THE H-BOMB GIRL

by Stephen Baxter

  Laura sat down on a hard chair. Cracked lino peeled off the floor under her feet.

  “Wash day,” Joel said. “Thought so. Bernadette’s mum always has trouble with wash day.”

  “She seemed all right last week,” Bernadette said. “But she’s jiggered today. She’s upstairs with the baby. She might come down later and watch a bit of telly.” She shrugged. “I can do it. If I ever have a bit of money I take it all down to the coin-op. Lots of lads there.”

  Laura asked, “What’s wrong with her? Your mum.”

  “Nerves.”

  “Where’s your dad?”

  Bernadette snorted. “Even the scuffers don’t know.”

  Laura had to ask. “Scuffer” was Liverpool slang for policeman.

  Bernadette handed them mugs of tea, sweet, with sterilised milk. Laura saw that the dress Bernadette was wearing was cut from curtain cloth. No wonder she wore her school uniform the whole time.

  Not two feet from where Laura sat, a mushroom was growing out of the wall, the size of a breakfast plate.

  “You admiring the decor, Posh Judy?”

  Joel poked the mushroom in the wall. “It’s not exactly Ideal Homes, you’ve got to admit.”

  “If you cut it off it just grows back. The whole place is manky. Got shook up by a bomb in the war and never got fixed. Now you can’t close the door, and there’s a big hole out back where the rats get in.”

  “You ought to get Billy Waddle to help,” Joel said. “He’s a joiner.”

  “I thought he’s a drummer,” Laura said.

  “He’s a joiner, and a drummer.”

  “Billy Waddle can shove his head up his big bass drum,” Bernadette said fiercely. “He’ll take you out if he thinks he’s got a chance of pulling. But he’s so tight he wouldn’t give you last week’s wet Echo.”

  “Ah,” Joel said. “The great love story is over.”

  “Cobblers, Joel,” she snapped. “I don’t need Billy’s help. Or anybody’s. Anyhow I was sick this morning. Nearly spewed up my ring. Old Arthur next door complained about the stink in the bog.”

  So they shared a toilet with the neighbours, Laura realised.

  “You should tell somebody at school,” Laura said. “That you have to bunk off because your mum can’t cope.”

  “Don’t be a div,” Joel said. “She can’t tell the teachers. She and her sister would just be put into a corpy home. Better this way, at least they’re together. I think the teachers turn a blind eye. Except Miss Wells, who’s a headcase.”

  Laura jumped at something else to talk about. “Miss Wells called me in this morning. She said she wants to be my friend.”

  They both laughed at that.

  Bernadette snorted. “I still think she’s a muncher.”

  Laura asked, “A what?”

  “She means, Miss Wells fancies you,” Joel said.

  “Not that.”

  “Then maybe she’s just needy,” Bernadette said. “One of my dad’s sisters lost her own baby, and then couldn’t have any more. She was around here all the time when I was small. Wouldn’t leave me alone. Maybe Miss Wells is like that.”

  “She really could be your long-lost auntie, Laura,” Joel said. “She does look like you.”

  “I think it’s more than that.” Laura struggled to put her thoughts in order. She didn’t want to seem weird, or stupid. “She doesn’t feel like an auntie, or a mother, or a sister. We’re connected somehow. But not in any way I’ve felt before.”

  Bernadette rolled her eyes. “You’re one brick short of a full hod, girl.”

  In the face of her common sense, the strange fantasies Laura had been building up about Miss Wells popped like a soap bubble.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you something real, though. Somebody went through my desk.” She told them about the missing hair.

  Bernadette just laughed. “I can’t believe you did the business with the hair. What do you think, that Miss Wells is a spy?”

  “Well—”

  “Oh, come off it. They search my desk all the time.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. Condoms. The pill. Whatever they think girls like me shouldn’t have. You can always tell when they’ve had their mucky paws in there. These are teachers, remember. They aren’t exactly the CID.”

  Laura nodded. “Maybe it’s just something like that.”

  “Yes,” said Joel. “Maybe.”

