Straight on Till Morning (35 page)

Beryl's first short story, ‘The Captain and his Horse', appeared in
Ladies' Home Journal
in August 1943. This magazine had previously published a chapter from
West with the Night
under the title ‘Wise Child' which had proved popular, and Beryl had no difficulty in placing another story with them. Interestingly the basis for the story was several discarded paragraphs from the manuscript for
West with the Night
, but she appears to have borrowed the idea from her friend Stuart Cloete according to the following letter:

By September when Houghton Mifflin wired her to ask if she would speak at a forthcoming book fair in ‘the East' the Schumachers had left New Mexico for good and were living on a small ranch at Lake Elsinore in Southern California where she wrote ‘Something I Remember', another short autobiographical story. Houghton Mifflin also wanted to discuss her future writing plans.

‘Something I Remember' and ‘The Splendid Outcast', both written in the winter of 1943–44, were written in the same style as
West with the Night
, and are based on actual incidents in Beryl's early life. Her success in publishing these short stories provided the Schumachers with a potentially lucrative source of income and Raoul was not slow to recognize the marketability of Beryl's name. However it was almost certainly Raoul who wrote the next two stories which appeared under the name Beryl Markham. Both ‘Your Heart Will Tell You' and ‘Appointment in Khartoum
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rely heavily on Beryl's flying experiences in Africa for the story-line, but they are purely romantic fiction and are written in a totally different style to that of Beryl's book and her earlier stories. This style is clearly repeated in ‘The Whip Hand', a short story published under the name of Raoul Schumacher which appeared in
Collier's Weekly Magazine
in June 1944.

Although in later years Raoul claimed to friends that he had been a writer during the early 1940s, ‘The Whip Hand' was the first time his name had appeared in print. His writing style was smart and snappy, contemporarily popular with the readers of a whole range of periodicals who lapped up escapist fiction at an astonishing rate. It is unlike Beryl's more poetic, sensitive style of writing though it is known that she co-wrote these stories to the extent that she told Raoul of her experiences and provided background information about Africa. It seems that she was not able, or was not prepared, to write popular fiction to order.

Another story, ‘Brothers are the Same', written in 1944 and published in
Collier's
under Beryl's name in February 1945, was almost certainly also Raoul's work although, again, Beryl must have provided much of the detailed background information on the Maasai and Africa. Not enough it seems, for Raoul was driven to researching in a reference library for tribal customs of the Maasai which Beryl could not provide.
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Nevertheless there is more of Beryl in this story than in the previous two and the Schumachers obviously felt they had found a successful formula. Raoul, who had been a frustrated writer, could be relied upon to turn out fictional stories based on Beryl's adventures and experiences whilst Beryl herself could occasionally write a short autobiographical episode. In this connection Raoul's subsequent claims that he had been a ghost writer appear to be true, although these activities seem to have been mainly confined to those stories he wrote under Beryl's name with story-line help from her.
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Scott O'Dell visited the couple whilst they were at Elsinore and found them working in the basement, the coolest place in the house during a heatwave. In a letter to
Vanity Fair
in March 1987 he recalled: ‘Beryl [was] dictating, Raoul copying; [they were] writing a short story and stewing in the torrid heat. A New York editor sat on the doorstep.' The New York editor was almost certainly Kyle Crighton of
Collier's Magazine
, who was known to have been in regular contact with Beryl at the time. Interviewed for
Collier's
, Beryl admitted to being unsure as to whether the adventurous life she had led was a hindrance or a help to her as a writer. ‘That old adage “Truth is stranger than fiction” is so correct for me,' she told Crighton, ‘that any inventive power I might have is stifled.'
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The statement that Beryl was seen dictating to Raoul is an important one, though when I questioned Mr O'Dell later he revised this, saying that Beryl was merely ‘telling stories to Raoul and he was putting it into readable prose'. Unfortunately O'Dell could not recall the substance of the story on which they were working, but he did recall Beryl and Raoul's relationship at this time, more than a year after their marriage: ‘They were deliriously happy and went about hand in hand, dressed in Levis, concha belts and matching calico shirts and hats. Modern lovers out of ancient times. Beryl had a horse, a cat and two Nubian goats to remind her of her African days. How I envied them and their Arcadian lives.'
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Beryl too remembered this time for she had already told me that she and Raoul used to ride out ‘dressed as cowboys', but she could provide no further details. She was promised a series of lecture tours and Raoul, having had ‘The Whip Hand' published, now felt he could write under his own name. To all appearances the couple's future as a writing team looked set to flourish and in the summer of 1944 Beryl and Raoul moved to a much larger, rented house in Pasadena, north-east of Los Angeles.

