Straight on Till Morning

by Mary S. Lovell

  The first Beryl knew of this was a small article entitled ‘Air Race Romance’ which appeared in the same issues of the East African Standard as the reports of the race. A four-page report under the banner headlines ‘BRITISHERS WIN AIR RACE’ appeared a week after the results were known,23 but Beryl was shocked to read the succeeding paragraph:

  AIR RACE ROMANCE

  London 23rd October 1934

  A secret romance was associated with the flight to Australia. It is now revealed that Miss Florence Desmond, the British actress was asked by Capt. Campbell Black before he left Mildenhall, to marry him. Miss Desmond informed Reuter that her reply to his question was that she would give him her answer when he had won the race. Before Campbell Black left she gave him a black and gold matchbox inscribed with a message of luck and he placed three of her photographs in the cabin of the machine.24

  Beryl had been expecting Tom to come flying back into her life after his marvellous victory. She had been so proud of him, and for him, flying up to Elburgon to tell her father the news as soon as she had heard it. Everyone knew that Tom was ‘Beryl’s boyfriend’. That stupid newspaper article, she felt, couldn’t be true. It must be some publicity stunt. She scribbled a note to Tom, but even before he received it, the latest news broke in the English papers and was subsequently transmitted to Kenya. ‘Famous airman to wed Top London Actress.’ Stunned, she cabled Tom: DARLING IS IT TRUE YOU ARE TO MARRY FLORENCE DESMOND? PLEASE ANSWER STOP HEARTBROKEN BERYL.25

  Sadly for Beryl, it was all too true. She told me she thought she had flown to England to see Tom when he arrived back there from Australia. She could not remember what they talked about. Tom never mentioned such a visit to Dessie and Beryl’s log book for that period is unfortunately missing. Tom and Dessie married in the spring of 1935. A further letter from him, shortly after his marriage, exhorts Beryl once again to stop scouting in elephant country, even though he must have known she would not pay any heed. Beryl had had a recurrence of malaria and he was concerned about her health. He wrote that with Dessie’s help he had managed to buy a Comet of his own. In this aeroplane, he explained, he planned to make an assault on several targets: London–Cape Town and return; London–New York and return; London–Hong Kong and return, all to be done in long weekend hops. If he had succeeded with these plans it would have been sensational.

  What Beryl really thought of his letter, somewhat heartless in the circumstances, is not known; her comment to me was that she was pleased that Tom was at last achieving his ambitions which ‘were endless, absolutely endless. There was so much he wanted to do…’26 She now threw herself into her safari work. No job was too dangerous or too arduous, and she worked ceaselessly. Now she cast off her restless apprehension, for she had a plan of her own. Partly it concerned Tom, for she needed, more than anything, to prove something to him.27

  She did not give the impression of being broken-hearted. A visitor to Kenya, who knew Beryl only slightly, met her in Muthaiga one day. She was with Cockie, and both were cool, fashionably dressed, each beautiful in her own way, and self-assured. The visitor was sad because it was the eve of her departure for England. ‘Why go if you don’t want to?’ asked Beryl, puzzled. ‘Conscience I suppose,’ said the visitor. ‘Beryl and Cockie looked at me askance. It was quite clear that both of them lived entirely for themselves and would never dream of doing something they didn’t want to for such a frivolous reason. Frankly, I think they were amazed.’28

  Stories of her numerous love affairs abound, but such fleeting liaisons meant absolutely nothing to Beryl. They may have been a simple gratification of her sexual needs, or perhaps a symptom of her endless search for security.

  Tom and Dessie had meanwhile flown to Morocco for their honeymoon in Lord Furness’s Puss Moth. Knowing Tom’s skill as a horseman, Dessie had had some beautifully cut jodhpurs made, intending that he should teach her to ride so that they could ride out together. He had told her about his rides with Beryl in Kenya, though she was not aware at that time that the pair had once been lovers. On the morning following their arrival in Tangiers the newlyweds went for a ride. Dessie’s horse was a stallion – hardly an ideal mount for a novice, but Tom told her not to be nervous, they’d take it quietly. Dessie wished she could have had her first riding lesson somewhere less hilly than Tangiers, and heaved a sigh of relief when the horses were turned for home. Alas too soon – for as another horse and rider came towards them, Dessie’s horse ‘gave a blood-curdling scream’ and the two horses rushed at each other. Discretion conquered valour and Dessie slipped off the horse’s back and ran off to the hotel, leaving Tom holding on to her horse’s reins and joining with the other rider in trying to subdue the two horses now locked in combat.

