“That’s very good news, Lady Astor. Thank you so much for letting us know.”
“Those are the words of a polite and professional secretary, my dear. Don’t you realize what this means? All women over twenty-one can cast a vote next year, single or married, rich or poor. It’s the law now, and it won’t ever be changed again. It’s rather a bit of something.”
Phyllida would turn twenty-one next year. She would be able to vote. Everyone would. Then Maisie swayed and seized hold of the desk. A Canadian national, living in Britain, was allowed to vote. That meant her. And now she was going to get to spread the news.
“I’ve got to get Miss Matheson straightaway.”
“That’s better,” Lady Astor trilled, her laugh ending in an unladylike snort.
Maisie slammed down the phone, snatched up her pad, and sprinted for the studio. Where of course the BROADCASTING IN PROGRESS sign kept her rooted to the corridor. She circled before the door, a bull trapped in a pen.
“My goodness, dear, you’ll wear a hole in the floor!” It was Siepmann. With Cyril. She wanted to lower her head and charge. “You don’t look like you’re working. Doesn’t Miss Matheson keep your nose well to the grindstone?”
She thrust her nose into the air to give him a better view. “She does, Mr. Siepmann, though it’s hardly necessary. We in Talks are very dedicated to doing the best possible work. For the BBC,” she added, remembering their last conversation. She was pleased to see Cyril look abashed at Siepmann’s manner. Or maybe he was surprised at hers.
“I rejoice to hear it,” Siepmann said. “I do sometimes wonder how you all manage, being so busy.” He shook his head, as though the wonderment preyed on him. “I’m surprised Miss Matheson doesn’t seek to expand the department, do more delegating while keeping the whip hand high. I’m sure if I ran it, I’d have to be a terrible tyrant.”
I’m sure if you ran it, we’d all take up pitchforks and torches.
“Miss Matheson manages very well, thank you.”
“Certainly according to the papers and listener numbers, yes,” he agreed, as though such things were inconsequential. “Well, keep up your hard work, my dear,” he said, and jerked his head to Cyril to chivvy him on.
If only I were one of those secret agents. I’d have a poison dart to shoot at him.
She shunted aside that pretty picture and focused on the real masterpiece: Lady Astor’s scoop. There had to be a way to use it and not step outside their bounds. A special guest, perhaps, ruminating on the possibility that full suffrage would at last be the law of the land? And if that person was highly respectable, known, above reproach . . . maybe Lady Astor herself? No, not a sitting politician. Everyone knew they leaked stories all the time, but none would do so publicly. But it should be a woman. A suffragette! Emmeline Pankhurst had just died (such a lovely retrospective Talk on her life and work). Her daughter Christabel had moved to California. Perhaps the other daughter, Sylvia? No. An older suffragette would be better, someone who had fought long and hard and survived to see—of course, Millicent Fawcett. She was over eighty, not well, but very much alive and a dame, so decidedly proper.
Hilda came out of the studio and Maisie pounced on her.
“Miss Matheson, the most extraordinary thing! We’ve got to . . . It’s so . . .”
A shadow loomed over her. She’d forgotten it was Vita Sackville-West who had been broadcasting.
“Holy smokes,” Maisie whispered, gazing up into the great lady’s steely eyes. “I . . . er . . .”
Vita laughed. “I do relish the sight of a woman passionate about her work. Do attend to Miss Musgrave, my dear Hilda. I can see myself out this once. Good day.”
As soon as Vita was out of earshot, Hilda turned on Maisie in a rage.
“Since when are you unprofessional? Was my promise of ‘later’ somehow not clear? I’m a patient woman, but—”
“No, it’s not that. I—” She barreled an astonished Hilda back into the studio, closing the door behind them. “Miss Matheson, Lady Astor rang, and—”
Billy was still in there, clutching a wilted bouquet of red and blue wires.
“Could you leave us be for a moment, please?” she asked him.
“But . . . I’m working,” he protested. Maisie shot him her most ferocious glare, and out he went. She slammed the door behind him and leaned against its gloriously soundproof surface, grinning in the face of Hilda’s fury.
“They’ve passed equal suffrage. Lady Astor said so. It’s being announced tomorrow, but she’s told us now on the chance we can do something with a broadcast tonight. Can we? I thought Dame Millicent Fawcett, maybe. She could speak to a rumor or some such, so it’s not ‘breaking news.’ The papers can’t complain at anything to do with Dame Millicent, surely? I mean, not the good ones.”
Hilda’s face morphed from purple with indignation to white with astonishment and was now pink with pleasure. She clasped Maisie’s hand.