Helga's Web

by Jon Cleary

  “What’s got into you? What’s happened to the social snob I was married to?”

  “Listen to who’s talking. I lost my snobbery on the living room floor of your girl friend, along with my best string of pearls. I had to get down on my hands and knees to find out I’d also lost my pride.” She turned to him, the smile frozen on her face like a grimace of pain. “Let’s go home, Wally. I’m feeling terrible.”

  They went out through the slowly swirling crowd that, its preoccupation with itself thickened now by drink and gossip, would not miss them. As they got into the car Norma slumped back in her seat, took off her pearls and put them in her handbag, and sighed quaveringly as if she were on the verge of tears. Helidon sat quietly beside her, something telling him that this was a crisis moment in their marriage, even more critical than when she had found out about Helga. Their life together from now on started here.

  “Would you give up politics if I asked you to?” She did not look at him directly; there was more apprehension in her voice than threat. “Not right away, but as soon as you could.”

  He said warily, “You’re asking a lot.”

  “I know. But I’m trying to save our marriage.”

  “We’re all righk darl-”

  She was massaging her throat, as if she had just removed

  a rope from it instead of the string of pearls. “We don’t have a marriage, Wally. Even Miss Brand told me that.”

  “I thought we weren’t going to mention her again?”

  “I’m not throwing her up at you. I’m trying to be dispassionate about her—” She stopped, as if she found being dispassionate was not an easy emotion. “But she told the truth. We don’t have a marriage. We have a—a social arrangement.”

  “There are plenty worse marriages than ours.”

  “A man’s answer.” She turned round to him, gaining more confidence. “Wally, I mean it. Our marriage isn’t going to last the way it’s going. Oh, we might stay together for convenience’s sake. There are a lot of our friends who have marriages like that. But—” She faltered, then went on: “I want something more than that to look forward to. I think I’ve just discovered I was’ happier as the dull woman I was ten years ago. At least then we were in love.”

  “I love you now,” he said and meant it.

  “You probably do. And I love you. I really do, darling. But—” She regarded him thoughtfully. “How long will it last if we go on living separate lives? That’s what we’re doing, you know. We sleep in the same room, but not in the same beds—”

  “Whose fault was that?”

  She waited a moment before she admitted, “Yes, it was my idea. And I’m sorry now.”

  “We can buy a double bed tomorrow.”

  “All right, we’ll do that. But that’s not going to be the solution. We have to start living together all day. Even when we’re apart. Does that make sense to you?”

  He nodded slowly, still unsure of her. She was asking him to give up all he had worked for over the past ten years, the life that for him was the only life worth living. He loved politics, got almost a sensual as well as an intellectual pleasure out of them. He had reconciled himself to the recognition that he would never be Premier, the ultimate satisfaction (he

  had no interest at all in Federal politics and never even thought of being Prime Minister); he had achieved a complacency of mind that, with parallel smugness, he knew very few men managed. He had at least another fifteen years, probably more, of public life to be enjoyed: neither the voters nor the Party would ever ask him to do what Norma was asking. He would agree with her for the time being, but he would try to change her mind in the weeks ahead. They could still have the life she wanted if she gave up her charity committees.

  “What would we do?”

  “We could go abroad. Travel—take our time—”

  “It makes very good sense, indeed.”

  She smiled, relaxing. She leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. “We’ll be happy, darling, I promise you. But while we’re making a new start—”

  “Yes?”

  “Give up saying indeed. I’m not one of your voters, dar-ling.”

  He smiled, loving her now as much as when their marriage had begun. “I’ll watch it. Let’s go home and vote for each other in bed.”

  An hour and a half later she got out of bed and reached for her dressing gown. “Don’t put it on,” he said. “You used to walk around naked when we first got married.”

  The shadow of Helga passed between them, but they looked at each other frankly as if neither of them had seen it. He wants me to act like his whore did, Norma thought. What was the perfect wife supposed to be: a servant in the kitchen, a lady in the drawing room and a whore in the bedroom? But she said nothing of that, only looked at herself in the big wall-mirror. “I looked better in those days.”

