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

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 Laura, 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