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

She was impressed that Nick’s “group” actually existed.

She wasn’t much interested in music, though. Back in Wycombe she’d been taken to a few concerts by Mum and Dad. But they had been folk music, which was old men in woolly hats with their fingers in their ears, or trad jazz, which was old men in bowler hats belting out show tunes on trumpets. Everybody said trad jazz would be the next big thing in popular music. The sixties would be the “trad decade.”

As for pop music, she had dutifully listened to scratchy 45s by Cliff Richard and Tommy Roe on her friends’ gramophones, and had tried to do the Twist to “Let’s Dance” by Chris Montez. It didn’t mean much to Laura. In fact the lilting tunes and the popstar boys’ high-pitched voices mooning over their “sweet angels” just annoyed her.

So going to this concert wasn’t all that appealing. But at the end of the school day Bernadette had offhandedly told her about a coffee club where they could meet on Sunday afternoon. After Mort and his Barbie doll, it sounded a good idea. Any excuse to get out of the house.

And a chance to make better friends with Bernadette. All day Bernadette had struggled in the lessons, but she was somehow a bit more sensible than the other kids around her. Laura was glad to have her solid company.

She folded the newspaper up again. On the front page was a grainy photo of another group, four skinny young men in suits, and half of the rest of the page was taken up by a huge ad:

MONDAY OCTOBER 22ND

BACK AT THE CAVERN AT LAST

DIRECT FROM HAMBURG

THE SAVAGE

YOUNG

!! BEATLES !!

Beatles? She’d never heard of them. Stupid name. She folded up the paper and put it in the rubbish bin.

Of course the big question was what to wear on Sunday. She started to go through her suitcase.

Chapter 4

Sunday 14th October. 10 a.m.

Another sunny morning. It’s an Indian summer, the weatherman says.

Hurray.

Never mind Cuba and nuclear bombs. Today I face the ultimate horror.

Sunday lunch. With Mum and Dad.

And It.

And tomorrow, he’s been putting it off, Dad’s driving back to Wycombe at last.

She was stuck indoors, waiting for the chicken to cook in Mum’s new cooker, a Tricity Marquise. Dad and Mort sat on the deep velvet-covered settee in the parlour, minuscule glasses of sherry in their hands, not speaking.

Laura didn’t want to sit with them. She roamed around the house, like a rat in a cage, avoiding the adults.

The house had cost six thousand pounds. It had been done out by an old dear, the previous owner who had died, and most of her furniture was still here. It was all thick-pile carpets and oatmeal wallpaper; and the whole place stank of Johnson’s furniture polish. In the parlour, walnut bookcases held condensed editions of Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie. The phone was stuck to the wall, an old-fashioned box that you had to put pennies into to make it work. The most fun piece of furniture was a huge cocktail cabinet. When you pulled down the hatch at the front a tray inside lifted up and out, and fluorescent lights switched on.

The back garden was tiny, just a patch of muddy earth. It had been turned into an allotment. In one corner stood a wooden frame that might be the ruins of a chicken coop.

At last Mum banged a silly little gong, three inches across. “Lunch is served!”

They sat down at the dining table. The table was polished walnut, hardly ever used. Mum bustled around in her hostess apron, and served drinks: sweet German wine for the men, dandelion and burdock for Laura, Babycham for Mum. The smoke from their cigarettes curled up to the ceiling.

The first course was prawn cocktail. Then Mum went off to the kitchen and came bustling back with her brand new hostess trolley with its heated shelves, laden with the main course, coq au vin. Laura knew for a fact she had never cooked coq au vin before. The chicken was like rubber, floating in gloopy sauce.

Mum had fussed her way through the first course, nervous and chatty, and by the time they were chewing their way through the overcooked chicken she was mildly drunk. “Of course now we’re back in Liverpool we’re not eating lunch but dinner. And later we won’t eat dinner but our tea.” She put on a Scouse accent. “Isn’t it funny?”

“I saw the vegetable patch out back,” Mort said gruffly.

“Everybody had them in the war,” Dad said. “We used to eat pigeon pie for Sunday lunch. Rationing only came off—when, love, 1954?”

“You remember, don’t you, Laura?” Mum said. “When the sweets came off? I remember your little face that Christmas when you ate your first tangerine.”

Laura, embarrassed, said nothing.

“You folks had it tough,” Mort said, nodding his huge head. “I won’t deny that. Even though I was stationed over here for most of it, it wasn’t the same for us, we were provisioned from home. We had luxuries. Like stockings and soap. Great gifts, right?” He grinned at Mum.

Laura saw the look that passed between them. Dad just chewed his chicken, head down.

“And even now,” Mort boomed on, “half your houses are still bombed to bits, and your food’s still crap—forgive me—and you’re only just getting washing machines and vacuum cleaners. Is it true some parts of England still don’t have electricity? Why, I swear you’re twenty years behind us.”

Dad looked up, his expression blank. “Of course we are. But we’d be catching up a lot quicker if your government was a little more generous over the war reparations.”

Mort leaned back and blew smoke out of his pursed lips. “Yeah, but sooner a bill from Uncle Sam than to be owned lock, stock and barrel by Cousin Adolf. Right, Harry?”

Dad kept his mouth shut.

Dad groused about this a lot. The Americans had loaned the British a fortune during the war to keep fighting the