Maisie felt herself returning Cyril’s blush. They stared at each other, trying to find something to say. The phone rang, breaking the spell.
The story went on for days. Hoppel and Grigson resigned, and their respective corporations insisted they were mere rogue operators, and safeguards were in place to prevent such occurrences again. But that didn’t stop the newspapers from writing more and more. They didn’t even complain when it was announced there would be no further restrictions on the BBC’s news reporting. They had proven they could do fine independent journalism, so no reason not to let them keep on doing it. Especially if it helped the papers, too.
“But we haven’t really changed anything!” Maisie complained to Hilda one lunchtime, as they walked Torquhil on the Embankment. “Why can’t they all be prosecuted?”
“Fear of entrapment, apparently. Good countersuit.”
“Who cares?”
“The rule of law. But we’ve spoken the truth and gotten results, and the rallies are right ’round the BBC. The British Fascists have lost half their numbers, the unions are emboldened, and there’s a sense that being worried about Russian spies is perhaps a waste of energy. And Nestlé is doing poor business. I like Rountree’s chocolate myself. That Nestlé stuff is like sugary chalk.”
Maisie kicked a pebble. “And Simon’s gone.”
His family’s estate was ruined and they’d all fled. The papers were full of rumors as to where they might have gone, but no one knew for sure. Maisie hoped she would never find out. She had posted the ring back to him, and it was returned to sender.
“It’s like ill-gotten goods,” she fretted.
“Ach, you more than earned it,” Phyllida said. “Think of it as a nest egg. I bet Miss Matheson can advise on investments.”
Maisie put the ring in a safe-deposit box at the bank. Provenance notwithstanding, it was nice to feel cushioned. Georgina wrote an almost plaintive letter, detailing the difficulties of finding a new sponsor and a new job as the Depression set in and asked if Maisie might think of “coming home.”
“I am home,” Maisie wrote back. But she enclosed twenty pounds.
She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Simon, about those strange final moments, trying to make sense of it and succeeding only in disturbing her sleep.
“He probably meant it, you know, that bit about making Britain great again.” Hilda said as they strolled the Embankment. “Fantasists usually do.”
He might really have loved her. She was both the things he wanted—clever, with the capacity to be pliable, though that last was changing apace. And as to the suddenness of his return and proposal, she need only bear in mind that a wife couldn’t testify against a husband.
“Not that I think he expected to be caught, but might as well hedge the bet. The whole family seems to have gone a bit mad after the crash. I’m inclined to agree with Vita. You can do better.”
“I don’t want to get married until I’m sure I can keep working.”
Hilda’s answer was lost with the arrival of Nigel, the new messenger boy, who’d come running to find them and chivvy them back to Savoy Hill, where there were twenty new crises to contend with.
Maisie allowed herself to believe that peace would reign in the BBC, despite the presence of Siepmann. He was so determined to make his own work superior, he primarily left Hilda’s team to its own devices. Besides which, there was so much excitement about the rapidly rising new Broadcasting House and the steady expansion of operations that there was far less time for petty squabbles. But Reith won a strange battle. Someone, somewhere, agreed that content should be controlled in these more difficult times. More conservative, more measured, more quiet. More music, more light entertainment, much less to challenge tired listeners. It meant almost daily battles for Hilda, who was starting to look pale and drawn.
And there was nothing the rest of them could do about it.
Harold Nicholson—of all people—was set to come in to broadcast about James Joyce’s Ulysses. Hilda and Vita had gone their separate ways, but they all remained good friends.
“Who the devil does that woman think she is?” Reith spluttered to Siepmann as they were climbing the stairs to the executive suite just as Maisie, having delivered a set of proposals for upcoming debates, was going down them. She shot back up the stairs and attempted to melt into the wall.
“I’ve said no Joyce, no Ulysses. All disgusting stuff. Bonfire’s too good for it, and that poofter Nicholson! Nicholson! By God, she lives to provoke, and I won’t bear it another minute.”
“I think if you just delete a few lines in the script, it should be all right,” Siepmann said in his oily, soothing tones. “I’ve marked the most offending passages.”