Helga's Web (10 page)

Helidon went out to his car. Angry and confused as he was, he had some trouble at first in finding it: the car park seemed

to be full of blue Mercedes. Christ, he thought, the more affluent we become the more conformist we become. Per head of population Australia was now supposed to buy more Mercedes than any other country; that was a fact Helga had mentioned to him with some pride. Helga! With what he recognized as juvenile spite, he wished now he was looking for the old Pontiac.

He found his car, got into it, wound down the windows and sat staring out at the small bay of the harbour where the yachts rode like sleeping gulls. A cool breeze came across the water and he turned his face towards it, towards the south and Coogee where everything had started. Only seven miles and twenty-five years, but it seemed like another country and another century.

He had come back from the war, after six months in New Guinea, a twenty-one-year-old determined to be rich by the time he was forty. He had started out in a real estate agent’s office and within three years had his own office. He had married a girl from Coogee, but she had left him after two years, tired of sharing her bed with a man worn out by long hours and ambition. He had divorced her after three years, then married Norma; he had loved her, but he had also married her because he needed a woman to look after him. And she had looked after him, at least up till he had forced her to go into public life with him. Then she had become too busy for sex, for taking trouble cooking his meals, for running the house as a haven where he could come home to rest. Sex had become a Sunday morning ritual, as washing the car or mowing the lawn was for other men; they went out for most of their meals and when they did eat at home it was only to have a snack; and their home was no longer a haven but an aviary for chattering charity committees. He had never had much sense of humour, but he had been in politics long enough to appreciate irony. If it had not been for his ambi-

tion and his insistent spurring of Norma’s own ambition, there would have been no need of Helga.

He and Norma no longer had any financial worries. He did not need his Minister’s salary of nineteen thousand dollars, but Australians were too cynical about their politicians ever to accept a man who might model himself on some of the wealthy Americans who had worked in Washington for a dollar a year. He would be classed as either a fool or a crook. And he could not risk the latter epithet. Half-buried seven years back in his political past was the one piece of skulduggery he had ever indulged in. As a real estate man he had bought some land several years after the war, but had been thwarted when a State Commission had zoned the area as green belt. But when he had got into parliament, become tuned to the atmosphere there, he had seen his opportunity. He had sold the land to Norma’s brother, a wheeler-dealer like himself whom he could trust. He had bided his time, then after two years had quietly worked to have the area re-zoned. He had been successful, his brother-in-law had sold the land for a three thousand per cent profit, had turned over the proceeds to Helidon, taken his commission and conveniently died six months later. There had been a few inquiries, even the police had been brought in, but they could prove nothing. On the face of it Helidon was clean and since then the matter had been forgotten. The profit from the deal had been the foundation of Helidon’s current fortune. It was part of the irony of his whole life that with the current boom of the past three years, when money could be so easily made by anyone who could add two cents together, there might not have been need of that skulduggery of seVen years ago.

Helga had come into his life two years ago. Again there had been the irony: she had been a mannequin at a charity function arranged by Norma. He was not unhandsome, he was well-groomed and, even if it was still an effort, he was urbane; it had not been difficult, once he understood Helga’s

arrangements, to get the key to her flat. She had cost him fifty dollars a week, an expense that his accountant accepted as a legitimate entertainment of constituents. The arrangement had been ideal, though he had known in the back of his mind that eventually it would bring its own complications and it would have to end. He had not expected it to end this way.

Guests began to drift out from the party, got into their cars and drove away. Scraps of conversation floated across to him, the metal filings of cocktail gossip:

“Did you see that interior decorator and the antique he had with him? She must be old enough to be his mother—”

“I thought Norma Helidon looked marvellous, didn’t you? That hand-made face of hers never shows a crack/’

“I loved that little black Givenchy Louise County was wearing. It went so well with her dandruff accessories—”

“All right, you women! This was supposed to be a charity show. How about showing a bit of charity?”

