Helga's Web

by Jon Cleary

  They drove back to the city in the steel tide of traffic moving in for the night’s entertainment. They climbed the hill to King’s Cross, past the raw eczema of neon, past the girls coming out to begin their night’s work. Malone looked out at them, wondering how many of them would finish up as Helga Brand had. The funny thing was, he had never met a pro who had felt sorry for herself. He wondered how Helga had felt on the last night of her life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Monday, December 2

  1

  Helga Brand chose another chocolate from the box beside her, bit into it, then had a moment of doubt. She looked at herself in the mirror across the room, shrugged and ate the chocolate. She had put on a little weight over the past month, but it did not matter; there would be time to take it off be- fore she got to Miinchen. And if German men were as they had been when she had left Hamburg six years ago, they wouldn’t mind some plumpness in the right places on a girl. Though in those days she had been dealing with men lower down the social scale than those she was aiming at when she got to Miinchen.

  She felt a thrill of anticipation and for a few moments was lost in contemplation of what her life would be like in the Bavarian capital. It would be fun to get back to a real city after the collection of suburbs that was Sydney. And the Ger- man men, especially the Bavarians, though they might be unsubtle, were at least lavish in their treatment of women who gave them what they wanted. Which was more than the knauserig Australians, the stingy ones, were.

  She looked around the comfortable flat. She had always had a passion for neatness and taste and it showed in what she had chosen to surround herself with. The living room was the sort of room where most men would be at ease; she had learned at an early age that the average businessman preferred his eroticism in the bedroom. The pictures on the walls showed her nostalgia for her homeland; the biggest was a photograph of the Aussenalster, the lake glittering in an August sun and the yachts poised like birds about to take flight. The books on the nest of shelves in one corner were mostly popular novels, but there were also half a dozen picture books of Germany. There was nothing to remind her either of the Reeperbahn or the farm near Hanover: her mementos were illusions as much as anything else, but she was practical enough to recognize them as such.

  She continued to look around the room and allowed herself another illusion, the fantasy of what would surround her in Germany if she were, as she was here in Sydney, the mistress of both a Cabinet Minister and a film producer. It must be the puritan that still hung about in the corners of even the most libertine Australian, the reluctance to spend extravagantly on anything sinful. A whore’s life could be profitable in Australia, but never that of a mistress.

  She had never liked the whore’s life on the Reeperbahn. She had not run away from the farm and gone to Hamburg to be a prostitute; but there had been no great moral battle when a travelling salesman at the hotel where she had worked as a chambermaid had offered her twenty marks after she had slept with him one night. She had been fifteen then but had looked eighteen; and she had found the experience neither frightening nor revolting. The journey to the brothel on the Reeperbahn had been both quick and gradual, almost a night-by-night progress. The next four years had bred a disgust for men and an early acceptance of the thought that she could never love a man; but she had known no other way of earning so much money and having money, lots of it, was her main aim in life. She had fled to Australia when one of her regular customers had threatened to cut her up because she had been stealing money from him. She had found no trouble in getting work as a model when she had arrived in Sydney; the local photographers were always impressed with any girl who had had overseas experience. But their fees were not high and after a year or so she had started looking around for other sources of income. There had been several men before she had found Jack Savanna and Walter Helidon. She smiled now as she thought of them, the big-time spenders of pennies.

  She took another chocolate, then picked up the large ma-nila folder with its file of newspaper clippings. She had started the collection almost six months ago when she had first thought of going back to Germany. There had been no definite thought in her mind of how to use the collection or even that she would; she had begun to put the pictures and clippings aside for a rainy day, in much the same way as her farmer father had taught her to bring home firewood, even in summer, against the possibility of an early winter. She had always been a practical girl, despite her extravagance, though never a calculating one: at least not till this past week. If she had been calculating at an earlier age she would have done better for herself than the brothel; and she would certainly never have listened to the suggestion of Gruen, the brothel owner, and had those embarrassing marks tattooed on her bottom. She would have those removed as soon as she got back to Germany. But not in Miinchen. In Essen or Dortmund, some city she would not be likely to visit again. She had left one identity behind her on the farm near Hanover, another in Hamburg, and she would leave Helga Brand in Sydney. An entirely new girl, Helga ? (she must start dreaming up a new attractive surname), would arrive in Munchen to begin a new, rich life. She turned over the collection of photos and clippings, her passport to the new life, and reached for a third chocolate.

