Laura was shocked.
Bert said, “That kicking you got has done wonders for your charm, mate.”
Jimmy’s hammering got louder.
“Oh, for chuff’s sake.” Nick buried his head in his hands.
Laura wanted to get away from the atmosphere at the table. She got up and walked over to the heap of mattresses. “Jimmy!”
He stuck his head out of the heap. “What’s up? Coffee cold?”
“What are you up to?”
“My patriotic duty. This is my Inner Refuge.”
“Your what?”
“Look.” He crawled out and lifted back the mattresses. They had been heaped up on doors, which had been taken off their hinges and leaned against the wall. Jimmy was proud of his workmanship. “See, there’s a bit of two-by-four nailed to the floor so you have something to prop up the doors. Then you pile up mattresses and stuff on top. The angle of the doors has to be exactly sixty degrees to the floor, for maximum protection.”
“Who says?” Bernadette asked.
“The government,” Joel said. “He’s getting all this from one of their leaflets.”
“Come inside.” Jimmy beckoned Laura, and she followed him under the doors.
Inside, it was like being in a little hut. Jimmy had spread sleeping bags over the floor. “I have torches and a lamp. I’m supposed to collect fourteen days’ worth of food and water. I made a start.” He showed her bottles, canteens, cans of beans and Spam. “Even got a camping stove. Of course I’ll need less, now that Little Jimmy won’t be in here with me.”
“But what’s it for?”
“To keep out the bombs,” Jimmy said. “And the fall-out. Which is something to do with radiation. Fourteen days in here, you should be OK.”
“Where do you go to the toilet?”
He grinned. “I’ll have bottles. Empty cans. We got by, in the bomb shelters in the war. Or course we weren’t down there for fourteen days at a time. Look here.” He found an old tin cigar box under a heap of cans.
“What’s in there?”
“Our birth certificates. Mine, anyway. I had to give Little Jimmy his. My marriage licence, to Jimmy’s mother, God rest her. Our ration cards and identity cards. Though I kept my old one from the war. Bank book, driving licence. All for when it’s over, you see. The fourteen days. And things start to get organised.”
Laura looked at all this stuff. Here was Jimmy’s whole life in a tin box.
Huddling fearfully under the doors, it was hard to remember this was the Jive-O-Rama. A place where you came to have fun. Now it was a place infected by fear and dread, like everywhere else.
“They’re here,” Agatha said.
They scrambled out of the refuge. Laura heard engines rumbling outside, heavy vehicles rolling up.
Shadows crossed the stairs, and a torch flashed.
Laura heard a familiar growl. “Is that little baggage down there? We done enough running around for one stupid kid.” The Minuteman, trapped at the top of the stairs.
Everybody was agitated but Agatha. She just stood there like a shadow.
“Agatha,” Laura said. “Which way?”
“Like before. Come on.” She turned to lead the way out the back. Laura saw that the hardboard was already off the hole in the wall.
Bernadette said, “They’ll dig us out. This time they mean business.”
“We’ll go on,” Agatha said.
“Where?”
Agatha wouldn’t say.
Seconds left.
“Move it,” Big Jimmy said.
Joel grinned at him. “I thought you trusted the government.”
“Not that much. Look, I take as I find. Agatha is a good woman who needed somewhere to hide, and that’s enough for me. And when the Army comes breaking down my door hunting for kids—well, I know which side I’m on.
“Enough chit-chat. You lot, get down the hole. You and you,” he said, pointing to Bert and Mickey, “stay sat there. I’ll get some more coffee. We’ll hold them up.”
Bert and Mickey shrugged and sat down.
There was a clatter of boots on the stairs. A gruff male voice called, “Hello? Anybody here?”
Jimmy’s eyes were popping. “Go, go!”
Agatha had already disappeared into the hole. Laura hurried after her. Bernadette, Nick and Joel scrambled behind.
Laura looked back. Just as Joel was putting the board back over the hole, she saw scuffers and squaddies coming cautiously down the stairs into the club. The soldiers had ugly looking rifles under their arms.
