Straight on Till Morning (29 page)

Jim Mollison, who still hoped to take the London–New York record, travelled to New York, arriving on 25 September, to take possession of the Bellanca aeroplane in which he hoped to make the flight to London and return. It really was too late in the season to be thinking about transatlantic crossings, but the record was now so close to falling that those in the running hardly dared delay. In the event Mollison was forced to land at Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, where he was delayed by bad weather. In the end he took off, like Beryl, despite the conditions. He then flew to Croydon, establishing a record time of 13 hours and 17 minutes for the crossing from Newfoundland. By this time even he realized that it would be suicidal to attempt the return and Bellanca later repossessed the aeroplane after issuing a writ for its return.
²⁷

Tom, meanwhile, was engaged in the last-minute preparations for his entry in the Johannesburg Race. The aeroplane which he was to fly in the race was a Percival Mew Gull. This super-sleek little racing aeroplane represented a new peak in perfection of line, but was a ‘hairy little beast to fly' in the opinion of many pilots. It was fast and very unforgiving. On Friday 18 September he flew to Liverpool to be present at the naming ceremony of the Mew Gull
Miss Liverpool
at Speke Airport. On the following day he was due to give a demonstration flight for the sponsor Mr John Moores and a large crowd of wellwishers – the Moores' publicity machine had not been idle. The purpose in sponsoring the flight was to publicize the City of Liverpool and Tom Campbell Black was the right person to sponsor, for he would obviously start as one of the favourites in the fastest thing on wings.

Tom waved goodbye to the crowds and slid into the tiny black and white aeroplane, which was no more than four feet off the ground at its highest point. It was a fine, bright day with an autumn sparkle to the sunshine as he taxied out to the runway.

Modern aircraft are fitted with a tricycle undercarriage arrangement which places the aircraft in an upright position when taxiing. The Mew Gull, however, like most aircraft of its vintage, was fitted with a tailwheel, so that visibility was extremely limited until the tail was lifted from the ground on take-off. In addition, the extremely long engine with its faired-in cowl meant that the only way a pilot could see ahead was to fishtail along, looking out of the side windows.

Thus Tom probably never saw the aircraft that killed him.

It was a Hawker Hart – a ‘light bomber' in the parlance of the day. Its pilot, a young RAF officer, with equally restricted vision, and landing with the sun in his eyes, could not see anything but the ground thirty or forty yards to the side and front of his aeroplane. He stated that he had checked the runway whilst flying a routine circuit of the aerodrome before landing. Simultaneously, Tom had jumped into the Mew Gull and quickly taxied out on to the runway. At the inquest a woman witness stated that Tom was reading a piece of paper, which may have been a map, seconds before the accident, so that his attention may have been diverted. To the horror of the spectators, the Hawker Hart landed straight on to the tiny Mew Gull, its propeller slashing through the tiny bubble of canopy, and through Tom's left shoulder and lung.
²⁸

Terribly wounded, he was gently lifted from the plane and taken to the hospital, but he died within half an hour. The only words he spoke were, ‘Oh God! Help me, darling! Help me, darling!
²⁹

Dessie was on stage rehearsing for an opening night the following week, when news came through that Tom had had an accident. They had had a silly tiff the previous evening over the positioning of some furniture, and Tom had slept in his dressing room, but they had made it up before he left for Liverpool on Thursday morning. Dessie had had the furniture moved back the way he wanted it, but she couldn't help thinking of him. ‘How sensitive he was! How quickly he took offence and was hurt! He reminded me of a highly strung, nervous thoroughbred. If anything upset him, his eyes would flash and up would go his head.' After only eighteen months, the exquisite actress was a widow and her grief was accentuated by the thought of their quarrel.

Dessie travelled to Liverpool with members of Tom's family in order to accompany Tom's body back for the funeral. That night she stayed at the Moores' home near Liverpool and never forgot their kindness. During the night whilst Dessie was sobbing her grief into the pillow, her hostess Ruby Moores came into the bedroom, got into her bed and cradled her in her arms. Dessie eventually fell into an exhausted sleep and woke the next morning to see Ruby slipping quietly from the room.
³⁰

The inquest recorded ‘accidental death' and it seemed particularly tragic that Tom, with such outstanding ability as a pilot, should meet his death in what the press described as ‘a million to one accident', where all the ability in the world could not have saved him.

