Read Conquerors of the Sky Online
Authors: Thomas Fleming
Conquerors of the Sky (20 page)
Adrian returned from his trip to England deeply depressed. Amanda assumed it was because he had failed to sell a single plane. When Victoria asked him if they could go to Hawaii over the Christmas holidays, he snapped “no” so harshly she burst into tears. He rushed out and bought her a seventy-five-dollar Shirley Temple doll, then excoriated Amanda in private for letting her daughter have delusions of wealth.
“We're not going to be rich, ever,” he said. “Get that through your head. The aircraft business is a penny-ante game and it's going to stay that way.”
“You're the one who talked about going to Hawaii,” Amanda said. “You buy her the most expensive doll in the store. Then you tell me her delusions are my fault?”
“She's your responsibility. I don't have time to educate her. I wish I did.”
“Gordon is forming his own oil company,” Amanda said. “He called to ask if we wanted to buy any of the stock.”
“We'll be lucky to pay the mortgage on this house,” Adrian snarled.
“He's brought in another dozen wells. He's going to be a millionaire,” Amanda said.
“Are you going to hate me for the rest of your life?”
“I don't hate you,” Amanda said. “But you obviously have no intention of giving me a chance to love you, either.”
“What do I have to do to merit that,” Adrian said. “Grovel?”
“Give me some evidence that you want me to love you.”
“I do!” Adrian said.
“For whose sake? Mine or Victoria's?”
She saw fear flicker in Adrian's eyes. She had read him correctly. Instead of admitting she was right, he retreated into sullen isolation again.
“Do I have to fill out a goddamn questionnaire?”
They went back to being antagonists in small things and large things. One of the large things was the drift toward war in Europe. Hitler swallowed Austria and Czechoslovakia, making the British politicians who favored appeasing him look more and more foolish. The British and French began rearming to meet the German threat. Adrian frankly, unabashedly welcomed the prospect of an explosion.
“How can you say such a thing?” Amanda gasped. For her it was a grisly replay of the First World War. All she could think of was her father's death, the destruction of Eden.
“Because it will be good for the airplane business,” Adrian said.
“It will mean death, suffering for thousands, millions of people,” Amanda said.
“I don't know any of them,” Adrian said. “I can only sympathize with people I know.”
“I'm not sure you can even do that,” Amanda said.
Amanda of course had no idea that the Adrian who said those heartless words was the man whom Beryl Suydam had wounded. For the first time in years, she felt repelled by her husband. His good manners, his dislike of argument, had held such feelings at a distance. She was even more dismayed a few weeks later, when the newspaper informed her that the British had placed an unprecedented order for two hundred light bombers with Buchanan Aircraft. That day, Adrian came home brimming with good cheer. He had a huge teddy bear for Victoria and a string of pearls for her.
“I'm beginning to change my mind about the aircraft business. It may not be penny-ante after all.”
“I don't want them,” Amanda said, giving him back the pearls.
“Why, for God's sake?”
“I don't want to wear anything that comes from planes built to kill people.”
“I always knew your intelligence was limited. This proves it,” Adrian snarled. “These planes will defend decent people against barbarians. Do you want Hitler and his friends to conquer the world?”
It was too late to advance this rational argument. Amanda could only remember Adrian's declared indifference to slaughtering people. “I don't care who wins as long as we stay out of it,” Amanda said. “This sort of thingâmaking planes for one sideâwill drag us into it.”
Amanda was speaking out of the depths of her California self, in a voice that millions of Americans shared. To her, Europe was a land of literature and monuments, the dead past that could be explored from a distance but was not worth the death of a single American. Adrian, with his deep ties to England, could only respond with outrage. Seven-year-old Victoria watched, bewildered and tearful, as her mother and father insulted and reviled each other.
Amanda joined America First, an organization committed to keeping the United States out of any future war. Henry Ford, former governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana were among its leaders. Its chief spokesman was aviation's hero, Charles Lindbergh. Adrian was infuriated but how could he object to a policy that Lindbergh was advocating? Polls showed 80 percent of the voters backed America First's call for strict neutrality. Earlier in the decade, Congress had passed a neutrality act which forbade the United States to sell arms to any country at war.
On September 1, 1939, huge headlines blossomed in all the Los Angeles newspapers, announcing that the Germans had invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. For Amanda that only made America First's task even more important. Adrian had other things on his mind. He rushed to Washington, D.C., to wangle a change in the neutrality act, which forbade him to ship his bombers to England.
Adrian came back to California with a self-satisfied smile on his face. At his suggestion, Roosevelt had persuaded Congress to amend the neutrality act to permit the bombers to be delivered, as long as they did not leave the country under their own power. Adrian had found an airfield in North Dakota on the Canadian border. Buchanan pilots would fly the planes there and Canadians would tow them across the border, where British pilots would be waiting to fly them to England.
When Adrian described this coup at dinner on the night of his return, Amanda denounced it as a criminal evasion of the law. “Who did you bribe?” she asked.
“Do you realize where we'd be if we can't deliver those planes?” Adrian shouted. “Bankrupt. Ruined.”
“In a good cause, that wouldn't bother me in the least,” Amanda said.
“It would bother the hell out of me,” Adrian said. “Especially when the cause is brainlessness masquerading as idealism.”
“Please stop, please!” Victoria cried, putting her hands over her ears.
For Victoria's sake, Adrian and Amanda negotiated a private neutrality act. She would say no more about his bombers and he would let her continue to support America First. A few weeks later, Lindbergh came to Los Angeles to speak at a rally. Amanda announced she was going and Adrian sullenly assented.
