“Miss Matheson, I need you to replace Sir John Simon in the talk on Lord Birkenhead.”
Hilda turned white. “But, Mr. Reith, we’ve invited him. He’s accepted. It’s all arranged.”
“Yes.” He helped himself to one of her cigarettes. “You’ll have to disinvite him. He’s not appropriate for broadcast—his personal life, you see.”
“I’m afraid I very much do not see.”
Neither did Maisie. Sir John was married to an activist of some sort, but that was as much as she knew of him. Reith rolled his eyes.
“Well, with the girl present, I can’t say more. Just see to it at once. This isn’t pleasant for me, you know. Do you realize I had MPs on the phone after that Bolshie debate, worried we might be creating panic? Panic, Miss Matheson!”
“Oh, what tosh,” Hilda said, ignoring the disappearance of Reith’s eyebrows. “The papers are constantly screeching any amount of dross about Russians, radicalism, revolution, probably even roller skates. We create a space for dialogue, and that calms things down rather than stirs them up. The more people understand—”
“You’re not going to argue that radio forges connection again, are you?”
“I don’t have to. I think it’s been quite proven.”
She was going too far. Maisie wanted to throw herself between them.
“Miss Matheson, I admire your hard work, but you must be more temperate. I see, for example, you are allowing Lady Nicholson to review that filthy Mead book?”
“Oh, it’s not filthy at all, Mr. Reith. It offers an extraordinary insight into the Samoan culture! Remarkable people. Here . . .” She produced the book from her stack. “Do read at least some of it.”
Reith shied from the book in more alarm than Maisie guessed he ever had from mustard gas.
“You’ll disinvite Sir John, and I don’t like the sound of this fellow talking about our oil interests in Persia. The Persians are lucky to have our business, you know.”
“That’s not really what—”
“You must be politic as well as political,” he said. Feeling the impression of the exit line, he nodded to Hilda and Maisie and strode away.
Fielden stuck his head in. “Shall I reschedule the oil talk, then?”
“I suppose so,” Hilda said. “I’ll try to winkle more of what’s troubling him. Do draw up some names to replace Sir John Simon, will you?”
Fielden almost smiled. Catastrophes and unpleasant tasks stimulated him.
Maisie flipped to a fresh sheet in her pad. “Do you want to draft the letter to Sir John now?”
“No,” said Hilda. “I most emphatically do not. He must have crossed Reith. If everyone with a dodgy personal life were barred, there’d be no one left to broadcast.” She lit a cigarette, leaned back in her chair, and glared up at the leaf-and-dart cornice. “Very silly, panicking about panic. Dangerous, too, really.”
“Yes!” Maisie burst in. “It’s funny you should say that, because—”
Rusty ran in, bearing aloft an urgent telegram for Hilda, just as the phone rang and Maisie jumped to answer it. One emergency turned into another, and somehow the entire week disappeared in a flume of radio waves.
Alfred handed her a card with the last round of correspondence. “Funny, people writing to you,” he said, winking. Maisie ignored him and tore open the envelope. It was just one line, from Simon, asking if she was free to meet for a drink the next evening.
“Ooh, someone fancies himself a Bohemian,” Phyllida said when she saw the part of Chelsea he was suggesting for their rendezvous.
“Maybe he is and the aristocrat suggestion was just a joke?” Maisie ventured.
They left their tea and ran down to the BBC’s library—a grand appellation for what was basically a converted airing cupboard. Squeezed together at the single bookcase, they turned the pages of Debrett’s straight to “B.” And there it was. Simon’s father, Charles Brock-Morland, was the Earl of Banbury. His older brother, Nigel, was the principal heir. Simon himself was an Honorable. A thrill of excitement ran through Maisie as she read this. Damn, I thought I’d outgrown my Lady Astor fantasies.
“‘Honorable,’ eh?” Phyllida drawled. “And do we suppose he is?”
“The evidence is in his favor thus far,” Maisie said. She started to close the book, but instead flipped to “W.” “Well! Look at that. Beanie’s an Honorable, too. ‘Hon. Miss Sabine Eugenia Warwick.’ It certainly is a refined name, isn’t it?”
Phyllida shut the book.
“Lot of maungy nonsense,” she pronounced, and blew a raspberry at the cover for extra emphasis. Maisie whipped out her handkerchief to wipe the book clean of spittle before replacing it on the shelf. “Means sod all these days, and they know it,” Phyllida added, folding her arms in satisfaction.
“Someone like Miss Matheson deserves to be in a book like this, doesn’t she? There’s Who’s Who, but that doesn’t seem illustrious enough,” Maisie said, her finger still resting on the spine.