That winter Scott O'Dell noticed the first snags in the fabric of the once idyllic relationship. The couple were known for throwing numerous parties. O'Dell attended one of these parties and was sitting on the sofa next to Beryl when Raoul carried in a tray of martinis. Somehow Raoul spilled a drink and Beryl meaningfully whispered to O'Dell that this clumsiness was becoming a habit. It was a clear hint about the heavy drinking that was later to become a real problem for Raoul, and O'Dell was startled by the glint in Beryl's eyes as she spoke. Later he spent some time alone with Raoul and they talked about writing.

But did Raoul actually claim to have written them all himself? ‘Yes I'm sure of that, Raoul wrote them all,' O'Dell stated. ‘But anyway that was when everything started to go wrong for them, when they were in Pasadena.'
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Some years later Raoul was to make a similar statement about his authorship to another close male friend, but the evidence does not substantiate his claims. I have no doubts that Raoul wrote three – or perhaps four – of the fictional stories published in Beryl's name. They were clearly based on Beryl's own experiences and it is obvious that she must have provided the background, probably in just the manner that Scott O'Dell witnessed. But I believe Raoul's claim to have written
West with the Night
was a weak attempt to bolster his own ego when he was feeling the first icy vibrations of Beryl's disapproval.

Certainly he had edited the manuscript, maybe he even became involved in the writing of the final six chapters, and this might well have led him to assume a closer identity with the work than was justified. He may have genuinely felt that his contribution entitled him to some claim to authorship. But there is nothing to corroborate his reported statement that Beryl wrote ‘not one damn word'. On the contrary, all the surviving documentary evidence points to Beryl having been the book's author. According to the correspondence between Beryl and her publishers, Houghton Mifflin had already received one hundred and thirty-two pages of manuscript by July 1941, and a further sixty-seven pages had been sent to Ann Watkins before Beryl left Nassau for California. Yet although she wrote the final six chapters (of twenty-four) after she met Raoul, there is nothing in
West with the Night
which even hints at a change in writing style.

Saint-Exupéry's death had been announced only weeks before O'Dell's visit to the couple in Pasadena.
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Could it be that in making his surprising ‘confession' Raoul felt that there was no possible danger of it being refuted?

These first signs of strain in the marriage that had at first been so happy also marked a new characteristic in Beryl. Where there had once been a childlike appeal, there now appeared a hardness in her manner bred out of a great disillusionment. There was a peremptory edge to her voice and the look in her eyes when she watched Raoul was now more often jaundiced than adoring. What had gone wrong for the couple in the months since O'Dell had last seen them? Was it only because of Raoul's increasingly heavy drinking, or had she already discovered at this stage that he had male lovers?

O'Dell did not know the real cause behind the small manifestations of approaching disaster; he saw the Schumachers too seldom, he says, even to hazard a guess (though Raoul's statement, ‘You are my best friend,' sits uneasily in this light). He saw no evidence of homosexuality in Raoul. ‘To the contrary, I thought he was rather like me in that respect – too much the other way, and I knew he had earlier enjoyed several affairs with some high-flying women in New Mexico and Arizona,' Mr O'Dell added.

