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 shoulders 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.”