On Air: A New E&D Short Story! (Part One)

Hi there, friends! Long time, no see! I have much to say, but not much time to say it, so I’ll just get right to the point: I’m writing yet another E&D short story, and here’s Part I!

Hope to post Part II in a fortnight. I haven’t edited this part yet, so you’re getting a bit of a rough draft. Still, I hope you enjoy!

On-Air

(An Elizabeth and Darcy Short Story)

Her mother liked to tell people that Elizabeth was an actress; she liked to tell people, especially the bachelors her mother foisted upon her, that she was an unwed mother. Both claims were true, in their way.

Elizabeth Bennet—or “Miss Lizzy,” as she was known on-air—considered herself a mother to the tens of thousands of children who tuned in each week to hear her perform on “Tales for Tots,” the nation’s third-most popular radio broadcast for children. (“Third place is not first place,” read the recent memorandum from the network’s vice-president, Fitzwilliam Darcy. “Brilliant observation,” Elizabeth had muttered to her co-worker and best friend, Charlotte Lucas.)

“You’re more like a big sister than a mother to all those children,” suggested Jane, her own big sister, who loved Elizabeth’s show, but hated the idea that Elizabeth would sully her reputation by suggesting she’d had a child out of wedlock.

It was not that Jane was prudish, only that she knew exactly how hard it was to be an unwed mother. Never mind that it was 1939, and middle-class women everywhere were having to make do in ways their mothers and grandmothers would have found distasteful. (Poor women had long known, of course, that making do had little to do with taste.) Jane’s “fall from grace,” as her mother liked to put it, had destroyed Fanny Bennet’s hopes that all of their financial problems would be solved by a Rockefeller or a Chrysler sweeping into their lives and falling madly in love with her most beautiful daughter.

“But why shouldn’t a rich man fall in love with Jane—or with any of us?” Kitty had asked, soon after Jane had given birth. “She is still as beautiful as ever, and so are we all!”

“At least some of us,” said Lydia, with a giggling glance at Mary.

“Beauty,” retorted Mary, with a sad shake of her head, “is nothing to virtue, and the loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable.”¹

Elizabeth wished she could scoff at Mary’s old-fashioned attitude, but she could not deny that Jane—kind and compassionate Jane—had become something of a pariah in the three years since the birth of little Tommy Bennet. It did not matter that Jane had been abandoned by her fiancé; to the people of Meryton, New York, she was loose and immoral for having given her love to the wrong man. Nor did it matter that Jane was a gifted teacher with a degree from Hunter College; to her neighbors, she was unfit to educate their children. And it certainly did not matter that Jane continued to volunteer at church and aid those with even less than the Bennets; to some of her fellow congregants, Jane was a sinner, through and through.

Well, Elizabeth had no use for such small-minded folk. She was only too glad to spend her weekdays rooming with Charlotte Lucas and two other girls in a dingy Manhattan apartment, dining on tins of beans and hanging her laundry to dry on the loud and ill-tempered radiators. She missed Jane and Tommy, of course, and she never could get enough of walking the rolling hills of Meryton when she returned home for a visit. But she was proud to earn the income that kept her mother, sisters, and darling nephew from being evicted from Longbourn, the rambling old country house where the Bennet girls had been born.

Yes, she relished being a “career girl,” as the magazines liked to call working women of any age, but that did mean she loved every aspect of her job. She disliked her desk chair (splintered down the middle of the seat, so that several of her skirts were now snagged); she distrusted the elevator (“I’ve only been stuck four times since starting,” assured Mel, the lift operator who had been hired six months earlier); and she utterly detested her latest boss.

“Perhaps you have a teensy-weensy problem with authority?” Charlotte had suggested, after their first meeting with Darcy—the son, that is. She quite liked old Mr. Darcy, the owner of Pemberley Broadcasting Network, or PBN.

“Yes, but old Mr. Darcy’s not really your boss,” Charlotte had pointed out, when Elizabeth had tried to defend herself. “He’s more like a genial uncle who happens to own the place. Anyone who dares to tell you what to do…now they’d better watch out! Just think of Mr. Collins!”

“Oh, come on, Charlotte! No one liked Billy Boy, even you!”

“I still can’t believe you weren’t fired when you called him that to his face.”

“I suppose my voice is simply more valuable than his. After all, he’s long gone, and I’m still here!”

“Well, I doubt you’re more valuable to PBN than the owner’s son, so you’d best keep your wit to yourself, Lizzy, at least if you want to keep your job. Besides, Dr. Darcy isn’t that bad. Sure, he’s a little stiff and abrupt, but—“

“He called my show ‘tolerable’!”