But Raoul had been found lacking in some way, of that there is no doubt. The idol had feet of clay. He did not measure up. Perhaps at this stage in their relationship, it was merely Raoul's failure as a provider that forced Beryl to recognize some disappointing reality in his make-up. That year of 1944 was the most prolific time for the couple as writers, but even then they only produced five short stories between them. Beryl's short lecture tour had provided a much needed boost to the couple's income and according to O'Dell she had received a large advance to write a book on Tod Sloane, the celebrated jockey, though if this is so it was from a source other than Houghton Mifflin and Beryl's agent was never aware of the contract.
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Perhaps, once again, Beryl's marital problems were caused by her own promiscuity. Few men would have been tolerant of her attitude towards casual sexual encounters. But this seems unlikely, for almost imperceptibly Beryl now began to assume a dominant role in the relationship. Raoul was the underdog, (which hints that he was the wrongdoer) and nothing could have been more fatal for the survival of the marriage. Essentially Beryl needed support from a partner, someone she could lean on in times of stress and who could assuage her own deep-seated insecurity. Clearly she did not receive the support she needed from Raoul and anything less was almost guaranteed to earn only her growing contempt.

1944–1948

In April 1945 Raoul was placed ‘on general reserve' (without pay) with the US Coast Guard ‘and released from active service duty' (though beyond Beryl's statements on the subject there is no evidence that he ever saw any).
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With the war virtually over, Beryl and Raoul started to think about a permanent home. Both wanted to remain in California, preferably on a small ranch, somewhere quiet where they could write but not too far from social contacts. Milly Kelleher, a friend of Raoul's from Santa Barbara, provided the answer.

Milly ran one of the four real-estate agencies in Santa Barbara and she had on her books a small ‘avocado ranch' which had previously been the country retreat of Leopold Stokowski and his former wife Evangeline. Beryl had known Stokowski since her trip to the West Coast in 1937, at the beginning of the maestro's affair with Greta Garbo, but had already returned to South Africa in February 1938 when their romance burst into public gaze courtesy of the world press and culminated in the famous, wistful remark, ‘I only want to be left alone.'
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Stokowski married Gloria Vanderbilt in April 1945 and in strange ways strings were pulled that jingled echoes in Beryl's earlier life, for Gloria was the niece of Lady (Thelma) Furness (the former wife of ‘Duke' Furness who had been Tom Campbell Black's employer in the 1930s). Thelma had also been the acknowledged mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales, who bestowed upon her the nickname ‘Toodles'. For five years the prince had enjoyed a sophisticated liaison in which matters were always satisfactorily arranged to ensure that he and Lady Furness could spend weekends together at Fort Belvedere, the prince's home in Windsor Great Park.
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Their personal idyll was ended when Thelma, about to depart for a holiday in America, naively suggested to Wallis Simpson, ‘I'm afraid the Prince is going to be lonely. Wallis, won't you look after him?'
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As a child Gloria had been the principal character in a legal battle that captured world headlines in which she was dubbed ‘poor little rich girl' and in which her widowed mother, also named Gloria (the twin sister of Thelma Furness), fought a vicious battle for custody of ‘Little Gloria'. The child who had inherited millions of dollars had an unhappy upbringing for which she never forgave her mother.
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When ‘little' Gloria married Stokowski, a man forty-two years her senior, the press conjectured that she was seeking the father she'd never known. Publicly she cut off her mother's allowance, declaring through newspaper interviews, ‘My mother can go to work or starve.' When her Aunt Thelma castigated her – again in the papers – for ‘her bad example to the average American girl and her inhuman treatment of her mother' Gloria answered with a broadside: ‘Lady Furness need not criticize and be so anxious about the American Girl. The average American girl lives in a happy home and receives Mother Love. My mother gave me neither of these blessings. Let her Ladyship go back to England and tend to her own affairs.'
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Gloria's petulance even affected Beryl, for the new Mrs Stokowski did not like the Montecito ranch in the hills at the back of Santa Barbara. Possibly this was because Stokowski's previous wife Evangeline had lived there, but it was also locally notorious for having been the hideaway of Stokowski and Garbo during their harried love affair some years earlier.
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Stokowski loved the seventeen-acre ranch, and it was probably at Gloria's pre-marital request that he put the property on the market, but he could never bring himself to sell it.
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He had more or less built it to his own specifications, or at least had personally designed and supervised much of the building, and he even claimed to have personally planted some of the avocado trees.
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Throughout the years that he owned the property, despite long absences he maintained a regular correspondence with the handyman Robert Lopez who looked after the house and garden from 1942 to 1957. Stokowski's letters were full of minute instructions for the garden, down to the precise site for, and after-care of, the rare and exotic trees which regularly found their way to the ranch. Often when the maestro made an overseas tour he would be asked what gift he would most like to commemorate the occasion, and he always requested a tree for his Montecito ranch. The ranch, having been unlived in for some time now found its way onto the books of Milly Kelleher.

