fist inside sucked all the breath from her body. Arthur Grigson. A company director. At Nestlé.

She should have been flabbergasted. But she wasn't.

Neither was Hilda. “Although I would like to be, I must say.” Maisie had met her at the door to Savoy Hill that morning and they walked up the stairs together. They murmured, though they could have bellowed and no one would have heard them over the din, even at that hour. “All this fuss, just to keep a wealthy company run by wealthy men earning a bit more money. And I wouldn't be surprised if they call themselves Christians, too. Silly idiots.”

“They also want to keep women from working. Or voting.”

“They wouldn't, if they thought women working and voting would earn themselves one extra half-farthing. Never mind. The more we educate our listeners, the harder their work will be.”

“And the more fun for us,” Maisie said.

It was a grueling day. Hilda asked both Maisie and Phyllida to accompany her in rehearsing Virginia Woolf, an uncomfortable hour during which the writer refused to meet any of their eyes. She gazed at the microphone as though she expected it to bite her and looked fully prepared to bite back.

“I enjoyed
Orlando
very much,” Phyllida ventured, with her most winning smile. Virginia Woolf stared at her without blinking.

“Thank you,” she said at last. “It was a great pleasure to write.” This comment was delivered with what looked very much like a glare at Hilda.

“We're all very lucky, aren't we?” Hilda asked. “Getting to do work we enjoy? Wouldn't have been possible, even when you were born, Miss Fenwick.”

“No, quite,” Phyllida answered, but her voice was wavering under that ceaseless glare, and Hilda's usual cheer and disinterest in Miss Woolf's temper was making it worse. Maisie and Phyllida exchanged a look, but there was nothing to do except carry on until, at last, Miss Woolf rose to leave.

Maisie stepped forward to walk her out. Miss Woolf said nothing, but shunned the lift for the stairs, moving with such ominous solemnity
as to unnerve anyone coming upstairs, so that they jumped aside to let her pass. Maisie didn't like the writer's behavior, but couldn't help be impressed.

“Are you working on something new, Miss Woolf?” Maisie asked, hoping she seemed polite. In fact, she wanted to punish Virginia Woolf by forcing her to talk.

“I am,” was the succinct reply.

“Another novel, dare we hope?”

“Of sorts.” They reached reception, and the writer gave Maisie the faintest of nods. “It is, in part, about the importance of having one's own space. And having that space respected.” She raised an eyebrow at Maisie, then turned and sashayed out the door.

Well, what idiot's going to argue otherwise?

Maisie ran back upstairs, where Hilda had forgotten Virginia Woolf and wanted to address the problem of some letters they were getting in response to
Questions for Women Voters
, letters from married women whose husbands were angry about them registering to vote.

“What sort of marriage do you call that?” Phyllida demanded. “One that needs walking out of, is what I say.”

“We can't be accused of promoting marital discord,” Hilda said. “Or more scandalously, divorce. So, let's think about these women.”

Maisie rolled her pencil up and down her pad. Just a few years ago, she wouldn't have wanted to vote, to do anything that required making her own decisions. The old ideas, home, safety, someone who loved her, a family at last. So here were women whose husbands still believed that their voices should be sufficient in speaking for the whole family. It had for centuries; why should it not now?

All right, so they were raised to be the head of the house, and they do still earn the money, most of them, so they want to feel in control. But why should a man want to control the person who's meant to be his partner? That can't really be pleasant for anyone, surely?

“I suppose it's something new to share, isn't it?” Hilda said, sounding unusually romantic. “That's what marriage is meant to be, sharing lives.” Her eyes wandered; she took a thousand-mile journey in
a millisecond. “Another member of the family voting isn't going to change real love.”

“Speaking of love, Maisie, you've got a phone call,” Phyllida said, her hand thankfully over the mouthpiece.

Maisie took the phone in surprise. Simon preferred to write than ring.

“Maisie!” he cried when she greeted him. “Glad the ever-so-important BBC can spare you a moment. Do you need to tell them it's work-related, lest you risk a whipping?”

“No, it's all right . . . Are you all right?” She thought he sounded odd, a bit sneerier of the BBC than usual, and almost frantic. Which wasn't Simon at all. Maybe it was just the strangeness of hearing his voice on the phone.

“Grand, grand. Listen, darling, can you dine with me tonight? Seven? The Spencer in Chelsea? Say you can!” He definitely sounded rushed and frazzled now, and her “yes” was as much to calm him down as because she wanted to see him. “Thank you, darling. Must dash, cheerio!”

Maisie hung up and stared at the phone.

“All right,” Hilda said, returning Maisie to the office. “We'll convene a panel of married women to give a Talk addressing this worry about cross husbands. That will be nice and proper.”

Maisie made the note, her mind running backward from marriage to love.
Is this love, between me and Simon? Could he love me? Do I love him? How does anyone ever know?
I suppose if people were sure, it would put an awful lot of poets out of work.

She glanced at the neat pile of Hilda's books. Several volumes of poetry, a novel—probably one of Vita's recommendations—and any number of pamphlets. Had Hilda been disappointed in love, once? Was that why she threw herself so wholly into work? Or worse, was the one she loved lying under poppies, somewhere in Belgium?

Maisie's mind spun far away from Simon now. Ten years had passed since the Armistice, but for so many left alive and alone, it was yesterday. Maisie loved the bold new world, this glory they were
continually inventing, but it was hard not to walk through the streets and feel that undercurrent of rage and, of course, fear. Because if so much had changed already, what might happen next? Maisie wanted to tell people there was no point trying to control change. Far better to control fear, but . . .

Her fingers were itching again.

“Look at the busy little bee,” Mr. Holmby at the Tup crowed as he brought Maisie more bread and butter with her lunch. “Writing a letter?”

“I'm working on a story,” she said, beaming up at him.

“Ah, isn't that lovely, then?” He nodded in approval. She knew he was thinking of the sort of puff-pastry stories that ran in the glossy magazines. It would never occur to him, nor to her to tell him, that she was writing about the unreasonable fears of Communism, when in fact they should be more afraid of the effects of deep poverty on so much of the British population. Such information would disrupt the order of things.

And it would disrupt the bread and butter.