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.’29
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.’30
There are many in Kenya who truly believe that Beryl had a secret formula, and if so it has died with her, but those closest to her during her greatest success scoff at the theory. Buster Parnell, who accompanied her on countless evening stables, remarks simply, ‘She didn’t need to fake it…she was too good.’ The nearest approximation to an elixir was described by Doreen Bathurst Norman.
Beryl always had a little mixture made up which she carried round with her. There was nothing special about it, it contained the usual additives that one gives horses – salts, vitamin supplements and that sort of thing. As she worked her way around the horses she would add some of this mixture to the horse’s feed. One horse might get one handful, another three handfuls, and another none at all. She seemed to know exactly what the personal requirements of each horse were, but there was no magic about it. It was just skill and a unique and intimate knowledge of the individual horse’s needs.31
The writer Martha Gellhorn, the former wife of Ernest Hemingway and a prize-winning war correspondent, met Beryl briefly during the early 1970s. Invited by a mutual friend to drinks at Beryl’s rented house, she wrote, ‘I had never heard of Beryl, and so arrived ignorant…Beryl received me in a typical sitting-room, “settler” furnishings, big chairs covered in chintz, a stalwart piece to hold drinks and glasses. No books; it is a professional deformation always to notice books’32 – incorrectly as it turned out, for Beryl had a large and impressively varied collection of books, though these were not on public show.
Beryl wore tight black trousers and a high-necked silky pullover; exotic clothing for upcountry where khaki prevailed. She looked very glamorous, fair hair, tanned face, splendid lean body; certainly not the least horsey as I would have expected. I jumped to instant wrong conclusions; this obvious darling of the Muthaiga Club, the ancient boring centre of Nairobi social life, trained racehorses, whatever that meant, for amusement. Two admirers were visiting her, one older, one younger, and I was impressed by the way they leapt to be serviceable about drinks while Beryl waited gracefully to be waited on…I took her to be a striking woman of forty.33
Beryl continued to attract admirers – even, it was rumoured, lovers. However care must be exercised in this matter of Beryl’s reputed love affairs for if the stories repeated to me were all true, Beryl would never have risen from a reclining position between the ages of fourteen to eighty-four. They are part of the sea of rumour, gossip and speculation which forms Beryl’s legend. Beyond any doubt she was promiscuous in her sexual relationships with men, but her affairs were not totally indiscriminate, for she retained an inbuilt fastidiousness where her body was concerned and took a great pride in it. Doreen Bathurst Norman, probably Beryl’s greatest woman friend, said that Beryl’s attitude towards sex was more like that of a man than a woman. ‘I don’t think Beryl ever thought how her behaviour must have appeared to the people of the real world, and if she had thought, she would have said it was stupid and would certainly never had (sic) let it worry her for a minute.’
Typical of the way in which gossip clung to Beryl without any foundation were stories told me by a number of people regarding meetings that Beryl supposedly had with Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, when he visited Nairobi in November 1950. In these stories Beryl had disappeared for days with the prince. In another version she was ‘actually seen’ being smuggled out of a car into the back entrance to the Muthaiga Club to meet him. The third was that Prince Henry borrowed the governor’s car to visit Beryl on her farm and crashed it on the return journey (this latter story at least, is partially true for HRH did crash the Rolls-Royce and His Excellency, Governor Mitchell was understandably upset about it). But what actually happened was that Beryl spent the entire period of the prince’s visit with the Bathurst Normans, and never left the farm. Prince Henry never visited her there. Doreen stated, ‘She did in fact write to him but he did not answer.’
In 1975 Beryl invited the Irish jockey Dennis Leatherby to Kenya to ride for her. He found her very tough, but an excellent trainer. Once, when they were riding back to the stables at Thika his horse, an uncut colt, tried to mount Beryl’s horse. Beryl fell off and Leatherby immediately got off to help her. ‘No, no, sweetie,’ she told him firmly, ‘I’m fine, leave me alone thank you.’ ‘That was Beryl,’ he said. ‘She didn’t accept help from anyone and she was very, very tough.’34
Buster Parnell, Beryl’s partner in the ‘unbeatable combination of talents’ which formed the true peak of her racing career, returned to ride for her at the New Year meeting in 1976, and the Standard reported the event.
