Helen(e) Bang

In this portion of his autobiography my father writes of  meeting a Danish girl named Helen, who would become his first mistress, and of being blackmailed by his landlord. One interesting fact I found among my father’s notes after his death was that Helen would appear the following year (1963) as the fictional character of Helene Bang in Kingsley Amis’ novel One Fat Englishman.

The endless fornication and carousing continued throughout the spring. I had made a number of increasingly feeble attempts at my research, but unfulfilled socio-erotic impulses and the fantastic availability of gratification kept me from it. But as May rolled around I was becoming a full-fledged sex-addict. Then fate intervened.

It was my birthday, the 7th of May, and there was a party at Overstream House, a University rowing house party place just on the North side of the Victoria Avenue Bridge. When Dick Walters and a couple of other guys and I arrived, the party was already well under way. In fact we met other “gunslingers” coming out of the place. They mumbled to us as they passed us, “Forget it. It’s Noah’s Ark time. All the animals have paired off already. There’s no chance ...” As they spoke I noticed a tall, blonde, attractive Scandinavian girl dancing with a local guy who was a full head shorter than she. She looked over and saw us come in, then carried on with this Yo-Yo—my term for a shorter-than-average guy who does most of his dancing vertically, bouncing more up-and-down, more than any other direction, bobbing away. He looked like a real twerp. My attention then went back to these guys who were leaving and the chaps I was with. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve found my girl for the evening!” I was chided for what seemed like my fruitless egotism and I rejoindered with a challenge—having bet a pound with each of them that I would end up taking the Scandinavian blonde home that night. Ten minutes later I grabbed the proffered notes en passant as the girl and I exited the dance hall together. That evening was to have some decided effect of my life.

I left the party with that girl, Helen, that night. She was very intelligent, quite articulate and with an apparent sensuality. We didn’t go to bed that evening, but I sort of got the impression that she wanted to. I took her home to the temporary digs she was staying in, that of a doctor who one of her friends was working for and who needed a house sitter for his family home just a few blocks down from me on Huntingdon Road. Helen had invited me to come round for a visit: if it was sunny, she would be at home tanning herself in the back yard.

The next day, unable to get this sultry 22-year-old, worldly, sophisticated Danish girl out of my mind, and with little else to do, I ventured down the road to pay her a call. She came to the door in a terrycloth bathrobe as she had been sunbathing in her one-piece bathing suit. She invited me to the backyard with a bottle of wine and a small portable radio for music. We lay on a blanket taking in the sun. The conversation was all small talk, skirting the obvious sensuality that was beginning to rise in us. I certainly know that the music, the warm sun, this attractive and intelligent Danish blonde were having an effect on me, but, in my relative inexperience I couldn’t seem to fathom if she was interested in me. Finally, at an appropriate moment, I leaned over a kissed her. It was a warm and inviting kiss, but it was not one, like Deborah and Burt in From Here to Eternity that seemed to promise anything more. After a few more minutes of small talk I felt that we were going nowhere in particular and I was growing a little tired—if not tumescent—of lying in the sun. I made my exit, saying I would ring her later and we might go out. She welcomed the invitation but did not seem upset at my leaving.

Three minutes later I was up in my loft room, standing in front of my desk, looking out the window onto Huntingdon Road at the beautiful day outside and kicking myself for having left her. I wanted her... and, I thought, she wanted me. I was just going to resign myself to a little work when I opened the drawer and saw a couple of foil-wrapped Durex condoms staring back at me. God, I was sure, was giving me a sign! I snatched up the rubbers and headed downstairs, outside, on my scooter, and back to Helen’s place.

