THE H-BOMB GIRL

by Stephen Baxter

  Bernadette shouted at the woman. “Oi, tatty head!”

  She turned, her face a slab. “Yeah?”

  “One espresso,” Bernadette called, above the racket. “Italian style.”

  “There’s three of you,” the waitress pointed out.

  “We haven’t got enough money.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “Give us three straws. Italian style.”

  The others laughed.

  The waitress just gazed back, dully. She wore a hand-lettered name tag: AGATHA. She was a sallow, skinny woman of about forty, but with an oval face that might once have been pretty, and pale-blue eyes, and thin hair pulled back. She looked bored, resentful.

  But when she saw Laura, her eyes widened. As if she recognised her.

  Laura looked away, confused.

  The Chinese man came over. His tag read BIG JIMMY. “Oh, it’s you,” he said cheerfully. “Saint Bernadette. I wish you’d shove off back to Lourdes and stop causing me trouble.” His accent was pure Scouse, not a trace of the Chinese Laura had expected.

  Agatha said, “She wants one espresso and three straws.”

  “Oh, give her what she wants.” He wandered off to tend to his shining machines.

  Agatha just shrugged and went to get the drink.

  Laura, disturbed by the interest Agatha had shown in her, watched her go. And she saw that Agatha had a thick book, bound in brown leather, jammed into the pocket of her grimy apron. The end of the spine was ripped, and the gold page ends looked scorched.

  For all the world it looked like Laura’s own diary.

  Of course it wasn’t her diary. How could it be? But she remembered how oddly Agatha had looked at her. What was going on here?

  Bernadette had seen all this. “Another one of your cousins, H-Bomb Girl?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The eyes,” Joel said. “The shape of her face. Like Miss Wells. Like you.”

  “There really is something funny about you,” Bernadette said without malice.

  Laura asked, “Who is she?”

  “Agatha? Beats me. I don’t know why Jimmy keeps her on.”

  “Probably for a bit of the old bayonet practice.” Nick O’Teen joined them.

  “Come off it, Nick,” Bernadette said. “Last time I saw a mouth like hers it had a hook in it.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Nick was in his Ted uniform, a blue suit and shoes with pointed toes. His duck’s-arse hair was slicked back, and he looked sharp, clean, his bootlace tie carefully knotted. His eyes were bright, his lips full.

  Agatha brought back their coffee, a tiny cup with three huge straws falling out of it.

  Nick reached into his pocket. “I’ll mug you for this, Bern.”

  Agatha looked at Joel. She smiled, a strange, empty expression. “Are you Joel Christmas?”

  Joel looked alarmed. “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing. Just—it doesn’t matter.” She turned to Nick. “And are you wearing make-up?”

  He just smiled back. “I’m on stage in a couple of hours.”

  “You look like a clown.”

  “And your name means ‘death’, darling. Keep the change. Bern, come and join us.”

  He led them to a table, where another boy was already sitting. They had to scrounge chairs to sit down. There was a bowl of boiled sweets on the table. Bernadette cadged a ciggie from Nick. He produced packets of Park Drive, Embassy, Woodbine, all more than half-empty.

  Nick introduced Laura to the boy, who was in his group the Woodbines. “Billy Waddle, drummer to the stars.” The drummer, a plump, good-looking boy with a sullen mouth, did a brief drum roll on the table top with cutlery. A couple of girls on a nearby table looked over and laughed. He grinned back.

  Bernadette crowded in next to the drummer. She looked more animated than she had since Laura had met her. “Hello, Billy. Long time no see.”

  But Billy was still grinning at the other girls.

  Bernadette grew angry. “You don’t half irk my shingles, Billy Waddle. Leave those scrubbers alone!”

  Nick watched, his expression complicated. Joel looked at the floor. Billy Waddle didn’t say a word.

  Laura saw all this. There was a lot going on here, she thought. A lot of ties between these people, whose lives she had just walked into. In a way, it was just like at home. And she wasn’t a part of any of it.

  Bernadette changed the subject. “Nick wouldn’t like your dad, H-Bomb Girl.”

