Helga's Web (14 page)

Perhaps she was right. You did not make your own character: it grew out of the influence of environment, circumstances, other people: all you could do was polish up the distinctions you became aware of. And perhaps when erosion set in other people became aware of it from the outside before you saw it from within.

“You can make a new start after he gives us the money.” She reached across, put a hand on his; from the other side of the room the waiter watched them, envying the grey-haired joker whose young bird so obviously loved him. Christ, what money could do for you these days! Because that must be all the grey-haired joker had. “Fifty thousand for you, fifty thousand for me.”

“What’ll you do if I tell you to go to hell?”

“Then I’ll go and see him myself. And take the whole of the hundred thousand. Eat up your steak, darling. It’s getting cold.”

Automatically he bit into a piece of steak, found it tasted like india rubber, spat it out on to his fork and pushed the plate away from him. The waiter was beside him at once. “Something wrong with the steak, sir?”

“No. No, I’ve just lost my appetite. It’s the—the height, I guess. Vertigo.” He looked out the window, saw a freighter

pulling out from a wharf. Where was she headed: London, Hong Kong, Tristan da Cunha? If only he had a passage on her, anywhere would do. “I’m used to basement bistros.”

The waiter laughed politely, took the plate away and Savanna picked up his wine and gulped a mouthful. Helga said, “Wine isn’t good for vertigo, darling. Please, you mustn’t think I am awful. Have I ever tried to blackmail you?”

He laughed, feeling giddier than ever he might have from vertigo. “You’d have been wasting your time. They don’t allow overdrafts for blackmail.”

“Darling, it wasn’t just that you did not have enough money. I like you—no, really, I do. But him! You’ve told me yourself what an awful old villain he is. He’s the really unscrupulous one—you have told me that a dozen times. What is the difference between blackmailing someone and swindling them? None, as far as I can see.”

“There is a difference, a slight moral one. But you’re myopic when it comes to morals, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be nasty, liebling” Her voice wasn’t raised or quickened; but he was an expert in voices and he detected the hard note that was suddenly there. “I don’t think your wife would think much of your morals.”

“Are you thinking of going to her, too?”

“Why should I? I suppose she has less money than you have. And I would not go to see her just out of spite. Whatever else I am, darling, I am not spiteful.”

“No,” he admitted. “At least not up till now. But you’re greedy and that’s what I’m afraid of as much as anything else. What if you aren’t satisfied with what he gives you? Are you sure you won’t go back to him in six months, twelve months, and ask for more?”

“I shan’t be here in six months. I shall be back in Europe. I am not foolish, darling, nor brave. If he gives us the money, if he is as bad as you say he is, he would want to keep an eve on us all the time. He can do that with you and there is noth-

ing you can do about it. Unless, of course, you come back to Europe with me 0 “

“There wasn’t enough invitation in your voice when you said that.”

She put her hand on his again. “Xo, liebling. I think it would be best, once we have the money, if we never saw each other again. I don’t want to be anvwhere near our friend after we have—er—negotiated with him. So I’ll go back to Europe.”

“To Germanv?”

j

“I think so. Germany is booming again—there are wonderful opportunities for investment there—people work hard—” Was he mistaken, was her voice becoming more guttural, more German? Thev never lose their pride in their Fatherland, he thought, never lose their German-ness; then wondered why he should think that was a fault. Thev had a remarkable talent for turning a blind eye to their faults, but then so did a great manv other nationalities; the first nation to face the truth of itself would become the first countrv of saints and would at once be invaded by all its neighbours, afraid that the disease might spread. Helga had casually (and without spite, he had to admit) often pointed out to him faults with Australians that he had never bothered to examine. But now, unreasonably, he hated the German arrogance that he thought he saw rising in her.

“Where will you go, back to Hamburg?”

She shook her head. “Munchen. The people are gayer there, especiallv the men. I shall invest my money, find a nice rich husband and settle down.”

“How will vou explain the nipples on your bum to him?”