  Later, when Tom came across Dessie sitting in the bar enjoying a medicinal brandy, he was annoyed. ‘You shouldn’t have got off his back…Never mind – you must ride again quickly or you’ll lose your nerve – we can ride again tomorrow.’ Dessie wondered how she could lose something she’d already lost, but she needn’t have worried; the next morning the owner of the horse was quite adamant. He would not allow Dessie to ride his valuable animal.29

  There were further incidents during the honeymoon which were frightening to Dessie – on one occasion the Puss Moth aircraft developed engine trouble. They were over a range of mountains with no possible landing place. Even Tom was disturbed. When they eventually landed after a terrifying flight Dessie’s legs were like jelly and she was sobbing with relief. ‘What [Tom] said about dirty Spanish petrol one can hardly put into print,’ Dessie said.

  Tom decided that Dessie had better take the train to Biarritz with all the luggage. The weather wasn’t good and he said he could take risks in the plane alone that he couldn’t take with her. Eventually he landed safely and the pair flew home to England without further mishap. It is interesting to speculate on what Tom’s feelings must have been after these events. Despite his undoubted deep love for the delectable Dessie he could not have helped making the obvious comparisons about how Beryl would have reacted to the horse-riding and flying incidents. Beryl would have coped easily with either, so that in fact neither would have become an incident. Clearly Dessie would have to be cherished in a way that would not have suited Beryl.

  On their return from honeymoon, Dessie continued her highly successful stage career whilst Tom made plans to assault various flying records in his new De Havilland Comet, which Dessie christened Boomerang in the hope that it ‘would always come back’. His first attempt was on the Cape Town record, with Gordon McArthur as his co-pilot. His intention was to get to the Cape within thirty-six hours, stopping at Cairo and Kisumu (where Beryl hoped to see him briefly) to refuel. After a quick turn-around he intended to return to England by the same route.

  The men eventually got away, and after an anxious wait Dessie was delighted to learn that they had arrived safely at Cairo in eleven hours, breaking all previous records. However, delight turned to disappointment when it was learned that the Comet had landed with one engine completely burned out. Investigation revealed that the aeroplane had been supplied with the wrong dipstick at De Havilland’s, resulting in an incorrect oil-level reading. Tom could only return to England and start all over again. But it was not as easy as all that. He needed a fine weekend with a full moon. It had to be a weekend, for the whole record attempt was built around the theme ‘To the Cape and back in a long weekend’.

  On the second occasion Dessie persuaded the two men to wear parachutes, much against their will because of the added weight and bulk involved. The factor which decided them was the lower insurance premiums if they carried parachutes. Once again Boomerang reached Cairo in record time (eleven hours and ten minutes), after battling through severe thunderstorms. On the second leg, headed towards Kisumu, the Comet developed engine problems, and after leaving it almost too late, Tom and McArthur donned the parachutes and jumped over the bush. They were rescued by Arabs and taken on camels over several tiring stages to Atbara. It was
two days before the world learned they were safe. Tom acknowledged that had they not taken the parachutes they would probably not have survived, for there was nowhere to make a landing in the sleek, extremely fast racing aeroplane.30

  Beryl, continuing her safari and freelance bush piloting work, and reading of Tom’s exploits, felt she had been left out of the adventure. There is no doubt that she had loved him and found a deep fulfilment in the relationship which, during the two years prior to his marriage, had continued despite the distances involved. Tom’s rejection of her, for Dessie, was devastating. But her hurt was not only at having been denied Tom’s love. Just as important was the fact that she was being denied any part of the new and adventurous life that Tom seemed to have made for himself. That her life was equally, if not more, exciting seems not to have occurred to her at the time, and despite her love for Kenya she felt she would have to go to England in order to achieve her ambitions. When Tom’s attempt on the Cape record failed it is not unlikely that Beryl thought of tackling it herself.