  You look all right now,” he said, shutting out the image of Helga, being doggedly faithful and loving. “You look— womanly.”

  She came back, leaned across to him as he sat up in bed and kissed him. “Was it really good?”

  “We haven’t lost the knack. All we needed was to forget everything but ourselves. I’m just glad Rosa has gone.”

  “I forgot everything, everything but what we were doing. But if you asked me to remember—” She smiled, kissed him again. “We don’t need to remember it. It’ll happen again. Often.”

  Then the phone rang. He picked it up automatically: it could be the Premier, his own secretary, a voter, anyone: even Helga. It was a voice he had never heard before, a rough voice full of gravelly menace: “Mr. Helidon? I think you and me might get together.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “My name don’t matter right now. But I got a diary here that’s got your name in it, you know what I mean? It was given to me by a girl named Helga, an old friend of yours. You remember her?”

  He looked at his wife. He had been about to pull her back into the bed with him when the phone had rung; but now all the sex ran out of him. He put his hand over the phone. “Don’t get cold. Put your gown on.”

  Puzzled, she said, “Who is it?” Then her face flushed. “It’s not her, is it?”

  He shook his head. “Some man.” He took his hand away from the mouthpiece. “I’m not interested in what you have. You can tell Miss Brand to—”

  “To go to hell?” The voice chuckled. “She’s gone back to Germany, sport. She ain’t innarested in you any more.”

  “Then why did she leave you her diary?” Helidon saw his wife’s head jerk up.

  “She owed me a favour I done her. But don’t let’s get into any long natter over the blower. You have a boat, Mr. Helidon, it’s moored off the Yacht Club. Wuddia say I meet you on her tomorra morning, say ten o’clock? And don’t bring

  anyone with you.” The voice hardened. “You couldn’t prove anything right now against me. But I got a lot here might worry you. See you at ten.”

  The phone went dead in Helidon’s ear. Slowly he put the instrument back on the bed table, stared at his wife sitting naked and middle-aged on the bed beside him. “More blackmail,” he said, and wanted to weep. “It’s not over at all. A long way from over, indeed.”

  Saturday , December 7

  Bixby saw the blue Mercedes come down the narrow street and swing into the parking lot of the Yacht Club. He walked across as Walter Helidon, in dark glasses, blazer and linen slacks, impeccably dressed even as a victim, got out of the car.

  “G’day, Mr. Helidon. Right on time.”

  Helidon looked at the big, rough-looking character in the red checked shirt, blue trousers and fancy-banded straw hat. A race-course urger, he thought: what would Helga have been doing with a man like this? “What’s your name? That’s the first thing I want to know before we start talking.”

  “I don’t think you need to know that—”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” The dark glasses hid the anxiety he felt; this man looked capable of physical violence and Helidon had al
wavs been afraid of violence. But he was in control of his voice and he did his best to get into control

  of the situation. “If this thing goes as far as you seem to think it’s going to—”

  “How’s that?”

  “Blackmail. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? I’m not going to pay out money to someone whose name I don’t know.”

  “You’ve decided to come good with the cash, then?”

  “I didn’t say that—” Helidon’s voice rose a little.

  “Don’t get excited, sport. Let’s go out to your boat. We wanna keep this calm, you know what I mean? That’s the shot, eh?”

  The club house and moorings were as busy as a cormorants’ nest site. Weekend sailors were preparing their boats; some yachts were already nosing out towards the broader waters of the harbour. No one took any notice of Helidon and the tough-looking man with him as the two of them went out in one of the club’s runabouts; everyone, even a Cabinet Minister, lost rank here at the weekend and became no more than someone indulging his favourite sport. The man in the red shirt, if he was noticed at all, was taken for a tradesman going to do some work on Helidon’s yacht. Helidon was known as a soft-hands sailor: he had never been known to scrub a deck or wind a rope.