Milly, the mutual friend of both the Schumachers and Stokowski, at once saw a solution to the dilemma and Beryl and Raoul moved into the property in Toro Canyon in the late spring of 1945. They paid no rent and lived there as guest-caretakers rather than tenants. Stokowski continued to visit the house whenever he returned to the West Coast.

Like Stokowski, Beryl adored the ranch. In 1986 she told me it was the loveliest house in the world. ‘Lovelier than Njoro?' ‘Mmm…different,' she said. Indeed in its setting it was remarkably like Njoro. Nestling high in the foothills of the Santa Ynez mountains which form an impressive backdrop to Santa Barbara, the rustic timber house overlooks sunbaked slopes of red-earthed groves of fruit trees. The climate is, like Njoro, seemingly eternally sunny and the views from the house are equally spectacular, for whilst in Njoro the views across the fabled Rift end with the Aberdares, in Toro Canyon the views across the hills terminate in palm-fringed beaches and the glittering, blue Pacific Ocean.

The house itself, single-storeyed with large cool rooms, is U-shaped and built into the hillside so that one wing is higher than the other. It is not an ostentatious residence, but it is well-designed, comfortable and typically Californian. The large living area which forms one side of the building is on the lower level and the bedrooms form the higher wing, so that from every room the views are spectacular, and each window has a clear prospect. In the centre of the horse-shoe are a swimming pool and a patio, both built at the same time as the house. All the rooms open on to the pool and patio; bougainvillea tumbles everywhere in bright red and pink confusion. The windows of the house, generously shaded under overhanging eaves, have always been flung open to the gardens basking in the California sunshine and cool ocean breezes.

Even today in the uncultivated hills which lap the edge of the ranch, wildlife abounds – deer, foxes, bobcat and rabbits roam the quiet hills of the canyon.
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There is an ever-present hot dry scent of eucalyptus and pine, and a sweet elusive perfume from the creamy flowers of towering yucca plants. Wherever you walk you hear constantly the quick scuttling sounds of lizards, disturbed from basking, as they scurry across dry undergrowth. Bluejays screech in the trees and bustle in the flowerbeds, buzzards hover constantly on the air currents of the surrounding hills.