  They sipped their tea, hot and sweet, in silence.

  In a room upstairs, a baby cried.

  Chapter 7

  When she got home that afternoon, she found Dad sitting on the hall carpet, with his ear glued to the phone. He had a military radio beside him, and there were papers and maps of the American east coast scattered over the floor. He just glanced up at Laura, then went back to work.

  Deep voices boomed in the parlour. Laura glanced inside.

  Mort was standing there, silhouetted in the dusty light cast through the net curtains. Mum perched on the edge of the settee, legs crossed at the ankles, nervous as ever. And there was another man, sitting in what looked like an upright chair. Laura saw medals on his chest.

  Laura tried to hurry past and get to her room. But Mum spotted her and came bustling out. “Laura,” she called in a loud, fake voice, and she grabbed Laura’s hands. “Come and meet our visitor. Or rather it’s Mort’s visitor…” All that ever mattered to Mum was not to have a scene, not to have anybody think badly of her.

  She had Laura’s hands locked tight. Laura didn’t have a choice. She dropped her satchel in the hall, and let Mum draw her into the parlour.

  There was a mechanical whir. The stranger’s chair came rolling towards her. It was a wheelchair, she saw now, with some kind of motor built into it. Sitting in it was a big square man, as big as Mort. But he was old, maybe eighty or more, his stubble of hair white. He wore a suit, not a uniform, though he had that row of medals pinned to his breast pocket.

  And he was stuck in that chair, she could see. His legs and torso didn’t move at all. All that moved was one hand that worked a joystick to push the chair around. The hand was a red claw. Maybe it had been burned.

  He smiled at her, showing gleaming teeth, surely false. “Laura, isn’t it? Mort told me all about you.” His voice was a croak, but his accent was just like Mort’s. “You’re the flower of England we’re over here to shelter from the atomic fire of the Soviets. Right?”

  “Darn right, sir,” Mort said.

  When Mort spoke, Laura saw how alike they were, the same worn-away faces, the same flat noses and deep eyes and square chins, though the old man’s right cheek was marred by a long, livid scar.

  She felt a bit dizzy. It had already been a strange day. “Well, well,” she said. “More lookalikes. More family resemblances. What a coincidence.”

  The Americans exchanged glances.

  Mum looked shocked. “Laura, what are you talking about?”

  “Let me guess. You must be Giuseppe Mortinelli the Second.”

  The old man said, “No, the Third—”

  Mort shut him up by kicking his wheelchair.

  The old man nodded shrewdly. “You’re a smart girl. Just call me the Minuteman. Everybody else does.”

  Mum said, “He’s here to speak to your father, and to Mort. There’s an international crisis. Your father and Mort are going to have to work on resolving it.”

  “There’s always an international crisis,” Laura said. “Boring.”

  “Laura.” That was Dad coming in the door, a sheaf of papers gathered up under his arm. “I think you ought to apologise.”

  The Minuteman’s face creased, though he didn’t move a muscle of his body. “Oh, no need for that. Just joshing. Weren’t we, girly?”

  Mort tried to take control. “Harry, I think the Minuteman’s tiring. Maybe we should conclude our business.”

  “Sure. Laura, maybe you could give us a few minutes. Do you have homework?”

  It would
be a relief to escape. “OK.”

  “Good to meet you, little missy,” the Minuteman called after her. “I hope we get a chance to get to know each other better. In fact,” he rumbled, “I’m darn tootin’ sure we will.”

  “Yes,” Mort said, staring at Laura hard. “We really got to make more of an effort, you and I, Laura. We’ll talk later.”

  It sounded like a threat.

  She heard the Minuteman leave an hour later.

  She looked out of the window. The Minuteman’s chair whirred down the drive to his car, a huge black automobile. People came out of their front doors to goggle.

  She went downstairs. Mum was in the kitchen. To her relief, Mort was nowhere to be seen. She had thought Mort was here because of his relationship with Mum. But he had seemed different with the Minuteman here, more focused on Laura. Whatever that was about, she didn’t want to know.

