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.47
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:
I never really knew her well. In fact I wonder how many people did really know her. Perhaps it was because Beryl never spoke about herself. Without prior knowledge one would never have realized she knew anything about flying. Moreover, she never mentioned her son or granddaughters. It was a long time before I knew she had a son. Somehow one had the feeling that she was entirely detached from people, not that she disliked them – they were just not important to her. Not so with animals. Going round her stables with her was a revelation of her love for horses. She was entirely dedicated and devoted to them – as she was to her dogs. My husband knew Beryl when she was young and she trained one or two horses for him. I remember him saying that she moved like a beautiful animal.48
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.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
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.’1
Jack Couldrey contacted Ulf Aschan, a friend of Beryl’s,2 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,3 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.’
When I went to her bedroom I was very shocked at what I saw. Beryl was tied hand and foot with telephone cord. The bindings were very tight and she had been there a long time, for her hands and feet were badly swollen. She was virtually naked and had bad bruising and cuts about the face and neck. It was obvious that she had been severely beaten up. She was in great pain due to the bindings having been so tight that circulation had stopped. By this time Mrs Bowden, a friend of Beryl’s, had arrived and we proceeded to cut the bindings.4
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…’5
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’,6 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.’7 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.
I remembered what she had been like, and the judgement and experience she brought to training…When in 1982 I had the opportunity to buy a couple of horses, I sent them to Beryl to train because I still felt she had such a lot to give. Her technique was not one of shouting or telling people what to do, but rather of asking the horses to do what she wanted. Her feeding and exercising routines were all geared up to the individual horse – she didn’t treat the horses as a string.
One good example was a horse with very bad tendons. He was a big horse, yet she managed to slim him down without losing any of the horse’s ‘physique’ in order to make him light enough for the tendons to carry him – and he won races afterwards.8
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.9
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.10
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?”’11
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:
December 20th 1982
San Rafael, California
Dear Beryl Markham,
Two summers ago, driving back to Ketchum, Idaho, after a superb day trout fishing with Jack Hemingway, he said, ‘George, have you read my father’s letters?’ I was startled for, though we have been friends for years, Jack had never mentioned his father to me nor I to him. I said no I hadn’t. ‘They’re very revealing,’ he said. That was the end of it but when I returned home I read the letters.
Well, quite an experience and indeed revealing…cruel, kind, hateful, loving, petty, grand, boastful and never once humble except on page 541 in a letter to his editor, Maxwell Perkins. On the chance you have not been told of it I quote the following passage:
‘Did you read Beryl Markham’s book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer’s log book. As it is she has written so well, and so marvellously well, that I was simply ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an OK pigpen. But this girl can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of being there at the time and heard the other people’s stories, are absolutely true. So you have to take as truth the early stuff about when she was a child, which is absolutely superb…I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book.’
Such praise intrigued me mightily, coming as it did after Hemingway had cruelly savaged most of his peers and a few of his betters. Further, I was still annoyed by his silly and pompous use of pugilistic metaphor when comparing his work with that of other writers…i.e. ‘I could go the distance with Stendhal for sure and maybe with Flaubert, but I couldn’t get in the ring with the Count.’ Good Lord, who other than Shakespeare could! What rubbish!
So after quite a search, I found a copy of West with the Night. Ah, what a grand and astounding book it is! I read it one day and again the next day. I blessed Hemingway and gave the book to Evan Connell, a friend who in my opinion is one of the two or three finest prose writers in America. (His Mrs Bridge is a classic.) Evan’s enthusiasm and regard for your book matched mine and so we decided to send it to Jack Schumaker [sic] and William Turnbull, publishers and editors of North Point Press in Berkeley, two men with flawless literary taste and the courage of lions. They, too, fell under the spell of your wondrous book and set about securing US and British rights. I am sure you are pleased that North Point Press will re-issue West with the Night in late spring of 1983. Marvellous! Could not happen to a finer book. I am glad I am a careful, involved reader or I m
ight have skipped right over Hemingway’s tribute.
In appreciation of a beautiful book, I send my best regards to the woman who lived and wrote it.
George P. Gutekunst
George Gutekunst proved to be a larger-than-life character whose love for literature and motion pictures (‘the only twentieth-century art-form’) knew no bounds. No doubt it was out of concern for Beryl’s finer feelings that he edited Hemingway’s letter about her, for he left out the following: ‘…and sometimes making them an OK pigpen. But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers.’ And later: ‘She omits some very fantastic stuff which would destroy much of the character of the heroine; but what is that anyhow in writing?’13
Whatever George’s motives, he was the moving force in this important chapter of Beryl’s later years. A question screams to be answered. Why did Hemingway refer to her as ‘very unpleasant’ and what is the fantastic stuff that would destroy the character of the heroine? Bearing in mind the fact that Hemingway knew Beryl for only a matter of weeks, whilst he was convalescing in Nairobi from his unfortunate illness, and Beryl was engaged for most of that time in scouting for Blix on the Alfred Vanderbilt safari, he must have gained his impressions mainly from gossip. Hemingway, not renowned for his own saintliness, could surely not have been referring merely to Beryl’s reputation for sexual promiscuity? One of the many rumours which abound says that Beryl spurned Hemingway’s sexual advances – is this perhaps the reason for his personal condemnation?
Straight on Till Morning Page 40
