Read Online Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford - Free Book Online Page B

men encasing their wealth in sleek metal and leather and wire wheels. Women, too, occasionally, nearly always driving open-top cars, bursts of impertinent sunshine in beaded cloches, cherry-red lips widespread in ecstatic smiles, eyes fireworking from behind their motoring goggles. Racing their way somewhere they no doubt called important.
    Maisie turned from them and held her breath, waiting for the entrance onto the Strand, this last mile of the marathon. So many magnificent buildings to pass on the way, the Royal Courts of Justice, the charming and appropriately antique Twinings tea shop, and thenat last, the Savoy Hotel, an almost-palace on a street that once boasted palaces. She alighted at the corner of Savoy Street and revolved once on the spot, drinking in the day before measuring each step down the hill to Savoy Hill House, home of the BBC. The pub on the left, the Savoy Tup, was still shuttered at this hour. It and the Lyceum, just up on the Strand, were popular lunch spots for the denizens of Savoy Hill. Until she was paid, Maisie confined her lunches to an apple and a bun, but the Tup had been the purveyor of the sandwiches Hilda ordered that first day, and so Maisie hailed it with respect.
    She hadn’t yet visited the decrepit Savoy Chapel, just outside the BBC, but knew it was the subject of many jokes, its location considered ideal for the days when one’s entire department was imploding (at least once a week) or as a hiding place from Mr. Reith when he was on the warpath (at least once a day).
    No less worthy of worship was the Thames, at the foot of the hill. Maisie stopped outside the BBC’s door and looked down at it. Some bright day, it would be the height of bliss to eat a sandwich and cake on the Victoria Embankment.
    The BBC shared its home with the Institute of Electrical Engineers, who, being more than fifty years the senior, showed its scorn for this damp-eared upstart by designing the carved-out space so that the two entities never met. The IEE commandeered Savoy Hill’s majestic entranceway on the Embankment, and it was said they had a good laugh whenever some grand person came to broadcast and had to use the BBC’s unprepossessing entrance at the side of the building. Maisie thought that since the BBC was the natural and rather exciting outgrowth of the IEE’s work, they should be hovering like proud mothers. Instead, each organization went about its business as though the other didn’t exist.
    And indeed, once through that wooden door, nothing else did exist.
    It was easy to maintain her status as Invisible Girl as she whizzed back and forth between the executive offices and the Talks Department. Maisie had a long experience of listening to many conversations at once and gleaning anything that might be useful, and informationflew through the narrow corridors of Savoy Hill at a speed Lindbergh would envy. Thus, as the week progressed, she learned that Cyril Underwood-not-typewriter worked in the Schools Department, where they produced broadcasts heard in schoolrooms throughout Britain, considered a daunting task. Scores of complimentary letters from teachers and heads did nothing to allay the staff’s horror of a scalding letter, or even worse, negative commentary in a newspaper. They soldiered on, both pets and prodigals under Mr. Reith’s watchful eye. There was a woman producer there, too, a Mary Somerville, apparently hired through “an old girls’ network, who knew?” and quite brilliant. The curvy, curly blonde in the typing pool was Phyllida Fenwick, the de facto head of the consortium by dint of being the tallest and loudest. The proprietress of the tearoom, her temperament both leonine and motherly, was Mrs. Hudson. Then there were those who simply announced themselves, like Beanie.
    â€œIt’s Sabine, of course, Sabine Warwick, not of the Greville side—wouldn’t want to look after that pile anyway—but baronets just the