Straight on Till Morning (30 page)

She was particularly proud of the telegram she received from the East African Aero Club offering congratulations and making her a life member,
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and she ought to have been on top of the world. But for Tom's death she would have been. She liked the attention, provided it did not intrude beyond the invisible fence she had erected around her personal life. But she could not see that the attention she was receiving was actually helping her, and in retrospect her victory seemed a hollow one. There was no doubt that her reputation as a pilot had been established, but little in the way of financial rewards had resulted. She was as impoverished as ever, though she dined out most nights in the best hotels and nightclubs in London and was recognized wherever she went. But the offers of appearances on stage did not appeal to her and no serious offers of work, other than that from Hollywood, had been made. The little money she had made from her public appearances in America and her newspaper articles would hardly pay Bruno's bill.

So she went on with the circus. On 18 October
The Messenger
was unloaded from the freighter (aptly named SS
Cold Harbour
) at London Docks. Beryl went to see her aeroplane but she already knew that she'd lost it. Carberry had told her he was shipping it back to Kenya where he would have it repaired. There was no question of her flying it to South Africa, he told her, nor of putting it on display to the paying public. He had held to his bargain, she to hers and the arrangement was now at an end. Perhaps he was peeved at missing the Johannesburg Race, but more than likely it was just another example of what James Fox called ‘fun spoiling' – a hobby of Carberry's. It would have meant nothing to him financially to let Beryl have the aeroplane – or even to make it available to her on loan.

Instead Carberry shipped it to East Africa where it was sold for an undisclosed, but almost certainly small sum. Some time later a friend of Beryl's saw it at Dar es Salaam. It was lying derelict outside a hangar. He thought it may have been bought by someone who had wanted to learn to fly: ‘I think it wasn't really suitable for local flying, having been built for long-distance flying. I imagine whoever had it just lost interest because it couldn't be flown and possibly couldn't be properly maintained, and it was a rather crumpled heap on the ground. I tried to climb into the cockpit and stepped on to the wing but it just collapsed underneath me and went a bit further towards Africa.'
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In November Beryl and Dessie were reported as taking part in a charity darts match where the other celebrities included Lord Semphill, Amy Johnson, Steve Donohue and Jimmie Wilde. But the biggest attraction was His Majesty the King, who was said to ‘throw a pretty dart'.
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Within a month the royal dart-thrower would have abdicated his throne in order to ensure the help and support of the woman he loved.

The King's Secret Matter had now reached crisis proportions. The US papers were running banner headlines speculating on the probability of a ‘Queen Wallis'. All society had been discussing the couple's liaison for months (since the king's holiday with Wallis on the yacht
Nahlin
in September, and even prior to that), and now ordinary citizens were becoming aware of it. When British newspapers, previously muzzled by protocol and loyalty, reported the divorce of Wallis and Ernest Simpson, the seriousness of the situation was fully revealed. In December the abdication was announced. Edward, king no more, went abroad. The Duke of York, now reluctantly King George VI, sat on the throne of England. When asked what should be done about the coronation planned for Edward on 12 May, the harassed Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin reportedly snapped, ‘Same day. New king!'

While Dessie worked at the theatre, Beryl was out every night, dining and dancing until the small hours. ‘I loved to dance,' she told me. ‘I used to be very good at it.' Mollison was a particular friend with whom she had a casual affair, but Dessie disliked him. He was a rough, hard-edged heavy drinker, aptly nicknamed ‘Brandy Jim'. ‘He did drink rather a lot,' Beryl said. ‘So I started to avoid him after a while. I hardly drank then.'
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‘He was coarse, boorish and arrogant in his manner,' Dessie said, and this is borne out in his own writing, for a bigger piece of conceit than his memoir
Playboy of the Air
would be hard to find. ‘Before the London–Melbourne Race,' Dessie recalled, ‘Tom had a piece of grit in his eye. Seeing that Mollison had a neatly pressed handkerchief in his breast pocket he asked if he might borrow it. Mollison took out the handkerchief, blew his nose on it and handed it to Tom. Tom simply let it drop to the ground, he never liked him after that.' Dessie also remembered receiving a call from a friend who managed the Grosvenor House Hotel. ‘We've had the most awful night here. Jim Mollison and Amy Johnson had a fearful row and he's beaten her up. The bathroom looks like a slaughterhouse…' There were lots of equally unpleasant anecdotes about Mollison from other sources, but he was, undoubtedly, a good pilot and a brilliant navigator.