Jimmy walked forward, arms wide. “Gents. What can I get you soldier boys? Jukebox, sixpence a throw. How about Adam Faith, ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’?”
One of the soldiers lifted his rifle butt and hit Jimmy in the belly. Jimmy went down as if his bones had turned to water. Mickey and Bert lunged forward.
That was all Laura saw. Joel pushed her away. “There’s nothing we can do.”
She stumbled off into the dark. She heard angry shouts, and the thud of fists and rifle butts hitting flesh.
They huddled in the dark of next door’s cellar. Agatha had a torch. Their faces floated in its light.
Bernadette said, “So now what? They’ll find that hole in the wall as soon as they finish with Jimmy and the boys.”
“We go on,” Agatha said. “I told you.”
She led them to the back of the cellar, and pulled out a loose brick. Something small and furry jumped out of the hole, and went squeaking off. They flinched, all except Agatha, who seemed to be used to rats.
“What’s through there?” Laura hissed.
“Another cellar. Next door.”
“And then what?” Joel asked. “Another cellar, and another?”
“Yes,” Agatha said, matter-of-fact. “We’ll work our way west. Towards the city centre. There are other deep places there. More cellars. Storage places under warehouses.”
“Like the Cavern,” Nick said.
“Yes. And sewers.”
“Sewers. Oh, cracker,” Bernadette said.
“There have been traders coming into Liverpool since Roman days,” Agatha said. “Smugglers too. There are all sorts of cellars, tunnels. Bunkers and air-raid shelters from the war. The place is a warren. Most big cities are, underground.”
Laura asked, “And then what?”
“That’s up to you,” Agatha said. “At least you will have options.”
She led the way.
Laura followed her. “Agatha. What about my mum? She’ll be scared out of her wits. When can I go home?”
Agatha turned to her, her face silhouetted by her torch. “Don’t be stupid,” she said.
The phone in Laura’s pocket, heavy and alien, began to ring again.
Chapter 18
Wednesday 24th October. 11 p.m.
Writing this by candlelight. Stub of pencil from my blazer pocket. Didn’t think to bring a pen from school.
Haven’t seen daylight since about three. We reached this last hole about six, I’d say.
Eight hours underground. About fifteen hours since I last spoke to Mum.
Joel thinks we’re somewhere in the warehouse area, not far from the docks. Maybe near Mathew Street where the Cavern is. We’ve come miles, then.
It stinks in here, of rat poo and damp. I’m cold. My school blazer’s not enough. I wish I had my overcoat.
No phone in this cellar. I wish I knew what was going on.
Three days to Black Saturday. The tension just keeps winding up and up. It’s like waiting for Christmas (sarcasm).
We’re frightened. But exhausted. I think I could sleep. We need to be sharp tomorrow, whatever happens.
Nick is handing out pills.
Agatha pulled back a filthy blanket to reveal a row of old lemonade bottles full of water. A rat scuttled away. “The water’s clean,” Agatha said.
Laura said, “It must have taken you ages to get this lot together.”
Agatha looked at Lau
ra, her eyes pits of blackness. “I was born in a bunker. I grew up in tunnels, in the dark. Where I come from, everybody does. The rats aren’t so bad. You can deal with that. I always knew I’d have to go back.”
“ ‘Where I come from’,” Bernadette said. “And where’s that, Agatha?”
Nick laughed, raucous. His mood had switched to manic. “All you have to do is take your magic pills, and you can follow Alice-Agatha here down her rabbit holes. Look. I’ve got Prellies, and Black Bombers, and Purple Hearts, and French Blues. A regular chemist’s shop in my pocket.”
“These are all amphetamines,” Joel said. “Uppers. Pep pills.”
“Of course they are. This is what we used on stage in Hamburg, so we could keep playing ‘Besame Mucho’ for German prozzies until the small hours.”
The others took the pills gingerly. Their faces were a circle of anxiety, lit up by a couple of candles.
