The Prodigal Daughter (53 page)

Her new office
overlooked the courtyard, with its fountain and cobbiestoned parking area. The
green lawn would be a popular lunc~i place for senate staffers during the warm
weather,
and for an army of squirrels in the winter.

Florentyna told
Richard that she estimated she would be paying out of her own pocket over
$200,000 a year more than her senatorial allowance, an amount which varies from
senator to senator depending on the size of their state and its population, she
explained to her husband. Richard smiled and made a mental note to donate
exactly the same sum to the Republican Party.

No sooncr had
the Illinois State Seat been affixed to her office door than Florentyna
received the telegram. It was simple and stark: “WINIFRED TREDGOLD PASSED AWAY
ON THURSDAY AT ELEVEN C,’CLOCK.”

It was the first
time Florentyna was aware of Miss Tredgold’s Christian name. She checked her
watch, made two overseas calls and then buzzed for Janet to explain where she
would be for the neKt forty-eight hours. By one o’clock that afternoon she was
on board the Concorde and she arrived in London three hours and twenty-five
minutes later at nine twenty-five. The chauffeur-driven car she had ordered was
waiting for her as she emerged from Customs and drove her down the M4 motorway
to Wiltshire. She checked into the Landsdowne Arrns Hotel and read Saul
Bellow’s The Dean’s December until three o’clock in the morning to counter the
jet lag. Before turning the light out
she
called
Richard.

“Where are you?”
were his first words.

“I’m in a small
hotel at Caine in Wiltshire, England.”

“Why, pray? Is
the Senate doing a fact-finding mission on English pubs?”

“No,
my darling.
Miss Tredgo’~d has died and I’m attending the funeral tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,”
said Richard. “
if
you had let me know I would have
come with you. We both have a lot to thank that lady for.” Florentyna smiled.
“When will you be coming home?”

“Tomorrow
evening’s Concorde.”

“Sleep well,
Jessie. I’ll be thinking of you-and Miss Tredgold.”

At nine-thirty
the next morning a maid brought in a breakfast tray of kippers, toast with
Cooper’s Oxford marmalade, coffee and a copy ofthe London Times. She sat in bed
savoring every moment, an indulgence she would never have allowed herself in
Washington. By ten-thirty she had absorbed the Times and was not surprised to
discover that the British were having the same problems with inflation and
unemployment as those that prevailed in America. Florentyna got up and dressed
in a simple black knitte6 suit. The only jewelry she wore was the little watch
that Miss Tredgold had given her on her thirteenth birthday.

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
11 guesstimate.” As she strode along, she reflected on how
little exercise she had had lately, despite the pristine Exercycle, which had
huen shipped up to Cape Cod. She had also allowed the jogging inania 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 collccted. 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 approvedbut 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
Tredgoid-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 iomething 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 b~ 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 frorn 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, Floreqtyna 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
th(
.- new energy policy provoked by the latest war in
the Middle East.

As the onlN,
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 sancturn 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 Sinall Business
bill, giving generous tax concessions to manufacturers that exported over 35
percent of their product
,.
For a long time she had
believed that companies who did not seek to sell their goods in an overseas
market were suffering froin 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 th
,it
the British had failed to come to terms with in the 1980s.

In her fii-st
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.

1
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 secood death
was every bit as much of a shock as Miss Tredgold’s, because-the whole family
had spent the previous weekend toFether 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. “TheD 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 frorn 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.

Florentyna
glanced at William and Joanna. Joanna looked as though site would he giving
birth in about a month and it made Florentyna feel sad that Kate had not lived
long enough to become G reat-G rand mother Kane.

After the
funeral, they spent a somber family weekend in the Red House on Beacon Hill.
Florentyna would never forget Kate’s tirelcis efforts to bring her husband and
son together. Richard was now the sole head of the Kane family, which
Florentyna realized would add further responsibility to his already impossible
work load. She also knew that he would not complain and it made tier feel
guilty that she was unable to do much about making his life any easier.

Like a typical
Kane, Kate’s will was sensible and prudent; the bulk of the estate was left to
Richard and his sisters, Lucy and Virginia, and large settlements were made on
William and Annabel. William was to receive two million dollars on his
thirtieth birthday. Annabel, on the other hand, was to live off the interest of
a further two million until she was forty-five or had two legitimate children.
Grandmother Kane hadn’t missed much.

In Washington,
the battle for the midterm election had already begun and Florentyna was glad
to have a six-year term before she faced the voters again, giving her a chance
for the first time to do some real work without the biennial break for party
squabbl(,,s. Nevertheless, so many of her colleagues invited her to speak in
their states that she seemed to be working just as hard and the only request
she politely refused was in Tennessee: site explained she could not speak
against Bob Buchanan, who was seeking re-election for the last time.

The little white
card which Louise gave her each night was always filled vith appointments from
dawn to dusk indicating the routine for the following day:

“7:45: breakfast
with a visiting foreign minister of defense. 9:00: staff meeting. 9:30~ Defense
Subcommittee hearing. 11:30: interview with Chicago Tribune. 12:30: lunch with
six Senate colleagues to
,liscuss
defense budget. 2:00:
weekly radio broadcast. 2:30: photo on Capitol steps with Illinois 4-H’ers.
3:15: staff briefing on Small Business bill.