Dessie was annoyed to come home from the theatre one night to find Mollison and Beryl in the sitting room. ‘Mollison was so drunk he could not stand up, but when I came in, Beryl told him he'd better leave. She knew how much I disliked him. Astonished I said to her, “But you can't let him go in that condition – he can't even walk properly!” Beryl simply shrugged and raised her eyebrows. I had a bed made up for him in Tom's old dressing room and he spent the night there. But I was very cross with Beryl for putting me in that position.'
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Shortly after this Dessie put the house on the market. The constant daily reminders of Tom were too sharp, and the house far too big. The two women moved from St John's Wood to a flat in Stockleigh Hall. Sometimes, as time went on, when Beryl was at one of her innumerable parties, she would call Dessie after a show and ask her to come and join them. Occasionally Dessie would go along. ‘They were always very bright and cheerful parties, and I was grateful because it made me go out and meet people.' One night Dessie was in her dressing room when she received such a call. A voice said, ‘You don't know me. My name is Charles Hughesdon. I am speaking for Beryl Markham. We are having supper at the Hungaria Restaurant and Beryl asks if you would care to join us after the show.' It was the same Charles Hughesdon who had crashed in Tanganyika during the ill-fated Johannesburg race. Later, when another friend of Beryl's came over to the table Charles asked Dessie to dance, and went on dancing far longer than politeness demanded.
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On the next evening Beryl and Dessie were having supper at the Savoy Hotel with a group of friends. Charles threatened to gatecrash the party and Dessie spent the entire evening anxiously looking over her shoulder. On the following Sunday, Charles went to lunch at Dessie's flat. The two had already fallen headlong in love, but Beryl was hardly to know this when she came in after lunch and sat talking. After a while she got up, went over to the writing table and scribbled a note which she unobtrusively slipped to Charles before leaving them alone. After she'd gone Charles said to Dessie, ‘Nice friend you've got!' and showed her the note which invited him to try to get away somehow and join Beryl that evening.
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After this incident things began to cool between the two women, especially in the spring of 1937 when Beryl could not raise enough money to pay the increasing number of bills which came flocking in. In order to keep up with the smart lifestyle and constant round of parties, dinners and suppers, she needed a good wardrobe. Milliners, shops, and dressmakers were pleased to provide clothes for her; she was good-looking, well known and wore them so well. Her vitality, deer-like grace and sense of chic ensured that they would be noticed. Dessie had introduced Beryl to her own dressmaker, the young Teddy Tinling, who was not known then for tennis clothes, and he made the two women some beautiful gowns. Likewise Dessie's milliner produced some lovely hats for Beryl – tiny frivolous affairs which Beryl wore at a cheeky angle over her forehead. But when the bills were presented Beryl couldn't pay them. In the end, she simply replied that she was going to declare herself a bankrupt. Dessie was mortified because so many of the creditors had taken Beryl as a client on
her
introduction. She made it clear how she felt and Beryl moved out of the flat.
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No formal bankruptcy claim was ever filed, and Beryl settled with her creditors out of court for five shillings in the pound. This was backed up with a promise to repay the balance when she was able but it remains open to doubt whether Beryl ever seriously intended to honour this offer, for she had a preposterously irresponsible attitude to money. She was almost certain of getting sponsorship for ‘The Big Race', she told her creditors, which would enable her to pay them off; she had already been offered an aeroplane, a Northrop Delta IC, registration G-AEXR.

