“It’s true! You’re less scrawny now, and you’ve got nice color in your cheeks.” She leaned closer to examine Maisie. “You’ve even got cheeks! And you don’t look so frightened anymore. You look more . . . Well, you’re still hungry,” she said, breaking out the grin. “Have a banana.”
Maisie finished her pie and took the banana. She knew she’d filled out and she liked it. A boyish look was fashionable, perhaps, but no one wanted to look unhealthy. Her new dress—still plain wool, but better quality—didn’t hang like a rag on the line. Instead, it skimmed what was belatedly but unquestionably turning into a figure. The dress was a nice pale green. “Garland Green,” the shopgirl had informed her in a proud, breathy swoon, as though she’d invented it. “And the trim is Briar Rose.” Maisie still just called it pink.
“Hallo. Would you like company?” The women looked up, Maisie’s cheeks bulging with banana, to see two young men walking their bicycles, grinning at them. Or anyway, at Phyllida.
“D’ye nae see we have each other’s company?” Phyllida asked.
“Ah, go on,” the bolder one persisted. “How’s about we give you a lift on the bikes, hm? You’d make a fine figurehead,” he complimented Phyllida.
“When I feel like having my bones broken, you’ll be the first one I call,” she promised.
“And we have to get back to work,” Maisie added. “Some of us work, you know.”
“Oh Lord,” the other man groaned. “Northerners, Americans, working girls. A trifecta of misery. Come on,” he urged, pedaling off. The bold one gave Phyllida another longing glance, but followed his friend.
“Which trait do you think was our gravest offense?” Maisie asked, though she assumed the men had only included her by way of convenience.
“Working, no contest,” Phyllida said.
“I suppose it’s not such an awful thing, fellows liking you,” Maisie ventured, handing Phyllida a cake.
“Pah. They like that I’ve got blond curls, long legs, and an enormous chest,” Phyllida scoffed.
She was very lovely. Tall and plumper than was fashionable, her dairy-farm roots evident even in her urbanity. The long legs were wonderfully sculpted, so it looked like she still hiked the hills after the cows every day, though she hadn’t since she was seven. And despite her strident efforts, the loose fashions and flattening corsets failed to conceal her ample bosom.
“I thought I’d find a man to marry me in Savoy Hill,” Maisie said. She concentrated on picking a currant out of her cake, glad her cheeks were already pink from the cold.
“Lots of lasses come in thinking that,” Phyllida consoled her. “And I daresay it happens.”
“What sort of man would you like to marry?”
“O-ho, no, thank you. No, I had quite enough being under the thumb of my father. I won’t be subjected to any other man and that’s that. One way or another I’m going to end up in Parliament. Is that the church bell?”
They braced themselves against the wind for the short walk up Savoy Place.
“Do you think there are Bolshevist spies in Britain?” Maisie shouted, her words buffeted on the wind. It was the perfect weather for asking such questions—you were lucky if the person right next to you could hear.
“If there are, they must feel right at home. Siberia’s got to be warmer than this.”
“But really, do you think so?” Maisie persisted.
“Communists believe in equality for women, so they aren’t all bad, I’d say.”
“If they believe in a single-party state, though, then no one would be allowed to vote.”
“Mad way to cut down on paperwork, isn’t it? And that’s exactly why it’s silly to be afraid of communism gaining a hold here. Even the illiterate know we British love paperwork.”
They’d been gone less than an hour, and each returned to in-trays mountainous with paper, rather proving Phyllida’s point.
Having new energy as well as new cheeks, Maisie felt she was becoming the avatar of the efficiency Hilda demanded for Talks. She read and sorted correspondence as though she’d taken a speed-reading course and could not remember the last time she missed a key when typing. She liked it all, but the constant bustle meant there was scant time for trying new things beyond the typewriter. There was her vague interest in Hilda’s German propaganda, but Maisie wanted to do more within the world of Talks.
Hilda liked initiative in her staff, so Maisie felt bold enough a few days later, when Hilda was signing letters, to ask, “Could I be the one to start putting together notes and things for the Talk on memorable sounds, please, Miss Matheson? Or might I help Mr. Collins?”
“Hmm? Sorry?” Hilda looked up at her from a letter to Alexander Fleming.
“The idea, from the meeting, on sounds?”
Hilda’s expression remained blank. Maisie blushed. “My idea. You said it was good, something we could . . .” She trailed off, feeling silly. Feeling worse than that, because Hilda was frowning.
“There are any number of good ideas, but as you very well know, only a few of them ever become Talks.”