“Grand, grand. Listen, darling, can you dine with me tonight? Seven? The Spencer in Chelsea? Say you can!” He definitely sounded rushed and frazzled now, and her “yes” was as much to calm him down as because she wanted to see him. “Thank you, darling. Must dash, cheerio!”
Maisie hung up and stared at the phone.
“All right,” Hilda said, returning Maisie to the office. “We’ll convene a panel of married women to give a Talk addressing this worry about cross husbands. That will be nice and proper.”
Maisie made the note, her mind running backward from marriage to love. Is this love, between me and Simon? Could he love me? Do I love him? How does anyone ever know? I suppose if people were sure, it would put an awful lot of poets out of work.
She glanced at the neat pile of Hilda’s books. Several volumes of poetry, a novel—probably one of Vita’s recommendations—and any number of pamphlets. Had Hilda been disappointed in love, once? Was that why she threw herself so wholly into work? Or worse, was the one she loved lying under poppies, somewhere in Belgium?
Maisie’s mind spun far away from Simon now. Ten years had passed since the Armistice, but for so many left alive and alone, it was yesterday. Maisie loved the bold new world, this glory they were continually inventing, but it was hard not to walk through the streets and feel that undercurrent of rage and, of course, fear. Because if so much had changed already, what might happen next? Maisie wanted to tell people there was no point trying to control change. Far better to control fear, but . . .
Her fingers were itching again.
“Look at the busy little bee,” Mr. Holmby at the Tup crowed as he brought Maisie more bread and butter with her lunch. “Writing a letter?”
“I’m working on a story,” she said, beaming up at him.
“Ah, isn’t that lovely, then?” He nodded in approval. She knew he was thinking of the sort of puff-pastry stories that ran in the glossy magazines. It would never occur to him, nor to her to tell him, that she was writing about the unreasonable fears of Communism, when in fact they should be more afraid of the effects of deep poverty on so much of the British population. Such information would disrupt the order of things.
And it would disrupt the bread and butter.
“It’s going to be all hands on deck for the correspondence tomorrow, I should think,” Phyllida exclaimed later that afternoon, rubbing her hands together. Fielden sighed heavily.
Maisie looked up from the script she was revising. “Hmm? What? Why?”
Fielden sighed again and Phyllida laughed.
“Maisie, I know you’ve not forgotten the evening’s debate topic?”
She hadn’t forgotten the topic, just that it was this evening. There were times when a single day at the BBC felt like it lasted a week, which was part of what she loved about it, but it did occasionally make life confusing. However, tonight’s debate was Should Married Women Work?—a subject half the women in Savoy Hill felt was already decided and were delighted to share with the world.
“Oh, goodness!” Maisie screeched, prompting another sigh from Fielden. “It’s going to be a tremendous show, isn’t it?”
They powered through their work that afternoon and Maisie skipped to the studio just before six thirty to ready it for the debate at seven. She was setting up the microphones when Reith strode in. Reith never entered the studios, and Maisie suspected this shift in habit did not presage anything good.
“Good evening, sir. You’re here quite late. Is there something amiss?”
“Hmm? Oh, Miss Musgrave. No. I simply thought I had best supervise this debate. Best make sure all the right sort of things are said, mitigating against complaints and what.”
She wondered how much he agreed with Hoppel’s opinion that the BBC needed to be less progressive. She wondered how many other men held the same opinion.
“It’s very good, having these debates,” she said. “Very patriotic, really.”
“Is it?” He looked as though she were using the word incorrectly.
“Oh, absolutely! They discuss the complexities of government and social policy, and of course question it, too, but maybe, perhaps, give ordinary people information for discussing with their representatives, which might mean changing policy, and you can only have that sort of thing in a civilized and democratic society like ours,” she said, hardly pausing to breathe.
“Hm, well, it’s a very interesting perspective you have, Miss Musgrave,” he said, nodding. She felt like a dog who had just performed a trick, and that he was barely restraining himself from patting her on the head. “Quite extraordinary, that we can even ask the question, isn’t it? These times, these times.” He sighed and took out his cigarettes.
“No! I mean, er, they do ask that no one smoke in the studios, sir,” she reminded him, feeling herself blush.
“Ah. Yes, of course,” he muttered, tucking the case back in his jacket.