Free The Prodigal Daughter by Jeffrey Archer Page B

sorry,”
said Florentyna. “Can you ever forgive me?”
    “For
following me, yes. But for the state of your golf, no. We shall hwc to
start with the basics, as it seems in the future I am no longer to have
Thursday afternoons to myself, now you have discovered my father’s only sin.”
    Miss Tredgold
taught Florentyna how to play golf with the same energy and application as if
it were Latin or Greek. By the end of tt~e summer holiday Florentyna’s favorite
afternoon was Thursday.
    Upper School was
very different from Middle School. There was a new teacher for every subject
rather than one teacher for everything ~ ,ut gym and
art. The pupils moved from room to room for tht ir classes, and for many of the
activities the girls joined forces with the boys’ school.
    Florentyna’s
favorite subjects were current affairs, Latin, French and English, although she
couldn’t wait for her twice-weekly biology classes, because they gave hur the
chance to use a microscope and admire the school’s collection of bugs.
    “Insects,
dear child. You must refer to the little creatures as insects,” Miss Tredgold insisted.
    “Actually, Miss
Tredgold, they’re nematodes.”
    Florentyna
continued to take an interest in clothes and noticed that the mode for short
dresses caused by the enforced economies of war was fast becoming outdated and
that once again skirts were returning toward the ground. She was unable to do
much about experimenting with fashion, as the school unifonn was the same year
in and year out; the children’s department of Marshall Field’s, it seemed, was
not influenced by Vogue. However, she studied all the relevant magazines in the
library and pestered her mother to take her to more shows. For Miss Tredgold,
on the other hand, who had never allowed any man to see her knees, even in the
self-denying days of Lend-Lease, the new fashion only proved she had been right
all along.
    At the end of Florentyna’s
first year in Upper School the modern-] ang Liages mistress decided to put on a
performance of Shaw ‘s Saint Joan in French. As
Florentyna was the one pupil who could think in the language, she was chosen to
play the Maid of Orleans, and she rehearsed for hours in the old nursery, with
Miss Tredgold playing every other part as well as being prompter and cue
reader. Even when Florentyna was wordperfect, Miss Tredgold sat loyally through
the daily one-woman shows.
    “Only the Pope
and I give audiences for one,” she told Florentyna as the phone rang.
    “It’s for you,”
said Miss Tredgold.
    Florentyna
always enjoyed receiving phone calls, although it was not a practice that Miss
‘rregold encouraged.
    “Hello,
it s Edward. I need your help.”
    “Why? Don’t tell
me you’ve opened a schoolbook
    “No hope of
that, silly. But I’ve been given the part of the Dauphin and I can’t pronounce
all the words.”
    Florentyna tried
not to laugh. “Come around at five-thirty and you can join the daily
rehearsals. Although I must warn you, Miss Treelgold has been making a very
good Dauphin up to now.”
    Edward came
around every night at five-thirty and although Miss Treelgold occasionally
frowned when “the boy” lapsed back into an American accent, he was ‘Just about
ready” by the day of the dress rehearsal.
    65
    When the night
of the performance itself came, Miss Tredgold
instructed Florentyna and Edward that under no circumstances must they look out
into the audience hoping to spot their parents~ otherwise those watching the
performance would not believe the character they were portraying. Most
unprofessional, Miss Tredgold considered, and reminded Florentyna that Mr. NoO
Coward had once left a performance of Romeo and Juliet because Mr. John Gielgud
looked straight at him during a soliloquy. Florentyna was convinced, although
in truth she had no idea who John Gielgud and NoO
    Coward were .
    When the curtain
went up, Florentyna did not once look beyond the footlights. Miss Tredgold
considered her efforts