She typed, hardly knowing what keys she was hitting. Would Alfred or another mail boy come in with an envelope? It was ridiculous not to ask, but questions were verboten for Maisie long before she met Miss Jenkins. Lorelei had no interest in any granddaughter, much less an inquisitive one. Georgina felt the same about a daughter. Librarians welcomed questions, but Maisie had already learned to be cautious with her curiosity, hugging information as it was provided, but letting her wondering mind explore the stacks alone, satisfied to stumble upon scraps of knowledge in her quest for whatever she originally sought.
Sister Bennister hadn’t been one for encouraging questions, and all Maisie really wanted to ask in the hospital was why this war had had to happen, and the opinions on that front flew at the same rate as the bullets on the Western front.
But no one was as violently opposed to questions as Miss Jenkins. “You must appear from day one to know your work intimately. Never give anyone reason to query your capacity. If there is something you don’t know, up to and including where the ladies’ room is, simply keep your eyes and ears open and figure it out.”
Maisie plucked the correspondence from Hilda’s in-tray. Her eyes and ears were open, but all she could see or hear was Hilda, on the phone.
“Oh, certainly,” Hilda was saying. “I haven’t got any quarrel with his politics. We’re all allowed to hold whatever opinion we wish. That’s the beauty of a free country . . . Precisely, even if it’s irretrievably silly . . . No, no, my hesitation with inviting him to broadcast is that his work is painfully dull . . . Yes, the BBC is committed to airing all points of view, but we’re also very keen on keeping listeners awake. No, I assure you . . . If it were bad work, that would at least be a conversation point. Dull is simply pointless.”
Hilda hung up a few minutes later, and Maisie handed her a sheaf of letters.
“Thank you, Miss Musgrave. Been a good first week, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose so, Miss Matheson.”
“Many more to come, I hope,” Hilda said. Maisie nodded absently, trying to control her nerves. She was dizzy, and couldn’t feel her fingers anymore.
Hilda looked over the next week’s schedule, her pencil running a steady gauntlet through all the broadcasts, each name provisionally knighted as she went along.
“It’s horribly impertinent of me, I’m sure,” she said suddenly, eyes still on the schedule, “but I’m given to understand that this is about the usual time for a weekly employee to collect pay at the cashier window.”
“The cashier window?” What—and where—on earth was the cashier window?
Hilda’s smile was infuriatingly kind.
“I’m sure you’ve passed it a dozen times without noticing. On the fourth floor, the little cage at the south end of the corridor.” She paused, grinning. “Looks not unlike the sort of jail cells you see in Western films.”
“Do I go now?” Maisie asked, half standing. “I’m not done with this.”
“We will never be done with the post. Go and get your money. You don’t want the cashier to run out before your first pay.”
She laughed at Maisie’s traumatized face.
“I’m pulling your leg, Miss Musgrave. Run along and collect your wages.”
Maisie was a fast runner. She could have leapfrogged anyone who had a five-minute start on her. But she walked, forcing sedateness into her stride. She wasn’t going to let anyone laugh at her eagerness.
There was a queue for the cashier’s window, a retired corner that Maisie had indeed never noticed.
A clutch of typists was queued ahead of Maisie, headed by Phyllida. She smiled on seeing Maisie, took a luxuriant puff of a cigarette in a pink Bakelite holder, and nudged the others.
“Pah, I told you it was just a gentlemen’s bet.” She turned back to Maisie. “We didn’t think you knew how to collect your wages.”
I’m so sorry to have disappointed you.
“Oh,” Maisie said, hoping it was enough to end the conversation.
“I suppose someone told you.”
Maisie couldn’t see how that required a response.
“Would you have asked if they hadn’t?” Phyllida asked, her expression uncomfortably shrewd.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m not trying to be impertinent.” (Though she was succeeding admirably). “You just don’t seem the asking sort.”
A point to Miss Jenkins! But the crease between Phyllida’s brows made Maisie feel guilty.
“I guess I don’t know what sort I am,” she told Phyllida.
That made Phyllida laugh, a deep, boisterous laugh that echoed centuries of raising tankards in the remote countryside on a rare night off. She muttered something, and Maisie realized Phyllida’s usual voice struggled to tamp down a strong Yorkshire dialect, the sort that was generally sneered at in London.
Maisie was still thinking about Phyllida’s accent when, at last, it was her turn at the barred window.
“Oh, yes. Miss Musgrave,” the cashier, Miss Mallinson, responded when Maisie gave her name. She wore round spectacles and a masculine tie and worked with brisk purpose, but gave Maisie a wide smile as she slid the brown pay packet under the bars. “Welcome to the BBC.”
Maisie half nodded and tiptoed away, not hearing the whispers and ill-suppressed giggles her trance accorded.