When she came to the door she was in her terrycloth robe again. She looked a little hesitant; I had to come up with some explanation of my return ... but I couldn’t. I wanted her. I told her I couldn’t explain why I had come back and, as I did, I reached out for the lapels of her robe. I was going to kiss her. Then, at that moment, the loosely-tied cinch around the robe came loose and the panels came about four inches apart, revealing the fact that she was completely naked underneath. It was a beautiful, perfect body, spread out over her 5'8' slender frame. I took it all in. As I tried to stammer out an explanation as to why I’d come, she just took my hand and led me down the hall, up the stairs and into the bedroom she had been using. “Helen ...” I said as I took hold of the lapels of her robe. As I pulled it open, she shrugged it onto the floor. “Shh ... don’t say anything ...” and she pulled open my shirt. With that I tore open my pants and stepped out of them, having just kicked off my shoes. It was all so quick, passionate and violent, it was over in fifteen seconds. As I started to pull out of her I felt her hands press against the small of my back. “No, don’t...stay there until you’re ready again.” With those words I was already ready again! This time it was really passionate and violent. She came several times—and I thought it was love! A beautiful, bright Danish nymphomaniac! This seemed to me what life was all about! I never gave a second thought to my marital status, my kids, or where the hell I was!

The relationship with Helen became all-consuming. We lived and breathed for each other. My relationship with the Frosts—witchy, puritanical Beryl in particular—had become intolerable; as a result I went out to look for another place. It was about this time that, having confessed to Mary Ann that my work would undoubtedly require me to spend at least another term at Cambridge, she said that she and the boys would be coming back to England—as soon as they boys’ school year was over—probably around July 1.

Actually, just as it was coming time for me to find a new place, so it was becoming time for Helen to return to Denmark. I hadn’t really given it much thought, but my heart was going with her. I can’t recall the details of our parting, but that is probably because something in me didn’t recognize it as a parting.

I did find a little house on Panton Street, just opposite the University Chem Labs and just down the road from my friend John Henshaw, who was an artist and the only man in town who regularly threw a New Year’s Eve Party. The house was alongside the yard and meeting place of some weird sectarian church group. It was a cute place that was actually quite bigger than it appeared on the outside.

As expected, Mary Ann and the boys moved in July and life resumed fairly normally. I realized that my six months of playing around, while they may have cost me only one term of delay, nevertheless cost me an extra year because of the necessity of now earning a living. I got a job teaching for the University of Maryland at Sculthorpe USAF base—which paid quite well, but still wasn’t enough to keep the whole family. I also managed to get a job teaching at the Tech in town: two subjects—A-level Biology and courses for the Certificate in Medical Lab Technology.

Mary Ann and I tried to resume a normal life—but, through the criminal activities of Maurice and Beryl Frost, this was not to be. Shortly after Mary Ann’s return, I had a visit one evening from Maurice Frost. Seems he was still having a hard time finding suitable employment, their money was running out, so he was bringing along the latest still-unpaid gas bill for my small gas ring which I had occasionally used to heat food and drink in my flat. He told me that, as the bill was for gas service for the whole house, he would just have to guess at the amount I owed him. He said I should give him £181! (A single ring used very intermittently for 5 months would have normally come to about £8, tops—about £30 in 1994 money). I couldn’t believe my ears! If I didn’t pay it, said he drifting off into unspoken innuendo . . .

I replied: “Maurice, if you’re doing what I think you’re doing...”

He smiled craftily. “I didn’t say a thing,” he added.

I was furious! Here I’d taken pity on this guy who had, through no fault of his own, gotten into financial troubles. I had agreed to pay rent in excess of value so as to help him and his family out—and now he was blackmailing me for more money! I was fit to be tied.

I asked “What do you intend to do?”

“You mean,” he said, “if you don’t pay?”

“Exactly,” I countered.

He shrugged his shoulders: “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.” I could only reply, “Maurice ... get fucked!” and with that I got out of the car and walked back to my house.

One night, a couple of weeks later, when I was out teaching at the USAF base at Sculthorpe, the Frosts came by the house. Mary Ann had just put the kids to bed. She knew the Frosts but, believing they had come by to see me, she told them that I wasn’t in, I was teaching. No, said they, they’d come to have a chat with her. The ominous tone in their voices made her incline to beg off to another evening—one which would involve my being there. Eventually she relented and invited them to come in and sit down.