  “Nice craft you got here.” Bixby clambered aboard the yacht. She was an ocean cruiser-racer based upon a successful Sydney yacht, Freya: a 39-foot craft with an 11-foot beam that Helidon had bought with the vague idea of entering her in the annual Sydney-Hobart race, but so far he had taken her no more than ten miles out to sea and had been sick most of the time. But a gale would have made him no sicker than he was now on this smooth backwater of the harbour. “Must of set you back a fair packet.”

  “We didn’t come out here to talk about the price of my boat.” Helidon took off his blazer and sat down. The sun, criss-crossed by gulls, blazed down and he was wishing he had brought a hat with him; if this talk went on too long he

  was going to get badly burnt from the glare off the water. He should have cut the talk short back at the parking lot, got into his car and driven off. He had already lost a tactical point by coming out here; it conceded that he was willing to listen to this man’s proposition. He tried for some authority: “Get to the point. But first, what’s your name?”

  Bixby hesitated, then gave his name. He had never pulled a job like this before and he wondered if other jokers who went in for blackmail kept their names out of it. But if he played his cards carefully this bloke Helidon would have nothing on him. “Helga told me you’d already paid her some cash.”

  Helidon remembered the check for a thousand dollars which Helga had torn up and thrown in his face. His bank had not called him this week to query him on the deposit of a pieced-together check. And if Helga had already gone back to Germany, as this chap had said last night on the phone, then it was pretty obvious she was not going to try to cash the check. “You’re wrong there. I paid her nothing.”

  Bixby sensed the assurance in the other man’s voice. For just a moment he lost his own confidence; then he remembered the diary in his hip pocket. The entries were straight enough: a bloke couldn’t misunderstand them. “I told you, sport, Helga left me her diary.”

  “Why did she do that? How well did you know her?”

  “Ah, we were old friends, sorta.”

  “Were you the pimp who ran her?” Helidon realized his mistake at once.

  “Oh, you admit you knew what game she was in? No, I wasn’t her ponce. Like I said, I was just a friend. Not even one of her customers. But you were, weren’t you? Pretty regular, too. Every Monday and Thursday.” Bixby had been looking carefully at Helidon in his dark glasses and now he remembered the man he had seen going into Helga’s flat last

  Monday afternoon. “Did you say goodbye to her last Monday?”

  Helidon said nothing, wondering how much this man knew. He could not see Bixby as a friend of Helga’s, she had been so fastidious and highly critical of certain types of Australian men; but then he had read that whores often sought as friends men entirely different from their clients, and maybe Helga’s kink had run to having someone like this lout. He was as big and crude as a bull and maybe that was what she had wanted. He felt a sudden angry embarrassment, as if he had proved sexually inadequate. Knowing his own fastidiousness and, yes, his lack of stamina, it could have been part of her bitchy revenge that she should have exposed him to a man like this. But why had she so suddenly decided to leave for Europe?

  Bixby grinned. “Never mind what you said to her. I seen you going into her flat last Monday. I was gunna call on her m’self, but when I seen you I went away and give you your time. What did you say to her? She made up her mind pretty quick to go back to Germany.”

  A yacht slid by, its auxiliary engine ticking over, its crew freeing the sails for quick raising as soon as they were out far enough to catch what breeze there was on the water. The skipper of the yacht waved to Helidon. “Don’t look so glum, Walter! There’ll be a nor’-easter this afternoon—plenty of good sailing!”

  Helidon forced a smile and waved back. He rubbed the top of his scalp, feeling the sun biting in through his thinning hair, and looked back at Bixby. “I didn’t say anything to her, nothing that would have caused her to hare off to Europe the way she appears to have done. Are you sure you didn’t say something to her?”