  Then she heard the key in the lock. She sat up at once, pushed the manila folder under the heavy armchair in which she sat, and looked towards the small entrance hall as Walter Helidon came in and closed the front door behind him. The weather had been up and down in its temperature the past few days and today was another warm day. Walter was sweating and she felt repelled as she always did, though she had never let him know.

  She got up, pulling down her skirt. Usually when Helidon arrived she was waiting for him in a negligee or a brief miniskirt and blouse: he was a man who asked for the obvious in sexy attractiveness. But this afternoon she had dressed as for a business interview; after all she had invited him to come to talk business. She glanced at herself in the mirror, at the pale blue dress with the white collar and cuffs, and thought: I could be his secretary.

  “Darling,” she said, and smiled.

  “What’s the smile for?”

  “I was thinking I could be your secretary. But then she would not call you darling. Or would she?”

  “I’m in no mood for jokes.” Helidon walked across to the sideboard against one wall and poured himself a stiff gin-and-tonic. He looked at her, but she shook her head. He took a sip of the drink, savoured it, nodded, then sat down in the chair she had just vacated. “We’re going to have a straight talk, Helga. No mucking around, understand?”

  “Can politicians talk straight, darling?” She ran her fingers lightly over the top of his head as she passed him and sat down opposite him. “I’m joking, Walter. I’ll stop it. Talk straight. Did you bring the check?”

  He took another sip of his drink, then wiped his face with the silk handkerchief he took from his pocket. He had not removed his jacket, as if he, too, saw this only as a business talk: he was going to avoid looking at home. “No. Not the twenty thousand.”

  “How much, then?” She, felt a momentary stab of angry disappointment, but her face showed nothing.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to see my wife, Helga. I don’t say I’d have given you the twenty thousand, that’s a ridiculous amount, no man would be that foolish—”

  “Not foolish,” she said. “Generous. There are some generous men in the world.”

  “Not in this city. Not like that,” he said, and there was almost a note of pride in his voice, as if Sydney men who kept mistresses were good businessmen who kept prices down.

  “No,” she said, but he missed the irony in her voice.

  “If you hadn’t gone to see my wife,” he continued, “I could have done something for you. For this boutique, I mean.” She had forgotten her original excuse for asking for the money and he stopped when he saw the blank look on her face. “That was what you wanted it for, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said, putting the dream of
Munchen out of her mind for the time being. She might have to play her cards differently to get the money out of him and already she was beginning to shuffle the pack in her mind.

  “I thought you’d have known better, Helga. I mean, than to go and see my wife. Don’t you know most wives won’t pay to keep their husbands’ names out of the paper? Would I have been coming to see you these past two years if my wife was the sort who loved me enough to pay twenty thousand dollars to keep my name out of a scandal?”

  Helga smiled. “I think I do know women, darling. I went to see your wife because I thought she would pay to keep her name out of the newspapers. And I think she will, once she realizes I am in earnest.”

  Helidon sipped his drink, composed his face into his Cabinet Minister’s image, the one of decision. “I’ve been thinking. It would be a good idea, a very good idea indeed, if you left Sydney and went back to Germany. Or anywhere you want to go.”

  “Why do you think that would be a good idea?” She kept her voice expressionless, putting on no face at all.

  He evaded her question: he was an old hand at such a practice. “I’ll give you your air fare to wherever you like to go. In fact I already have it here.” He took a check from his pocket. “It’s for a thousand dollars, made out to Helga Brand Proprietary Limited.” He smiled, trying to improve the atmosphere between them; but it was his politician’s smile and she recognized it. “That was a nice touch, a very nice touch indeed. My wife was quite impressed by it.”