Beryl was still enjoying her triumph when Jim Mollison telephoned to tell her of Tom's death. Though she had technically already ‘lost' him to Dessie, he was still the man in her life. All through the summer and in the build-up to her flight it was to Tom that she turned for help and guidance. When Denys had been killed, Tom had been there. In this terrible grief there was no one to whom she could turn and all her old feelings of insecurity returned. Later she was to receive a long letter from Percival, but initially, she recalled when I asked her for her reaction, ‘It didn't seem possible. You know he was so good…I could hardly believe it was true.'
³¹

Her return passage was already booked on the Cunard White Star liner
Queen Mary
, leaving for Southampton on Thursday of that week. She told Bruno to cancel all her appointments. The remainder of her stay in New York was unmarked by interviews or meetings, but she did attend the reception in her honour organized by Bruno and his wife for the eve of her departure to England.
³²

On the journey back to England she was, inevitably, photographed. Wearing a chic white satin evening gown, she smiled out from the photographs, at the captain's table and perched on the edge of the dressing table in her first-class stateroom. But there is no humour in her smiles.

The journey was not uneventful, for a fellow passenger was Jack Cohen, vice-president of Columbia Pictures Corporation. Before the great liner docked at Southampton Mr Cohen was able to cable the following message to his New York office:
AFTER MUCH PERSUASION FINALLY INDUCED MRS BERYL MARKHAM TO SIGN CONTRACT APPEAR IN MOTION PICTURE PORTRAYING HER GREAT ACHIEVEMENT FOR COLUMBIA
.
³³

Beryl later told a friend that she used to stand by the ship's rails for hours on end, particularly at night, just watching the water, thinking that if she'd first crossed the Atlantic by sea she'd never have dared to fly across it.
³⁴

So much black water. So much sorrow in her heart.

Shortly after Beryl left New York, work started on salvaging
The Messenger
on behalf of John Carberry. Under Ray Goodwin's supervision, ‘thirteen fishermen and two mechanics wearing hip boots' manhandled timber several miles across the oozing peat to construct a platform around the aeroplane. Two rotary jacks were employed in the task and after four days
The Messenger
was ‘ripped free from seven feet of mud'.

Inspection disclosed a bent propeller shaft but the propeller itself was, remarkably, undamaged. It was decided to take
The Messenger
to Louisburg by scow, and the seven-mile trip, in the face of strong, shifting winds, took three and a half hours. ‘At one point during the journey,' said one of the engineers involved in the project, ‘it seemed as though we might have to abandon the scow in the rough seas. That would have meant the loss of the aeroplane, and possibly the lives of the four men on board. But the wind abated and we were able to proceed.' At Louisburg 750 people had gathered to watch the aeroplane's arrival, ‘and only one policeman who stood no hope of controlling the crowd. They ripped the fabric of the right wing, took the gas tank covers and loose fabric.' Ray Goodwin had already removed the valuable instruments.
³⁵

Mr William Fischer, who was responsible for the shipping of the aeroplane to New York and thence to London, said: ‘We loaded it on a motor vehicle for the long trip to Halifax and ran foul of the highway authorities before we'd gone twenty-five miles. Although the wings had been dismantled they insisted that it was still too wide for the road. So the freighter
Ulva
was summoned from Halifax and picked up
The Messenger
from Sydney and later transferred its cargo to the SS
Cold Harbour
. Altogether,' Mr Fischer asserted, ‘the removal job was just about as difficult as the flight. It took three weeks' labour and cost about $3000.'
³⁶

1936–1937

When Beryl arrived in Southampton she received a heroine's welcome. ‘Trial by press', she called it. She smiled for the cameras, posed obediently by the ship's rail, shook hands with the mayor innumerable times, as she had done in New York, answered the same questions that she had been answering for weeks, and in every way behaved as everyone thought she ought. A civic reception was laid on for her, followed by a ride in an open car through the streets of the old city, passing under the ancient Bargate, but her heart was not in it.