  “Why not?”

  “Nick doesn’t like soldiers,” Bernadette said, goading. “Do you, Ciaran O’Teen?”

  Joel looked at Nick. “Why?”

  “I had to do National Service. They’ve scrapped it now. I was one of the last to be called up. Lucky me. Eighteen months of square-bashing and spud-peeling. Like a cross between boarding school and a loonie bin. I got thrown out in the end. They said it was my fault.”

  Laura asked, “What was?”

  “Among other things, a broken jaw.” He rubbed his chin. “I was a bit of a target in there. Long story. You lot have been spared all that.”

  Bernadette glanced at Laura, and they said it together. “You kids today don’t know you’re born.” They laughed.

  “All right, all right.”

  With their one coffee drunk and Bernadette’s ciggie smoked, Nick produced more money for another round.

  Laura took the coffee cup back to the counter. Agatha had her back turned. Laura could clearly see the “diary” in her pocket.

  Big Jimmy took the cup, and smiled at her. “Thanks. You new here?”

  “We just moved up. My family.”

  He listened to her accent. “From where? Down south? How you fitting in?”

  She considered bluffing it out. Something in the expression on his round, warm face made her tell the truth. “Badly. Everybody takes the mick. I want to go home.”

  He smiled, his brown eyes creasing. When he spoke again his accent was strong Chinese, not a trace of Scouse. “I feel like that sometimes. I was born in Hong Kong. Emigrated here, worked at my cousin’s restaurant, saved up, bought my own place. Now I do this, and other things. Out of place? Maybe everybody feels the same way. My advice is, just pretend you fit in, and pretty soon you find you do fit in. Come again. You’re welcome here. But bring some money next time.” He grinned and turned away to make the coffee.

  Laura didn’t go on with the others to Nick’s gig that night. She didn’t quite have the nerve.

  She got home about eight.

  She had to knock. She wouldn’t get a key of her own until she was twenty-one, and she was given “the key of the door.”

  Dad opened the door, one-handed. He had the phone headset tucked under one ear and was making notes on a pad. “Yes… Yes, sir. And what about our own deployment?… Yes, I understand the decisions will follow on from the diplomatic posture we adopt, but we need to be prepared…”

  He barely noticed her as she squeezed past him.

  Her mother was sitting alone in the parlour, before the television. Sunday Night at the London Palladium was showing, with some dismal comedian bantering with Bruce Forsyth. Two wine glasses sat on the occasional table beside her. Mum looked vaguely drunk, her eyes glazed silver by the telly’s pearl light. “Hello, dear. Have you eaten?”

  “Yes,” Laura lied. “Who’s Dad speaking to?”

  “Work,” Mum said. “Been on the phone for hours. Some crisis or other, I suppose. Do you want a cup of tea?”

  “No, thanks. I could do with a bath. I’ve got some homework left too.”

  Mum laughed. “You leave it late, don’t you?”

  Mort bustled in, shirtsleeves rolled up, tie loose, wine bottle in his hand. He looked huge in the little English parlour. “I found another Liebfraumilch, honey. Oh, hi, Laura. How’s life in the land of the bobbysoxers?” He laughed at her.

  Laura got out.

  In her room she thought back over the events of the long day.
She remembered the strange, pale woman in the coffee bar, Agatha, and the book in her pocket.

  She had stuffed her diary at the back of her underwear drawer. She looked there now. The diary was intact, not scorched. But when she looked more closely, she saw that the bottom of the spine was slightly torn and folded down.

  Just like Agatha’s.

  Chapter 6

  Monday 15th October. 6 p.m.

  Another day got through.

  Dad hasn’t gone yet.

  *

  Tuesday 16th October. 8 a.m.

  Dad still here.

  He definitely should have gone back to Wycombe by now. I think he spent the whole night on the phone. And at 5 a.m. this morning a motorbike courier brought him a packet of photos. Something is “brewing up,” as he would say. As if to the RAF the whole world is one big cup of tea.

  Well, I’m glad he’s here. I feel a lot safer. I hope he’s still here when I get back from school.