“Oh, shut up! I heard you and Harry talking about that girl in the see-through blouse. What’s the difference between a little bit of gossip and sex talk?”

“If you don’t know by now, I dunno why you married me. Come on, get in.”

“Aren’t you going to open the door for me?”

“Christ, what’s the matter, you crippled or something all of a sudden?”

“Men!”

Despite his depression, Helidon smiled. Other married couples had their problems and their frictions. He saw the Gibsons come out ancl walk across to their Rolls-Royce; there was one couple who did not seem to have any problems. He felt suddenly resentful of Grafter Gibson, the unscrupulous old bastard whom everyone hated but whom one woman loved with all the devotion that better men yearned for. Married bliss never made any sense; it happened to the most un-

likely partners. He and Norma had once had it, but it was gone now.

At last Norma came out of the clubhouse, looked around, then came across and got into the car. A government car had brought her to the function and he knew how much she liked that: it gave her a small cachet above her rivals. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I thought you might have gone back to Double Bay for another dressing on your eye.”

He grunted wearily. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you. How did you find out about her? Did she phone you?”

She was still wearing her smile, like jewelry she had forgotten to remove. “She was lucky to catch me. I had to go back to answer the phone. It could have been something important.”

“Jesus!” He rarely swore, but her attitude had for the moment left him without any adequate words. He started up the car and they drove out of the car park and up towards the main road that led towards home. They rode a mile or more in silence, till at last he said, “All right. What are you going to do about her?”

“It’s not what I’m going to do. It’s what you’re going to do.” She had taken off her smile and now in the dim light from the passing street-lights she looked old, haggard and unhappy. He felt a stirring of the old love for her, a regret that he had hurt her. But they had grown apart: he, who was so voluble with his constituents, could not now talk to his own wife. She looked at him when he didn’t answer and said, “You’re going to tell her to go to hell.”

“I’ve already told her that.” He brought the car to a halt under the bloodshot eye of a traffic light. “When she asked me for some money this afternoon.”

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

She uttered a sound that was halfway between a gasp and

a laugh, a whinny of disbelief. Then she leaned her head against the window of the car and said, “I could kill her.”

The light turned green and he drove on. “Don’t say things like that.”

“I could!” she said fiercely through her teeth. “If she breaks us up, I could kill her! I’d never let you go, Wally—never!”

It was years since she had called him Wally; not since the early happy years. He turned off Pacific Highway and swung down the long tree-lined street where they lived. They had lived for years south of the harbour because that was where his first electorate had been; three years ago he had been offered this much safer seat on the North Shore and both of them had leapt at the offer: he because he knew it guaranteed him a seat in the Assembly for as long as he wanted, she because at last it meant they would have a good address. It had been a cunning ploy on her part and he had admired her for it. Everyone these days was moving into the eastern suburbs, but they were becoming much too fashionable: they were plagued with social-climbers. Norma had chosen Pym-ble, one of the older, exclusive addresses, and some of the more bitchy social columnists, ready to score a point off some of her rivals, had remarked upon her taste and good sense. They had bought an old colonial style house, invited Sydney’s most expensive interior decorator to swindle them, then moved in with that pleasurable pain that accompanies the realization that there is nothing more to be desired. Helidon drove down the street towards the house, suddenly looking forward to it as a haven again. Once there he knew that, though it might take time, he would be able to explain to Norma the why and wherefore of Helga.

He swung into the drive and the lights of the car lit up the other car parked before the front door. Even before he had braked sharply to a halt he had recognized Helga’s Datsun.

“Your maid let me in. I said it was business. Which it is, of course/’

“Why did you come here?” Norma demanded.

“I thought I should come and see you both,” said Helga. “I thought it would save time.”

“How’s that?” said Helidon, unable at this moment to get any grasp at all on the situation.

“It would save you running back and forth to Mrs. Helidon for instructions.” She looked at Norma. “I’m sure you will make the decisions, anyway.”

