The room smelled as if the painters had moved out only the day before. It was clear that she was to share with two other girls: there were three beds, three dressers, three desks, three desk chairs, three desk lamps, three pillows, three coverlets and three sets of blankets, according to the checklist that was left on the inside of the door. As there was no sign of her roommates, she chose the bed nearest the window and started to unpack. She was just about to unlock the last suitcase when the door was flung open and a large valise landed in the middle of the room.
‘Hi,’ said a voice that sounded to Florentyna more like a foghorn than a freshman from Radcliffe. ‘My name is Bella Hellaman. I’m from San Francisco.’
Bella shook hands with Florentyna, who immediately regretted the act as she smiled up at the six-foot giant who must have weighed well over two hundred pounds. Bella looked like a double bass and sounded like a tuba. She began to size up the room.
‘I knew they wouldn’t have a bed large enough for me,’ was her next pronouncement. ‘My headmistress did warn me that I should have applied to a men’s college.’
Florentyna burst out laughing.
‘You won’t laugh so loud when I keep you awake all night. I toss and turn so much you’ll think you’re on board a ship,’ Bella warned as she pushed open the window above Florentyna’s bed to let in the cool Boston air. ‘What time do they serve dinner at this place? I haven’t had a decent meal since I left California.’
‘I’ve no idea, but it’s all in the Red Book,’ said Florentyna, picking up her copy from the side of her bed. She started flicking through the pages until she reached ‘Meals, times of.’ ‘Dinner, six-thirty to seven-thirty.’
‘Then at the stroke of six-thirty,’ Bella said, ‘I shall be under starter’s orders at the dining room door. Have you found out where the gymnasium is?’
‘To be honest, I haven’t,’ said Florentyna, grinning. ‘It wasn’t high on my list of priorities for the first day.’
There was a knock on the door, and Bella shouted, ‘Come in.’ Florentyna later learned that it had not been a shout, just her normal speaking voice. Into the room stepped a Dresden china blonde, not a hair out of place, dressed in a neat dark-blue suit. She smiled, revealing a set of small, even teeth. Bella smiled back at her as though her dinner had arrived early.
‘My name is Wendy Brinklow,’ said a voice with a slight southern accent. ‘I think I’m sharing a room with you.’ Florentyna wanted to warn her about Bella’s handshake, but it was too late. She watched Wendy cringe.
‘You’ll have to sleep over there,’ Bella said, pointing to the remaining bed. ‘You don’t by any chance know where the gymnasium is, do you?’
‘Why should Radcliffe need a gymnasium?’ said Wendy as Bella helped her in with her suitcases. Bella and Wendy started to unpack and Florentyna fiddled with her books, trying not to make it too obvious that she was fascinated by what came out of Bella’s suitcases. First there were goalie pads, a breast pad, and two pairs of cleats, then a face mask, which Florentyna tried on, and finally a pair of hockey gloves, all in addition to the two hockey sticks she had had strapped to the valise she had earlier flung into the room. Wendy had all her clothes in neat little piles packed away in her dresser before Bella had even worked out where to put her hockey sticks. Eventually she just threw them under the bed.
When they had finished unpacking, the three girls set off for the dining hall. Bella was the first to reach the cafeteria line and loaded her plate so full with meat and vegetables that she had to balance it on the palm of her hand. Florentyna helped herself to what she considered a normal amount and Wendy managed a couple of spoonfuls of salad. Florentyna was beginning to feel they resembled Goldilocks’s three bears.
Two of them had the sleepless night Bella had promised Florentyna and it was several weeks before either she or Wendy managed eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Years later, Florentyna discovered that she could sleep anywhere, even in a crowded airport lounge, thanks to spending her freshman year with Bella.
Bella was the first freshman to play goalie for the Radcliffe varsity and she spent the year happily terrifying anyone who dared to try to score against her. She always shook hands with the few who did. Wendy spent much of the time being chased by men who visited the campus and some of the time being caught. She also passed more hours reading the Kinsey Report than her class notes.
‘Darlings,’ she said, eyes saucer-wide, ‘it’s a serious piece of academic work written by a distinguished professor.’
‘The first academic work to sell over a million copies,’ commented Bella, as she picked up her hockey sticks and left the room.
Wendy, seated in front of the one mirror in the room, was checking her lipstick.
‘Who’s it this time?’ asked Florentyna.
‘No one in particular,’ she replied. ‘But Dartmouth has sent their tennis team over to play Harvard and I couldn’t think of a more pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Do you want to come along?’
‘No thanks, but I would like to know the secret of how you find them,’ said Florentyna, looking at herself appraisingly in the mirror. ‘I can’t remember when anyone other than Edward last asked me out.’
‘It doesn’t take a lot of research,’ said Wendy. ‘Perhaps you put them off.’
‘How?’ asked Florentyna, turning toward her.
Wendy put down her lipstick and picked up a comb. ‘You’re too obviously bright and intelligent, and not many men can handle that. You frighten them and that’s not good for their egos.’
Florentyna laughed.
‘I’m serious. How many men would have dared to approach your beloved Miss Tredgold, let alone make a pass at her?’
‘So what do you suggest I do about it?’ asked Florentyna.
‘You’re good-looking enough, and I don’t know anyone with a better dress sense, so just act dumb and massage their ego; then they feel they have to take care of you. It always works for me.’
‘But how do you stop them thinking they have the right to jump into bed with you after one hamburger?’
‘Oh, I usually get three or four steaks before I let them try anything. And just occasionally I say yes.’
‘That’s all very well, but how did you handle it the first time?’
‘God knows,’ said Wendy. ‘I can’t remember that far back.’
Florentyna laughed again.
‘If you come to the tennis with me you might get lucky. After all, there’ll be five other men from Dartmouth, not to mention the six on the Harvard team.’
‘No, I can’t,’ Florentyna said regretfully. ‘I still have an essay on Oedipus to finish by six o’clock.’
‘And we all know what happened to him,’ said Wendy, grinning.
Despite their different interests, the three girls became inseparable, and Florentyna and Wendy would always spend Saturday afternoons watching Bella play hockey. Wendy even learned to scream ‘Kill ’em,’ from the sidelines, although it didn’t sound very convincing. It was a hectic first year and Florentyna enjoyed regaling her father with stories of Radcliffe, Bella and Wendy.
She had to study hard as her advisor, Miss Rose, was quick to point out that the Woolson Scholarship came up for renewal every year and that it would do neither of their reputations any good if the prize were withdrawn. At the end of the year Florentyna’s grades were more than satisfactory and she had also found time to join the Debating Society and was made freshman representative for the Radcliffe Democratic Club. But she felt her greatest achievement was trouncing Bella on the Fresh Pond golf course by seven strokes.
In the summer vacation of 1952, Florentyna only spent two weeks in New York with her father because she had applied to be a page at the Chicago convention.