Straight on Till Morning (45 page)

Anna Parnell remembered a similar incident: ‘Once at a particularly important luncheon Enid asked Beryl not to bring her dogs into the dining room. All went well until there was a great crash and Caesar and Circe leapt through the open window. All conversation was stopped, and I looked at Beryl who sat quite unperturbed, continuing her meal – I thought she was rather pleased.'
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Buster stayed through 1967, but he found the situation almost intolerable. He had gone there to do a job of work and found himself in the middle of the constant squabbles. Matters did improve when the old manager left and a younger man was recruited from Kenya, but tragically he had not been there long before he was killed in a car accident outside the gates of Broadlands.

Finally, Beryl could take no more. If she couldn't manage the stables as she wanted, then she really couldn't be expected to turn out winners. A final quarrel over stable management led her to leave, taking the few horses she herself owned – Niagara, Title Deed and Kara Prince. Responsibility for the break-up lay on both sides. Beryl had been for years a public trainer and therefore responsible to no one, except for the individual performance of a horse to its owner. But as a private trainer she was, ultimately, the paid servant of Lady Kenmare, and the silken chains weighed heavily. Lady Kenmare was then well into her seventies, and although she was only ten years older than Beryl, she looked and acted as though there were more than that number of years between them. She had suffered a back injury some years earlier and had (according to Beryl at least) begun to act in the cantankerous way of the elderly. ‘She could never make up her mind exactly what she wanted to do with the farmland. One minute she would plan to plant vines, and the next she would have them all ripped out for another crop. Beryl felt it was all very unsettling,' Anna Parnell stated.

‘Enid was getting very old and difficult. She couldn't understand what I needed, and so I left,' Beryl told me.
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Lady Kenmare, who originally thought she had been buying into Broadlands in a partnership arrangement, with Jørgen Thrane taking all the administration and management off her hands, found instead that she was the sole owner, and having to take full responsibility. She had no help from Beryl, who was uncooperative and embittered by Thrane's departure.
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Hoping to set herself up as a public trainer, Beryl managed to find a temporary home for herself and the horses with a friend, Belinda Black.
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The new stables were in the Flats, a rather poor area and not at all what Beryl had been used to. But she couldn't afford to set up properly, and despite her successful years she had no savings. Buster and Anna Parnell used to go out to see her during this time, before they too became discouraged and returned to Europe. ‘It was a really dreadful place she had there. You had to walk miles over sand to get to Beryl's place, it was quite awful – and of course she had no money. She never really stood any chance of succeeding there. Oddly enough I became very good friends with her during that period. At Naro Moru she had never paid any attention to me, but at the Cape when she was unhappy and needed someone to talk to then I got to know her and liked her very much…' Anna said.
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Finally, after a row with the stewards at Cape Town, Beryl moved briefly to Natal, but after a few months decided to move permanently to Rhodesia.
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At sixty-six she was no youngster to be thinking of starting afresh in a new country where her reputation was unknown. However, few people would have guessed her age, for physically she was as slim and lovely as ever and looked at least twenty years younger than her true age. She always dressed in slinky, silky materials, and there was always some little item like a silk scarf, or some other accessory which added chic to her outfits. She moved with extraordinary lightness ‘as if she had wings on her ankles', and it was as if age had passed her by. She settled on Inverness Farm at Ruwa near Salisbury, and at first she was confident that she could succeed there despite the lack of a ‘supporter'.

Interviewed shortly after her arrival, she said, ‘I wish now that I'd settled here when I left Kenya…I would have been well established now. I have been very impressed with the standard of racing here…' Asked about her flying career she replied, ‘I can't remember how many hours I've logged – it must be about three thousand – but horses have always been my first love. I can't wait for my first race, it beats flying every time for excitement.'
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In fact it was nearly thirty years since she had last piloted a plane, but the trails of her glamorous flying career still clung to her and whenever she could, she used them to get publicity for her training establishment.

Peter Leth, an old friend from Naro Moru, where he worked for a while culling buffalo at Soysambu, was living in Rhodesia when Beryl arrived. He recalled, ‘She was taking a hell of a gamble when she went to Rhodesia. She had no contacts, she couldn't get anyone to send good horses to her to train and she couldn't get any jockeys to ride for her. I used to drive out to her place about ten miles from Salisbury to ride fast work for her. She was certainly in a mess financially and a friend of mine, a solicitor, tried to help her. But she never really had a chance there, the odds were all stacked against her.' The odds included constant rows with the stewards, while concerns about her establishment revolved mainly around her doubtful financial ability to run a training yard. In addition Beryl could never accept handicaps allocated to her horses. In Kenya during her youth the stewards had all been family friends and to argue the handicap was all part of the game. In more formalized racing circles such arguments were viewed more seriously.

‘She was such a character you couldn't help being fond of her, but she had a shocking temper,' Leth told me. ‘On one occasion I rode a morning workout for her. When I got back to the stables, I slipped off the horse and turned to Beryl, expecting to be thanked or at least to discuss the performance of the horse. Instead I turned to get a bucket of cold water thrown over me with great passion. “You slowed that horse up,” Beryl stormed at me. Apparently there were prospective owners looking on and they hadn't been impressed. I got the blame.'
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Tired, dispirited and once again penniless, Beryl soon realized that she would have to return to Kenya. A wealthy friend helped her by buying her beloved Niagara for breeding. Part of this bargain was that Beryl should keep the resulting foal from Niagara's visit to the top South African stallion, Ships Bell. Ships Bell had done little on the racecourse, for he damaged his knees and had to be pin-fired as a comparative youngster. He had been sold out of training for only 300 guineas. However his breeding was impeccable, being by Doutelle out of Belle of All (winner of the One Thousand Guineas at Newmarket), and he could get very good progeny. The result of his meeting with Niagara was the lovely little colt Water Boy, whom Beryl reckoned would be ‘a really great horse'.