Her mouth hardened, her eyes went pale. He had never seen such a coldlv fierce look on her face before; she turned sallow with hatred and anger. “Do not bother to go near your brother-in-law.” She did not name Gibson, but it was as if she did not care now who heard her identify their victim.

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Or rather her victim: Savanna had been wiped from the scheme: “I shall go myself. You won’t have to worry yourself about him. You can start cleaning up your dirty little scruples again.”

“Please yourself.” He felt relieved, as if she had just taken a loaded gun away from him. “But do me a favour. Don’t tell him where you got your information. I have to go on living with him.”

She was gathering up her gloves and handbag. “Oh, I shall tell him, darling. You will have to pay something for your insults.”

“You are spiteful,” he said, feeling suddenly sick.

“Only when other people are.” She looked up as the waiter materialized beside them; the professional lover managed the bright easy smile: “We must rush, darling. Otherwise we’re going to miss the show.”

They were halfway across the restaurant when Savanna saw Silver step out of the lift. He half-halted, not knowing where to go but not wanting to meet Silver at exactly this moment; but Helga had already reached the lift, had turned back to wait for him. He stumbled up the few steps to the foyer, desperately trying to work his face into an expression of pleasure.

“Hel-fo, Silver!” Jesus, he thought, I sound like the Lone Ranger. He had thought it a beautiful name for her when he had first heard it, that it had suited her ideally; but now, dismayed and fumbling like a schoolboy, he had made it sound ridiculous. He was still in love with her and nothing, nothing in the wide world, would ever change that. “This is Miss Brand. Mrs. —” He fumbled again, his mind blank. It was farcical that he could not remember his first wife’s married name; but it was always the same. As if his mind refused to accept that she was now another man’s wife. “Mrs.— Carson.”

“Hello, Jack.” She looked at Helga with a quick glance of appraisal that was not long enough to be offensive but that

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missed nothing. He felt an odd relief that her judgement of Helga seemed approving, that he had not come down to going around with tramps. “You look a little peaked. Been working hard?”

“Never harder,” he said, thinking how hollow his bluff sounded. “Are you down for long?”

“Just to pick up the children from school when they break up. And do some Christmas shopping.”

He heard himself say, “Maybe we can have a Christmas drink before you go back?”

Silver glanced at Helga, who smiled. “It is all right, Mrs. Carson. Mr. Savanna and I work together occasionally. I am not his girl friend or anything.”

Silver smiled in return, but the smile told Savanna nothing. She looked back at him and said, “I’m at the Wentworth, Jack. Phone me.”

Then she went across to join two women who were waiting for her at a far table and Savanna followed Helga into the lift. It was an automatic lift and they were the only passengers. Conversation was safe here: about blackmail, about ex-wives.

“That was your first wife, wasn’t it? She must have been beautiful when she was young.”

“She still is,” he said with angry emphasis. He sometimes saw Silver’s photo in the newspapers: at country picnic races, at the polo, at the Carson beach house at Palm Beach; and each time she looked as beautiful to him as that first night they had met during the war. This time was the first for four or five years that he had seen her in the flesh and he was still feeling the sudden heartache it had given him.

“Don’t bite my head off, darling. I hope I look as good as she does when I am her age.”

“If ever you get to her age,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?”

But the lift had reached the bottom level, the doors had opened and a party of four couples, wielding their quips,

were mustering each other into the lift. Savanna and Helga pushed out past them, went out of the building and down into the plaza into the wind that swooped and climbed like storms of invisible birds. The fountain spun off water like silver sawdust from a saw and they had to walk wide of it to avoid being sprayed. They crossed the plaza, their tempers sharpened by the abrasive wind, and came out into Pitt Street. Savanna hailed a cab, it drew into the curb and he opened the door.

“Aren’t you coming with me?” Helga said.

“No,” he said, closing the door on her. “From now on, you’re on your own.”

Monday, December 2

Leslie Gibson looked at the check for ten thousand dollars, then added his crabbed signature to it. He didn’t know within a hundred thousand dollars what he was worth these days, but it still was a painful exercise, a case of financial arthritis, for him to sign a check for more than fifty dollars. Jesus Christ, he thought, the things a man does when he’s afraid!

