The Prodigal Daughter (18 page)

The next morning
Henry Osborne called and begged Florentyna not to tell her father what had
taken place the night before, pleading with her that it wouldn’t have happened
if he had not drunk so much and adding plaintively that he could not afford to
lose his place on the board.

Florentyna
stared down at the bloodstain on the carpet and reluctantly agreed.

W
HEN ABEL
RETURNED FROM PARIS he was appalled to learn that one of his directors had been
found drunk in a freight elevator and had needed seventeen stitches in his
scalp.

“No doubt Henry
is claiming he tripped over a dumbwaiter,” said Abel before he unlocked a
drawer in his
desk,
took out an unmarked file and
added another note to it.

“More likely a
dumb blonde,” laughed George.

Abel nodded.

“Are YOU going
to do anything about Henry?” George asked.

“Not at the
moment. He’s still useful as long as he has contacts in Washington. In any case,
I’m up to my eyes with buildings in London and Paris, and now I see the board
wants me to look at possibilities in Amsterdam, Geneva, Cannes and Edinburgh.
And now Zaphia is threatening to take me to court if I don’t increase her
alimony.”

“Perhaps the
easy way out would be to pension Henry
off ?
”
suggested George.

“Not quite yet,”
replied Abel. “There is still one thing I need him for.”

George couldn’t
think of anything.

“We’ll kill
‘em,” said Bella. Bella’s decision to challenge Harvard’s ice hockey team to a
field hockey match came as no surprise to anyone except the Harvard team, which
politely declined the invitation without comment.

Bella
immediately took out a half-page advertisement in the Harvard Crimson which
read:

HARVARD
JOCKS FLUNK

RADCLIFFE CHALLENGE

The enterprising
editor of the Crimson, who had seen the advertisement before it went to press,
decided to interview Bella, so she landed on the front page as well. The photograph
of Bella wearing her mask and pads, and brandishing a hockey stick, ran with
the caption: “She’s more frightening when she takes the mask off.” Bella was
delighted with the picture and with the caption.

Within a week
Harvard had offered to send its third-string team to Radcliffe. Bella refused,
demanding varsity players only. A compromise was reached, with Harvard making
up a team Of
f(
_)Ur varsity players, four junior
varsity players and three third-string players. A date was chosen and the necessary
preparation~ were
made. The undergraduates at
Radcliffe began to get quite chauvinistic about the challenge, and Bella became
a cult figure, on campus.

“More figure
than cult,” she told Florentyna.

Bella’s tactics
for trying to win the match were later described by the Harvard Crimson as
nothing short of diabolical. When the Harvard team arrived in their bus they
were met by eleven amazons with hockey sticks slung over their shoulders. The
fit young men were immediately whisked off for lunch. Members of the Harvard
squad never normally drank a drop before a match, but as the girls, without
exception, ordered beers, thev felt honor-bound to join- them. Most of the men
managed three cans before lunch and also enjoyed the excellent wine served
throughout the meal.

None of the
Harvard men thought to comment on Radcliffe’s generosity or to ask if they were
breaking any college rules. All twenty-two ended the lunch with a glass of
champagne to toast the fortunes of both colleges.

The eleven
Harvard men were then escorted to their locker room, where they found another
magnurn of champagne awaiting them. The eleven happy ladies left them to
change. When the Harvard captain led his team out onto the hockey field he was
met by a crowd of over five hundred spectators and eleven strapping girls whom
he had never before seen in his life. Eleven other ladies, not unknown to the
captain, were finding it hard to remain awake in the stands. Harvard was down
3-0 by half time and was lucky to lose only 7-0. The Harvard Crimson might well
have described Bella as a cheat, but the Boston Globe declared her to be a
woman of great enterprise. The captain of the Harvard team immediately
challenged Bella to replay against the full varsity squad. “Exactly what I
wanted in the first place,” she told Florentyna.

