Straight on Till Morning (47 page)

Beryl had some enemies among the stewards, but she also had many friends. Her licence was renewed almost immediately, and she went on for several years with her small establishment. In the 1980–81 and 1981–82 seasons she won four races each year, when each of her four horses obliged once in each season. Two of these horses belonged to a friend, Freddie Nettlefold, and the other two to Beryl. One of her horses was exceptionally good but she couldn't keep him sound.
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‘During that entire period the effort of simply continuing was very tough for her,' Buster Parnell told me. In 1982 Buster Parnell managed to ‘slip into Kenya for two hours whilst changing flights en route to London from India'. It was illegal for him to enter the country of course, but Buster was not the man to allow such a small consideration to weigh with him unduly. He took a taxi to Beryl's cottage near the race course and luckily she was there. ‘Beryl was very moved. She took hold of my hand and said, “Sweetie. You just sit there and have a little pinkie. I'm just going outside for a cry and then I'll come back and we'll have a long talk.” And she did – she would never have let me see her cry, of course. When she came back she had on fresh make-up and we sat and talked until I felt that if I didn't get out the police would be in to pick me up.'
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Buster, to whom letter-writing is a chore, kept in touch by postcard until Beryl's death. They are brief and to the point: from India, ‘Won the Derby today!'; from Denmark news of another important win and the message, ‘How are those bastards at the club behaving? Don't let them get you down!'

But she was struggling against the overwhelming odds of insufficient money, her own lack of administrative ability and, despite outward appearances, old age. Horses were never declared and so missed races in which Beryl intended them to run. She had virtually no income other than her annuity from England and the little her two training fees brought in, and though her horses continued to have the best of everything, Beryl was deeply in debt and living very simply. The end of her racing career was inevitable.

Her social life was as full as ever. She retained the ability to make friends and her personal magnetism, together with her reputation as a celebrity, ensured invitations, which she usually promptly forgot. Long-term invitations with old friends she always kept, and every Tuesday for many years saw her blue Mercedes wending its way to Muthaiga, the district around the Muthaiga Country Club. There she had a standing lunch appointment with her friends ‘CB and Gwyn'.

The CBs' home was small but one of the oldest and loveliest in Muthaiga, built entirely of wood. The L-shaped sitting room had a chapel ceiling and the walls and ceilings were lined with beautifully ageing Kenya timber. The grounds were several acres of indigenous and imported trees and plants, much of it informal, completely screened from neighbouring properties and the road by trees and high banks of bougainvillea. The house was virtually unchanged since the earliest days of Kenya's European Settlement and totally unmodernized, apart from the provision of electricity and modern plumbing. The servants still dressed and were treated as they were in the old colonial days. Behind the high screen of trees was an oasis where one could experience the life of decades earlier and the ‘old' Kenya where Beryl felt at home.
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The CBs expected Beryl every Tuesday, no matter who else happened to be visiting, and immediately she reached the verandah she always kicked off her shoes. Throughout her life she had gone barefoot by choice whenever possible, and in old age was still proud of her feet, which were tiny and beautifully shaped. Lady CB (now the Duchess of Portland) recalled that even though she had known Beryl since the early 1950s, and had seen her sometimes two or three times a week over lunch:

Even in the late 1970s and until 1980 Beryl was fit and active. She rode every day and told friends she was now happier on a horse than off. Her stance was upright and relaxed, and she still walked with the light springing step she had learned as a child, poised on the balls of her feet as though ready to take off at any moment; her movement was part of her legend. When she lunched every Sunday at the Muthaiga Club, newcomers and visitors would look up and watch Beryl with interest, as her story was whispered to them.

It must be said that Beryl was not concerned about her poverty. She had always lived as best she could. When there was money she spent it, when times were difficult she lived on credit. It was her ability to persuade local merchants to allow her credit that brought Jack Couldrey into her life.