Beryl began in a pseudo-noble tone about how she felt it was her moral duty to relate to Mary Ann just what it was her husband had been doing for the past five months. If it was something bad, Mary Ann said, she didn’t want to hear about it. It was, said Maurice, and she should. Beryl then fetched from out of her purse a little notebook and, as she flipped through the opening pages, commented that, so unbelievable and so immoral had been my behavior that she just had to keep a record of it as no one would believe it otherwise. However uncomfortable, Mary Ann listened quietly and without comment. It was a distasteful scene: this scrawny, witch-like woman looking years beyond her actual age and her puffy, weak, pale-faced husband who had always seemed like such a “lech” to Mary Ann; taking such a moral “high ground”—stabbing a man in the back who had befriended them and helped them in a time of need.

A psychologist would say that Beryl was deriving much pleasure from causing Mary Ann considerable pain. She detailed the total number of nights I had stayed in their house, then she claimed to have the exact number of nights I had shared my room with a member of the opposite sex. She talked (lying quite blatantly) about laughter, cries, little screams, etc. She commented that there were at least 30 different females, she went on, flipping through her notes trying to cite with pseudo-accuracy the lurid details.

This was the unseemly way Mary Ann learned what I’d been up to. The writing of this, even after thirty years, I still find painful. Clearly Mary Ann was shattered. There never had been a question in her mind as to the truth of these happenings. Clearly, she was feeling helpless and alone. She had but one friend in whom to find some solace, some consolation, and that was Johanna, Elie Zahar’s wife. Nonetheless, she was feeling very alone.

I wasn’t to find out about this scene until some weeks later when a special delivery letter from Helen was diverted to the house from my college as I hadn’t been there to sign for it. She handed me the letter when I arrived home that night and told me she knew all about the affair from the Frosts.

We spent several hours that night talking about it. And I didn’t make matters any better when I told her that I had gotten heavily involved with Helen. The upshot of the whole conversation was that, at least temporarily, she would let the whole matter pass until I finished my dissertation and we returned home to the U.S. Then, if I hadn’t given her any further reason to distrust me, we would see what we would see.

But somehow or other I seemed not to be able to leave it at that: I saw an opportunity to vent my feelings about Helen. I wasn’t sure I could give her up. This proved an even further blow to Mary Ann. She wasn’t sure that she didn’t want me to leave; she wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t take the kids, pack up, and leave for home in America. We went round and round, but I was obviously reluctant to just simply cut the string that (to whatever extent) seemed to be binding me to Helen. As we wound down, Mary Ann insisted on my ending it with Helen, no ifs, ands or buts. I said that I obviously understood, but ... I felt that I had to confront her—such had been the past and such were my latent feelings for her that I felt I had to see her. So the conclusion was that I would go to see her, make a decision, and return. This was probably one of the worst moments in Mary Ann’s life. She had thrown in her fate with me, left America to come and live in England, had two children and set herself on a life-path and now she would be obliged to sit around a rented house in Cambridge, England and keep up a brave front in front of two small children, while I tooled off to Denmark to see if I loved someone else and therefore see if I wanted to have a wife and two children any more. What a position she would be in! What a self-involved, 24-year-old bastard I was!

I left for Denmark shortly thereafter, taking the Harwich-Esbjerg ferry. I had called Helen ahead of time and so she was there to meet me when the ferry docked at noon on the day after my departure. I will never forget the humorous scene which followed upon her inquiring as to whether I’d brought contraceptives with me. Confessing that I hadn’t, she pulled over to an Apotek in Esbjerg so I could run in and get some. I didn’t give it a second thought until I saw that there was no one in the relatively small place except women. I felt like a 14 year old trying to buy rubbers in a less-than-crowded American drug store! I was doubly chagrined to find a woman pharmacist coming forward to the counter to assist me!

