THE H-BOMB GIRL by Stephen Baxter (beach books txt) 📕

“Do you play football in America?”

“You mean soccer? We play our own football, which is like your rugger, I think.”

“Do you have chewing gum in America?”

“I think we invented it.”

“Do you really say ‘line’ instead of ‘queue’?”

“We don’t have too many queues in America.”

“Have you heard of the Beatles?” That raised a laugh.

Joel stood up. “What about Holy Loch?”

“Excuse me?”

Miss Wells snapped, “I didn’t point to you, Mister Christmas. Sit down.”

But Joel said quickly, “Holy Loch is a base in Scotland. Americans have nuclear submarines there. It’s close to Glasgow. So the Americans have put a big British city in the front line of their nuclear war.”

There was a ripple of excited noise among the kids, as there always was when somebody did something brave, or stupid.

“It’s OK.” Mort held his hands up. “You’re well informed, young man. I can’t discuss operational details here. I mean, who controls what. But it makes no difference. The Special Relationship, remember. We’re all on the same side. Let’s take another question. You at the front with the teeth.”

“Do you want to be an astronaut?”

When the assembly broke up, Miss Wells said, “Mister Christmas. Go straight to the headmaster’s office.”

Everybody poured through the corridors on the way to afternoon class, their chatter a noise like flocking birds.

“Well, that was a laugh,” Bernadette said. “When Joel gets back, look for his goolies stapled to his CND badge.”

“He was brave.”

“Just showing off.”

“It was creepy,” Laura muttered. “Seeing the two of them together like that. Mort and Miss Wells.”

“Your two enemies,” Bernadette said, mocking. “Quite a coincidence.”

“It’s not a coincidence at all. It’s obvious why he came here.”

Maybe they were all in it together. Maybe Mort had orders from the Minuteman. Maybe Mort had been told to come to school to hook up with Miss Wells, just as he had started rummaging about in her smalls drawers.

Bern was staring at her. “What are you on about? Why would Henry Fonda out there be interested in you?”

“For my Key.”

Bern laughed. “You’re kidding. You think he’s a spy too?”

“Oh, shut up, Bern. I don’t know what to think.”

They reached class, and went to their desks at the back.

Bernadette said immediately, “Somebody’s been through my desk. You can always tell.”

They checked Laura’s desk, and their bags, and their coat pockets. Everything had been rummaged through, searched, put back. Bernadette showed Laura how you could tell from small clues: dust traces, excessive neatness.

Bernadette said, “Well, now we know why we were all kept in the hall over lunch. So they could search the place.”

“For what?”

“Well, that Key of yours, if you’re right. What else? Just as Miss Wells searched your desk for it when you were at PE, I suppose.”

Laura looked at her. “You said they’re always searching the desks.”

“Well, they are. But it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Maybe you’re right. Maybe they are all spies!” She was grinning.

“You’re enjoying this. You’re laughing at me.”

“Well, it’s better than fretting over my mum and her wash days, I’ll tell you that. What would James Bond think about all this? And the question is, why now? What’s going on?”

Laura thought she knew what this was all about. She longed to tell Bernadette about Cuba, and the missiles, and the silent, invisible crisis that was pushing the world towards war. But Dad had made her promise to keep quiet, and, ashamed, she said nothing.

The teacher walked in and everybody stood up, ready for class.

“Let’s come back tonight,” Bernadette whispered.

“To school? Why?”

“I’ve got an idea. How we can get our own back. And maybe find out the truth about your mysterious auntie.”

Friday 19th October. 4:30 p.m.

Home from school.

Mum is in the living room with Mort. He’s still in the uniform he wore at school. She is in one of her party frocks, and stiletto shoes, and bright lipstick on her face. They are laughing, wine glasses on the occasional table, dancing around to Glenn Miller.

They didn’t hear me come in. Good.

Nothing done in the house all day. Dishes from breakfast still in the sink. Hoover in the middle of the parlour floor.

No smell of cooking. Friday is fish night. We always have smoked haddock. Not tonight.

Mail not picked up from the mat. But there is a letter in there from Dad.

The letter went on about Cuba.

Things had got worse. American spy planes had seen more Russian missiles on Cuba, a more powerful kind than before. Now they were sure that Cuba could be a threat to the whole of the US, not just Florida, the nearest state.

Dad wrote, “The question is, what’s JFK going to do about it? Bomb the missile bases? Invade Cuba? If he does that he might trigger global war. Or, should he do nothing about Khrushchev planting missiles in his own back yard? Then he looks weak.

“I think he’s looking for some middle way to defuse the whole situation. But his Joint Chiefs of Staff—they’re his top soldiers—are pressing him to attack. The Russians will just cave in, they say. But the Joint Chiefs always want you to attack. Kennedy says the joke is that if he listens to them, and the world gets blown up as a consequence, none of us will be left alive to tell them they were wrong.”

Dad wrote all this down with his fountain pen in his neat, sloping handwriting. She’d always loved his handwriting. Even his signature had flourishes.

But the news was dismal. It was as if the whole world was a huge unexploded bomb that might go off any minute.

She hid the letter. She tried to concentrate on her homework.

Later, she heard Mort going out.

Laura crept downstairs.

Mum was sitting on the big settee, alone, listening to “Moonlight Serenade” on the Dansette. She had her legs crossed, one stiletto dangling from her toe. Her face blank, her head off in some other place, she looked very young, much younger than her thirty-three years. Her lipstick was smudged.

She saw Laura, standing in the door. “Oh, hello, love.