THE H-BOMB GIRL, Stephen Baxter [ereader for android txt] 📗

They closed in and began poking him. One of them grabbed his hat, but Joel held on to it. Laura could hear what they were saying. “Niggy, niggy. Niggy nigritta.”

Bernadette moved in, tall, commanding. “Hey, face ache. Leave him alone.” She said to Laura, “There’s going to be bother tonight. You can just feel it.”

Somebody twanged a guitar, a single electrical chord that crashed out of the loudspeakers stacked up on the stage.

A shock ran through the crowd. Everybody roared, and pushed forward. Laura had to struggle to stay with Bernadette and Joel.

The stage was only about ten feet wide. The back wall was painted with big slabs of colour, covered in graffiti: signatures of the groups in marker pens.

Near the stage, the floor was just packed with girls. They were too jammed in to dance, or even to breathe probably, Laura thought. But they wanted to be close to the groups. The lads on stage reached past the bouncers, touching the girls’ hands. Some of the girls stuck bits of paper into the pockets of the lads’ jackets. Phone numbers, maybe.

Laura was crushed in among taffeta dresses and cheap serge suits. Big fat drops of condensation dripped off the roof and hit Laura on the head and shoulders.

“Don’t mind the rain,” Joel shouted at her. “Sometimes it shorts out the amps.”

Some of the girls were chanting. “Bring back Pete! Bring back Pete!” or, “Pete for ever! Ringo never!”

Laura tugged Bernadette’s elbow. “Who’s Pete?”

“Pete Best.” It wasn’t Bernadette who answered, but Nick. He smiled at Laura, his teeth white in the gloom. Compared to some of the tough-looking Teds he looked very young. He leaned towards her and shouted, “He was the Beatles’ drummer, and they sacked him because he was useless.”

Bernadette came between them. “No, they sacked him because he was too good-looking. Even though it was his drum kit. What’s the new bloke called, with the big nose? Bongo?”

“Ringo, you div. Glad you came, Posh Judy? What about you, Bern? Do you want me to autograph your bump?”

“Bog off.”

That sardonic voice came from the stage again. “A one two one two testing. Is there anybody there? Hard to see without me goggles.”

There was a huge roar, and the crowd crushed forward again. Laura was swept up. Laughing, she grabbed Bernadette and Joel by the hand.

“All right, thank you, Beatle John.” An MC character, a bustling little man in a crumpled suit, grabbed the mike. “We’ll be seeing plenty of you later, and the other boys. Go on, clear off.” Now he shouted, his voice booming around the arched roof, “First of all, hello Cavern dwellers, and welcome to the best of cellars, as I always say, ha ha!” He got whistles for that. “In the break you can buy water, coffee and pop from the tables over there. I think there’s a bit of soup left over from dinner if you fancy that. We’ve got a great show for you tonight. You’ll get plenty of Beatles later, don’t worry. But first, let’s give a big warm Cavern welcome-back to—Nick O’Teen and the Woodbines!”

Nick was up on stage. He grasped the mike stand, as the Woodbines clattered their drums and tuned up their guitars behind him. “Good evening, troglodytes! It’s wonderful to be back from Bootle. As if we’ve never been away. We’d like to play for you a song by a good friend of ours, a Mister Chuck Berry. You can never go wrong with a bit of Chuck, can you, lads? Eh, Billy?” He looked around, but Billy Waddle just ignored him, and, chewing gum, grinned at the girls at the front of the crush.

Nick called out, “This is a number called ‘Johnny B Goode.’ A one two three—”

The guitarists crashed out their chords, and Billy hammered his drums, and Nick leapt about the stage cradling his mike stand.

The sound was huge, and it just walloped out of the big speakers on stage, so loud the walls shook, and bits of white paint drifted down from the roof, like snow. Laura had never heard anything like this before. It was music transformed into a battering ram. She was electrified.

You couldn’t dance here, it was so tightly packed, but everybody yelled and jumped, following the rhythm as best they could, and Laura jumped with the rest. One girl fainted, and had to be passed over the heads of the crowd to the back.

Nick sang raucously but clearly, and Laura could hear every word. There was a line about guitars like a ringing of bells, which she thought was better poetry than most of the stuff she had to swot up at school.

And when Nick yelled out the chorus line, urging “Johnny” to “go go go,” the Beatle called John came mucking about on stage, doing the Twist, jiving like a madman, even goose-stepping up and down behind Nick. The crowd screamed, and went even more crazy.

That was when the Teds kicked off.

It was planned. They had worked their way to the front. Now a dozen of them surged forward and made for the stage. The bouncers went for the Teds without hesitation. One huge man stood firm, and a Ted just caromed off his belly and went flying back into the crowd, knocking screaming girls for six. But three, four, five of the Teds got through and leapt up on to the stage. The music dissolved in a jangle of broken chords.

One of the Teds shrieked, “Bash the queer!” And he threw himself straight at Nick, who went down under flying fists. Another Ted joined in, and another.

Billy Waddle cowered behind his drums at the back of the stage. Bert Muldoon smashed his rhythm guitar down on one Ted’s head. Mickey Poole dropped his guitar and leapt at the tangle around Nick. But another big Ted held out his hand and shoved his palm into Mickey’s nose. Mickey went down screaming, blood pouring from his face.

On the dance floor it was chaos. The fighting spread everywhere as bouncers