I had no idea what the Danish word for contraceptive was, but, as always, I thought if I spoke slowly, pronounced precisely, perhaps I would be understood: “Con-tra-cep-tive” I articulated carefully, as it seemed to me the pharmacy had grown quiet and the ladies were fixed on the stranger. It drew no comprehension from the pharmacist. Repeating it had no new effect. “Rub-ber” only tended to increase her mystification. Then, I looked down and saw that she was pushing a blank writing pad and pencil across the counter to me. But then I thought, what does one draw in a case like this? At last I came up with a drawing that looked rather like a test tube lying on its side. No comprehension—as a couple of ladies pushed their way to take a look at what I’d put on the pad (one of the shorter ones had actually lifted up my elbow to get an unobstructed view!) I was beside myself with frustration and embarrassment. Then, somehow or other, the message got through and the pharmacist lit up with comprehension! As she kept nodding and mumbling, ‘yes, yes, I understand’ she dipped momentarily under her counter and came up with a large (about 6"x5"x4") cardboard box and upended it, spilling its contents on the counter top. There must have been about 100 loose, unwrapped condoms there: big ones, medium ones, pink ones, lt. blue ones, ribbed ones, tipped ones—every conceivable style, color, shape, and size imaginable.

I could hear the group behind me inhaling with surprise as in one breath! Even the odd “oooo” and “ahhh”s! I felt about 2" tall; all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there! But she stopped me by asking (I surmised) how many I wanted. I paused, thinking; then I saw that all had turned to look at me. I reckoned that they were probably thinking: here’s a swaggering Yank thinking he’s coming here to swive all our innocent maidens; but I wasn’t going to let any possible opinion of this group to sway me. I said “Four dozen!” Needless to say there were a few “tch, tch”s among the second round of “ooo”s and “ahhh”s. But I grabbed my package, paid, and dashed out into Helen’s waiting car.

We had about a 3 hour drive to her family home outside of Randers on the main Jutland peninsula. When we got to Kolding, about 1/3rd of the way, we were finding it difficult to contain ourselves. A mile out of the smallish town we actively started looking for a lovemaking place ... so full of pent-up hormones were we. Within a minute, Helen ordered me to turn off to the left, down what looked like a farm road.

A little way down the road there appeared what looked like to be an old barn. Helen told me to pull over. We got out of the car, me following her into the barn. I was looking left and right and all around to make sure the place was as deserted as it appeared to be. It was.

We spotted one darkish corner with a pile of hay and Helen ordered me to close the barn door. As I did so and turned back to her, she had already taken off her blouse and was busy removing her panties. She beckoned me as I undid my belt and lowered my fly. Within seconds, we were making the most delicious, frantic, impassioned love: We almost set the hay afire! But we had hardly finished than we heard the rustling of the farmer/owner who had, it appeared, been in the building the entire time! We were devastated with embarrassment!

I got the feeling that I was being introduced to the family as a prospective mate for Helen. I don’t think I had a single moment while in Denmark, except, perhaps, for a few minutes in that barn, where I was not reflecting on my position, my future; not to mention wife and family back in Cambridge. Somehow, the view that seemed to predominate was that it would be poetic retributive justice for me to burn my bridges behind me and, having done so, have nothing to show for it but burned bridges. In Helen’s tough and seemingly unrelenting mother I saw where Helen had gotten not only her smarts but her tough, take-charge attitudes: there was a lingering fear that, after the romance and passion had waned a bit, I might just be left with a bossy wife and a long-distance view of some charred bridges! I loved my two sons and, although I had badly damaged her and thoughtlessly caused her much grief, I nonetheless cared for Mary Ann. I did have a conscience, though it didn’t seem to play much a role in the decisions I had made in 1962.

By the time it had come for me to leave Denmark and head for the ferry, I had made up my mind. I knew I had to leave Helen behind: that there was no moral or personal choice. As we were getting out of the car at the ferry quayside in Esbjerg, Helen gave me a nice cardboard-framed photo of herself.

I stood at the ships stern as it pulled out of the harbor and waved goodbye to Helen on the quay. As she drifted away into nothingness and the ship passed out into the North Sea, I reflected on what might have been. I thought how near-perfect the match might have been. But then I came back to reality, thought of Mary Ann and the boys and I remember standing at the stern of the ship as I tore up her photo and threw the pieces into the sea, believing I would never see Helen again. I definitely had the feeling I was closing a chapter in my life.

In the next two months there were—at my college—two letters from Helen, but I answered neither of them. I knew that she must have known that it was over.