  “You mean she liked it?”

  “Well, not exactly liked it, no. She thought it showed you were—business-like.”

  “I think the word she would have used was calculating, Walter,” she said, and from the expression on his face she knew she had been close in her guess. “A calculating bitch? I don’t under-estimate your wife. But you seem to be underestimating me.” He looked puzzled. “Thinking you could buy me off with a thousand dollars!”

  “But that wasn’t all of it,” he protested, hurt that she should think he was stingy; didn’t he have the reputation at the Assembly of being the first always to pick up the tab for a lunch or drinks? “I’ll give you another—” he thought quickly: how much would be reasonable? “—two thousand dollars. Three thousand all told. You don’t have to use the thousand dollars for air fare, if you don’t want to go back there. You can go to Melbourne, Perth, anywhere you like. Just so long as you get out of Sydney. And you’ll have something to get you started in your boutique wherever you want to open it. Go to Perth—they wouldn’t know anything about real fashion—” he spoke with the Easterner’s disregard of anything west of the Blue Mountains “—there’s a lot of money there now—”

  She leaned forward, hating him now for his meanness, for his bland assumption that she could be bought cheaply, for all the boredom she had felt with him over the time she had known him. He was a little man, a mediocrity who thought

  small, an Australian: suddenly she hated all Australians, the whole lucky country as they called themselves. She hungered to be back among her own people whose mentality she understood: “It isn’t going to be as easy as that for you, Mr. Helidon!” Her voice became guttural, harsh: this was a different sort of passion from the one that made her German in bed. She suddenly swept into a torrent of her own language, hurling obscenities at him that he did not understand; she grabbed the check from him, ripped it into small pieces, threw it at him, the confetti of abuse. He sat back in his chair, brushing the pieces of check from him as if she had showered him with dirt, almost cowering before her fury; the foreign language confused him, made her more threatening because he did not understand her. Then she stood up, struggled to regain control of herself, spoke in English again: “Get out! Don’t come back till you bring me what I’ve asked for! And I want it by tomorrow night! Now get out!”

  He was sweating profusely as he stood up; he took off his glasses as they began to mist up. He peered at her, trying to match her anger with his own; but all at once he was afraid, sensing a recklessness in her temper that might lead to disaster. Abruptly he made up his mind to give her all she asked for. “All right, you’ll get it!” He tried for some fury in his own voice, to show that she had not frightened him into giving way. “I don’t have another check on me. I’ll be back tomorrow night—” He struggled for some sarcasm, anything to salvage something from her victory over him: “That is, if you don’t mind me coming on a day that isn’t mine? It’ll be Tuesday—I’m a Monday man—”

  She smiled at once, moved closer to him but didn’t make the mistake of trying to kiss him: she was too shrewd to be coy at a moment like this. She moved just close enough to him to let him smell her perfume, revive the memories, if only in his blood, of what he had once had, of what, in effect, he was paying for.

  “Liebling, I’m glad it’s going to be this way. I didn’t want us to part bad friends—we’ve been good friends too long. Tomorrow evening will be fine—” Jack Savanna would not be back, not after their last meeting: her Tuesday and Friday man was gone forever. He would be the one she would miss, the only man to whom she had ever said Ich liebe dich and almost meant it. “I’ll be here. Alone.”

  Helidon had caught the smell of her perfume; he knew that something he had enjoyed was now over and he felt a physical twinge of regret. He stifled a sigh, nodded, put on his dark glasses and went out of the flat. Helga closed the door, locked it and walked to the window and looked out. A minute passed; then Helidon appeared on the pavement below, walking with that quick, suspicious walk that always amused her: he looked like a man hurrying away from an hour or two with his mistress: the dark glasses only added to the effect. Poor Walter, always afraid of being found out. But he had been found out, she guessed, years ago: by his wife, by herself, by his political opponents: a man who had only one talent: ambition.

