Helga's Web by Jon Cleary Page A

her hair was pulled back with a matching green ribbon. She had stripped the bed and the bloodstained and chocolate-daubed sheets were nowhere to be seen. Looking at her and the room one might have doubted that any scene had taken place. He knew how house-proud she could be, the whore in her ruled by the hausfrau, but this today seemed just a bit too cold-blooded to be called house-pride.
    But he wasn’t going to let her sweep him under the bed like that. “I think I’ve paid my last visit here. You can find someone else to fill in your Mondays and Thursdays.”
    “As you wish, Walter.” She didn’t look up at him, just went on filing her nails. “But I still want the twenty thousand dollars.”
    It was difficult to be righteously angry when pulling on your underpants. He teetered on one leg, waited till his loins were clad, then said, “You know what you can do, Helga. With your experience you should find several interesting ways of doing it.”
    She looked up at him then, her face puckered just slightly with contempt. “You’re still what you were at the beginning, aren’t you? A nasty little schoolboy trying to be a big man. Everything you’ve been since has not made a bit of difference to you.”
    A mistress flattered you; a wife and a whore told you the truth. He recognized the difference now: she would never be his mistress again, not if every day in the week for the rest of his life was blank of sex. He finished dressing, doing his best to ignore her. He had regained control of his temper and was regretting the cheap abuse he had flung at her. He hadn’t shown much urbanity up till now; at least he should try for a suave exit. He combed his hair, put on his dark glasses and patted the strip of plaster he had fixed above his eyebrow. Then he turned to her.
    “I apologize for what I said. But it doesn’t alter the fact
    that you and I are finished. Very much finished, indeed. Goodbye, Helga. You just made the mistake of being greedy. Hitler was the same.”
    He went out of the flat, wondering if the last barb had been a worthwhile one; there had been no change of expression on her face nor had the rhythm of the file on her nails faltered. Maybe she was right: he was only capable of schoolboy’s abuse.
    She waited till the door closed, not even bothering to get up and follow him out of the bedroom to the front of the flat. Then she put down her nail file, opened a drawer in the dressing-table and took out a small leather-covered diary. Its pages were thick with her heavy Germanic hand, but the entries were in English; even in her private moments she had drilled herself to put her past life behind her. Only occasionally did German words creep in and they were more numerous in the later entries; there was a point in the diary where one could almost read the beginning of the decision to return to Germany. If everything went as she hoped she would be back home in Germany for Christmas: well, not home, but in Germany. Home, the farm near Hanover, had been farewelled forever. The last pages in the diary would be written in German.
    She ran her finger down the list of names and phone numbers in the front of the book. She had never called Walter before, either at his office or at his home; but it was part of her thoroughness that she had both numbers in her diary. She chose the home number, picked up the phone, dialled and waited. Then: “Mrs. Helidon? We haven’t met—”
     
2
    Norma Helidon floated through the cocktail crowd like a very elegant and not unattractive porpoise, catching balls of greeting and throwing them back to the guests. There had
    been a time long ago when she could not have exchanged a bon mot with the milkman, when it had been agony for her to meet anyone outside her immediate family. But ten years ago, when Wally, as he then was, had told her bluntly that she would have to do something about herself, when he had come home and said he was moving up from local government as a councillor