In the flag-decorated auditorium on Wilshire Boulevard, Amanda was stunned to see Frank Buchanan in the front row. “What are you doing here?” she said, sitting down beside him.
“I could ask you the same question,” he said.
“I'm sure Adrian is considering divorce. But I feel this so strongly.”
“So do I.”
“But you're still designing those bombers. How can you live with that?”
“I'm here to prevent American boys from flying in them.”
“I thought making them at all was reprehensible. Don't you think it puts us squarely on one sideâagainst the Germans?”
“I hope not.”
The pain in Frank's eyes made it clear that his conscience had asked the same question. She saw the anguish of his position and dropped the argument. She no longer despised this man. He seemed sad and lonely in his shabby flight jacket and tieless shirt.
Lindbergh gave a stirring speech, denouncing Franklin Roosevelt's attempts to evade the neutrality act and edge the United States into the war on England's side. He grimly declared Germany was going to win the war and there was nothing the United States could do about it but adjust to a world of new political realities. Amanda applauded fiercely, agreeing with every word of it. She noticed that Frank did not applaud. He sat with his arms folded on his chest, looking troubled.
Amanda drove Frank home to his house in Topanga Canyon, listening to him argue with himself. He was not sure Lindbergh was right about the Germans winning the war. He was unsure about Germany. Did Hitler's rampant
anti-Semitism justify building planes for the British? Didn't every country have its anti-Semites? Could they possibly be right? His friend Ezra Pound, the greatest poet of the era, thought so.
anti-Semitism justify building planes for the British? Didn't every country have its anti-Semites? Could they possibly be right? His friend Ezra Pound, the greatest poet of the era, thought so.
Amanda said she disliked anti-Semitism as much as Frankâbut she hated war. When they reached Frank's Topanga house, he urged her to stay for coffee. She sensed his loneliness. His anguish over the bombers was only a small part of his need for her companionship.
Inside the crude three-room house, she was appalled by the dirty clothes flung in corners, dishes piled in the sink. “Forgive my bachelor's style,” Frank said. “I should have a woman come in once a week at least. But I can't afford it.”
The words gouged her nerves. The chief designer at Buchanan Aircraft could not afford a cleaning woman? Frank saw the question in her eyes and began telling her what he did with his money. Some of it went to causes like America First. More went to Ezra Pound, whom he had been helping to support for years. More went to help Billy McCall, Buzz McCall's son, who was in college at UCLA. Buzz and the boy did not get along. Or, more precisely, Billy did not get along with Buzz's wife, Tama.
There was a mystery here, Amanda thought, as Frank Buchanan poured her coffee. This man was not the money-hungry manipulator her brother had portrayed. But how could she begin to search for the truth without telling him about her own unhappiness with Adrian? She knew what that might suggest to this lonely man. Anyway, how could she trust these intuitions? She was a naive woman, cut off from the politics of Buchanan Aircraft, the constant jockeying for power and money. She talked for an hour behind a shield of noncommittal politeness and went home troubled, full of inchoate wishes she could not even express to herself.
A month later, Hitler's armies swept into France and defeated the French and British in a few stunning weeks. Adrian went almost berserk with anxiety. He prowled the house from midnight to dawn, listening to the latest radio bulletins. He was terrified for Englandâand for Buchanan Aircraft. If the Germans bludgeoned the English into surrender, the 200 bombers already in production would never be paid for and Buchanan would be bankrupt.
In the middle of this turmoil, the first bomber came off the production line and was rolled out for a maiden flight. The desperate British decided to make it a symbol of their determination to fight on. They arranged for national publicity. Adrian was of course delighted but he still could not sleep and Amanda deduced that publicity was all the British were putting up. Nevertheless, to the press and public, Adrian was a picture of confidence and pride.
Amanda refused to go to the rollout celebration. Adrian almost exploded. “The British ambassador will be there with his wife! Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's right-hand man, is flying out from Washington! The governor, both senators will be there. I insist on you coming.”
“I can be sick. Make excuses. You're very good at that.”
“
I
want you there.”
I
want you there.”
Amanda shook her head.
“I'll take Victoria instead.”
“I can't stop you. But I think you shouldn't. She's too young to understand any of this. All she knows is we seem to hate each other.”
“I'm taking her. I want her to see what her father is doing to defend democracy. Let her figure out why her mother sides with the barbarians.”
On rollout day Amanda stayed home, working in the garden. It was a beautifully sunny June morning, without a cloud in the sky. She listened on NBC radio, which was devoting an hour to the ceremony. The British ambassador, Adrian, California's governor, made brief speeches. Then the announcer described the preparations for the test flight. The test pilot and chief designer Frank Buchanan were introduced. Frank discussed some of the features of the bomber, such as two counter-rotating variable pitch propellers on each engine, which would add to the plane's stability.
“Are you going along, Mr. Buchanan?” the announcer asked.
“I always go along on test flights of planes I design,” Frank said. “I believe the designer ought to risk his own neck to demonstrate his faith in his ideas.”
The announcer described the two men boarding the plane, settling into the cockpit. He let the audience hear the roar of the two Wright Cyclone engines as they warmed up. In a moment he was describing the takeoff, the climb. Suddenly his voice changed tone. “Something seems wrong! The plane is pitching and yawing up there. The pilot doesn't seem to have complete control! He's trying to turn back to the field but he can't do it. He's losing altitude fast!”
A roaring filled the sky. The plane was coming toward her. Suddenly Amanda was in the cockpit with Frank and the test pilot, as they fought to control the berserk machine. Her body remained in the sunny garden but she was in the careening plane, the thunder of the motors tearing her brain apart, hearing Frank shout to the test pilot. “Bail out! Bail out!”
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