Her eyes were sparkling. Maisie railed inwardly, determined to no longer be any sort of rule breaker. Mr. Reith wouldn’t like it.
“Rules are useful, of course,” Hilda noted, as though she were discussing galoshes. “But I find it’s best to be flexible. You’d be amazed at who might turn out to be wrong.” Hilda’s grin turned conspiratorial. “The lads are keeping it quiet, but Billy was taken to the woodshed by Mr. Eckersley. He’s also been given a few days off—without pay—to ‘recuperate,’ as it’s being put. What with the shame, and a ‘mere secretary’ having done him such a good turn before all his friends, he’ll never dare look you in the eye again, I should think.”
Maisie couldn’t help it. She laughed. Hilda laughed, too. She opened a biscuit tin and tossed one to Maisie.
“Butter. Your favorite, I believe.” It was. “Let’s forge on. We’ve a great deal to do. The lads can mess ’round if they like. We need to get things done.”
“Perhaps . . . perhaps we can have a nurse do a series of Talks on treating injuries at home,” Maisie suggested. “Not me! I mean, obviously, a proper nurse, a Sister from a hospital. Someone who really—”
“A very, very fine idea,” Hilda agreed. Her smile was something different this time. Maisie had nothing to compare it with, but if she had to guess, it was respect.
“I’d have thought you’d be too brokenhearted to carry on there, after that rotten fellow,” Lola said, watching Maisie put on her hat. “But you seem almost . . . jolly.”
Imagine me, jolly.
“I suppose I’m still a bit cut up about it, to be honest,” Maisie admitted. “But they keep me too busy to think about it much.”
“‘Too busy’ is the problem. You’ll never get a chance to meet anyone else.”
“Ah well.” Maisie shrugged, pleased with her fresh lack of concern. “Perhaps I’ll have more luck when I get some new clothes. What do you think?”
Lola, always a keen advocate of new clothes, waxed eloquent all the way to the tram stop, where she saw Maisie off.
True to Hilda’s prediction, Billy melted into the wall whenever he saw Maisie approaching. When she couldn’t be avoided, his addresses were to her shoes, or occasionally an elbow. Maisie marveled at the improvements humiliation could make in a man’s character.
Phyllida, on the other hand, was so impressed with Maisie, she drew her into a circle of two. They quickly became friends.
“You’re very lucky, working for Miss Matheson,” Phyllida told her. “She’s an absolute genius. She was political secretary to Lady Astor, you know.”
“I know. I can’t imagine. Or I can, but I can’t.”
Phyllida flicked some ashes off her cigarette and sipped her coffee.
“I trow . . . er, bet she was a suffragette.” Phyllida’s native Yorkshire dialect ceaselessly battled to break free of its London cage, scoring the most victories when she was animated. “I wanted to be a suffragette. I even came down to London for the last big fight!” She grinned and took a long drag of her cigarette. “I was ten years old. But tall, so no one noticed me till we were arrested. And just months before it was legal, what rot. The police didn’t mither—bother—me, but I still have the scars from Father’s whipping. Right nonsense women can’t vote till we’re thirty! I’m going to stand for office one day, you know, and get to changing things.”
From a Yorkshire dairy farm to a typist at the BBC to an MP. That would be quite a story. Someone should be keeping notes.
“Did you vote, in America?” Phyllida asked longingly.
“I couldn’t. I’m not a citizen there,” Maisie reminded her. She’d still been in Brighton in 1920, and read about the American election with the same cursory interest she’d give a story about farming in India.
“The Talks are getting awfully fascinating. I wish I could have been Talks secretary.” Phyllida looked mournful, not jealous.
“Did you put yourself forward?” Maisie felt guilty.
“Couldn’t.” Phyllida snorted. “If a lass is to shift from typing, she’s got to be asked, not ask herself. That’s just not the done thing. Besides, I’m a Northerner, officially uneducated, and nobody. So goes the assessment.”
“But I’m not educated, and I’m nobody,” Maisie said. “Why would—”
“Ah, but you’re foreign,” Phyllida pointed out, as though that answered everything. “Never mind. We’re all here; that’s what matters.”
Back in the office, Hilda was radiating so much glee, the chilly summer felt almost warm.
“No, I shan’t tell you until the meeting,” Hilda teased. Her excitement was contagious, and Maisie tore through correspondence with hungry impatience.
The Talks staff usually held their meetings around a large table in the room that housed their files. It was the only room where the staff was guaranteed to sit still for an hour at a time, and so had the perversity to be the draftiest in the department.