  She promised Blix that she would scout for him during the 1935–36 safari season, and return to England as soon as the spring rains started. Meanwhile, she worked long and hard. Nearly all of her work in these days was scouting, though now Blix often added her to the hunting party, whilst occasionally she worked for other big-game hunters such as Percival.

  Soon she became so busy with scouting and charter work that she found it necessary to buy another aeroplane. In September she took delivery of a De Havilland Leopard Moth, a three-seater aircraft, in which two passengers could be carried side by side behind the pilot. It was a high-wing mono-plane, more modern than the Avian, though with a cruising speed of 120 mph and a much higher landing speed, not as suitable for bush work where short take-off and landing ability was a major factor. Beryl used the Leopard Moth mainly for air-taxi and air-ambulance jobs.31

  Questions have always been asked about Beryl’s relationship with Blixen. Interviewed in spring 1986, a few months before her death, she made conflicting statements to questions about this speculation. On the first occasion she openly scoffed at the suggestion that she had had a love affair with Blix. ‘Good God no! I knew him very well and we were good friends. I flew him everywhere…all over Africa, to England twice.’ On the second occasion when the subject of Blixen was raised in another context she made the surprising statement, ‘Of course I made love with him…sometimes when we were out there, there was nothing else to do but make love.’ When I reminded her that two days earlier she had refuted the suggestion of a love affair with Blix she said witheringly, ‘But I never did have a “love affair” with him…It was just how it was.’32

  Cockie also believed that Beryl and Bror had some form of liaison, though by that time her own marriage to Blix had already failed. This was nothing whatever to do with Beryl. After the coffee plantation at Babarti failed, Cockie and Bror returned to Nairobi where Cockie ran a dress shop. Beryl was her only bad debt, she remembered without acrimony.33 Bror meanwhile returned to safari work, and ‘resumed his pursuit of attractive ladies’.34

  According to Cockie, Bror was in turn pursued – a story which is worth the telling. A former film star in her native Sweden, Eva Dickson had heard so many stories about Bror, who was a distant cousin, that she decided to sell everything in order to travel to Kenya to meet him. ‘For a while,’ Elspeth Huxley reports, ‘Blix, African-style, enjoyed the company of one wife in the bush and another in Nairobi; but when a friend invited him to stay and he accepted with the rider: “I shall bring both wives,” Cockie responded with the edict: “You will take only one.” He took Eva. So the marriage ended.’35 In time, Eva became the third Baroness von Blixen.

  After Cockie divorced Bror she married Jan Hoogterp, a handsome and talented young architect, but she is on record as saying that the happiest years of her life were spent with Bror and had he asked her to marry him again she would have done so without hesitation. This is interesting, for the ever-witty Cockie, with all her intelligence and sophistication, would hardly have made this remark had Bror been the coarse man his detractors describe. After her marriage to Hoogterp the couple moved to Johannesburg and it was there, some years later, that Cockie read her own obituary.

  Eva was killed in a car accident at Baghdad. She was the first woman to drive across the Sahara, a feat she undertook for the reward, offered casually across a bar, of a crate of champagne. A newspaper mistakenly reported the death of Baroness Jacqueline Blixen, and when informed of the error by a highly amused Cockie, the editor apologized profusely. ‘Don’t mention it…I’m returning all my bills marked “Deceased”,’ said Cockie. When the editor insisted on printing a correction in Cockie’s own words the following notice duly appeared. ‘Mrs Hoogterp, the former Baroness von Blixen, wishes it to be known that she has not yet been screwed in her coffin.’36

  Beryl and Eva Blixen became friends – indeed there was a striking physical similarity between the tall, blonde Eva and Beryl, as well as a shared instinct to go ‘all out’ for anything either wanted. ‘Both Eva and Beryl were not afraid to take risks,’ said Bror’s godson and biographer Ulf Aschan. They were often seen sitting in the bar at Muthaiga Club ‘like a lovely pair of Scandinavian bookends’, said an appreciative club member.

