Straight on Till Morning (20 page)

When she landed after a brief five-minute hop into the air, he smiled. ‘Good. That was fine, Beryl. Now let's go round again and see if we can't improve on that landing technique. I noticed that as you came in you flattened out too early…'
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On the next day she managed a fifteen-minute solo flight, entered in a neat feminine hand in the new pilot's log book.
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She could not then fly for a week because Tom was involved in a venture in which he hoped to prove the value of commercial flying in East Africa. In one day he planned to link the four East African territories by flying from Nairobi to Entebbe, Kisumu, Mombasa, Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, and back to Nairobi. During that week he flew to each in turn, ensuring that there were sufficient petrol supplies and essential spares should he need them. Having announced the flight, he could not allow anything to go wrong. If he failed for some mechanical reason this would set back his dreams of a regular commercial air service for years. In the event he successfully achieved this feat setting up a world record by covering the 1600 miles in a single day in a De Havilland Puss Moth.
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When he returned on 19 June Beryl began her tuition again, each day gaining some new experience. She remembered those early flying lessons with great affection: ‘He would wait until the very last minute and then say, “Beryl – do you really want to die – because you'll never get over that mountain”…or he'd say, “Where are you going?” And I'd say, “Nairobi.” And he'd say, “You haven't a chance of getting there on this course.”' He always waited until she could actually see where she'd gone wrong, and then in his calm professional way he'd correct her.
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A month after her first solo on 13 July, with five and a quarter hours in her log, she took her ‘A' licence tests and passed. Now she could take off and fly whenever she wished, without the sanction of her instructor. But she still had a lot to learn, for even with her dual instruction, she still had less than fifteen hours of experience. She had not even made her first solo cross-country flight.
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She speedily rectified this on 17 July by flying to Nakuru, the nearest landing ground to Njoro. No doubt she took time to fly over her father's farm to waggle her wings at him.
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Later she said of her early aviation experiences:

Even Tom could not fault her application. Her log book tells the whole story. Special occasions and milestones are recorded in the column entitled ‘Remarks'. In mid August she made her first bush landing at Machakos. Later that month she flew to her farm Melela and landed on the gallops. In September she took her first passenger up – it was Tom. During October she added a new type of aircraft to her repertoire. Tom had told her that if she seriously wanted to take up flying as a career in East Africa (and by this time she was considering an aeroplane of her own), she could not do better than buy an Avro Avian. One had recently arrived from England and still bore the English markings GA-BEA.
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It was an Avion IV, powered by a Gipsy II 120-hp engine. She leased the machine in early November and flew it until the following February when she bought it from Wilson Airways for about £600.
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Advanced dual instruction followed, and a spell of blind flying, then ‘Passenger M. Cottar'. After thirty hours her confidence was such that she could take up a non-pilot for a local flight.
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On 13 November Beryl, along with the entire colony, heard with grief and shock that Lord Delamere had died. Delamere went back as far as Beryl's very earliest memories; he had been present at her marriage to Jock, stood in as protector during the break-up of her first marriage, and had given her away on her marriage to Mansfield. Clutterbuck attended Delamere's touching funeral on a rocky out-crop overlooking the lake at Soysambu. Beryl would not attend, but it is certain that her sorrow was sincere and went deep.

In December Beryl's flights became more wide ranging. She flew to Njoro and landed on the polo ground, then on to Nakuru where she stayed for the races; from Nakuru she flew to Naivasha where she stayed with the Errols at Oserian. Other neatly written notes in her log book reveal that she ‘dropped a message to Crofton', and flew a passenger, F. Darling, to Kajiado and back, and her friend Lilian Graham for a nip around Nairobi. Nothing was wasted, no experience too small to profit by.

In the first days of 1932 she took her young half-brother flying, and a few days later on 9 January flew down to Tanganyika to visit Bror and Cockie Blixen, in company with Tom; he flew a Gipsy Moth and she the Avian. Cockie remembers them as being ‘very close'. On the return journey from Babarti they intended to stop at Arusha to refuel, so Cockie begged a lift as far as Arusha. ‘Tom never took his eyes off Beryl for a single second as we flew to Arusha. In the end I got a bit tired of this and said to him, “I suppose you couldn't watch where
we
are going now and again?”' He told her there were severe down-draughts and he wanted to be sure that Beryl could cope. When they landed at Arusha he talked to Beryl about this phenomenon, reminding her of its potentially fatal effects.
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In fact Tom and Beryl had been living together since his return from a trip to England in the previous autumn, and to Beryl the relationship was far more than a simple romance. Some friends say that Tom was the one man in her life who came anywhere near her father in her estimation, even superseding her feelings for Denys Finch Hatton. Certainly when I interviewed her in 1986 she spoke of both men with great respect and obvious affection, but it was Tom's photograph she kept over her chair.

It is not generally known now that Tom was as much at home in the saddle as in the air. He had raced in the colony on a number of occasions, and in common with Beryl and many of her friends was a constant competitor in the series of gymkhana events around the country. He was a magnificent horseman
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and nothing could have been more calculated to impress Beryl. Together they rode around the high country on the slopes of the Rongai, and around Tom's ranch. They played polo up country where the teams included as many women as men. In Nairobi the couple were often seen dancing or socializing at the Muthaiga Club and Torr's Hotel. Their relationship was a well-rounded one and, as in her relationship with Denys, it was successful because she was never allowed to become the dominant partner. In a curious way Tom had somehow inherited the role of teacher from Denys, though his subjects were less aesthetic.