Bella accepted
by sending a telegram from one side of Cambridge Common to the other. It read:
“Your place or mine?” Radcliffe had to arrange for several cars to transport
their supporters, their ranks swelled by Harvard’s decision to put on a dance
that evening after the game. Florentyna drove Bella and three other members of
the team across the river in her newly acquired 1952 Oldsmobile, with hockey
sticks, shin pads and evening dresses piled high in the trunk. When they arrived,
they did not meet up with any of tire Harvard team before they reached the
playing field. This thuc they were greeted by a crowd of three thousand, which
included President Conant of Harvard and President Jordan of Radcliffe.

Bella’s tactics
again bordered on the dubious: each of her girls had clearly been instructed to
play the man and not to concentrate tt~o much on the ball, Ruthless hacking at
vulnerable shins enabled them to hold Harvard to a scoreless first half.

The Radcliffe
team nearly scored in the first minute of the second half, which inspired them
to rise above their normal game, and it began to look as if the match might end
in a draw when the Harvard center forward, a man only slightly smaller than
Bella, broke through and looked poised to score.

He had reached
the edge of the circle when Bella came charging out of her cage and hit him
flat out with a shoulder charge. That was the last lie remembered of the match
and he departed a few seconds later on a stretcher.

Both referees
blew their whistles at once and a penalty was awarded to Harvard with only a
minute to go. Their left wing was selected to take the shot. The
five-foot-nine, slimly built man waited for the two teams to line up. He
cracked the ball sharply to the right inner, who lofted a shot straight at
Bella’s chest pad. It dropped at her feet, and she clicked it to the right,
where it rolled in front of the diminutive left wing. Bella charged at the
slight figure, and gentle people in the crowd covered their eyes, but this time
she had met her match. The left wing sidestepped deftly, leaving the Radcliffe
captain spread-eagled on the ground and himself ample time to flick the ball
into the back of the net. The whistle blew and Radcliffe lost 1 -0.

It was the only
occasion on which Florentyna had seen Bella
cry,
even
though the crowd gave her a standing ovation as she 117 led her team off the
field. Although defeated, Bella ended up with two compensations: the U.S.
Women’s. Hockey Team selected her to play for her country, and she had met her
future husband.

Florentyna was
introduced to Claude Lamont at the reception after the match. He looked even
smaller in his neat blue blazer and gray flannel trousers than he had on the
field.

“Little
sweetheart, isn’t he?” said Bella, patting him on the head.

“Amazing
goal.”
Florentyna was surprised that Claude did not seem to object. All he said was
“Didn’t she play a firstclass game?”

Bella and
Florentyna returned to their rooms at Radcliffe.
where
they changed for the dance. Claude accompanied both girls to the affair, which
Bella compared to a cattle show as the men swarmed around her old roommate.

They all wanted
to dance the jitterbug with her, so Claude was dispatched to fetch enough food
and drink to feed an army, which Bella disposed of while she watched her friend
in a whirl of Trig~re silk on the dance floor.

She first saw
him sitting talking to a girl in the corner of the room while she was dancing.
He must have been about six feet tall, with wavy fair hair and a tan that only
proved he did not spend his winter vacations in Cambridge. As she stared, he
turned toward the dance floor and their eyes met. Florentyna turned quickly
away and tried to concentrate on what her partner was saying- -something about
America moving into the computer age and how he was going to climb on the
bandwagon. When the dance ended, the talkative partner took her back to Bella.
Florentyna turned to find him by her side.

“Have you had
something to eat?” he asked.

“No,” she lied.

“Would you like
to join my table?”

“Thank you,” she
said, and left Bella and Claude discussing the relative merits of the value of
wing-to-wing passing, comparing field hockey with ice hockey.

For the first
few minutes neither of them spoke. He brought some food over from the buffet
and then they both tried to speak at once. His name was Scott Roberts and he
was majoring in history at Harvard. Florentyna had read about him in Boston’s
societ~ columns, one of the heirs to the Roberts family business and one of the
most sought-after young men in America. She wislied it were, otherwise. What’s
in a name?
she
said to herself as she told him hers.
It didn’t seem to register.