“Yes, but he called ‘Philip Morris Playhouse’ a disgrace to radio, so in comparison, tolerable is not—”

“And besides, why does he insist on being called Dr. Darcy? It’s ridiculous! He’s not practicing medicine anymore. He’s sitting in a cushy office that his daddy gave him, pretending he knows about the business of radio!”

To be fair, he was not, at present, sitting in his cushy office. He was pacing it with such energy that he did not seem to notice Elizabeth when she entered. She hadn’t knocked, but then, he had been the one to demand she come to his office, immediately. Besides, she rather enjoyed catching him unawares.

She had to admit: he looked almost handsome today, though not handsome enough to tempt her! It must have been the sunlight, streaming through his office window—or perhaps discomposure became him. He seemed more natural, more real when he was agitated. His expression, usually so blank and unreadable, came to life whenever they argued. Was this (and not her dislike of authority) why she had picked so many fights with him in the four months since he had become her boss? The way he ran his hands through his hair, the brightening of those ice-blue eyes, that muscle in his jaw, which jumped when she challenged him…

Oh, fine. She did not detest her boss. She only wished she did.

When he stopped pacing to stare out the window, she tiptoed further into the room, hoping to catch a glance of whatever had caught his attention. She noticed nothing unusual, but then, who needed a reason to stare at the Manhattan skyline? Even Elizabeth, country girl at heart, couldn’t get enough of that view.

Darcy sighed then, leaning forward until his forehead touched the glass. When he placed a hand, fingers splayed, against the window, her breath caught: this was not discomposure; this was not agitation. He was miserable.

For a split second, she considered hurrying over to him and placing a hand on his shoulder. He may have been her nemesis, but he was also a human being. She hated to see anyone suffer.

Then, abruptly, he straightened, his long spine stiffening, those shoulders she had longed to touch thrown back defiantly. He was on the verge of turning back to his desk, and then he would realize she had been staring at him.

Well, there was no better defense than a good offense.

“I must be in a great deal of trouble,” she drawled.

If her words startled him, he gave no sign of it, except perhaps in the sound he made, slight and low in his throat.

“You give yourself a great deal of credit, Bennet.”

Without glancing in her direction, he took a seat in his too-small desk chair. It struck her, not for the first time, that his office furniture did not quite live up to his prestigious title of Senior Vice President (whatever that meant); the desk and chair were mismatched and scarred, and there were no paintings or pictures on the walls.

Rustling through a pile of papers on his desk, he waved a hand in her direction. “Sit—if you please.”

“And if I do not?”

Finally he looked at her, and she arched a brow.

“Then stand,” he replied, matching her expression.

With a grin, she plopped down into one of the two wing-back chairs in front of his desk.

“Why is it that this chair,” she asked, settling herself against the cushioned back, “is so much more comfortable than your chair?”

He blinked. “Have you sat in my chair?”

“No.” (Though now she wished she had.) “It just looks uncomfortable—or perhaps you make it look uncomfortable.”

She’d meant it to be one of the jabs they usually exchanged, that sign they were revving up for a good fight, but something in his expression shuttered, and she realized she had wounded him.

She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Well,” he said, eyebrows raised. “That’s a first.”

“It’s a new act I’m trying.” She batted her eyelashes. “The sweet and repentant female.”

“It doesn’t become you,” he said, returning to his paperwork.

She spent the next several minutes sneaking glances at the surprisingly cluttered surface of his desk—not at his hands, no, certainly not. She was not watching his long fingers trace idle lines across whatever it was he was reading. Ratings reports? Advertising revenues? Perhaps he had drafted a memorandum listing all the reasons she ought to be fired.

Then he leaned back in his seat, pressing his fingers against his temples, and she saw what had engrossed him: a four-day-old copy of the New York Times.

She might have laughed at herself, had she not caught sight of the headline: “500 Doctors Called For Mimic War Duty.”²

“Do you miss practicing medicine?” she asked quietly.

His eyes widened. “I…” With a curt shake of his head, he slid the newspaper aside. “Where are you on the latest script?”

“Is this why you called me here: to ignore me—and then insult me?”

He frowned. “It is wholly within my purview as your manager to—“

“I’ve told you already: you are not my editor, Darcy, so any discussion of my script is—”

“That’s not actually why I’ve called you into the office, but it would be in your best interest—the best interest of everyone involved with ‘Tales for Tots’ —if we discussed—”

“Just tell me what have I done wrong, and then we may both go back to our”—she glanced at the newspaper on his desk—“work. Have I perhaps used too many of the network’s paper clips? Did I insult Carter when I asked him to get me a cup of coffee, instead of the other way around?”

“Bennet.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Believe it or not, I am trying to—”

“Oh, I know.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice, so that it matched the pitch she used on-air. “Is my tone not sing-song and high-pitched enough for your taste?”