1980–1986

‘I got involved with Beryl some years ago when I was asked to serve a writ on her, on behalf of a local shopkeeper,' said Jack Couldrey, a Nairobi solicitor. When he visited Beryl he found her living in genteel squalor, and he immediately wanted to do something about this for although he had not known Beryl personally, his family had known hers. The godson of Jock Purves – Beryl's first husband – Jack felt a certain obligation. ‘My father had known Beryl's father in the old days. I just couldn't leave her to live in those conditions.'
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Jack Couldrey contacted Ulf Aschan, a friend of Beryl's,
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and between them they contacted many aviation and racing people who agreed to subscribe a certain amount each month to a fund to meet Beryl's expenses. From that day until Beryl's death in 1986, Jack managed Beryl's affairs. When first he went through her papers he knew nothing of her personal life and thought she probably had no income whatsoever, so he was surprised to learn that she had once written a book, and that there was evidence of a regular though small annuity from London, which he assumed came from the Markham family. Jack Couldrey could in no way have been said to have fallen under the spell of Beryl's charm, but he nevertheless became the last link in the chain of ‘supporters', for once again Beryl had found someone to take on the burden of administration and ‘boring details' which she loathed.

In the early 1980s Beryl moved into a cottage in the grounds of the Nairobi racecourse. Since this move occurred virtually at the time that Beryl's previous solicitor was writing to the Jockey Club regarding her licence, it appears that the difficulty on that occasion was speedily resolved, for Beryl's new home belonged to the Jockey Club and she lived there rent-free until her death. It is a pleasant location and meant that Beryl was able to continue training without the need for daily travelling. The narrow well-kept murram road from her door leads directly to the racecourse and stables. The cottage, unpretentious and modern, had an airy sitting room, two bedrooms and a bathroom ‘complex'. It had originally been intended as living quarters for jockeys. From the sitting room Beryl could look out to see racehorses grazing in the small pasture beyond her fence.

With her servants Odero and Adiambo, she settled in. Early each morning the grooms brought the horses to Beryl's cottage where they received the day's instructions. Later she would drive her Mercedes down to watch the horses working out and to supervise various aspects of stable routine.

On the morning of 19 August 1981 the grooms went as usual to the cottage and waited. Beryl did not appear but they waited for a while thinking that the memsahib had simply risen later than usual. Odero, who had been Beryl's houseboy since the days at Naro Moru,
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was washing down Beryl's car and he confirmed that she had not been seen that morning. Odero slept a little way from the house in his own quarters, and Beryl usually unlocked her door early so that he could get in to prepare breakfast. He was puzzled but not alarmed at this stage. Eventually the little group of waiting men became concerned enough to go to Beryl's neighbour, the race course veterinary surgeon Mr V. J. Varma – ‘VJ' to racecourse patrons.

‘I went across to the house and knocked on the door,' VJ recalled, ‘but got no answer. I called out to her but still there was no response. By now I had begun to worry, so I went round to her bedroom window and called out again. Beryl answered me and said she was in a very bad way. She couldn't talk much but said she needed help right away so I went round to the front door and broke in.'

Beryl would have suffered great agony when the bindings were released and the circulation was restored after many hours, but her primary concern was for her dogs. They toured the house looking for the ‘corgi-pugs' and Beryl at first thought they had been stolen. Eventually they found the two animals under Beryl's bed, obviously very frightened and sitting quietly in a corner. Only then were her friends allowed to give her first aid and take her to the hospital.

Paddy Migdoll continued the story: ‘She was left with
nothing
. Everything was stolen – even her passport and driving licence. She can be a difficult person because she is such an individual, and not everyone likes her, but when we went around asking for help for her we found out how many friends she did have. Everybody rallied around and donated things. Money, clothes, coats, blankets, everything…'
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Had Beryl merely obeyed her attackers (for there were several) and ‘gone quietly' she would probably have simply been tied up and left, while the burglars ransacked the house. But this was not in Beryl's nature. Her attackers had been able to bind her because they surprised her whilst she was asleep. But as she lay bound on her bed she hurled a constant stream of invective in Swahili at the men, and it appears that the worst of her injuries were inflicted in an attempt to shut her up.

