Goldengirl

‘I like it, too,’ Valenti announced. ‘Sounds zippy — Goldine the Goldengirl. Can’t you just see that on the newsstands?’

‘That was not a factor we took into consideration,’ Dr. Serafin flatly replied. ‘She led the life of any other girl of school age in residential Bakersfield.’

Dryden frowned slightly. ‘Didn’t the school discover her ability in sports? You said in the film she has never competed with other girls.’

‘Correct,’ said Serafin with a sharp glance. ‘If you listened carefully, I said she was of school age, not that she attended school. We arranged for her to be tutored at home.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Because we wanted to be quite certain she had the best opportunities possible for mental and physical development. As people in our profession do, we had ideas on nutrition, exercise and so on, from which Goldine could derive only a partial benefit if she attended school. At home, we were able to ensure that her diet had the correct balance and that the physical demands made upon her matched her capabilities. She was a gifted child, you see. Gifted, I mean, in physical respects. But like the child of very high intelligence, the athletically precocious child needs a form of education that makes demands, presents challenges. The physical education provided in schools for children of her age would have been unsuitable. She would have become bored and very likely put on excess weight.’

Dryden felt increasingly hostile to Serafin’s rationale, but he couched his next question as blandly as he was able. ‘Did you give any consideration to her social development?’

Serafin said without altering his expression, ‘Do I detect a note of censure, Mr. Dryden? Yes, we took steps to see that she met other children of her own age. She attended ballet classes regularly from the age of six. She also went swimming — not at the beaches, which might have been traumatic — but at the municipal swimming pools. I believe she made a number of friends there. I don’t think you would regard her as socially deprived, would you, Melody?’

‘Deprived?’ Melody’s eyebrows peaked. ‘No way.’

‘Thank you,’ said Serafin. ‘My account is now reaching the point where some of those present enter the picture, you see. Up to the age of sixteen, Goldine had the upbringing I have briefly described. Two years ago, the situation was complicated by certain differences between my wife and me — they didn’t concern Goldine, except in their upshot, which was that we separated. My wife now lives in Jamaica, but the details are unimportant here. At about the same time, I arranged for Goldine to run some private time trials on the Bakersfield College track. I had monitored her progress since she was a small child, but her running that evening was truly as you described it earlier, Mr. Dryden. In a word, a revelation. It was evident to me that with the advice of a first-class coach and proper training facilities, she was capable in a year or two of representing this country at the Olympics. There was even the possibility of emulating her grandmother and winning a gold medal.

‘I would be guilty of deception if I gave you the impression that this was the moment I first regarded Goldine as a potential Olympic champion. The idea had germinated in my brain many years earlier, but what parent has not at some time pictured his child as a concert pianist, a brilliant attorney or a President of the United States? We learn to curb these ambitions, do we not? To load them onto our children would be monstrous. But when a child in adolescence reveals a prodigious talent, an undeniable potentiality to do great things, then I think the parent has a moral obligation to do everything in his power to foster that talent.

‘Allow me to mention an example. Exactly fifty years ago in Fort Worth, Texas, a girl of sixteen saw a running track for the first time in her life. Like Goldine, she was a second-generation American, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants. Her mother had been a brilliant skater and skier. The child, who had the unprepossessing name of Mildred Didrikson, had inherited some of that facility for sports. Her father recognised the talent, and encouraged her by fitting out what was in effect a private gymnasium in their backyard, complete with weight-lifting apparatus: a broomstick with flatirons fastened at the ends. Primitive, but effective, and, for 1930, enlightened. The girl had several brothers, and she benefited from joining in their games, often outplaying them, in fact. Her ability at baseball was so outstanding that she acquired the nickname of “The Babe,” after the celebrated “Babe” Ruth. When she came to that running track, she took to the sport at once, astonishing the coaches there.