“Your voice is”—he met her gaze, then looked away—“unobjectionable.”

In spite of herself, she laughed. “So you called me away from my work to tell me that my voice is”—now she lowered her pitch even further, though she could not quite match his resonant baritone—“unobjectionable?”

His lips curved upward, just slightly, and her breath caught.

“You really ought to smile more often,” she said.

His response: a frown, of course.

“Look.” She stood and crossed her arms. “I have far too much to do before I catch my train, so—”

“Did you make any of the edits I suggested?”

“I thought you said this wasn’t about—”

He pulled a sheaf of papers from one of his desk drawers. “This story, while amusing, is almost identical to a story you told on-air five weeks ago.”

“Yes, I believe you wrote, ‘Unoriginal’ on my copy of the script!” she bit out, before she could help herself.

“That is not an insult, Bennet, just a statement of fact.”

She leaned forward, placing her palms flat on his desk. “Then what about this as a statement of fact? You have been in the radio business for less than six months, and you are not, as far as I know, an actor, a writer, or a teacher. So I say that your expertise in the matter of of my team’s scripts is questionable. Perhaps you think your MD gives you license to dispense advice in the same quantities you once dispensed medicine, but—”

“I believe you have gone beyond statement of fact,” he said, sitting back in his chair, one eyebrow raised, “though your use of the word ‘dispense’ was rather clever. If only you were applying that cleverness”—he waved the script in the air—“here.”

She nearly lunged for the papers, stopping herself only when she caught sight of her reflection in the office window. Lydia, she thought—for the girl in the glass looked more like her 22-year-old sister than the 27-year-old professional Elizabeth claimed to be. Since their father’s death, four years earlier, Lydia had been fired from every job she’d managed to find (and finding jobs these days was no easy task). She spent more time fighting, or flirting, with her bosses than working.

So stop fighting and flirting with your boss, Lizzy!

Taking a deep breath, she sat down and folded her hands in her lap. “If you think my ideas for this week are unoriginal, we’ll go with Denny’s script.”

“His is worse.”

She snorted. “I’m not sure whether to feel relieved or annoyed that we actually agree on something, Darcy.”

“You’re not a bad writer, Bennet.”

“No, I hear I’m a tolerable one.”

“You’re witty, I’ll give you that.”

“Such praise, from the man I’ve never heard laugh.”

“And there’s a rhythm to your words that makes me—makes your listeners want to hear what you’ll say next. But—”

She rubbed her hands together. “Ah, here it comes!”

“Something has changed in your writing.”

Her lips parted, but no words emerged. After all, what could she say? He was right.

She had expected him to criticize the obvious flaws in her scripts: she was wordy; her sentences were too long; she tended to make even the simplest story a little too complicated. But these had always been problems for her. Thankfully, she worked on a team: Charlotte (who couldn’t tell a story to save her life) knew how to cut words with the best of them; Denny (who wrote like a telegram operator) could turn any complex sentence into a simple one; and old Mr. Philips (who had a diagram of Freytag’s pyramid posted above his desk) had a knack for identifying the most crucial parts of any story.

Darcy, however, had pinpointed the fear that had been nagging at her for a while now: she was no longer telling the stories she wanted to tell.

“I pulled the recordings from three years ago, from when you first started writing here,” he said, “and then, later, when you began acting, as well. There was something whimsical, something quirky about those stories.”

Yes. Those had been the stories she had liked to tell Tommy. Even when he had been too young to understand—even when he had been in the womb—she had been thinking up stories to tell him each weekend when she returned home to visit Jane.

“But this last year…” He exhaled. “Your stories have become pat, facile even.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “Facile?”

“Every story has a happy ending.”

“Of course it does! It’s a children’s show, for God’s sake! Even my earlier stories—”

“Yes, they had something like a happy ending, Bennet, but there was always some uncertainty, always something lurking behind the resolution that made you wonder what would happen after the story ended.”

She stared at him. Fitzwilliam Darcy—interloper, nemesis, unwanted source of authority and attraction—had just given her the most meaningful compliment she had ever received.

“Your stories now,” he continued, “sound almost exactly like what a listener might hear on ‘Let’s Pretend.’”

And that was the worst insult he could have leveled at her, mostly because it was true. How many episodes of CBS’s primetime Saturday show had she studied this past year, all in the hopes of figuring out exactly what made it so popular with children?

“You said yourself,” she bit out, “that third place is not first place. ‘Let’s Pretend’ has earned top ratings since—”

“First of all,” he cut in, “I was talking about the network, not your show, when I wrote that memorandum. PBN is regularly behind CBS and NBC. We will never catch up to them, Bennet, if we’re simply playing copy-cat.”

