“I don’t understand,” Maisie said, although she had a feeling she did.
“I prefer when everyone is open and honest. Makes for far pleasanter conversation, and more efficient, too,” Hilda explained. “Mind you”—a grin teased around her lips—“an enigmatic conversation is not without its enchantments. One does enjoy a challenge.”
There was a ream of things Maisie hated. Umbrellas that turned inside out. Newspaper ink on her fingers. Plays featuring Georgina. Hunger. And being made the subject of a joke. That was Georgina’s favorite trick. The nurses had picked it up as surely as if they had been sent instructions. And now Hilda was teasing her.
“Speaking of challenges,” Hilda went on, as though Maisie wasn’t inching toward the door, longing to escape to the typewriter, “we must arrange for you to be here more frequently. You’ll be worn to ribbons in a month, otherwise.”
“Please don’t rush on my account,” Maisie said, horrified at the thought of spending more time in this quarter of the BBC. “I can manage just fine.”
The grim head of Lionel Fielden swooped around the door.
“Mr. Bartlett for his rehearsal, Miss Matheson.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you.” She turned to Maisie. “I assume you can take notes whilst being discreet?” She didn’t wait for Maisie’s answer. “Of course you can. Come along! It’s high time you saw our studios properly.”
“I hope your shoes and hands are clean,” Fielden muttered into Maisie’s ear.
“Was there something else, Mr. Fielden?” called Hilda, already at the stairs. Maisie, pad and pencil pressed to her chest, scuttled after her, eyes fixed on her shoes.
A sign on Studio Five’s door warned against bringing in any outside dirt. Vernon Bartlett, MP to the League of Nations, was obediently attempting to brush what looked like half of London off his hat.
“It’s very nasty out,” he apologized. “It would take an industrial Hoover to make me suitable.”
“Quite all right, Mr. Bartlett. The sign is ultimately a suggestion. Only don’t tell the engineers I said so,” Hilda confided, sweeping them all inside.
“Oh!” cried Maisie, an outburst that would result in a string of demerits from Miss Jenkins. Billy, busy with something or other at the big black boxes with all the intriguing buttons and dials, squinted at her and turned away, smirking.
She hadn’t expected such a friendly space. Presenters sat in a pale green upholstered chair, comfortable enough to feel relaxed, firm enough to remind one of the gravitas of the event and thus remain regally upright. Beside the chair was a stuffed bookcase. Notes and elbows rested on a writing desk. And at the top of the desk was the microphone.
The microphone was oblong, tapered inward at the top, not unlike a tiny coffin, which seemed inauspicious. It bore the legend BBC, a presumably unnecessary but highly photogenic label. Maisie longed to touch its mesh exterior, run her fingers over the wires. Take it apart to see what was inside. She had to force herself to turn to Bartlett and take his hat and coat.
He gave Maisie a polite nod. Like Reith, he had a fatherly quality. Unlike Reith, Bartlett’s rumpled suit and impish grin gave him a cheerful, rather than imposing, mien. He was the type to give hair an affectionate tug and feign surprise at the discovery of a peppermint in his coat pocket. He eyed the microphone with nervous amusement. “I really can’t fathom how I’ve let you talk me into this,” he said to Hilda.
“Because you’ll be marvelous and you know it,” Hilda answered. She had a way of saying something that made it sound patently obvious, with further argument impossible. “People want the horse’s-mouth view from the League, if you’ll excuse the rather rank-sounding metaphor.”
“I think the six people interested in the League are the sort to prefer a newspaper,” he pointed out.
“Scores of people are interested and don’t know it. That’s where we come in. And anyway, not all the papers would print your columns. This is going to be far more riveting, trust me. After a good rehearsal, of course.”
Rehearsals for Talks were one of Hilda’s new policies. Maisie had heard Miss Shields sniffing about the “waste of time.” But as Mr. Bartlett ran through his first attempt, in a tone both prattling and ponderous, leaning so close to the microphone he was in danger of swallowing it, she could see where a rehearsal might be useful.
“A very fine first attempt,” Hilda said, sounding sincere.
“That’s what you said about this script you rewrote three times,” he said, laughing as though they were old friends. Which Maisie realized they might be.
“I meant it, too!” Hilda grinned. “Now, the easy part is to mind the mike—get too close or make any sort of noise like coughing or even rustling paper and you deafen all our listeners. And then those afraid of technology are allowed to be smug, and we can’t have that.”