  She found Dad in the parlour with the telly on, watching the news. He was on his footstool, with his sheaves of papers and photographs spread over the floor beside him. He glanced up at Laura. “Just give me a minute.”

  She sat on the edge of the settee, and watched the telly absently.

  She hated the news. It always seemed to be bad. Wars in faraway places like Laos and Thailand and Algeria. Tension between Americans and Russians and Chinese. That awful concrete Wall the Russians had built across the middle of Berlin, to divide the American west from the Russian east. And the long, posh, doleful face of Prime Minister Macmillan, droning on about international crises or the Balance of Payments. She’d much rather have President Kennedy, JFK, with his boyish good looks and glam wife and gorgeous little kids.

  What was worse was that whenever the news got bad enough, Dad got drawn away into the thick of it.

  At last the newsreader said, “And in other news…” The screen filled up with images of gleaming cars. The Motor Show at Earl’s Court.

  Dad looked tired, but he pointed to a Cortina. “Got one.”

  “Dad. I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Fire away.”

  “What’s a Minuteman?”

  He counted the answers off on his fingers. “One. A volunteer soldier in the American Revolution.”

  “When they got rid of the British king.”

  “Yes. The Minutemen said they would always be ready to be called out in just one minute. The kind of legend the Americans are very proud of, bless their flinty hearts. Two. A Minuteman is the codename of a new kind of missile the Americans are deploying.”

  “A nuclear missile?”

  “Well, yes. And three. The nickname of that crotchety old chap who wouldn’t drink the perfectly good cup of char your mother made for him.”

  “He probably would have rusted.”

  Dad laughed at that.

  “What was he doing here?”

  “He came with orders for Mort. Not me. The Americans keep some things classified, even from their closest allies.”

  “Orders about what? What’s going on now that’s so terrible?”

  He looked at her. “Well, we’re in a bit of a spot. I’ll tell you the truth, Laura. This isn’t just another crisis. We’ve never been closer to world war, since 1945. Never closer to a nuclear conflict. Not even over Berlin.”

  She stared at him. “So what’s it about?”

  He sighed. “It takes a bit of explaining. It would be a lot easier if you ever watched the news. Look, Laura—do you know what the Cold War is?”

  She shrugged. “Americans and Russians. H-Bombs.”

  “Yes. Exactly. At the end of the war the Americans, and we, marched into Germany from the west, and the Russians came from the east, and we all met in the middle of Germany, and we’re still there seventeen years later, eyeball to eyeball. Only now we’re all armed to the teeth with nuclear bombs and missiles. Enough to blow everybody up several times over, if it all kicked off.”

  “So what’s changed now?”

  “Do you know where Cuba is?”

  “It’s a little island off the coast of America.”

  “Yes. But it doesn’t belong to the Americans. It’s independent. And the government is Communist.”

  “Like the Russians.”

  “Like the Russians, yes. We, I mean the Americans, have known that the Cubans have been mucking about with the Russians all summer. Cargo ships crossing to Cuba. ‘Advisors on land reclamation’ going over. That sort of thing. But the Americans weren’t sure what they were up to.

  “Now, a couple of days ago the Americans took some photos of Cuba from a spy plane. And they saw that the Russians are building missile bases on Cuba.”

  “Nuclear missiles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would the Russians do that?”

  “Actually it sort of evens things up. We have bases close to Russia, in Turkey for instance. If these missiles in Cuba go ahead, the Americans will be under the same sort of threat. It’s fair, in a gruesome sort of way.”

  “Has this been on the news?”

  “No,” he said heavily. “Not yet. This really is classified, Laura. I’m telling you secrets. Even the Russians don’t know the Americans have those photos. Not yet. So you mustn’t tell anybody about it. I’m just telling you for your own good. Promise me.”

  “I promise. So what’s going to happen?”

  “Well, since the missiles are right on their front door the Americans are pretty miffed. Unless somebody backs down—”

  “There’ll be a ruckus.” She used one of his RAF words.

  It made him smile, but it was forced.

