This is a departure for me but I hope you enjoy the story. It is based on a woman I knew years ago and I wish I could have traveled with her.
*************************
Helen Mason was not beautiful, was not pretty. While she had more than a passable figure, slim, deceptively big busted with long curvaceous legs and rounded hips, her face while not ugly was angular with much too large a nose. She had a small chin, small mouth and thin lips. Her gray eyes were perhaps her most attractive feature being solemn but sparkling at the same time when humour struck her. Her skin was like alabaster. Her hair was decidedly frizzy but she took time to bring it under control. Helen was the most important person in my life. She was my PA - Personal Assistant and had been for 17 years.
In my first month at DHC International as a junior manager in charge of nothing, I had been allocated temporary assistance from the typing pool. Some were eminently beddable, some passably intelligent and others completely hopeless. On the Monday of the last week of trying out staff, I’d had Mandy - short , blonde, gum chewing, eternally reaching for her makeup. On Tuesday afternoon, it was Sonia, so thick I had to make my own coffee. On Wednesday morning, Helen arrived.
“Good morning.” I looked at the list I had in front of me. “Helen Mason?”
“Yes, sir.” Her voice was low and her eyes were downcast. She stood before me, her hands clutched in front of her, her shoulders shaking slightly. Was she just plain nervous or frightened of me? I’m sure the girls from the typing pool had heard that I had bawled out a couple of the more stupid ones. Her dress was buttoned to her long throat and reached at least to mid calf. It was dark blue and shapeless. Wisps of frizzy hair had escaped the confusion of pins holding it in place.
“Helen, er may I call you Helen?” A slight nod. “Helen, I say this to all the girls. I need somebody I can rely on, somebody to back me up. I need some intelligence and the ability to take on my mood swings with some degree of aplomb. I need an organiser. Can you do that?
“Yes sir.” She looked at me the first time and I saw eyes older than her years. The list said that she was 22 and unmarried. I found out much later that she had been nursing her elderly parents since she was 14. Her father had died the year before we met and her very demanding mother controlled her life outside of work. “I believe I could cope, Mr. Petersen,” she said fixing me with a solemn gaze.
“Well, let’s get started, Helen. We’ll start with the financial reports of the Great Northern Bank.”
“I’ll get the file, Mr. Petersen.” She started to turn, then turned back. I thought she was going to ask a stupid question. “I understand you like your coffee strong and black, no sugar, no milk?” I nodded, and she left. In record time she was back with the correct file and a steaming hot coffee, something no other temp had achieved. On Friday afternoon, I told the old dragon running the typing pool that I had found my PA. I told Helen. She gave me a tremulous smile revealing small pearly white teeth and thanked me. Much, much later, I found out that the 20% raise in pay to PA level for junior managers was the difference between her mother having to sell their house or not.
Helen rode the roller coaster of corporate life with me. She was there. She was never sick, never late, never complained, anticipated me, fielded my calls, initiated research and taught me the vagaries of the rapidly escalating computer presence. The only thing she wouldn’t do was work late. It was two years before she told me about her mother.
“Please Mr. Petersen, I just cannot work back. It is my mother, you see. She expects me at the same time each day and if I’m there she gets frantic and has heart palpitations. The last time I was late due to a missed bus, I found her lying on the floor gasping for breath. I cannot be late. I do hope you understand.” By then, she was so valuable to me, I could not demand more of her than she was willing to give.
I was the golden haired boy of the company. I had a series or rapid promotions following stellar achievements. The first few times, I was offered my predecessor’s PA but refused each time in preference for Helen. They stopped asking when they knew that where I went, she went. Her pay increased commensurate with mine.
After 4 years, I noticed that much of the anticipated work she prepared for me had the patina of academic grounding. I quizzed her and she admitted that she had obtained a business degree so that she could “understand what you were doing”. She was studying for her Masters in Economics and she duly got it. After that, we were an unbeatable team. Her judgment, sense of timing and ability to keep everything in perspective was crucial, although, apart from making sure she was paid well, I really didn’t fully appreciate her at the time. It took just three years for me to get to the second highest position and another four before the Managing Director retired and I got the top job. So did Helen. She took it in her stride, hiring and managing the additional personal staff without reference to me.