These were the good times with Tom. His job at Wilson was a tremendous and enjoyable challenge to him and he enjoyed the constant nights into the interior and to Europe.
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He was a tender and considerate lover, but stood no nonsense from Beryl and never allowed her to interfere with his work. Beryl's tendency to dominate stemmed from a natural ability to command (although some saw it as arrogance), but it cut no ice with Tom. His firm, almost paternal control of her behaviour was probably the essential recipe for Beryl's happiness, given her obvious father fixation. Oddly enough Tom even resembled Clutterbuck in appearance, with his high forehead, long face and thick eyebrows over humour-filled eyes. ‘He could control Beryl,' said a friend, ‘with a single look, and she adored him.'

But Tom was far more than a lover, he also helped to get Beryl started on her own as a commercial pilot, something which she craved desperately. Throughout her life when she wanted something she went after it with a single-mindedness almost frightening in its intensity. Nothing was allowed to stand in her way and she used people and friends with breathtaking ruthlessness. The fact that Tom was prepared to work as hard as she at achieving her personal ambitions was an important part of their relationship. There can be no doubt that she had loved Denys Finch-Hatton; her intense grief when he died was very real and recognized by many people, though few perhaps realized how deep the hurt had gone – she was always very good at hiding personal feelings. But her love for him had grown out of childish infatuation for a seemingly unattainable lover who belonged to another woman. Had Denys lived, their relationship could never have lasted, for many reasons. But Beryl's love for Tom had firmer foundations, and might have lasted through her life. At the age of eighty-three, when interviewed for this book, she referred to Tom as ‘my beloved' on several occasions and she told close friends over the years that Tom was the love of her life.
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In 1932 the media hype surrounding the professional and romantic liaison between the aviators Amy Johnson and Jim Mollison was at its extravagant height. From letters between Tom and Beryl it is clear that in idle moments, when they lay back and dreamed aloud their lovers' dreams, or when deep in conversation as they rode together on Mount Kenya, they saw themselves as just such a pair. They talked of record-breaking flights that would set them on the road to fame and fortune. Amy Johnson had made her record flight to Australia and Jim Mollison made a successful solo crossing of the Atlantic in his Puss Moth,
The Heart's Content
. However he had taken off from Ireland, and did not reach his intended destination, New York, non-stop. Mollison desperately wanted to succeed in a crossing from England to New York, because people in aeronautical circles realized that any commercial transatlantic service would have to link the great cities of New York and London, but it still remained to be proved that such a flight was possible going ‘the wrong way'.
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Tom talked to Beryl about these flights, and about the goals rapidly becoming attainable due to technological advances. Here were challenge and adventure, something to work for. There was no doubt in her mind that she and Tom were linked together and would find fame in the eyes of the world as a flying partnership. It was a glittering goal that floated before Beryl's dazzled vision and she meant to have it. Not for the transitory public glory – that never meant anything to her – but for the satisfaction of personal achievement. She was happy, deeply in love, and the future, with Tom beside her, was promising.

From this time onwards her flights generally had some purpose – they were no longer practice hops. She went to friends' farms up country and stayed overnight, or she ferried passengers – for instance in February she flew Betty Playfair from Nairobi to Mombasa, staying overnight there before returning next day to Nairobi. Her passenger list read like the members' list of Muthaiga, though some complained that after offering a lift up country she asked for a fee when they arrived. They had understood she had been giving them a free flight as a friendly gesture.

In March the pair were openly criticized for living together. Beryl was known to be a married woman with a child, and a past, in England. There was an unpleasant incident at the Muthaiga Club when a gentleman standing at the bar, who had probably had too much to drink, expressed his opinions loudly to the world at large. ‘Just the sort of thing that's given Kenya Colony a bad name…' Stories of sexual depravity in the White Highlands of Kenya were being given unwelcome publicity in England and there was general touchiness among the colonists at the time, about the bad press. Tom reacted by inviting the speaker outside where he thumped him on the nose, but the damage had been done.

This event coincided with difficulties between Tom and Mickey Wheeler (a friend of Beryl's), who accused Tom of exploiting Mrs Wilson, and using her money to further his own ambitions rather than those of Wilson Airways.

Tom was bitterly angry. He could hardly deny the accusation of his relationship with Beryl, but he had worked like a Trojan for Wilson Airways. By coincidence, he had just been offered the job of private pilot to Lord Furness, who had been in the colony on safari that winter. The offer came with the rider that Tom must accompany him to England in the spring. In the wake of the bad feeling that prevailed in the colony, and when Florrie Wilson did not, as Tom expected, rally to his side, he resigned his position at Wilson Airways in April and took the job with Furness.
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A few years older than Tom, Furness was a ‘red-headed, steely-eyed, hard-swearing, high-living peer who had about him an air of scandal transmuted to glamour
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by virtue of his vast fortune which ran into many millions. The family seat of Grantley in Yorkshire was backed up by three other country residences, one of which was Burrough Court near Melton Mowbray, where Lady (Thelma) Furness introduced Wallis Simpson to Edward Prince of Wales in 1930 and thereby changed the course of English history.
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Marmaduke (nicknamed Duke) Lord Furness was the son of a dynamic man who had started life as a docker at Hartlepool and became a multi-millionaire and 1st Baron Furness of Grantley. When he died aged sixty the former stevedore was head of the Furness Line of steamers, had been Member of Parliament for Hartlepool, and was a JP and Deputy Lieutenant for Durham. The scandal that surrounded Duke stemmed from 1921 when his first wife, Daisy Hogg, died suddenly on board the Furness's yacht
Sapphire
, under mysterious circumstances which have never been explained, and was hastily buried at sea.
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Duke was given to wild temper, scenes of loud bluster and shouting and swearing when thwarted, but Tom seemed to rub along well with him and enjoyed his new employer's company.
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