Highlight of the meeting was the return of Buster Parnell who rode three winners out of five rides for Beryl Markham. First winner was on P. Kenyatta and Samson Mirithi’s Greenacres. Buster made ground fast on Greenacres and his challenge was beautifully timed as he was twice headed. His second win was a close-fought victory on Sun Queen and his third win came when War Chant, belonging to Mary and Colin Haynes, cruised along calmly in front…beating the field by seven lengths.35
Robin Higgin considered Parnell to be the best jockey ever to have ridden regularly in Kenya. ‘His natural exuberance and wit did not make him the most popular jockey in the eyes of the racing authorities, but Kenya racing and Beryl in particular benefited from the flair which he so consistently displayed.’36
Buster returned to Kenya for the seasons of 1977, 1978 and 1979. But in 1979 he was deported. His natural exuberance had led him to be ‘rather naughty with the wife of an influential man. That wasn’t the reason given of course – but it was the real reason,’ Buster claimed with a grin. According to Romulus Kleen, Beryl had always stood up for Buster with the racing authorities, no matter what trouble he got into, and showed enormous loyalty to him; but on this occasion even she couldn’t help.
In 1977 the Aero Club of East Africa celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a golden jubilee dinner at which Beryl was the guest of honour. One of Beryl’s closest friends in her last years, Paddy Migdoll, recalled: ‘She was terribly nervous – she hated crowds and making speeches. I think it was probably the one thing that she was afraid of.’37 The Aero Club presented her with a commemorative souvenir, a large canvas on which were screen-painted the signatures of many aviation friends spanning fifty years. It hung in Beryl’s sitting room until her death.
The same year, F. D. Erskine, nicknamed FD and son of the Galloping Greengrocer Sir Derek Erskine, inherited some horses from his fathe
r when that vastly popular knight died. ‘I inherited Beryl along with them,’ he recalled.
At that time she had about sixteen horses in training but her financial affairs were in a terrible mess. She was wonderful with horses but her administrative ability was zero. She didn’t even have an oat crusher – I bought her one but within weeks it was stolen. I think some of her syces were dishonest – they can be like that with the elderly out here when there is no one to keep an eye on them. I tried to get her to take on a young lady as a sort of understudy. This girl was frightfully keen and greatly admired Beryl, but I’m afraid Beryl wouldn’t, at that time, have anything to do with ladies. She loved to have men around her.38
FD arranged for his accountant to take care of Beryl’s administration and for a long time Beryl would drive into Nairobi once a week, with all her paperwork. This help must have made a great difference, for in the 1978–79 season her count of wins doubled from twelve to twenty-four, and at the age of seventy-seven she trained Aldo Soprani’s Sailor Beware to win the Kenya St Leger – an incredible fifty-two years after her first victory in the same race with Wise Child. Her second horse, Indian Dancer, took second place. Some years earlier she had ceased to be Soprani’s sole trainer, but he remained loyal and always sent her a few horses. He relied on her judgement but they had an irascible relationship. ‘Beryl treated him shockingly,’ reported one of his friends. ‘He was frightfully rude to her,’ said one of hers. It was a typical example of Beryl’s relationships with many of her owners. Her statement to Parnell – ‘Horses are never any trouble – it’s their owners I can’t stomach’39 – is a precise summing up of her attitude.
After two years, supervising Beryl’s administrative affairs became ‘too much’ for FD. Beryl never cooperated and he was reluctant to accept the inevitable responsibilities involved in declarations and bookkeeping. But he remained steadfast to her as a friend. The good friends always did so, despite all the difficulties.