Over the years, we developed a close but completely non sexual personal relationship, that more resembled two jigsaw pieces. She countered my sometimes mercurial advances and desire to cut corners and get to the bottom of problems with a more methodical process that obtained and sifted information with checks to ensure there were no loopholes. Just as important, she kept up to date with my various girlfriends and mistresses, turning a blind but protective eye should one of them pounce on me in my office. Helen remembered their special dates and ordered flowers, chocolates and perfume depending on whether it was a first exploratory date or a thank you for a passionate night of love making.
She kept the wannabes from the company at bay and just short of becoming the top dog, I found out that her nickname was ‘The Rottweiller’ since she was so fierce in protecting me. One rumour had it that she was actually my mother who’d birthed me very early in life. Since I was tall, dark of visage, broad shouldered with blue black mediterranean hair, that one soon died a death. However, Helen often played the role of my wife when my interest in one or other of my paramours waned. She would ring them and tell them that as James had decided to return to her and the four kids, and it would be best for all concerned that the affair be terminated. A suitable piece of jewellry would be sent and all would be appeased. Not as if I had all that many girlfriends really. And, despite some lengthy relationships, I held back on commitment probably because I eyed the top job with such determination.
Our relationship was no longer master-slave; more mentor and co-pilot if anything. I respected her enormously and she knew all my secrets, even the dark ones of my fostered boyhood and knew the origin of my determination to succeed. Slowly she took over my personal accounting - everything from using my credit card to keep me dressed to paying the household bills on my town house. One year, when I was overseas on business, she even bought me a car - a light grey Mercedes Benz that fitted me like a glove.
Helen seemed not to age. The alabaster skin of her face remained unlined, her figure unchanged. One day, about eighteen months before the top job fell into my lap, I noticed that her uniform of dark cloth done up to the neck and draped past her knees had changed to a better quality, better cut that revealed that she actually had quite an interesting figure. Her knees were really quite sexy.
I hamfistedly complimented her. “Helen, what a marvellous dress. You should wear that more often.”
“James, I have been wearing it for months, along with a number of others of similar style. My mother died three months ago.” She turned and strode out the door on two inch heels, another change I had not noticed. How would you not know that somebody who had been with you for fifteen years had suddenly grown and inch or two? Stupid, really. The dimples at the back of her knees were riveting, as were the slim, finely turned ankles that I had also not noticed before. I shook my head, frowned and went back to work.
Although I was involved with a Chinese model at the time - some fifteen years my junior, who was determined to experience all of the positions in the Kama Sutra, I started to notice other things about Helen. I mean, long gone was the nervous timid young woman. She had blossomed into a well manicured woman of the world, striding through the corporate mayhem with complete confidence of her place in the structure of things. After the sub zero retort about the dress, I didn’t want to mention that the hitherto large nose seemed somewhat smaller and shapelier. More intriguing, she smiled more often and responded to the jokes of colleagues whom I suddenly realised had started to actually flirt with her. Dowdy was dead and buried - somewhat interesting was in.
This was cemented by a small episode one morning. She pulled up in the dark green Porsche I knew she had bought. However, she was in the passenger side. Helen got out of the low slung car, her skirt riding well up her shapely thigh. She leaned in the window which made her skirt cling tightly to her heart shaped bottom. Hell!! No VPL. I had alighted from my chauffeur driven Rolls only minutes earlier and witnessed this exchange. She laughed at whatever the driver said, waved gaily, and turned on her heel, striding towards the entrance of the building, her handbag swinging. She saw me. “Morning, James. Lovely day isn’t it?” She swung by me leaving me definitely intrigued.
Then the Managing Director announced his retirement and the race was on. A year later, I was in and settled. Expansion had stalled under my predecessor and one of the reasons I got the job was because of my success at bringing lucrative businesses under our wing despite his opposition. We desperately needed a European outlet for our business and Helen found two good prospects. One in Brussels and the other in Zurich. In the past, I had gone to check out prospects on my own. Helen had stayed behind and held the fort. I had quite often took my current bed partner. Strangely, after the Chinese chick had flown having failed to reach the end of the Kama Sutra, I had not taken up with another woman. I had thrown myself into the MD succession race and then into the round of hiring and firing that takes place after palace coups.
I asked Helen to accompany me to Europe to check out the two prospects. The response - “Of course, James.” - was accompanied by a raised eyebrow.
“Helen, you’ve kept the fort long enough. Time for you to see what happens elsewhere.”
“Are we taking anybody else?”
“No, just you and I. They don’t need us to run the place day to day.”
“That isn’t what I meant, James. Are we taking one of your friends with us?”