This big race had already been announced in the press: a transatlantic race from New York to Paris. The prize money, put up by the French government to mark the tenth anniversary of Lindbergh's solo night, included £30,000 to the winner, but with additional prizes for fastest time over various legs of the course, the winner might expect to collect anything up to £50,000. Initially there was to be a mass start, but the rules were changed after protests regarding safety, so that contestants could choose any day in August to make the flight. The winner would be the pilot with the fastest time. Contestants could fly solo or with a crew.

It was too good an opportunity to miss, and every pilot of note was looking for sponsorship. Early British entries included Jim Mollison, Amy Johnson, and Beryl. Howard Hughes, Roscoe Turner and Amelia Earhart entered from the USA, whilst Mussolini's son, Bruno, was a member of the Italian team. ‘Every country with an air force is determined to win for the prestige value,' the
Daily Express
announced.
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Initially Beryl had an unlikely partner in her bid for sponsorship. This was Jack Doyle, a handsome boxer who had recently broken into show business, having appeared in a film and made several cabaret appearances as a singer. Doyle fell for Beryl and for a few weeks the pair were inseparable. Beryl even gave him a few flying lessons. ‘I hope he was a better lover than he was a singer,' a friend of Beryl's said caustically. Doyle's manager was convinced that he could get sponsorship for the pair in the big race, but it all came to nothing. The relationship swiftly ended and Doyle went out of Beryl's life as quickly as he had entered it.

Beryl rented a flat at a smart address off Wigmore Street, and continued living life very much as she always had. She was always beautifully dressed and always in the middle of anything that was going on, yet with her quiet, casual manner she often seemed to be standing back, assessing it, rather than joining in. An acquaintance who recalls her in those days said that there was a sort of bright, pearly luminescence about her. She nearly always wore white, and with her clear healthy skin, fair colouring, blue eyes and blonde hair she stood out, even in a crowd – almost as if she glowed. ‘Your eyes were somehow drawn to her. There was a calmness about her, and when you spoke to her she looked you in the eye and listened, as if what you said was the most important thing in the world.'

She saw very little of Gervase. This may have been by private agreement between Beryl and Mansfield. Dessie could not remember Beryl ever visiting her son during the time Beryl lived with her.

The race was due to take place in August, but in late April the Americans requested a postponement, claiming that there was too little time to get machines ready for such a potentially dangerous project. Beryl had already entered in a French aeroplane because she had been unable to get an English sponsor. Eventually, after much argument and dire warnings that the scheme was suicidal, the transatlantic race was called off. A race went ahead but the course was changed to a 4000-mile circuit which started from Marseilles and took contestants down the Mediterranean, over Italy and Greece to Damascus, returning directly over Europe to Paris. The prizes too were changed so that the top prize was £15,000. With these changes the race became almost a military affair between the European nations, each anxious to display aerial superiority. In the event the Italians, who had entered six aeroplanes, took first, second and third places. After the race Mussolini is said to have stormed at the winning pilot for not allowing his son Bruno's plane (which came in third), to cross the line first.
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The changes to the race left Beryl out on a limb. Her French backer, a friend of Dupré's, withdrew his support, for with the ocean flight abandoned, he was now able to find a French pilot. Beryl managed to get a wealthy South African syndicate, including I. W. Schlesinger,
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to back a new entry, but they too eventually lost interest in the French race. However, they put a new proposition to Beryl and in June she sailed to New York with a mission to find an American machine, capable of at least 200 mph. It was thought, though never confirmed, that her intention was a round-the-world flight. If so, she had left her attempt too late, for at the time of Beryl's arrival in the States, Amelia Earhart had already set off with Captain Fred Noonan to encircle the globe at the equator. It was her second crack at the record; an earlier attempt in March had failed at Honolulu when the Lockheed Electra plane crashed on the runway and was damaged.

After flying across the country to California with Frank Hawks (the man who introduced Amelia Earhart to flying), Beryl stayed in Los Angeles. Here, she was generally expected to take part in the Bendix Air Races, but she made it known that she intended to wait until Amelia returned from her global flight in order to meet her.
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