The Prodigal Daughter Read online

  “It’s not impudence, Papa. If I finish top, half the credit must go to Miss Tredgold.”

  “If not more,” said Abel, “and I’ll agree to your demands. But on one condition.” He folded his paper carefully.

  “What’s that?” said Florentyna.

  “How much do you have in your savings account, young lady?”

  “Three hundred and twelve dollars,” came the immediate reply.

  “Very well, if you fail to finish in the first four you must sacrifice the three hundred and twelve dollars to help me pay the tuition you haven’t saved.”

  Florentyna hesitated. Abel waited and Miss Tredgold did not comment.

  “I agree,” said Florentyna at last.

  “I have never bet in my life,” said Miss Tredgold, “and I can only hope my dear father does not live to learn of this.”

  “It should not concern you, Miss Tredgold.”

  “It certainly does, Mr. Rosnovski. If the child is willing to gamble her only three hundred and twelve dollars on the strength of what I have managed to do for her, then I must repay in kind and also offer three hundred and twelve dollars towards her education if she fails to win a scholarship.”

  “Bravo,” said Florentyna, and threw her arms around her governess.

  “‘A fool and his money are soon parted,’” declared Miss Tredgold.

  “Agreed,” said Abel, “for I have lost.”

  “What do you mean, Papa?” asked Florentyna. Abel turned over the newspaper to reveal a small headline that read: “The Chicago Baron’s Daughter Wins Top Scholarship.”

  “Mr. Rosnovski, you knew all the time.”

  “True, Miss Tredgold, but it is you who have turned out to be the better poker player.”

  Florentyna was overjoyed and spent the last few days of her life at Middle School as the class heroine. Even Edward Winchester congratulated her.

  “Let’s go and have a drink to celebrate,” he suggested.

  “What?” said Florentyna. “I’ve never had a drink before.”

  “No time like the present,” said Edward, and led her to a small classroom in the boys’ end of the school. Once they were inside, he locked the door. “Don’t want to get caught,” he explained. Florentyna stood in admiring disbelief as Edward lifted the lid of his desk and took out a bottle of beer, which he pried open with a nickel. He poured the flat brown liquid into two dirty glasses, also extracted from the desk, and passed one over to Florentyna.

  “Bottoms up,” said Edward.

  “What does that mean?” asked Florentyna.

  “Just drink the stuff,” he said, but Florentyna watched him take a gulp before she plucked up the courage to try a sip. Edward rummaged around in his jacket pocket and took out a crumpled package of Lucky Strikes. Florentyna couldn’t believe her eyes. The nearest she had been to a cigarette was the advertisement she had heard on the radio which said: “Lucky Strike means fine tobacco. Yes, Lucky Strike means fine tobacco,” a theme that had driven Miss Tredgold mad. Without speaking, Edward removed one of the cigarettes from the packet, placed it between his lips, lit it and started puffing away. He blew some smoke jauntily into the middle of the room. Florentyna was mesmerized as he extracted a second cigarette and placed it between her lips. She did not dare to move as he struck another match and held the flame to the end of the cigarette. She stood quite still for fear it would catch her hair on fire.

  “Inhale, you silly girl,” he said, so she puffed three or four times very quickly and then started coughing.

  “You can take the thing out of your mouth, you know,” he said.

  “Of course I know,” she said quickly, removing the cigarette the way she remembered Jean Harlow did in Saratoga.

  “Good,” said Edward, and drank a large draft of his beer.

  “Good,” said Florentyna, then swallowed a mouthful of her beer. For the next few minutes, she kept in time with Edward as he puffed his cigarette and gulped from his glass.

  “Great, isn’t it?” said Edward.

  “Great,” replied Florentyna.

  “Like another?”

  “No, thank you.” Florentyna coughed. “But it was great.”

  “I’ve been smoking and drinking for several weeks,” announced Edward.

  “Yes, I can tell,” said Florentyna.

  A bell sounded in the hall, and Edward quickly put the beer, cigarettes and the two butts in his desk before unlocking the door. Florentyna walked slowly back to her classroom. She felt dizzy and sick when she reached her desk and worse when she reached home an hour later, unaware that the smell of Lucky Strikes was still on her breath. Miss Tredgold did not comment and put her to bed immediately.

  The next morning Florentyna woke in terrible discomfort, scabious eruptions on her chest and face. She looked at herself in the mirror and burst into tears.

  “Chicken pox,” declared Miss Tredgold to Zaphia. Chicken pox, the doctor confirmed later, and Miss Tredgold brought Abel to visit Florentyna in her room after the doctor had completed his examination.

  “What’s wrong with me?” asked Florentyna anxiously.

  “I can’t imagine,” said her father mendaciously. “Looks like one of the plagues of Egypt to me. What do you think, Miss Tredgold?”

  “I have only seen the like of it once before, and that was with a man in my father’s parish who smoked, but of course that doesn’t apply in this case.”

  Abel kissed his daughter on the cheek, and the two grownups left.

  “Did we pull it off?” asked Abel when they had reached his study.

  “I cannot be certain, Mr. Rosnovski, but I would be willing to wager one dollar that Florentyna never smokes again.”

  Abel took out his wallet from an inside pocket, removed a dollar bill and then replaced it.

  “No, I think not, Miss Tredgold. I am too aware what happens when I bet with you.”

  Florentyna once heard her headmistress remark that some incidents in history are so powerful in their impact that most people can tell you exactly where they were when they first heard the news.

  On April 12, 1945, at 4:47 P.M., Abel was talking to a man representing a product called Pepsi-Cola who was pressing him to try out the drink in the Baron hotels. Zaphia was shopping in Marshall Field’s and Miss Tredgold had just come out of the United Artists Theater, where she had seen Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca for the third time. Florentyna was in her room looking up the word “teen-ager” in Webster’s dictionary. The word was not yet acknowledged by Webster’s when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia.

  Of all the tributes to the late President which Florentyna read during the next few days, the one she kept for the rest of her life was from the New York Post. It read simply:

  Washington, April 19—Following are the latest casualties in the military services including next of kin.

  ARMY—NAVY DEAD

  ROOSEVELT, Franklin D., Commander in Chief, wife Mrs. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, The White House.

  Chapter

  Six

  Entering Upper School at Girls Latin prompted Florentyna’s second trip to New York because the only establishment that stocked the official school uniform was Marshall Field’s in Chicago, and the shoes, Abercrombie & Fitch in New York. Abel snorted and declared it was inverted snobbery of the worst kind. Nevertheless, since he had to travel to New York to check on the newly opened Baron, he agreed as a special treat to accompany Miss Tredgold and his eleven-year-old daughter on their journey to Madison Avenue.

  Abel had long considered New York to be the only major city in the world not to boast a first-class hotel. He admired the Plaza, the Pierre and the Carlyle but did not think that any of the three held a candle to Claridge’s in London, the George V in Paris or the Danieli in Venice, and only those achieved the standards he was trying to reproduce for the New York Baron.

  Florentyna was aware that Papa was spending more and more time in New York, and it saddened her that the affection between her father an