Percival was there to greet her, and to tell her about Tom's accident. Until now she had had to rely on scraps of information sent to her by cable and the crackly transatlantic telephone line. The letter sent by Percival which she had received the day she sailed from New York still left many gaps. She needed to understand how it could possibly have happened that Tom, so careful, so knowledgeable, so calm and precise in everything concerning aeroplanes, had been killed. ‘If you want to be good, remember you can't fly on your emotions. It's the harebrained pilots that make people distrust flying, the hero boys full of daredevil nonsense from the last war…' he'd once said to her.
¹
But her talk with Percival had to wait until she'd said all the right things and pleased all the people.

‘Will you make another attempt to fly non-stop to New York?' ‘I know I said I would not like to fly the Atlantic again, but that was shortly after I had arrived in the United States and you may imagine what sort of state of exhaustion and fuss I was in just then. But I have great hopes of flying from New York to France next May in an air race which the French government is sponsoring. I may do it solo, but it is more likely that I shall go as co-pilot with someone.' ‘You knew Mr Campbell Black well. What have you to say of his tragic death?' ‘Mr Black's death is a great loss and a personal sadness.' ‘Are you going to watch the start of the Johannesburg Race?' ‘Yes, I intend to motor down to Portsmouth tonight, so that I can be there for the early start.' ‘We hear reports that you have made a hundred thousand pounds from your flight, Mrs Markham, is this true?' At this Beryl laughed aloud. ‘I don't think I've made quite that much yet. I have signed a nice expensive contract to make a film in Hollywood – with flying as the theme. There is an option on both sides.' ‘Does this mean you will be returning to America?' ‘Not until I've been to South Africa to visit my father.' ‘Are you going to South Africa immediately?' ‘First I want to see my little boy Gervase – I've brought back a picture of my aeroplane which was painted in New York as a souvenir for him. Then I will probably fly on to South Africa as I want to see the British Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg, but I'll do it in easy stages.' ‘Is the cut on your face still giving you trouble?' ‘Oh, but it's disappearing. It
is
disappearing, isn't it? There's only a little bump now.'

Endless questions, questions, questions.

Inevitably when the articles appeared she was misquoted. Her son Gervase mysteriously became ‘her son Gerald', and she apparently told some reporters that she would never again fly the Atlantic.
²
It was not until they were on their way to Portsmouth in the late afternoon that Beryl was able to talk quietly to Percival and learn the full sad facts – hear with terrible anguish that ‘A foot either way would have saved him.' He also told her about Dessie. When Dessie learned of Tom's death she was in final rehearsals for the opening night of a new show, due to open two days later. Because of Tom's death the opening was postponed but on the day after the funeral Dessie received a call from the producer. ‘What do you want me to do about the show, Dessie? I need to know.' Dessie, though young in years, was a professional trouper of the old school. She told him to advertise the opening night for the following Monday. ‘Don't worry. I'll be ready.'
³

‘It's tonight,' Percival told Beryl.

Beryl was not the only one who cabled her best wishes to Dessie that night. As Dessie sat in her flower-filled dressing room she found one telegram particularly moving. It was from all the pilots taking part in the Air Race – Tom's friends. But for the accident he'd have been with them in that last flurry of preparations prior to the dawn start:

FLORENCE DESMOND VICTORIA PALACE LONDON. WE SEND YOU OUR LOVE AND THOUGHTS AND OUR ADMIRATION OF REAL COURAGE. TOMMY ROSE, CHARLES SCOTT, KEN WALLER, MAX FINDLAY, DAVID LLEWELLYN, CHARLES HUGHESDON, ALLISTER MILLER, STANLEY HALSE, VICTOR SMITH, CLOUSTON AND ALLINGTON
.
⁴

Her performance that night, Dessie felt, was not her best. She had to steel herself against the waves of sympathy directed at her across the footlights. Her voice seemed to her to be small and far away. It brought the house down.

