Джеффри Арчер - The Prodigal Daughter

The hotel porter told her that the church was about a mile away, and since the morning was so clear and crisp she decided to walk. What the porter had failed to point out to her was that the journey was uphill the whole way and his ‘about’ was a ‘guesstimate.’ As she strode along, she reflected on how little exercise she had had lately, despite the pristine Exercycle, which had been shipped up to Cape Cod. She had also allowed the jogging mania to pass her by.

The tiny Norman church, surrounded by oaks and elms, was perched on the side of the hill. On the bulletin board was an appeal for 25,000 pounds to save the church roof; according to a little blob of red on a thermometer, over 1,000 pounds had already been collected. To Florentyna’s surprise she was met in the vestry by a waiting verger and led to a place in the front pew next to an imperious lady who could only have been the headmistress.

The church was far fuller than Florentyna had expected it to be and the school had supplied the choir. The service was simple, and the address given by the parish priest left Florentyna in no doubt that Miss Tredgold had continued to teach others with the same dedication and common sense that had influenced the whole of Florentyna’s life. She tried not to cry during the address — she knew Miss Tredgold would not have approved — but she nearly succumbed when they sang her governess’s favorite hymn, ‘Rock of Ages.’

When the service was over, Florentyna filed back with the rest of the congregation through the Norman porch and stood in the little churchyard to watch the mortal remains of Winifred Tredgold disappear into the ground. The headmistress, a carbon copy of Miss Tredgold — Florentyna found it hard to believe that such women still existed — said she would like to show Florentyna something of the school before she left. On their way, she learned that Miss Tredgold had never talked about Florentyna except to her two or three closest friends, but when the headmistress opened the door of a small bedroom in a cottage on the school estate, Florentyna could no longer hold back the tears. By the bed was a photograph of a vicar who, Florentyna remembered, was Miss Tredgold’s father, and by its side, in a small silver Victorian frame, stood a picture of Florentyna graduating from Girls Latin next to an old Bible. In the bedside drawer, they discovered every one of Florentyna’s letters written over the past thirty years; the last one remained unopened by her bed.

‘Did she know I had been elected to the Senate?’ Florentyna asked diffidently.

‘Oh, yes, the whole school prayed for you that day. It was the last occasion on which Miss Tredgold read the lesson in chapel, and before she died she asked me to write to tell you she felt her father had been right and that she had indeed taught a woman of destiny. My dear, you must not cry; her belief in God was so unshakable that she died in total peace with this world. Miss Tredgold also asked me to give you her Bible and this envelope, which you must not open until you have returned home. It’s something she bequeathed you in her will.’

As Florentyna left, she thanked the headmistress for all her kindness and added that she had been touched and surprised at being met by the verger when no one knew she was coming.

‘Oh, you should have not been surprised, child,’ said the headmistress. ‘I never doubted for a moment that you would come.’

Florentyna traveled back to London clutching the envelope. She longed to open it, like a little girl who has seen a package in the hall but knows it is for her birthday the following day. She caught the Concorde at 6:30 that evening, arriving back at Dulles by 5:30 P.M. She was seated at her desk in the Russell Building by 6:30 the same evening. She stared at the envelope marked ‘Florentyna Kane’ and then slowly tore it open. She pulled out the contents, four thousand shares of Baron Group stock. Miss Tredgold had died presumably unaware that she was worth over half a million dollars. Florentyna took out her pen and wrote out a check for 25,000 pounds for a new church roof in memory of Miss Winifred Tredgold and sent the shares to Professor Ferpozzi to be placed at the disposal of the Remagen Trust. When Richard heard the story he told Florentyna that his father had once acted the same way, but the sum required had been only 500 pounds. ‘It seems even God is affected by inflation,’ he added.

Washington was preparing for another inauguration of a President. On this occasion Senator Kane was placed in the VIP stand from which the new chief executive was to make his speech. She listened intently to the blueprint for American policy over the next four years, now referred to by everyone as the ‘Fresh Approach.’

‘You’re getting nearer the lectern every time,’ Richard had told her at breakfast.

Florentyna glanced around among her colleagues and friends in a Washington where she now felt at home. Senator Ralph Brooks, a row in front of her, was even nearer the President. His eyes never left the podium.

Florentyna found herself on the Defense Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee and on the Environment and Public Works Committee. She was also asked to chair the Committee on Small Business. Her days once again resembled a never-ending chase for more hours. Janet and the other staffers would brief her in elevators, cars, planes, en route to vote on the floor, and even on the run between committee rooms. Florentyna was tireless in her efforts to complete her daily schedule, and all fourteen staffers wondered how much they could pile on her before she cracked under the strain. In the Senate, Florentyna quickly enhanced the reputation she had made for herself in the House of Representatives by speaking only on matters on which she was well briefed, and then with compassion and common sense. She still remained silent on issues on which she did not consider herself well informed. She voted against her party on several defense matters and twice over the new energy policy provoked by the latest war in the Middle East.

As the only Democratic woman senator, Florentyna received invitations to speak all over the nation, and the other senators soon learned that Florentyna Kane was not the token Democratic woman in the Senate but someone whom they could never afford to underestimate.

Florentyna was pleased to find how often she was invited to the inner sanctum of the Majority Leader’s office to discuss matters of policy as well as party problems.

During her first session as a senator, Florentyna sponsored an amendment on the Small Business bill, giving generous tax concessions to manufacturers that exported over 35 percent of their products. For a long time she had believed that companies who did not seek to sell their goods in an overseas market were suffering from the same delusions of grandeur as the English in the mid-twentieth century, and that if they were not careful, Americans would enter the twenty-first century with the same problems that the British had failed to come to terms with in the 1980s.

In her first three months she had answered 6,416 letters, voted 79 times, spoken on 8 occasions in the chamber, 14 times outside and missed lunch on 43 of the last ninety days.

‘I don’t need to diet,’ she told Janet, ‘I weigh less than when I was twenty-four and opened my first shop in San Francisco.’

The second death was every bit as much of a shock as Miss Tredgold’s, because the whole family had spent the previous weekend together on Cape Cod.

The maid reported to the butler that Mrs. Kate Kane had not come down to breakfast as the grandfather clock chimed eight. ‘Then she must be dead,’ said the butler.

Kate Kane was seventy-nine when she failed to come down for breakfast, and the family gathered for a Brahmin funeral. The service was held at Trinity Church, Copley Square, and could not have been a greater contrast to the service for Miss Tredgold, for this time the bishop addressed a congregation who between them could have walked from Boston to San Francisco on their own land. All the Kanes and Cabots were present along with two other senators and a congressman. Almost everyone who had ever known Grandmother Kane, and a good many of those who had not, filled the pews behind Richard and Florentyna.