What I remember most about her was that she was a very gracious and beautiful person. The jockeys adored her, in fact they were proud to ride for her and I was most impressed by the way that the horses loved her – she had a great affinity with them. They went very well for her – in spite of the fact that she worked them very hard – they had to be good horses to stay with Beryl’s training schedule. She had three of my horses and she was marvellous with them. One especially, Clean Sweep, won the Dewars White Label Trophy and led from start to finish and at one point was seven or eight lengths clear of the field. Clean Sweep won that trophy two seasons running for me, with Beryl training. She also trained Kaa Chonjo for Peter Kenyatta – it means Always Ready. I really loved that horse and bought it from him and am now using it for breeding. Unfortunately the foal born of Kaa Chonjo and Clean Sweep was stillborn but I would dearly love a ‘Beryl’ foal so I will try the combination again.40
Mr Erskine’s comment – ‘horses had to be good to stay with Beryl’s training schedule’ – was echoed by Robin Higgin, who is on record as saying that Beryl’s system may have led to the premature retirement of horses which might have had longer, if less illustrious, careers in other hands. But he could recall no horse that had failed to show form in Beryl’s yard becoming a success elsewhere.41
With responsibility for financial and administrative affairs back in her own hands, Beryl once again allowed these matters to become a hopeless muddle. She had no business sense whatsoever and as a result her tally of successes slumped again, though she did achieve a respectable total of ten winners.
Most of her wealthy owners gradually drifted away and soon she was left with a string of only four horses. When she became very ill with gastric problems, her friends did everything they could to persuade her to see a doctor and finally they enlisted the help of a very old friend and owner ‘Lady CB’ (Cavendish Bentinck)42 who, together with F. D. Erskine, went to collect her from her cottage at Ngong, with the intention of taking her to the hospital. Beryl saw them coming and locked every door and window in the house. She would not let anyone near her for two days and told her callers firmly by telephone, ‘I hate hospitals. I’m not going anywhere near any doctor or hospital because if they looked inside me they would have pronounced me dead five years ago.’43 This dislike, amounting almost to a phobia, had always been with her from her very earliest days.
For years Beryl had fought with the stewards of the Jockey Club of Kenya. Her attitude towards them veered from annoyance to outright contempt and she saw them as pettifogging. And her finances were in a mess. Nevertheless when, in June 1980, without warning, she received a letter from the stewards advising her that they were ‘not prepared to grant [her] a Public Trainer’s Licence for the season 1980–81 or thereafter’, Beryl was very shocked.
She immediately engaged a first-class advocate who, writing to Mr Michael Cunningham-Reid, acting senior steward, stated his client’s case in admirably clear terms:
We are aware that under rule 5 (vi)…the Stewards of the Jockey Club have power at their discretion to renew or refuse a Trainer’s Licence…However in the case of Mrs Markham you will appreciate that [this decision], communicated to her without warning…amounts to depriving her totally of the only means she has of earning her livelihood. In addition this decision involves a very serious stigma: the fact of having had a trainer’s licence refused in Kenya would undoubtedly mean that Mrs Markham would suffer severe embarrassment in any application for another licence elsewhere in the world. Whether or not the Stewards intended this result when making their decision, the fact remains that by so deciding, the Stewards both gravely injure our client’s reputation, and by implication cast grave doubts upon her honesty and her ability…With the greatest respect to the Stewards and to the Board, it would seem that a number of charges can be levelled against the decision thus to deprive Mrs Markham of her livelihood. Our instructions are that at no time has Mrs Markham been given an opportunity to hear the charges against her, or of being heard in her own defence, or of bringing evidence to answer any such charges as may have been taken into account by the Stewards. It is a fundamental rule of natural justice that a person has the right to be heard; without this, it cannot be said that Mrs Markham has had fair treatment or proper impartial consideration of her case on its merits.
Our client has already suffered both loss and damage, because in a small community word spreads with frightening rapidity and this matter appears to be already fairly common knowledge amongst the racing fraternity. Mrs Markham, if we may say so, enjoys a hitherto completely unblemished record; she has been Leading Trainer for many years, and it is common knowledge that her horses are always immaculately turned out. She has now recovered from her recent illness and her doctor confirms that she is back to complete fitness. These facts underline the seriousness of the damage caused by the letter of 10th June.
We request you, therefore, both to withdraw the letter…and to hold a proper enquiry into the question of renewal. Both we and our client would be happy to attend any meeting to which we are invited, or to supply any information you require. We trust that this upsetting matter can be resolved in an amicable fashion as soon as possible; we feel sure that there will be no call for Mrs Markham to have to seek redress in any other forum, and that you will ensure that she receives the equitable treatment from you that she has the right to expect.44
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.45
‘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 Lond
on 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.’46
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’.
Straight on Till Morning Page 39