  PE again today. On Friday they let me off because I didn’t have the right kit. Today I’ll have to get changed. I’m worried about the Key.

  And Miss Wells wants to have a “get-to-know-you chat” in my free period. Oh good.

  Bernadette didn’t show up for school. Miss Wells seemed to think this wasn’t too uncommon, as she entered a big “O” in her register.

  Laura could have done with Bernadette being around when it came to PE time. She would have to get changed into a singlet and short skirt. How was she supposed to hide the Key? Not in her desk, that was for sure.

  As she closed the desk before PE she had an idea.

  Then she thought it was stupid.

  Then she decided to do it anyway.

  Making sure nobody saw, she plucked a strand of hair from her head, licked it, and plastered it over the edge of her desk so it joined the lid to the main body of the desk. At first it didn’t stick. James Bond’s hair must have been coated with Brylcreem. There was some face cream in Bernadette’s desk, so she made the hair sticky with that.

  Just like a spy. She was only playing, she told herself.

  Then, as she made her way down to the changing room with her PE kit, she noticed a roll of duct tape, heavy silvery stuff, left sitting on a window ledge by some workman. She swiped it without anybody seeing and tucked it under her blazer.

  In the unheated changing room there was nothing but benches and a peg to hang her clothes on. No lockers.

  While the girls chattered, Laura went into a toilet cubicle and locked the door. She glanced around the cubicle. The wooden door and walls didn’t reach the floor or ceiling, but there was nobody peeking.

  She opened her blouse. She took the Key off her neck, rolled up its chain, held the whole lot against her belly just below her bra, and wrapped two lengths of tape around her torso. It was uncomfortable. The tape pinched when she moved. But it ought to hold up for a period of PE.

  Then she pulled on her singlet and hurried out of the cubicle.

  PE wasn’t too bad. While the boys chased a football, the girls played hockey, which Laura had played before. Because she had started the term late she had missed the selection for the school teams, and she found herself playing with a bunch of no-hopers and layabouts, resentfully monitored by a teacher whose main interest was a ciggie or two.

  But the game warmed up. There were one or two players who weren’t bad. As she ran around, her breath cold in her lungs, Laura managed to stop thinking about everything, just for a while.

  In her free period she had to go to see Miss Wells.

  The staffroom was a box of a room crammed with tatty chairs, an electric point with a kettle, and cupboards with stacks of newspapers and magazines on top. A metal cabinet of lockers, each no bigger than a shoebox, took up a lot of space. The air was stale with old ciggie smoke, and brimming ashtrays sat on the arms of the chairs.

  Laura sat down on one of the grimy armchairs, facing Miss Wells. They were alone in here. Laura felt uncomfortable, sweaty in her uniform after the hockey.

  And she didn’t want to be here at all, facing Miss Wells, with those cold blue eyes, and a face so like a reflection of her own, in a distorting fairground mirror that made her look sixty years old. It was truly weird, she thought.

  Miss Wells said, “I suppose you’re wondering where the confiscated comics are. Or the pornography. Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The teachers take it all home. The men, anyway.”

  Not an appropriate thing for a teacher to say, Laura thought uneasily. “Yes, Miss.”

  “ ‘Yes, Miss.’ Funny little room this, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Miss.”

  “It’s actually a storeroom. A cupboard, really. As the kids of your generation keep swarming in, the authorities can’t expand the schools fast enough. The old staffroom was converted into a classroom, and the poor old teachers were evicted to this place. Hardly room to light your roll-up.” She smiled at Laura. “I told you, Laura. You’re a unique generation, you post-war kids.”

  “Baby boomers, you said.”

  “Yes. People will look back on this as an unusual time, you as an unusual cadre of kids. Making friends, are you?”

  “I think so. Bernadette O’Brien. Joel Christmas.”

  Miss Wells snorted, a soft, subtle breath through her nose. “Those drones. They don’t matter.” She leaned forward. “Only you matter, Laura.”

  Laura tried not to flinch. Drones?

  “How are you getting on at home? Is your father still here in Liverpool, or has he gone back to Strike Command?”