  She turned away from the window, saw the torn-up check scattered on the floor. Perhaps she had been hasty doing that; at least it would have been a deposit on what he was going to pay her. But in the event she had done the right thing; it had proved to Walter that at least she wasn’t thinking small; he would be back tomorrow with the full twenty thousand. Meanwhile, tomorrow morning she would go and see Mr. Leslie Gibson about the hundred thousand. That might be more difficult, but he, too, had a wife who would probably pay to keep her name out of the newspapers. A woman who was a vice-president of the Daughters of Mary, who figured three times in the manila folder in photographs with the Archbishop, who had had an audience with the Pope, wouldn’t want her husband being exposed as connected, however remotely, with drug smuggling.

  She went out to the kitchen, got a dustpan and small broom, came back, swept up the pieces of the check and dumped them in the wastepaper basket. She did it with all the neat efficiency of a hausfrau; her mother had trained her well, if for the wrong profession. Then she went into the bedroom, took off her dress and underwear, put on the green silk dressing gown and went back into the living room. She sat down, chose a chocolate from the box, then picked up the small leather-covered diary on the table beside the chair. She opened it and with a ballpoint pen made an entry: Walter came this afternoon. Is coming back with the money. She looked at it with satisfaction; then she glanced idly at the entries, some just one line, others more detailed, for other days. The entry for the previous Friday disturbed her: Had argument with Jack. She would call him before she left Sydney, say goodbye and hope that there would be no bitterness.

  Sunk in a mood of sweet despondency, she jerked her head up in surprise when the doorbell rang. Stuffing the diary into the pocket of her dressing gown, she got up and went to the door. She pulled back the lock, opened the door, expecting to find Helidon there.

  Despite the dark glasses the woman wore, she recognized her at once. “Why, Mrs. Helidon! This is a surprise—”

  2

  Savanna pushed open the glass door to the entrance to Helga’s block of flats and slowly began to climb the stairs. As with his visit to Gibson, he was not quite sure
why he had come to see Helga; it certainly wasn’t that he expected any sex with her. He was not even sure that she would let him into the flat; this was Monday, not his day for visiting her. Perhaps it was his day for saying goodbye: he had just said goodbye to Silver, forever and after twenty-two years of foolishly hoping …

  “You know,” he had said as they had sat in the lounge of the Wentworth looking out through the tall glass walls at the breeze rocking the umbrellas in the outdoor garden area, “I’ve never really thought of us as being divorced. Separated, yes. But not divorced.”

  “That’s foolish, Jack. Or worse.” She was dressed in a cinnamon linen dress that set off the golden tan of her arms and the pale silver of her hair; other men in the room besides Savanna were looking at her, none of them guessing her true age. There was a youthfulness to her smile that excused the small wrinkles that appeared around her eyes when she did smile; and her bare arms, still firm, showed none of the dimples that so often gave away a woman’s age. “Separated couples don’t have another spouse each—I love that word, spouse —and children. You have your daughter and I have my four kids. We’re divorced, Jack, make no mistake about it.”

  “I didn’t mean it in that way, the legal way.” He sat back in his chair, cradling his drink in his big hands. He looked at her with careful tenderness, not wanting to offend her. “I’m still in love with you, you know that.”

  She did not deny that she might know it. She stirred her Tom Collins, the same sort of drink he had ordered for her when they had first met twenty-seven years ago. He had suggested it this time when the waiter had come to take their order and, smiling, she had agreed. She was not afraid of sentiment, so long as he did not try to take it too far. He would be taking it too far if he kept on with this line of talk: “I think we’d better change the subject, Jack.”

  A man sat at a nearby table morosely staring into his beer. A red-haired woman joined him, obviously having just come from the ladies’ room, and he looked up and said, “Geez, you were long enough! I thought you’d fell in.”