Colleen McCullough: The Prodigal Son

For CAROLYN REIDY

the best editor I’ve ever had

a loyal and unflagging publisher

and my very dear friend

with love and thanks

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication For CAROLYN REIDY the best editor I’ve ever had a loyal and unflagging publisher and my very dear friend with love and thanks

Prologue

Part One

Thursday, January 2, 1969

Friday, January 3, 1969

Saturday, January 4, 1969

Sunday, January 5, 1969

Monday, January 6, 1969

Wednesday, January 8, 1969

Part Two

Thursday, January 9, 1969

Friday, January 10, 1969

Saturday, January 11, 1969

Monday, January 13, 1969

Tuesday, January 14, 1969

Wednesday, January 15, 1969

Thursday, January 16, 1969

Friday, January 17, 1969

Part Three

Tuesday, March 4, until Friday, March 7, 1969

Wednesday, March 12, 1969

Friday, March 14, 1969

Monday, March 31, 1969

Tuesday, April 1, 1969

Wednesday, April 2, 1969

Thursday, April 3, 1969

About the Author

Also by Colleen McCullough

Copyright

About the Publisher

Friday, January 3, 1969from

7:30 P.M. until 11:30 P.M.

Breath surrounding him in puffed clouds, John Hall put one not-quite-steady finger on the door buzzer and pushed. The opening chords of Beethoven’s fifth symphony answered, an unexpected shock; the last thing he had associated in his mind’s eye with this unknown father and family was kitsch. Then the door was opening, a tiny little maid was divesting him of coat and gloves, and dancing at her heels came a young and beautiful woman, pushing the maid aside to attack him with outflung arms, lush lips puckered in a kiss.

“Dearest, darlingest John!” she cried, the lips squashed against his cheek because he had turned his head. “I am your stepmother, Davina.” She seized his right arm. “Come and meet us, please. Is Connecticut cold after Oregon?” she cooed.

He didn’t answer, too overwhelmed by the greeting, the young woman’s almost feverish chatter (his stepmother? But she was years younger than he was!)—and the noticeably foreign accent she owned. Davina … Yes, of course his father had spoken of her on the phone during their several conversations, but he hadn’t anticipated a bimbo, and that was how she presented. A brunette bimbo, clad in the height of fashion: a tie-dyed chiffon pantsuit in all shades of red, very dark hair loose down her back, a flawless ivory skin, full and pouting red lips, vividly blue eyes.

“It was my idea to introduce you to the family at Max’s birthday party,” she was saying, in no hurry to commence the introductions. A very few people were scattered around an ugly, hideously modern room. “Sixty!” she went gushing on in well structured English, “Isn’t that wonderful? The father of a newborn son, and the father of a long lost son! I couldn’t bear for you and Max to meet in a less significant way than tonight, everybody looking their best.”

“So this black tie is your idea?” he asked, just a trifle ungraciously.

His displeasure didn’t impinge; she laughed, her rather ropelike hair swinging as she tossed her head complacently. “Of course, John dearest. I adore men in black tie, and it gives us women an excuse to dress up.”

At least her prattle—there was more of it—had enabled him to assimilate those present, even come to some conclusions. Three tall, robustly built men stood together, and were very obviously related; John could say with certainty that they were his father, his uncle and his first cousin: Max, Val and Ivan Tunbull. Their broad Slavic faces were set in lines speaking of undoubted success, their well opened yellowish eyes held confidence and competence, and their thick, waving thatches of brassy hair said that baldness did not run in the family. The Tunbull family … His family, whom he wouldn’t have known before tonight had they chanced to encounter each other at a different black tie dinner party …

A briskly professional looking man of about forty was standing with them, his very pregnant wife of around his own age beaming up at him fatuously: not a bimbo!

Where were Jim and Millie Hunter? They’d said they would be here! Surely no one could be later than he? It had taken almost an hour for him to get up the courage to ring that bell, striding up and down, smoking cigarettes, shrinking back into the shadows when the professional guy and his pregnant wife came across the street, engaged in what sounded like married couple banter. No, maybe not an hour, but a half hour, sure.

Came another dose of Beethoven in tinny bells; the tiny servant moved to the front door, and in they came, Millie and Jim Hunter. Oh, thank all the gods! Now he could meet his father with a confidence bolstered by knowing that Jim Hunter had his back. How much he had yearned for this reunion!

Max Tunbull was advancing toward him, hands outstretched. “John!” said Max in a gravelly voice, taking John’s right hand in both his, smiling on a wall of huge white teeth, then leaning in to embrace him, kiss his cheeks. “John!” The yellow eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Jesus, you’re so like Martita!”

When the fuss died down, when all the introductions were safely in the past, when John felt that he could make some choices of his own without his stepmother foiling him, he sought out Jim and Millie, havens in a stormy, unknown sea.

“I was about to head for the hills when you came in,” he confessed, more to Jim than to Millie. “Isn’t this weird?”

“Three women, six men, and black tie. You’re right, it is weird,” Jim said, but not sounding puzzled. “Typical for Davina, though. She loves to be surrounded by men.”

“Why am I not surprised?” John put his martini glass down with a grimace.

“You no like?” asked a voice at his elbow.

He turned to look, found the midget maid. “I’d much rather have a Budweiser,” he said.

“I get.”

“One for me as well!” called Jim to her back. “Have you managed to talk to your dad yet?”

“Nope. Maybe at the dinner table. It’s as if his bimbo wife doesn’t want to give me any opportunity.”

“Well, she can’t keep that up forever, especially now you’re in Holloman,” Millie comforted. “Vina has to be the center of attention, from the little I’ve seen of her. Jim knows her far better.”

“Thanks for being home last night when I blew in from Portland,” John said. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

“I can’t believe Max let you stay in a hotel,” Jim said.

“No, that’s my fault. I figured I’d better have some place of my own to retreat to if I needed, and right about now I’m glad. California or Oregon this ain’t.”

“Hey, California was a long time ago,” Jim said gruffly.

“It lives in my heart like yesterday.”

“This is more important, John,” Millie said. “Family is all-important.”

“With an ugly stepmother in control? All that’s missing are the ugly stepsisters. Or should that be stepbrothers?”

Millie giggled. “I see the analogy as far as Davina goes, John, but you’d make a lousy Cinderella. Anyway, it’s a role reversal. You’re not an impoverished kitchen slave, you’re a millionaire forestry tycoon.”

When Davina drove them to the dinner table, a wide one as well as long, John found that he and Max were seated together at the head of the table; Davina occupied the foot alone. Down the left side she put, from Max to her, Ivan Tunbull, Millie Hunter and Dr. Al Markoff. On the right side she seated, from John to her, Val Tunbull, Muse Markoff the pregnant wife, and Jim Hunter.