‘Many film and theatre celebrities were among the audience which enthusiastically welcomed Miss Florence Desmond at the Victoria Palace last night when, just over a week after the death of her husband Captain Tom Campbell Black she appeared in the premiere of
Let's Raise the Curtain
…We only saw her twice but the piquant spot of the evening was her impersonation of Marlene Dietrich who, with Noël Coward, watched from a box. Miss Sophie Tucker and Mr Jack Hylton were also present.'
⁵

‘Isn't it strange,' Dessie said to a friend in the wings, ‘that all that could happen in one week – that Tom could die and be buried and I be back here doing the same things that I was doing last Saturday.' And to a reporter: ‘I am just going on with my job as Tom would have wished me to do.'
⁶

Beryl was at Portsmouth aerodrome at dawn on Tuesday 29 September to watch the start of the big race. In connection with the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition, South African mining millionaire and industrialist I. W. Schlesinger had offered prizes totalling £10,000 for places in the long-distance race. His intention was to stimulate interest in aviation in South Africa and to publicize the exhibition. It was planned on much the same lines as the London to Melbourne Race, won by Tom and Charles Scott two years previously.

After Tom's death Amy Johnson had come forward to say she would be willing to take his place and fly
Miss Liverpool
if the aeroplane could be repaired in time. Predictably, a great deal of publicity was given to this offer, but Dessie was very unhappy about it, and in any case Percival could not undertake to have the plane repaired in time. Amy Johnson mistakenly thought she would be honouring Tom's memory by taking his place. But many thought she was simply cashing in on tragedy, partly to counteract the publicity being given to Jim Mollison who was in New York preparing for his transatlantic flight to Croydon in the Bellanca. She had recently started divorce proceedings against Jim, charging cruelty, apparently prompted by Beryl's former employer, François Dupré, with whom Amy was currently enjoying a much-publicized liaison in Paris.

With Tom's Mew Gull withdrawn, and Carberry's mount,
The Messenger
, still en route to New York after its extraction from the Baleine Cove bog, together with the withdrawal of several aeroplanes which could not be made ready in time, there were only nine entries on the starting line. These nine left Portsmouth aerodrome at one-minute intervals on their way to Johannesburg via the compulsory check points of Belgrade and Cairo. Because of the Italian-Abyssinian conflict, the route was planned carefully to avoid Italy, against whom Britain had applied sanctions. After Cairo each contestant could take his own line to Johannesburg.

With the technical advances that had taken place since the London–Melbourne race, it would be logical to assume that the race would be a closely fought thing. It was a disaster.

Tom's former partner Charles Scott and his co-pilot Giles Guthrie were the winners in their Vega Gull, the same model as
The Messenger
. Their aeroplane was the only one to finish the course within the allotted time. Arthur Clouston, a Farnborough test pilot, flying a second-hand, open-cockpit Miles Hawk, eventually finished after an astonishing series of misadventures including a complete engine change, a forced landing in a swamp, and a crash landing in some tree tops. But he was too late to be considered for a place. Nevertheless, young and impoverished by his entry in the race, he hoped the authorities might offer him a consolation prize. They didn't. The remaining prize money went to the families of those who had been killed in the race. Max Findlay with his crew of four had crashed in their Airspeed Envoy whilst taking off near Lake Tanganyika. Findlay and his radio operator were killed.

Of the other entrants, Llewellyn and Hughesdon, also flying a Vega Gull, had crash landed near Lake Tanganyika. They were both thrown into the water but were unhurt and spent the night on a sandbank. When dawn broke they saw that what they had taken during the darkness for logs were in fact crocodiles. Fortunately they were rescued before further harm befell them. The undercarriage of the BA Double-Eagle flown by Tommy Rose and Jack Bagshawe collapsed on landing at Cairo. The undercarriage of the BA Single-Eagle flown by Messrs Allington and Booth collapsed when they had a forced landing in Bavaria. Victor Smith in a Miles Sparrow Hawk dropped out at Cairo with oil trouble and Allister Miller, having run out of petrol, damaged his Mew Gull in a forced landing near Belgrade. The final entrant, Stanley Halse, flew himself to a standstill. When eventually forced to land because of fatigue he tried to put his Mew Gull down in a jungle clearing. The little thoroughbred plane, ‘a plane that really needs flying',
⁷
not renowned for its forgiving qualities and with a stalling speed of 76 mph, landed badly, injuring the pilot and having to be written off.
⁸