They were alone in this cold damp place, with tunnels stretching off into the unknown dark all around them. And in the middle of all that, Laura thought, here they were stuck with a nutcase who was trying to make them take drugs.
Nick cried, “Swallow! Swallow!” He took a mixed handful of pills and gulped them down with a mouthful of water.
The others passed the water bottle around. But they all palmed their pills, out of Nick’s sight.
Agatha said to Nick, “Your friends back there.”
“Mickey and Bert.”
“They stayed behind to keep the soldiers off us. It was a pretty brave thing to do.”
“Well, we Woodbines are brave,” Nick said. “Although we’re not too pretty.”
“And one of you’s not too brave,” Bernadette said harshly.
“Ah, Billy Waddle. Billy Billy Billy.” Nick leaned his head back on the wall. “I wonder how many other little Waddles are walking around Liverpool. Waddles waddling around, ha ha.”
“Billy’s a scumbag.”
“Yes, he is. He’s not even a very good drummer.”
Joel’s face, shadowed in the flickering light, was a mask of hurt. He asked Bernadette, “Why him? Stupid, shallow, cruel—”
“But good-looking,” Nick said with a sigh. “Some of us are just drawn to the wrong sort, Joel.”
“This is nothing to do with you, Nick,” Joel snapped.
“Isn’t it? Well, what’s it got to do with you? No, don’t answer. I think we all know. You wish that little bleeder in Bern’s belly was a half-caste, don’t you?”
Joel just launched himself at Nick. He only landed one punch, but Nick screamed from his old wounds. Bernadette and Laura jumped on them.
For ten seconds the cellar was full of struggling and muffled cries. Agatha just sat back, watching.
When the girls got them apart, Bernadette cradled Nick. “He didn’t mean it,” she said. “That crack about half-castes.”
“He’s a get,” Joel said.
Agatha said, “But he’s hurting too. Listen to what he said. ‘Some of us are drawn to the wrong sort.’”
Nick put his shades back on, hiding his damaged eyes.
Laura remembered the way Nick had behaved on stage and in the club when Billy Waddle had flirted with other girls. “Bern was jealous,” she said. “And so were you, Nick. You fancied Billy too, didn’t you? Wow.”
Bernadette’s mouth dropped open. She stared at Nick. “Is she right?”
Nick struggled to sit up. “We really are crashing through the taboo barriers tonight, aren’t we? Yes, all right. I was in love with Billy. Still am. Can’t help it any more than you can, Bern. But I never did anything about it.”
Laura said, “Does Billy know?”
“Oh, of course he knows. He torments me about it. That’s what the likes of him do. I always fall in love with the wrong sort. Bits of rough like Billy Waddle. Straight, too.
“But he never wanted me, Bern.” There was a sort of desperation in his voice now. “He wanted you. Or at least girls like you. He dumped you, but you had him for a while, didn’t you? I’ll never even have that much.”
Bernadette put her arm around his shoulders. Joel just sat watching them, stranded in his own misery.
Agatha tugged Laura’s sleeve, and they moved away a little bit, into the dark.
“I’ve seen this before,” Agatha said. “People stuck in situations like this. The pressure gets to them. They turn on each other. Say things they shouldn’t say. Or maybe things they should have said a long time ago. Either way, it hurts.”
“Is it getting to me, then?”
“Yes. But you react differently. You soak it up. You don’t look inside yourself the same way. You think about other people. You try to cope, to get everybody through. You have a certain strength. That’s what I remember about you.”
“ ‘Remember’?”
But Agatha didn’t say any more.
“Agatha, listen to me. We’ll have to go out tomorrow.”
“Yes. We need food. Better clothes. Candles.”
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“We have to get my mum.” This was a hard thing for her to say. She didn’t want to be the adult, to make decisions for her mother. But she didn’t see a choice. “She isn’t capable of looking after herself up there. Not without Dad around. She’s better off with me, wherever I end up.”
She thought Agatha would say no, or call her stupid as she had before. But she just looked back gravely. “Your friends won’t like it.”
“I know.”
“And your home is the first place they’ll be looking for you.”