  How did she know about Dad’s job? “He doesn’t like me talking about his work to strangers.”

  Miss Wells laughed. “I’m your form teacher. I’m no stranger. And what about Mum?” Miss Wells’s voice seemed to catch for a moment when she said that. “Do you think she’s coping?”

  Why would a teacher use the word “Mum,” and not “your mother”? And why was she asking all these questions? “It’s not for me to say,” Laura said.

  “You’re loyal. Good. I remember that. I mean,” Miss Wells said hastily, “I like that about you. But you can trust me.” She laughed, as if thinking about a private joke. “If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?… Never mind. If there’s anything on your mind, you can tell me. I hope you will, in fact.”

  Laura squirmed. “Thank you, Miss.”

  “I want you to think of me as a friend. Really. For instance, there are plenty of thieves around this place, what with the workmen running around. Some of the staff are a bit shifty too, let me tell you. If there’s anything valuable that you’re worried about, you can leave it with me. Any time.”

  In that moment, even though it didn’t explain all the strange things she was saying, Laura was sure that all Miss Wells wanted out of her was her Key. She felt the Key’s hard edges pressed against her chest, under her blouse. She didn’t look down or touch it, or do anything to give it away.

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  After that she just sat there as the period wore away, and Miss Wells wheedled and probed.

  When Miss Wells let her out she hurried to her class. She was the first back. She was pretty sure nobody had been in here since they had all left for PE.

  But the strand of hair was gone from the desk lid. Somebody had been through her desk while she was away.

  It was ridiculous. What was she thinking, that Miss Wells was a spy, after her Key? Maybe her head was too full of James Bond. But who else would be after a nuclear bomber starter key?

  Maybe it would be better if Miss Wells was a spy, rather than something even more weird.

  At lunchtime Laura asked Joel about Bernadette.

  “Oh, she’s always sagging off. It’s usually Mondays though. Wash days. Her mum can’t cope. Come on, let’s go and see her. It’s only a mile. If we’re lucky with the buses we’ll be back in time for classes.”

  Bernadette lived closer to the city centre, in a suburb called Tuebrook. Laura found herself walking through str
eets of skinny back-to-back terraced houses separated by narrow, rubbish-clogged alleys. Some of the streets were cobbled, and grass and nettles pushed through the stones amid the fag packets and dog muck.

  Kids ran around, some barefoot, some too young to be at school, some not. All the kids looked grey to Laura, as if they needed a bit of sunshine. A few women bustled about with shopping trolleys and prams, but there were no men around. A factory hooter cried like a bird.

  There weren’t many cars here. “Only the doctors have cars,” Joel said. “Stinks here, doesn’t it? The pong’s enough to knock a buzzard off a bin lorry.”

  Bernadette had to drag at her front door to open it. The door frame was bent. She was wearing a shapeless dress of some faded flowery fabric. With her hair tied back, no lippy or mascara on her face, she looked much younger. She seemed shocked to see Laura standing there, then embarrassed. “Come to see how the other half lives, Posh Judy? You want to watch it round here. They play tick with hatchets.”

  “Come off it, Bern,” Joel said. “Just seeing if you’re all right.” He pushed his way in and took off his hat. “Is the kettle on? I’m gasping.”

  The terraced house was long and thin, like a corridor. Inside it was hot and smoky, and there was a smell of milk and boiled cabbage. Laura glimpsed a lounge, with a settee polished smooth in the places where you’d sit down, and hard-backed chairs with drying nappies hung over the back. There was a telly, even older-looking than the one at Laura’s, and a few worn-out baby toys scattered on the floor. On the window ledge sat a bottle of Hiltone hair dye, and a yellowing News of the World.

  In the kitchen a fire was burning in the hearth. Bernadette filled a rusty kettle from the tap and hung it on a hook over the fire. There was washing heaped in the sink and hanging before the fire that made the air smell of steam and soda. There were no mod cons here, no washing machine or tumble dryer, only a scrubbing board and a mangle. Laura saw that Bernadette’s hands were bright red from the scrubbing.