When in 1970 Beryl returned to Kenya she knew that she would need quick success. But the task was not so great as she had faced in Rhodesia. Here she was known, indeed was a celebrity, almost a legend. Her reputation and contacts were immense. When she found some difficulty in regaining her trainer's licence she approached the (then) vice president, Daniel
arap
Moi, who was sympathetic and personally saw to it that she was registered as a trainer. Once again Aldo Soprani helped her by giving her his best horses to train. Tubby Block thought better of returning to her, and risking the constant shauries, but she immediately persuaded a few other influential owners, and she set up her establishment at Thika on Soprani's coffee plantation.

Her house was situated in the middle of the plantation, on the slope of a hill with railed paddocks at the side, and there were good stables. The disadvantage was that there was no jockey's house nearby and jockeys had to travel by motorbike each day along seven miles of appalling tracks which were impassable in wet weather.

Soprani's trust in Beryl was not misplaced. Only weeks after the opening of the 1970–71 season she provided him with winner's trophies. Using the recess between seasons to prepare the horses, she planned carefully and brought on two new purchases for Soprani, Heron and The Sultan. With Heron, a grey yearling bought from Jack Ellis for Soprani's string, Beryl once again carried off the coveted Kenya Triple Crown of the East African Derby, Kenya St Leger and Kenya Guineas. With the brilliant two-year-old Sultan (winner of the Derby and St Leger) she also won the Futurity Stakes and the Champagne Stakes, and four others. In all, during that season of 1971–72 she helped to lead in twenty-three winners and became firmly entrenched in her usual position at the top of the leading trainers' league table.

After considerable difficulty she was able to import her own Water Boy into Kenya. The horse's South African parentage was against him, however Beryl had powerful allies and she was not afraid to use them occasionally. In this instance the allies were patrons Peter Kenyatta, son of the President of Kenya, and the equally well-connected the Hon. Charles Njonjo. Whatever it took, Water Boy was imported and, despite inevitably heavy handicapping, bore out Beryl's initial hopes.

As a three-year-old he won four races including the important feature races Delamere Gold Vase, Italian Challenge Cup and the Summer Handicap. After his ‘surprise win' in the Delamere Gold Cup, under the headline, ‘Red Faces after Water Boy's win', the
East African Standard'
s racing correspondent conveys Beryl's attitude with precise humour:

Water Boy never went on to achieve the greatness that Beryl predicted, although he won a total of ten races. ‘He was weighted out of it,' she said matter of factly to me, ‘his breeding, you see.' Nevertheless his speed was impressive, and his time over 1400 metres of 1 minute 26.2 seconds remained a course record for many years, vindicating Beryl's faith in him.

In 1971 Beryl received news that Gervase had been involved in a car accident and was critically injured. Mansfield flew to France to be with his son during the weeks that he hovered between life and death. ‘During that time I really got to know him,' said Gervase's wife, Viviane. ‘He was so kind to us and so sweet to the girls. It was the first time since our marriage that he had behaved as I thought a father, and a grandfather, should. That was a terrible time for us all. Gervase was in great pain but he was, like Beryl, immensely stoic. The bravest person I have ever met in that respect.'
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Following their visit to Beryl in Kenya in the mid 1950s Gervase and Viviane lived in London for twelve years with their two daughters Fleur and Valery. For most of that time Gervase worked for the
Financial Times
. In December 1967 they moved to France where Gervase launched an English weekly edition of
Le Monde
. A disagreement over advertising policy caused his resignation and he subsequently worked for a while at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. Beryl could not afford to travel to Europe. She was distressed when she heard that her son had died in hospital, but she had never been close to him. Many of her recent friends were not even aware that she had a son and the sensitive, introverted man had made little claim on the mother he saw as an unattainable figure. Gervase's body was taken to England for burial in the Markham family tomb and within months Mansfield too was dead.
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In the years between 1972 and 1978 Beryl continued to win races with a gradually shrinking string of horses, though no further classics came her way in those years. Now over seventy, she retained her lissom good looks and rode out every day despite having suffered a broken leg in 1972 which kept her in plaster for months. ‘She was stunning even then,' recalled Ulf Aschan, a friend in Beryl's latter years. ‘Her walk was that of a young woman, she wore her hair long and ash blonde, her figure was still fantastically good and from the back you would easily take her for a bird of thirty.'
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The late Robin Higgin, an expert on Kenya's racing history, who died suddenly whilst the last chapters of this book were being written, told me, ‘She was unquestionably the most brilliant trainer Kenya has ever known. I would really love to know what Beryl's secret was. I remember that there was always a very faint sheen of sweat on all her horses, so faint that it was a sort of bloom…I've never seen it before or since on any horse anywhere in the world, and I don't know why it was there. Her horses always looked absolutely magnificent. I feel sure she gave them something, perhaps some herb known to the Africans which gave them a little extra something…perhaps she got it from Clutterbuck. He also did extraordinarily well as a trainer, even when he went down to the Cape. But I think Beryl was better. She was an absolute sod about declaring jockeys. She was apt to change her mind on the morning of the race – she used to do that sort of thing all the time. You never knew who was going to be up until the last minute. It made her very unpopular in certain quarters.'
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