But it was true. She needed this job, needed this room with the desk, the swivel chair, the bird-festooned teacup and saucer. She even needed the terrifying Miss Shields. And the hidden Mr. Reith. If the BBC’s brazen raw newness chafed against her passion for the starch and certainty of tradition and opulence, it also enchanted her with its brightness and bustle. She couldn’t be turned away. She just couldn’t.
“Very nice, I’m sure, Miss Musgrave,” Miss Shields said dryly. “Thank you so much for coming in.” Miss Shields pressed a button by the door and held out her hand. “You will receive a letter in due course telling you of our decision. Rusty shall show you out.”
Rusty popped up like a groundhog and hovered as Maisie shook Miss Shields’s hand and thanked her with what she hoped wasn’t an excess of sincerity. She tagged after Rusty, feeling her heart oozing through the holes in her shoes. The most important thing was to get outside before the tears came.
“Hey, New York!”
Just as she reached reception, Maisie was stunned to be accosted by Mr. Underwood of the school tie and baggy trousers, pattering down the stairs after her. Still grinning. Still freckled. Eyes still blue—inviting enough that she wanted to learn to swim. Had she ever been smiled at by a man this handsome?
“Have you been to a speakeasy, then? What’s it like? Is Broadway really so bright at night it’s like day? Gosh, I’d rather like to spend just a week there. Must be jolly great fun—not that our London isn’t the best place on earth, of course, and we can get drinks legally, but maybe it’s more fun when you can’t? I’d give a lot to see the Cotton Club. Or do they let white people in?”
It was like being blown through with machine-gun artillery. The fellow’s interview skills were more daunting than Miss Shields’s, and the questions more impossible to answer. But he was looking at her with interest, which was more than Miss Shields had done and remarkable from a man. Grateful to him for distracting her from her misery, Maisie gave him the one answer she could manage.
“Well, ‘Broadway’ itself is a street, but you mean the theater district. It’s . . . rather . . . well, glorious, really. All those theaters, one after the other, marquees all lit up. I daresay you could read there, though I suppose you wouldn’t want to.”
To her dismay, he looked disappointed.
“You don’t talk like an American, not like some of the others who’ve been here, or in the stories.”
“Oh. Well, I . . .” She was eager to explain herself using as many choice bits of American slang as she could muster, but those eyes and freckles made syllables hard to come by.
“Oi, Underwood!” someone shouted from the top of the steps. “What the devil are you doing, having another tea break? Get yourself back here before the man takes your head off and uses it for a football.”
“Suppose I ought to dash, then,” her interrogator remarked, unruffled. “You’ll be back, will you? I do want to hear more!”
“Er . . . I—I don’t think so,” she mumbled, but he was scaling the stairs two at a time. “Thanks anyway,” she said to his back as it disappeared.
She glanced at the receptionist, wondering if she should be marked as leaving. The receptionist was simultaneously directing a man with a parcel, asking someone on the phone to please hold the line, and scribbling at a pad with a pencil.
Maisie closed the door on the painted trees and the gleam and the polish. She swiped impatiently at her eyes, rounded her shoulders against the chill, and trudged up the appropriately dark street.
“Miss! Miss!”
Rusty was sprinting toward her, a fiery little Olympic torch.
“Lucky you’re here, miss. Didn’t think I’d find you, but I took the chance. Miss Shields, miss, she asked if I did find you, would you return a moment, please?”
He ran back to the BBC, gone so fast Maisie was sure she was hallucinating.
But Rusty was decidedly solid, standing in the light spilling from the open door, beckoning to her with the impatient exasperation of boys universal, and was only mollified when Maisie finally walked back toward him. Her heart was behaving in a most peculiar fashion, as though it were holding its breath, wondering if it should crumple completely or take a leap of hope.
Miss Shields was descending the steps into reception. Her expression was resigned, with a soup?on of fury, and her words sounded rehearsed.
“Ah, Miss Musgrave, that is convenient. It has been decided to offer you the position. You may begin on Monday. Be here promptly at nine.”
Maisie knew she should close her mouth or say something, but she was thoroughly incapable of doing either.
“Are you interested in the position?” Miss Shields snapped.
“I . . . yes, that is, yes, abso . . . Thank you!”
“I will allow for your surprised enthusiasm, but do know that Mr. Reith expects clear-spoken decorum in his presence at all times. As to—” She pursed her lips and appeared to change her mind. “The position pays three pounds, five shillings a week, and we are not accustomed to negotiating. Is that understood?”
It would never have occurred to Maisie to negotiate. This woman had just offered her life. She only hoped she wasn’t, after all, hallucinating.