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

worry your pretty head, little missy,” said Mort, and he actually winked at Laura. “I’ll see you’re OK.”

Laura glared at him. “The way you saw Mum was ‘OK’ in the war? I’ll take my chances, thanks.”

Mort laughed. “You’ll come begging when you run out of candy bars.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“Oh, Laura,” her mother said tiredly.

Mum served up rice pudding. Laura helped her with the dishes, taking care never to be left alone with Mort. The roast had been OK, but the pudding was both burned and cold. Laura would have thought that was against the laws of physics. But Mort ate up his portion as if he was a starving man, and his compliments made Mum blush again.

Laura helped clear up. By the time Mum served coffee, and Mort had lit up a fat cigar and loosened his tie, the film was ending in a surge of weepy music.

“There now follows a statement by the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Harold Macmillan.”

“Good evening. I talk to you now at a time of grave international crisis. And yet I bring hope…”

“Oh, great,” Laura said. “What’s on the other side?”

“Macmillan,” Mort said.

“Hush, Laura,” Mum said.

The three of them sat down on the settee and armchair, facing the telly.

Macmillan’s face was long and mournful, with sad bloodhound eyes and sagging pouched cheeks. He had been born during Queen Victoria’s reign, and he looked it.

“I’m sure you’re all aware, from President Kennedy’s announcement and the news that has emerged during the day, of the continuing crisis over the Russian military adventure in Cuba. I have had repeated conversations with President Kennedy in the course of the day, and with other world leaders, as well as the Secretary General of the United Nations. Negotiations are intense and continuing, but though there are chinks of light in the clouds of despondency, I have to tell you that we have yet to make a breakthrough…”

Mort stabbed his cigar at the screen. “I’ll tell you where that old guy is right now,” he said. “He’s in a bunker, with his War Cabinet and his military chiefs. I went there once. Bleak kind of place in the Cotswolds. They call it ‘Turnstile.’”

“They’re all right then,” Laura said.

Mort said, “It’s not a place you’d want to be. They don’t have their families down there with them, you know.”

“Why, look,” Mum said now. “It’s Mister Churchill!”

There was the familiar round, almost babyish face, the small serious mouth, the bulldog jowls. A caption read: “The Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Churchill, MP.”

“My gosh,” said Mort, “your wartime leader.”

“He’s nearly ninety, I think,” Mum said.

Mum and Mort leaned closer. Their faces were lit up by the telly’s silver-grey glow, and Laura imagined a million other homes, millions of other people, all staring at Churchill’s comforting, moon-like face.

Churchill’s voice was a bass rumble. “The Prime Minister has asked me to speak to you tonight, at this time of national crisis, as one who has seen it all before. How could I refuse? Even when he told me there would be no fee, I still couldn’t refuse…”

Mum laughed, besotted, as if Churchill was a movie star. “Always a bit of a one, old Winnie.”

“I once saw one of his scripts for a wartime speech,” Mort said. “Pinned up inside a command bunker. It was set out like a poem, you know? It’s no accident he speaks so well. He plans every word.”

Churchill’s face dissolved to a map of Britain, and he talked about the new arrangements for the government during the State of National Emergency.

The central government would be working in its bunker, but there would be twelve “Regional Commissioners,” like local prime ministers, to run things in case communications broke down. The commissioners would be cabinet ministers. In the north-west, where Liverpool was, the Regional Commissioner would be Edward Heath, the government Chief Whip.

Under Heath there would be an Emergency Committee, including the Mayor of Liverpool, councillors, aldermen and town clerks. There would be an Army District Commander and a Regional Director of Civil Defence to run the military in the area. The committees would meet in bunkers and basements, and would stay there until the emergency was over.

There was a “War Book,” Churchill said, with instructions for what the committees and commissioners were supposed to do. Everything had been worked out in detail, he said.

Laura stared at the little captions. “Regional Director of Civil Defence.” That was who she was supposed to call about the Key, if the worst came to the worst. Maybe if she did call the number Dad had given her, she would be taken down into a bunker, like Mr Macmillan, until Dad could get to her.

She wasn’t sure she had ever really taken Dad’s dire instructions about the Key seriously. But seeing those words on the telly screen made everything seem real.

Churchill’s face returned. “Of course war has not yet been declared. But such is the lightning pace of modern technology that such a war as we must now contemplate may be over before it has time to be declared—or peace to be brokered.

“The French have a saying for times like this. Déjà vu. Well, we British don’t say much. We just roll up our sleeves and get on with the job. On the accession of our gracious Queen Elizabeth, I said that she came to the throne at a time when mankind is poised between world catastrophe and a golden age. And so it is now. But when we have come through this crisis together, when we have built a better world for our children, future generations will speak of the courage we showed at a time of unparalleled danger. I wish you victory, and peace.” He held up his fingers in his familiar V-sign.

The picture faded to a Union Jack, rippling in the wind.

Another film started up. The Dam Busters. Wartime heroics.

“Oh, good,” Mum said. “I always liked Richard Todd.”

Laura stood. “I’m going to my room.”

Mort looked up at her. “Laura. Listen to me. Everything will be