They were in the Helidon living room, surrounded by all the expensive comforts of home. There were bars on all the windows, each outside door had two locks and there was a burglar alarm system. The decorator, who had done six months for importuning sailors, had given the Helidons the benefit of his experience in jail without telling them where he had acquired his knowledge. “You just don’t know what tricks these awful professional housebreakers get up to! Security, my dears—you can’t have enough security. Especially with all these lovely treasures I’m going to give you—” But he had neglected to build in any security against blackmailers. Helga sat there in the red velvet empress chair that was Norma’s pride as composed and secure as if she were a buyer come to make them an offer for their home that she knew they could not refuse. She was dressed in a dark linen suit, carried white gloves and wore a thin strand of pearls. She looked coolly elegant, as only some women can, and Norma, suddenly feeling over-dressed in her cocktail dress, choked by her double strand of pearls, hated her even more.

“We could turn you over to the police,” Norma said wildly.

Helga smiled and Helidon looked pained. “Darl—” He hadn’t called her that for several years: short for darling, there had been a time when he had called her nothing else.

80 o

But somehow or other it had slipped out of his vocabulary over the past couple of years. Since he had met Helga, he realized with a sour taste in his mouth. “Darl, that’s the last thing we could do.”

Norma, recovering, nodded dumbly. She had been standing up ever since they had entered the house, but now she sat down opposite Helga, as if acknowledging at last that they were not going to be rid of her easily. She sat with her knees together, her hands folded primly on her lap, the way the nuns, years ago, had told her a lady should sit. “Miss Brand, what made you come to me so soon? I gather you only asked my husband for the money this afternoon.”

Helga sat back at ease, crossed one beautiful leg over the other. She’s lovely, Helidon thought, but why does she have to be such a bitch? And felt an ache in the pit of his stomach that was a sense of loss and not of fear. “I thought about it, Mrs. Helidon. Walter—” she used his name with a slightly proprietary note, a reminder to Norma that they had shared him “—would not have paid the money without a great deal of trouble on my part. It might have taken me weeks to get it out of him.”

“I told you,” said Helidon, “you won’t get a red cent.”

“I think I shall, Walter. That’s why I came to see Mrs. Helidon. You see, she is just as afraid of bad publicity as you are. I’ve followed your career, Mrs. Helidon. If everything goes right for you, you should soon be the Number One hostess in Sydney. I think the Sunday Telegraph referred to you the other day as the queen-elect.”

Norma flushed, a habit she thought she had conquered. “Go on.”

“It would not be difficult for me to make known my relationship with Walter. There are several political scandal sheets that are always ready to print stuff like that.”

“You’d get no money out of them” said Helidon.

“I’m not looking for money from them,” Helga smiled. “I’m looking to you for it.”

“You mean you’d give them a story like that just out of spite?” said Norma.

“Of course not. I’m not spiteful, Mrs. Helidon. I’m just— practical? Or what’s that new word they use about politicians—pragmatic? I know you’ll give me the money before you’d let me go to those people.” She stood up, smoothing down her skirt. Norma looked at her with grudging admiration: the skirt was just the right length, not too short but just short enough to be fashionable: no one would ever take her for the whore she was. “Think about it. When Walter comes to see me on Monday, he can bring the check. Made out to Helga Brand Proprietary Limited.”

“Proprietary Limited?” Helidon echoed.

“I formed a private company a little while ago. It will be much more discreet. It will just look like a business investment for you.” She looked at Norma and smiled. “You see, I’m not really spiteful. I don’t want to ruin Walter’s career any more than you do.” The smile widened a little. “Nor do I want to ruin yours. It must mean an awful lot to you, the money you have spent on it. You must have spent much more than twenty thousand dollars. Goodnight. Monday as usual, Walter. Well—” The smile was even wider, but even then was not ugly. “Well, not as usual. Just business.”