“I think it’s wonderful,” said Miss Kingsley, his secretary, and took the check. She handles the bloody thing more casually than I do, he thought. But then she didn’t have to sign it. “If the cancer appeal could find fifty men like you, they’d have their money in no time.”

“You think there are fifty men like me?” A wicked grin lay at the corner of his mouth like a venomous lizard; but she had worked too long for him to be trapped. He recognized her caution and allowed the grin to open up into a harmless smile. “I don’t think Sydney could stand fifty old buggers like me, Frances.”

She smiled back, not offended by his language. She was in her forties, a homely woman who was in her own way as tough as he was. She had had to be to survive twenty years with him. “It would be an interesting thing to see, anyway. I’ll have this check delivered by hand.”

“And get the receipt. We’ll need it for the tax man. It’s deductible. There are qualifications to my philanthropy, Fran-ces.

“It doesn’t alter the thought, Mr. Gibson. You may get a halo despite yourself.’*

She went out, closing the door quickly behind her before he could reply. They conducted an undeclared war, each trying for the last word, and she usually won. He muttered to himself, looked at the stub in his check-book, then dropped the book in a drawer of his desk. He sat back in the high-backed leather chair that made him look smaller and more wizened than he actually was, and gazed about his office. It was a large room, panelled on three walls and with the fourth wall a curved floor-to-ceiling window that looked out towards the harbour and the Opera House. Two long shelves held rows of books: bound copies of business journals, books on mining, shipping, forestry, several volumes of Punch cartoons, biographies of other, bigger tycoons than himself, and every book he had been able to lay his hands on that told him something of Australia’s history. Though his empire was now big by Australian standards, he no longer worked as hard as he once had; it had taken him some time to accept Glenda’s demand that he must slow down, but over the past two years he had started to delegate authority. He still came to the office every day, but he did no more than two hours’ work.

The rest of the time he spent reading his favourite subject: history, and particularly Australian history. He had left school at twelve years of age, but his education had not stopped there and then. He belonged to a breed of men who were now dying out, the men who had filled in their lonely hours in the Outback devouring books, reading and re-reading, discovering worlds to which they had never belonged.

Half a dozen prints of early nineteenth-century Sydney were hung about the room and on one wall there was a Hans Heysen painting of an Outback shack that reminded him of his birthplace. On the opposite wall hung a Dobell painting of Edie Creek, in New Guinea, where Gibson Industries had all begun.

He stared at the Dobell painting and the slightly stylized scene became real as he saw again the men working their small gold mines in the New Guinea hills, felt the heat, tasted the dull stale food, experienced the racking shivers of malaria, watched other men die of scrub typhus. That had been before the Japs had come, when he had made enough money to start dreaming about a future. Then he remembered the retreat over the mountains, the small groups of men like himself, miners, planters, timber men, fighting the Jap advance patrols, and he remembered the three bullet wounds that had eventually resulted in his being invalided back to the mainland. He had survived all that and now here he was in a luxurious office, protected by Miss Kingsley and his wealth, impregnable to every outside threat. Yet he was still afraid, scared to philanthropy by the thought of what could kill him from the inside: cancer.

Miss Kingsley buzzed on the office phone. “Mr. Savanna is here.”

“Bring him in.” He wondered what the hell Jack wanted. He had been on the point of going to bed last night when Savanna had rung and asked to see him this morning. Knowing Savanna, who rarely called him at all, let alone at ten

o’clock on a Sunday night, he had not asked what he wanted; he had known at once that it must be something important, not to himself but to Savanna and possibly Josie. He hoped he was not going to be involved in some domestic crisis, a divorce or something, between the two of them. Other people’s lives and problems were their own concern. He did not rise as Savanna came in but just waved him to the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “What’s on your mind, Jack?”

“You, Les.” Savanna had lain awake most of the night wondering about his approach to Gibson and had decided that the direct one was the best. It was the one Gibson would understand.