“A pretty name
for a beautiful woman,” he said. “I’m sorry we haven’t met before.” Florentyna
smiled. He added, “Actually, I was at Radcliffe a few weeks ago, playing in the
infamous hockey game when we lost seven -nothing.”

“You played in
that match? I didn’t notice you.”

“I’m not
iurprised. I spent most of the time on the ground feeling sick. I had never
drunk so much in my life. Bella Hellaman ni
,iv
look
big to you when you’re sober, but she looks like a ~iherman tank when you’re
drunk.”

Florentyna
laughed and sat happily listening to Scott tell stories of Harvard, his family
and his life in Boston. For the rest of the evening she danced only with one
man and when the night came to an end he accompanied her back to Radcliffe.

“Can I see you
tomorrow?” Scott asked.

“Yes, of
course.”

“Why don’t we
drive out to the country and have lunch together?”

“I’d like that.”

Florentyna and Bella
spent most of that night telling each other about their respective partners.

“Do you think it
matters that he’s straight out of the Social Register?”

“Not if he’s a
man worth taking seriously,” replied Bella, aware of just how real Florentyna’s
fears were. “I have no idea if Claude is in any social register,” she added.

The next
morning, Scott Roberts and Florentyna drove out into the couniryside in his
smart new MG. She had never been happier in hei life.

They lunched in
a little restaurant in Dedham which was hill of people whom Scott seemed to
know. Florentyna was introduced to a Lowell, a Winthrop, a Cabot and another
Roberts. She was relieved to see
Edward Winchester coming
toward her from a comer table, leading an attractive dark-haired girl by the
haDd-at least, Florentyna thought, I know someone
. She was astonished at
how handsome and happy Edward looked and soon found out why, when he introduced
his fiianc6e, Danielle.

“You two ought
to get on famously,” said Edward.

“Why?” asked
Florentyna, smiling at the girl.

“Danielle is
French and I’ve been telling her for a long time that I might have been the
Dauphin but even when I declared you were a witch, You had to teach me how to
pronounce sorci~re. “

As Florentyna
watched them depart hand in hand, Scott said 119 quietly, ‘Ve n’ai jamais pens~
queje tomberais amoureux d’une sorci&e. “

Florentyna chose
a simple meal of Dover sole and nodded her approvai of his selection of
Muscadet, grateful for her knowledge of food and wine, and was surprised to find
at four o’clock that they were the only two left in the restaurant, with a
headwaiter hinting that the time might have come to prepare for the evening
meal. When they returned to Radcliffe, Scott kissed her gently on the cheek and
said he would call her tomorrow.

He phoned during
lunchtime the next day to ask if she could bear to watch him play ice hockey
for the junior varsity against Penn on Saturday and suggested dinner together
afterward.

I Florentyna
accepted, masking her delight.
for
she couldn’t wait
to see him again. It seemed the longest week in her life.

On Saturday
morning she made one important decision about her weekend with Scott. She
packed a small suitcase and put it in the trunk of her car before driving to
the rink long before the face-off. She sat in the bleachers, waiting for Scott
to arrive, For a moment she feared he might not feel the same way about her
when they met for a third time, but he dispelled that fear in a moment when he
waved and skated across the ice toward her.

“Bella said I
can’t come home if you lose.”

“Perhaps I don’t
want you to,” he said, as he glided slantingly away.

She watched the
game, becoming colder and colder. Scott hardly seemed to touch the puck all
afternoon, but he still managed to get slammed repeatedly into the boards. She
decided that it was a stupid sport but that she would not tell him so. After
the match was over, she sat in her car waiting for him to change; then another
reception and at last they were on their own. He took her to Locke-Ober’s, where
again he seemed to know everyone, but this time she did not recognize anybody
other than those she had seen in the fashionable magazines. He didn’t rx
)tice
, as he could not have been more attentive, which
helped Florentyna relax. Once more, they were the last to leave, and he drove
her back to her car. He kissed her gently on the lips.