Her shoulders slumped. He was, yet again, correct.

“Second,” he said, his voice sinking, “I don’t actually think being first place is always what’s best, at least not when it comes to quality.” He stopped and stared up at the ceiling. “There are financial considerations—”

“Oh, good!” cried a cheerful voice from the doorway, and Elizabeth shot up from her seat, startled. There stood old Mr. Darcy, chewing on his customary cigar. It wasn’t lit, which was perhaps the reason he had startled her so. Usually, one could smell the owner of PBN—sweet, a bit spicy, and a little cloying, too—long before one saw him.

“Sir,” said Darcy, rising quickly. “I—”

“It’s all right!” George Darcy came ambling into the room, stopping to pat Elizabeth on the cheek. “I’m glad you’ve already explained things to her.”

Elizabeth turned and met Darcy’s eyes. He swallowed, and her heart sank.

“Actually, no,” said Darcy. “I haven’t yet—”

“Oh, very well then.” The old man—and he did appear old, Elizabeth realized, watching him sink gingerly into the other wingback chair—waved his cigar in the air. “Got a match for me, son?”

 Darcy sighed. “Dad, I told you—”

George Darcy winked at Elizabeth. “Tell him we’re at a radio station, not a hospital, will you?”

Elizabeth winced. “Mr. Darcy, I—”

“Ah, I’m only kidding with you, sweetheart.” From his chair, he reached out and gave her another pat, this time on the thigh. “Tell you what: get us a couple cups of coffee—and get yourself something, too, tea if you like it. Then we’ll all have a nice conversation, all right?”

Face hot, hands frozen, Elizabeth wondered if she had ever experienced so material a change of feelings in such a short period of time—and not just about old Mr. Darcy, either.³ His affability had become, at such close quarters, rather less affable, while his son’s cool distance seemed, in this light, more like respect than disdain.

“Sir.” Darcy’s tone was curt. “As we have already discussed—”

His father boomed out a laugh. “He’s about to give me a lecture, Miss Lizzy. He thinks we need to be more professional around here!”

“Well, I think he’s right,” said Elizabeth.

“Hmm, you’re one of those new women, are you?” The old man bit on his cigar, then grinned. “Well, Georgiana’s always telling me I need to keep up with the times, and now I’ve got you and William here saying the same thing. Don’t get old, Miss Lizzy, don’t get old! Now, about that cup of coffee—”

“She’s not getting you coffee, Dad.”

“Well, we at least need another chair. My assistant’s on his way.” To Elizabeth he added, “Have you met him? He’s a handsome bloke—but don’t you go getting any ideas! He’s sweet on my Georgi, you know.”

Elizabeth’s stomach clenched. “Yes, I’ve read about them in the society pages. Now, Mr. Darcy, if there are matters about ‘Tales for Tots’ that you would like to discuss—”

“Forgive me for running late,” came a smooth voice from the doorway—a voice that always caused Elizabeth to turn and walk in the other direction, whenever she heard it in the corridors of PBN. “I didn’t want to rush Georgiana at lunch.”

“Good thinking!” Old Mr. Darcy gave a hearty laugh. “Never anger the ladies, isn’t that right?” he added, waggling his eyebrows at Elizabeth. “Take a seat, my boy, and Miss Lizzy here can grab a chair from the next office over.”

Stiffly, Elizabeth turned to go, doing her best not to meet anyone’s eyes, but then Darcy said, “Take my chair, Bennet. I’ll stand.”

She turned and looked at him. “Then I’ll stand, too.” In spite of everything, her lips quirked. “I hear it’s not a very comfortable chair, anyway.”

He met her gaze. “Bennet, I—”

“Bennet, eh?” His father laughed again, though this time, Elizabeth heard the wheezing that came with the boom. “Treats her like she’s one of the boys!”

“She’s hardly that,” said his assistant, and Elizabeth could avoid it no longer: she turned and met the mocking gaze of Jane’s former fiancé, George Wickham.

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© 2024 Christina Morland

Notes:

1. “…the loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable” is a direct quote from Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 47 (Project Gutenberg version).

2. ““500 Doctors Called For Mimic War Duty” is an actual headline from the August 8, 1939 copy of The New York Times. Now, granted, August 8, 1939 was a Tuesday, and this scene takes place on a Friday, so it’s not perfect historical research — unless, perhaps, Darcy is reading a paper that’s a few days old, a perfectly acceptable thing to do for a busy person! Here’s the link to the article: https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/08/archives/500-doctors-called-for-mimic-war-duty-medical-officers-will-guard.html 

   3. “…so material a change” is a direct quote from Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 58 (Project Gutenberg version).