Beryl loved to ride out alone in these hills, she was totally at home here and despite the problems she was experiencing in her marriage was probably never happier. Initially the move caused a cessation of hostilities and the Schumachers rapidly became a popular addition to Santa Barbara society. Beryl – now aged forty-four – was stunning and her writing success had added a new dimension, an aura of self-confidence. She was still a minor celebrity in her own right and Raoul was a charming man. ‘In those days anyone who had a black tie and knew how to hold a knife was welcomed with open arms,' said a friend. ‘Raoul was a very entertaining guest – before he started to drink heavily that is…'
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There were also a number of people in the town whom Beryl knew from her past, including Thelma Furness who stayed there for a time, and Gabriel and Rhoda Prud'homme, whom she had first known in Kenya where the wealthy couple had owned a lavishly equipped farm in Nanyuki. Rhoda and Beryl were alternately close friends one week and at loggerheads the next. Rhoda loved to entertain often and on a grand scale from her Pacific Coast house and Beryl was not above turning up at Rhoda's impressive parties wearing her riding clothes, to the annoyance of her hostess.
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As usual Beryl did not have many women friends. ‘The other women tended to keep a tight hold on their men when Beryl was around,' Warren Austin said. ‘Men really liked to be around her and she liked to be around them. She didn't especially work at it but she had such charisma, and she was so interesting that it just happened that way. She couldn't help shining in any kind of gathering and the other women didn't particularly like always being in her shadow.
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A typical day for Beryl and Raoul started with a ride in the hills before breakfast. During the morning they would work independently; each had their own typewriter and Beryl preferred to work in her room.
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Several times a week Beryl would visit a beauty salon in nearby Santa Barbara with its white Spanish-style buildings and red-tile roofs. Cool courtyards with splashing fountains provided pleasant meeting places for lunch with friends. Afternoons were spent around the pool, and in the evenings the couple often dined out or went to the casino. In the colder months they sat in the pleasant sitting room around a spitting log fire, and read, or invited friends in to play bridge, a game which Beryl disliked but played moderately well. Stokowski had installed at one end of the room a grand piano for his work. Beryl recalled playing this piano, though how good she was is open to conjecture.

Maddie de Mott, who became a peripheral member of the same social set in those years, first met the couple in 1946 at a cocktail party.

It was about this time that Warren Austin met the Schumachers. For some years Dr Austin had been personal physician to the Duke of Windsor during the duke's period as governor of the Bahamas. He arrived on the islands some time after Beryl's visit there in 1941 so had never met her, but he had heard of her. Austin was running an army hospital when the prince's ADC, Major Gray Phillips, came in with a broken finger, suffered in a bicycling accident. The two men became firm friends and this led to Dr Austin's appointment as physician to His Royal Highness.

The doctor's most colourful memories of his time in the Bahamas revolve mainly around the constant ‘security exercises'. From the beginning there had been concern that the Germans would try to kidnap HRH, and given this forewarning it would be reasonable to assume that security would have been appropriately strict. However Dr Austin recalls that whenever the army staged one of the frequent ‘mock kidnap' attempts, the stand-in prince was always captured, and once during a major fire, all the fire hoses were found neatly cut into slices.
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Dr Austin and the duchess were frequently the only two Americans present at dinner parties and often partnered each other for bridge. ‘A lot of the English people were really good and in fact more or less made their living out of bridge. The duchess was always terribly worried that she might make someone lose who couldn't afford it, and I was her able partner in ensuring this did not happen.' He heard of Beryl through his great friendship with Major Gray Phillips and his frequent meetings with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. And when, at the end of his service in Nassau, Dr Austin dined with His Royal Highness and Major Phillips, they discussed their personal plans for the future.

In 1946 Beryl's son, Gervase, then aged sixteen, came over from England to stay with her for six months. Mansfield had provided the fare to grant the boy's natural wish to spend some time with the mother whom he had seen so infrequently, but of whom he was immensely proud. Gervase's age seems to have taken Beryl by surprise. ‘She was terribly upset,' said Warren Austin, ‘she didn't want people to know that she was old enough to have a son that big…'
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When Gervase arrived in Santa Barbara his wardrobe was unsuitable for the Californian climate and Dr Austin was dispatched to clothe the new arrival – Beryl would not be seen out in Santa Barbara with him. ‘She wasn't at all like a mother to him and left it to me to make sure he had proper food…I remember the poor boy seemed to have one cold after another…I think Beryl saw this as a sort of weakness of character. She more or less kept him hidden away up at the ranch,' the doctor recollected. Nevertheless Gervase enjoyed his visit to his mother. He admired her lifestyle, so colourful after the drab war years in England, and in particular he was impressed that she was a friend of Stokowski, who paid several visits to the ranch whilst Gervase was there.
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