“I know that too.” She was puzzled by Agatha’s reaction. “You’re not trying to talk me out of it.”
“Oh, no. This is something you have to do. Your mother is family.” Agatha smiled thinly. “I told you, you’re strong. I couldn’t stop you if I tried.”
She gave Laura the creeps. “And is it getting to you? This pressure of being stuck down here?”
Agatha shrugged. The candlelight seemed to pick out the lines in her face. “I’m used to it. And besides.”
“What?”
“I’ve got you back,” Agatha whispered.
Laura sat rigid.
Agatha leaned over, stiffly, and put her head in Laura’s lap.
Laura stroked Agatha’s hair. It was cut short, bristly, speckled with grey. And it was patchy, Laura saw. In places it seemed to have fallen out in clumps.
Agatha’s shoulders shook, subtly. She was crying.
They were going to have to deal with this, Laura thought. Agatha and her. They would have to dig the truth out between them, and set it before them, and look at it honestly, whatever it was.
But not tonight. First they had to get themselves out of this mess.
She stroked Agatha’s hair until the strange, skinny woman started to fall asleep.
She heard a soft thumping sound.
Nick, maddened by the pain of his headaches, was ramming the back of his skull against the brick wall. Bernadette was trying to soothe him.
Nick stopped at last, and lay in Bernadette’s arms.
He whispered, “Nuclear war is glamorous, you know. Those missiles they fire go all the way up into space, before coming down to earth. And the explosions are hotter than the sun. It’s like space touching the earth.”
“Hush,” Bernadette said.
“Suppose you had the power, Bern. To push the button, like President Kennedy. The power to blow up the whole world. You’d be more powerful than Jesus. Wouldn’t you be tempted to do it, just for the hell of it? Wouldn’t you? Even if you would die yourself. All that power…?”
But the pain returned. He cried out, and went back to slamming his head against the wall.
Chapter 19
Laura was jolted awake by a blue flashing, a high-pitched beeping. Everybody was scared, save Agatha.
It was Laura’s “phone”—or rather, Miss Wells’s. Agatha had taken it from Laura’s pocket and set it up on a heap of rub
ble. The screen showed the time in big numerals. 7:00:02. 7:00:03. 7:00:04.
“I thought we ought to make sure we woke up,” Agatha said.
Bernadette hissed, “You might have set it off.”
Agatha frowned. “Set it off?”
“You know. Told Miss Wells we’re here.”
“It’s just a mobile,” Agatha said.
“A mobile?”
She showed Laura what she had done to it to make it work like an alarm clock. “See, you tab this key and scroll through the menu…” As she clicked the phone’s keys with her thumb, words and numbers flickered across the little blue screen. “It has a lot of functions. Calculator.”
“A what?”
“Like a slide rule. There are even a few games in here.” She smiled coldly. “You can have a bit of fun, even where Miss Wells comes from.”
Laura had no real idea what she was doing. She took the phone and closed it up, so it went dark.
Joel said, “ ‘Where Miss Wells comes from.’ You don’t come from the same place.”
“Sort of. Not exactly. Actually we are from the same date. The year 2007. But we’re not from the same timeline. I’m from a different history.”
Everybody just stared.
Joel said, “Then how do you know how to muck about with a gadget like this?”
“We have similar stuff where I come from. Some things don’t change. In fact we both come from 2007, because in both our timelines it took that long to develop the machines that brought us here.”
Laura said, “We don’t have time for this. We’ve got to get my mother.”
As Laura had known they would, they all argued. And just as Agatha had said she would, Laura held her ground.
Nick barely said a word. He slumped in a corner, eyes hidden, rubbing his face. He had come crashing down from his cocktail of drugs, but he was no better than yesterday.
Bernadette said, “Whatever we do, I’m dying to drain my ‘taters. Where’s the bathroom, Agatha?”
“That’s a point,” said Joel.
They all dispersed into the corners of the mouldy cellar.
It was Joel who produced something more substantial than just a piddle.
THE H-BOMB GIRL Page 13