  The season ended with Winston Guest’s37 safari. In his second book Letters from Africa, Bror wrote of this safari in great detail and of Beryl’s part in it. He wrote of her professional delight when her scouting led to Guest’s first bag, a bull elephant with huge tusks. But for herself Beryl was never interested in killing animals for the sake of trophies. She hunted for the pot when necessary but she, like Denys Finch Hatton, preferred to hunt down animals for the camera. In one of his letters Bror told the story of the day that Guest and his wife went into Nairobi by train to collect the mail and enjoy some ‘civilization’ for the day. ‘Beryl expressed a wish to see the elephant at close quarters, having seen so many from the air. She also wanted to get some photos of them.’

  Beryl was operating the Avian from a small strip measuring 45 yards by 770 yards, but asked Bror to increase its length by another 55 yards so that she was not so dependent on wind direction. They decided to fly over the area to locate a suitable subject for Beryl’s camera within reasonable walking distance of the camp:

  All we had to do was top up the oil and swing the propeller – three turns backwards, one forward – and the kind engine came to life. Five minutes’ idling, a few revving tests and we were taxiing down to the north end of the strip. The sun was just coming up over the horizon when we cleared the tops of the trees against a southerly morning breeze. We rose slowly to an altitude of 1000 feet, circled the landing strip and skimmed over the bush. We followed the railway line eastwards and could watch the ice-blue dome of Kilimanjaro gradually being tinted rose by the rising sun. The air was clear after the cool night and along the riverbeds one could see veils of white mist floating along, finally fading away before the increasingly hot sunshine. We gained height by banking repeatedly, the wind played tunes in the rigging stays, the engine hummed and it was wonderful to be alive.38

  They located a small herd, fortunately within a couple of hours’ walk from the Imperial Airways landing ground at Makindu. After landing Bror hired a couple of Africans to accompany them to carry the rifles, food and water bottles, and they trekked towards the herd until they heard the sounds that they were close – occasional trumpeting, the flapping of ears and the puffing sounds as the elephants blew dust over their backs. Beryl had her Leica with a telephoto lens and they estimated that they should get to within thirty-five to forty-five yards for the best pictures. Once in position they waited for the bull to move from the thicket where the animals were feeding, across a clearing to a small clump of trees.

  He looked majestic as he approached. The big thick tusks caused his head to swing slowly up and down in rhythm with his paces. He was chewing on bayonet grass and was clearly enjoying the sun on his back. Now he was in the clearing
and the Leica clicked. He checked for a moment before continuing, and now he had got our wind. But instead of going back as I thought he would he turned straight for us with ears pricked. He evidently meant business. ‘Run back all of you,’ I shouted, and at the same time he charged with trunk extended and his small piggy eyes gleaming with rage. I remained by the tree, prepared to shoot if absolutely necessary. Just before he was on to me he stopped, emitted two triumphant, ear-splitting trumpet blasts, and turned round and walked back to his family, leaving behind a comical impression of satisfaction. The enemy had been frightened away and he had done his duty! Beryl was delighted. ‘By jove!’ she said, ‘I’ve never been so frightened in my life…’39

  By the end of February Beryl had arranged to auction the Avian in order to finance a journey to England where she hoped to persuade Tom to join her in a record attempt on the Cape, or alternatively to find a backer for some other record attempt. She had a little capital and was not going empty-handed for once. In addition there was her annuity from the palace which was paid regularly into her bank account in London. With the old king dead and Prince Henry safely married to the former Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott, Beryl would not incur any royal displeasure by returning to England, at least none that need concern her unduly. Before leaving she flew to Melela to visit her father. It was to be some years before she saw him again, for shortly after Beryl left Kenya, Clutterbuck moved to Durban in South Africa to train in the rarefied atmosphere of the top-class racing of the Cape.40

  It was a particular sadness to say goodbye to arap Ruta, her loyal friend from childhood days. Ruta had been at Beryl’s side through all the shauries of her adult life. When she had made her first successful sortie into the world of horse-training he had smoothed her path. During her marriage to Mansfield he had looked after the horses in her absence, and eased her way when she returned. When she abruptly dropped training to learn to fly he became an adept aircraft mechanic. Uncomplaining, like an efficient shadow, Ruta was always there, virtually the only unchanging fact in Beryl’s life through the trauma of Finch Hatton’s death and Tom’s desertion, for that was how she saw Tom’s marriage to Dessie.41