Although in the burglary most of her ‘lovely things were stolen',
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she was, fortunately, left with two of her most prized possessions, the silver and turquoise model of her Vega Gull, mounted on the trophy which Edgar Percival had presented after the transatlantic flight, and the engraved silver cigarette case she had long ago given to Prince Henry and which, after his death, had been returned to her.

Sir Charles Markham, who lives at Karen (the Nairobi suburb which is named after Karen Blixen), said: ‘I think that beating up was a very great shock to her. She never thought Africans would turn on her like that, and it seemed to age her a lot. A little while before the robbery she had been here for the christening of my grandchild and she was the life and soul of the party.'
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It certainly seemed to affect her movement, for she walked stiffly after that incident and her sprightly walk was gone for ever.

She went on training, though. David Sugden, who had helped her with her training programme in 1979 (when Beryl still had some of the Soprani horses), now sent a couple of horses to her.

Mr Sugden is on record as having said some years later that he rated Beryl as being still one of the best trainers in Kenya and that given the horses and finance would possibly be the best, despite the fact that she was well over eighty.
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Beryl continued her habit of driving to the Muthaiga Club each week for Sunday lunch. One Sunday in August 1982 she was surprised, as she approached the front gate of the racecourse, to find it closed. She asked the askari (guard) why and he said he didn't know, but that he was quite happy to open it for her. So Beryl drove off towards the Muthaiga in her faithful old Mercedes.

What Beryl (and presumably the askari) did not know was that there was an attempted military coup in full swing. As usual Beryl drove through the centre of town, stopping at the New Stanley hotel where she often met friends for pre-lunch drinks. Here she encountered some armed soldiers in the road who demanded money, which Beryl, predictably, refused in a manner which left them in no doubt that they weren't going to get any, by means other than force. Even Beryl must by now have realized that it was dangerous to be on the streets, and she immediately set off for Muthaiga. Before long she came to a road block. ‘Where are you going?' came the challenge. ‘I'm Beryl Markham and I'm going to lunch at Muthaiga Club,' she answered. When armed guards tried to search her car and her handbag, she accelerated and drove through the barrier. The guards opened fire and several bullets hit the car. ‘One of them grazed her chin and she arrived at the club dripping blood. It was quite a mess but she calmly parked her car at the front entrance and walked in with her dogs – which wasn't allowed, though an exception was made in this case. Quite a few people were staying there and they loaned her some clothes as hers were badly bloodstained. She stayed at the club for some days with her dogs until law and order was restored,' a fellow guest at the Muthaiga Club recalled.
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Beryl soon recovered from this experience, though Sir Charles Markham felt that ‘both the robbery and the coup incidents shocked her very deeply – more than most people thought'. A week after the incident, the
East African Standard'
s correspondent ‘Petersfield' wrote about the effect of the attempted coup on the racing community, and reported: ‘I looked in at Ngong and was delighted to see the horses, as usual, out for their morning exercise…and there was Beryl as unchangeable as always, asking me, “What's new?”'
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Now though, whilst she still trained her small string of horses, there were signs that age had not passed her by after all. Her carriage was still upright but there was the stiffness of age about her movement. Her smile, her humour, were still sometimes those of a young woman, her charm (when she wanted to charm) dazzling, and her temper (to those unfortunate to receive its blast) as fearsome as ever. She might have ended her days in a slow descent to obscurity and indeed her life looked set fair to do just that.

She insisted on keeping her horses, despite Jack Couldrey's advice that they were costing more than she could afford. This of course counted for nothing with Beryl. She never inquired how Jack was able to pay her bills and keep her in pocket money – it simply never occurred to her to ask.
¹²

By writing to the firm of solicitors in England who administered the trust fund set up for Beryl in 1929, Jack had been able to have the annual amount increased, as a temporary measure. Such an increase outside the terms of the contract can only be considered as personal generosity by those concerned.

Christmas 1982 saw the usual delivery of cards from friends all over the world. Among these was an intriguing letter from a man unknown to Beryl: