Conquerors of the Sky by Thomas Fleming Page A

Watertown. They ate sandwiches Amanda had packed and washed them down with iced tea. The rich May sunshine inspired Amanda to rhapsodies on California. In a month they would separate for the summer.
    â€œWill you miss me?” Amanda asked.
    â€œYes,” Adrian said.
    â€œA part of you likes me—and a part doesn’t.”
    â€œThat’s not so,” Adrian said, vehemently trying to conceal the truth from her—and from himself. His mother’s critique of Amanda often troubled him.
    Amanda flung herself into his arms. Her kiss was wilder, more intense, than anything Adrian had ever imagined. He was still a virgin. In his head women were divided into good and bad. Some of his fellow freshmen were already sampling what the bad ones had to offer in Boston’s Scollay Square brothels. But Adrian had remained aloof from this ritual as well as the other forms of college friendship.
    â€œThere’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Amanda whispered. “Come to California and I’ll show you there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

    Dimly aware that he was being invited to play Adam to Amanda’s Eve, Adrian spent the summer in Maine resisting a procession of young women Clarissa considered more suitable than his California temptress. To his mother’s almost visible distress, the romance resumed when school reopened in the fall of 1916. Not even Amanda’s enthusiastic support of Woodrow Wilson’s campaign for a second term on the slogan “He kept us out of war” diminished Adrian’s ardor. There were more kisses on the Charles and more dinners on Beacon Hill at which Amanda jousted with Clarissa with growing skill.
    Amanda reiterated her invitation to California, which acquired orgiastic overtones in Adrian’s mind. For a while he almost lost interest in the war in Europe. Then the Germans began proving all the nasty things interventionists like Adrian said about them, sinking American ships and trying to turn Mexico into a hostile foe on America’s flank. Woodrow Wilson’s balancing act on the neutrality tightrope ended with a crash and America declared war. Adrian wondered if this spelled finis to his romance with Amanda.
    He was surprised—and pleased—to discover a warrior maiden on their next date. Like many other pacifists, she had been swept away by the president’s soaring call for America to wage a war without hatred or greed, to make the world safe for democracy. Her father had volunteered for the army the day he read Wilson’s speech in the Los Angeles Times.
    On a Saturday night two months later, Adrian was lounging in his room, enjoying the prospect of taking Amanda to dinner in Boston. One of his floor mates said: “Van Ness. There’s a red-haired creature outside weeping and wailing to see you.”
    Behind Amanda in Harvard Yard a battalion of seniors was practicing the manual of arms with wooden rifles. Like most of America, the school was feverishly committed to the war. Tears streamed down Amanda’s face. She clutched a telegram in her hand. FATHER KILLED TRAINING ACCIDENT STOP. RETURN HOME AT ONCE STOP. MOTHER VERY ILL.
    Her tears stirred the guilt Adrian had felt the day they met, when he had mocked her pacifism. He was swept with a masculine desire to comfort this fragile, wounded creature. “Darling, it’s terrible. My heart breaks for you. But you have me. You have me to take care of you. I love you,” he said.
    Adrian took Amanda back to Wellesley where sobbing friends helped her pack. He hired a taxi that took them to Boston where Amanda boarded a train in North Station for her return to California. He wiped away her tears and kissed her. “I’ll see you in a month. Two at the most.”
    Adrian rushed to his mother’s house on Beacon Hill and announced his plan to move to California, marry Amanda Cadwallader and complete his education in some local college at night.