  “Why am I lumbered with this Key, Dad?”

  He shocked her by getting up, crossing to her, kneeling on the carpet before the settee and taking her hands in his. “Look, love, a nuclear war won’t be like the last lot, against the Nazis. It took us years to slug that one out to the finish. Now we have intercontinental missiles and high-altitude bombers, and a war could be fought out in days—hours, even. It won’t even be like a war. It will be like a great shining lid slamming down on us all.

  “I’m stationed at Strike Command at Wycombe. You know that. I have a senior command position regarding Britain’s own nuclear weapons, which would have to be deployed—I mean, launched against the Russians—if the worst came to the worst.”

  “The V-bombers.”

  “The Vulcans, yes. Even with our weapons alone we could wipe out thirty or forty Russian cities. Say eight million citizens. That firepower makes my base a prime target for Russian missiles. And, if the balloon does go up—” He looked right into her eyes. “I’m right in the front line. I would be dead, in minutes. That’s how fast the Russian missiles would come in. It’s a sure-fire certainty. So I wouldn’t be able to help you, or Mum, in whatever followed. And that’s why you must wear the Key. I know it sounds loopy, but it’s the best way I could come up with to be sure you’ll be taken somewhere safe, even if I can’t help you. Even if—”

  She pulled back her hands. “You’re frightening me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. It’s a frightening world, unfortunately.”

  “Dad—what’s going to happen on Saturday?”

  “Which Saturday?”

  “A week on Saturday. The 27th.”

  He frowned. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.”

  Laura heard her mother in the kitchen, softly singing “Galway Bay.”

  “Why don’t you give the Key to Mum? She’s the adult.”

  Dad looked away. “Things are a bit tricky for your mother right now. The war was complicated for her. The evacuation. Growing up too fast in London. Coming home to Liverpool—Mort being here—has brought it all back, I think. And she’s taken our separation hard. She’ll get over it. But for now…”

  For now, it was Laura who had to have the Key. Laura who would have to take charge, who would have to be the adult, if that great shining lid came slamming down.

  Suddenly she couldn’t bear this conversation any mor
e, or the sight of Dad on his knees before her. She pushed him away and ran out of the room.

  She threw herself on her bed and tried to sort it all out in her head.

  Dad loved her. But he was hard and unrelenting. It was like being loved by a slab of rock, by a mountain. And it was a love that took him away from her. She didn’t want to be loved that way.

  And she didn’t want to be vapourised in a nuclear war either.

  On top of that there was all the murky strangeness about her new life in Liverpool. Her parents’ peculiar relationship with Mort. The way Mort had suddenly grown a new interest in Laura after the Minuteman showed up. The way Mort looked like the Minuteman, as if the Minuteman was Mort’s dad, or uncle. And the way Miss Wells looked like Mum, like Auntie Eileen, like her.

  It was going to be hard to concentrate on her English homework.

  She still hadn’t washed properly since PE. She probably had time for a bath before dinner. Listless, she climbed off her bed and went to her chest of drawers to dig out new underwear.

  The top drawer was open, just a little. She never left it like that.

  She went through all the drawers. Nothing seemed to be missing.

  She sat down on her bed. So what now? Mum, looking for contraceptives or suspenders?

  Mort, stealing her knickers?

  No, not that. Mort might have been in here, but not for that. But why else was he interested in her? What else did she have that he might possibly want?

  The Key, the same as Miss Wells? Could he be another spy—right here in her own house?

  Maybe she was going mad.

  She sat on her bed for a while. Then, trembling slightly, she pulled the chair across so the door was blocked.

  Chapter 8

  Friday 19th October. 8 a.m.

  Dad left on Wednesday.

  He promised to write. Nothing’s come yet.

  At school, Bernadette was almost late. She ran into the playground just as the teacher rang the bell. Her face was as pale as a ghost’s.

  And then she had to duck out of the first lesson, maths, to throw up in the toilets. Laura was sent with her. “Dodgy curry,” was all Bernadette would say, but Laura didn’t believe her.