  Bixby spread his hands. “Why me? Her and I got on very well. We were always doing favours for each other.” He took a match from his shirt pocket, began to chew on it. “No, all

  she said was that you were coming back with some cash for her/’ He had memorized everything in the diary that had anything to do with Helidon, beginning with the name, address and phone number among the list of other names, addresses and phone numbers at the beginning of the small book. His mind was not subtle, but like the minds of many habitual liars he could turn fiction into fact in his own imagination. Her diary had said: Walter came this afternoon. Is coming back with the money. That was as good as talking to her, wasn’t it? He kept her alive in his mind till she would have told him all about Helidon that he would want to know. “Did you go back and see her?”

  “Yes, but—When did she tell you all this?”

  “She rung me Monday evening, after you’d been there the first time.” He had caught Helidon’s slip; the bastard had given himself away. He’d just have to watch he didn’t do the same thing himself; watch out for the old tongue. “I picked her up, took her out for a drink. She said then she was gunna go back to Germany. Then she gimme the diary, said I oughta get in touch with you. I rung her the next morning when I’d read the diary, but she’d gone. Did you give her the money she asked for?”

  “I did,” Helidon said abruptly, taking a chance that Helga had not confided too much in this brute. “It was probably what she used to go back to Europe.”

  “How much was it?”

  Then she hadn’t told him. “That’s between me and her, I think.”

  Bixby chewed on his match, then dropped it between his feet. “Yeah, I guess so. What we’re really talking about is what’s between you and me. I think it’d be worth a fair bit to you to keep your name outa the papers, wouldn’t it?”

  “One question,” said Helidon. “Did you and Helga have a fight about anything?”

  Bixby managed a look of surprise. “Me? Fight with her?

  Why?”

  “Nothing.” Then who had wrecked Helga’s flat? That is, if this chap was telling the truth; and Helidon could not be sure whether he was or wasn’t. He had always prided himself on being able to read other men: the salesman who sells himself, as he had been doing all his life, has to know his market. But upset and frightened as he had been this past week, his perception had lost its edge: suspicion was a cracked prism through which to view anything, let alone the truth.

  Bixby watched him for a moment, then looked about the yacht. “How much you say this set you back?”

  Helidon had recovered. “I didn’t.”


  Bixby grinned, feeling more confident every minute. “No, you didn’t. Well, I got a fair idea of boat prices. About fifty thousand dollars, I reckon. This your main pleasure, sport? I mean, besides girls?” He grinned again as he saw Helidon flush. “I’ll let you off light. How about ten thousand? You pay up and I’ll let you have Helga’s diary and you won’t hear another word from her or me.”

  “Did she tell you to speak for her, too?”

  Ah, you ain’t going to catch me that way, sport. But watch the tongue, Phil, watch the tongue. “No, she didn’t, come to think of it. But you think she’s gunna bother to come all the way back from Germany to bite you for a few more bucks? Not Helga, sport.”

  Helidon took out his handkerchief, spread it over his burning scalp. He sat there like some placid red-faced old woman, only the dark glasses, like empty sockets, suggesting the death’s-head beneath the smooth plump skin. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You don’t,” said Bixby, grinning cheerfully now. “But you’re a politician, you know nobody trusts anybody these days. You just gotta take the chances. If I give you the diary, what else will I have on you, see what I mean?”

  Helidon thought quickly. He had never written Helga even a note, never put his name to any present he had given her, always paid her in cash each week. The only time he had ever signed his name—“I gave her a check for a thousand dollars. She tore it up. Where’s that?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  There had been just a moment’s pause before Bixby had answered: Helidon couldn’t be sure whether he was telling the truth or not. “What would you know about the other man who visited her on Monday? Didn’t she mention him, too?”

  Bixby felt his nerve-ends beginning to tighten. “What bloke was that?”

  “The one who wrecked her flat. Didn’t she mention him?”

  “No, sport. If anyone wrecked her flat, it must of been after she left it.”

  “But it was wrecked on Monday night!” Then Helidon realized his second mistake.