After watching the start of the race Beryl returned to London where a crowd of friends, along with the gentlemen of the press, met her at Waterloo Station. Again she was feted and driven in an open-topped car for a celebration lunch at Claridge's. Later, she contacted Dessie. Beryl could not have known that Dessie was now aware of what Tom had once been to her. Tom's trunk had been sent to Dessie from the Royal Aero Club where he kept his log books and papers. In it she found the telegram sent by Beryl:
DARLING IS IT TRUE YOU ARE TO MARRY FLORENCE DESMOND
?
PLEASE ANSWER STOP HEARTBROKEN BERYL
. Dessie recalls surprise rather than shock when she read the message.
⁹

When Beryl contacted her to talk about Tom, Dessie found that Beryl had nowhere to live and, as usual, no money either, for the option payment on her film contract amounted to only a few hundred dollars. Dessie immediately invited Beryl to stay with her. Some months before Tom's death, the Campbell Blacks had bought a large house in St John's Wood. Now Dessie was lonely and depressed, rattling around alone in it. ‘I was especially glad of her company,' she recalled.

It was a pretty white house with blue window frames; a giant old tree faced the front door. In the sitting room the white walls were hung with a large collection of old maps enthusiastically collected by Tom, whilst on a low table near a large bookcase stood a silver model of the record-breaking Comet
Grosvenor House
. A picture of the Comet in its bright scarlet livery hung over the mantel which was lined with trophies and silver cups, mainly won by Tom on the turf in Kenya. It was a room redolent of Tom's activities. Dessie and Beryl did not use it much.
¹⁰

Because of the interest in Beryl and her flight, and Dessie's theatrical work, the two women were able to come to terms with the loss, which affected each of them deeply in her own way. For Dessie it was the loss of her beloved husband. Beryl mourned the man whom she still adored, though she had already lost him as a lover long before his death; but he had remained her friend and ‘supporter' and it was probably the loss of this support that affected Beryl most in the aftermath of her pyrrhic victory. For the next few years she was often reported as entering races and drumming up financial support for record attempts, but all were to come to nothing. The truth was that with Tom gone she had no motivation, no need to prove anything.

She was immediately swept into a round of lunches and dinners in honour of her flight. Tributes continued to fall about her head like April showers. In an amusing speech the chairman of Anglo–American Oil, one of Beryl's sponsors, said, ‘Our guest might well be forgiven a secret glow of satisfaction that on her solo flight in her relatively small 200-hp plane she penetrated further into Canada than the two bright American lads who followed her, when the weather had cleared up a bit, in their faster and more powerful machine elaborately equipped with wireless – to say nothing of 40,000 ping-pong balls…Mrs Markham's flight gives an entirely new meaning to the term “the flighty sex”…I am one of those who think that her name will be handed down among the great names of women in history. And what is most gratifying to all of us is that the machine, like the aviatrix, was British…'
¹¹

Percival, by now a staunch friend, said that her course-keeping and navigation must have been extremely accurate. He recalled that when her position was reported by the SS
Spaarndam
some 200 miles off Newfoundland, she was exactly on course – no mean feat after 1500 miles with no opportunity to check position. He presented her with a small trophy commemorating the flight. It embodied a silver and turquoise model of
The Messenger
and an engraved plaque stating ‘From E.W. Percival. 2656 miles in 21 hours and 25 minutes'. Beryl replied with a short, graceful speech: ‘It was windy in more ways than one when I took off…' she began cheerfully.
¹²
During her speech she commented on the fact that she had counted on a range of twenty-seven hours and had been disappointed when it proved to be under twenty-two. She did not mention the fact that during the recent salvage operations
The Messenger
had been found to contain enough fuel for a further 300 miles' flying.
¹³
The mechanics involved theorized that ice had formed in the air intake of that last tank of fuel, causing the engine to cut and Beryl to assume she was out of petrol.