Straight on Till Morning (12 page)

Her close friend and one-time jockey Buster Parnell disagreed with this quiet image of Beryl, though he himself was not living in Kenya at the time, as Sonny was. Buster recalled that Beryl told him with glee of the time when at a Djinn Palace party, she climbed into the back of a parked Buick with an amorous companion. To her astonishment she found herself sitting on the naked bodies of a lady and gentleman she knew rather well, and who had got there first. The lady, who was to become a neighbour some years afterwards, was not amused and bit Beryl's little finger nearly through to the bone. The incident cooled the ardour of both couples and the two women never spoke to each other for forty years.
⁷²

The description given by Sonny Bumpus of her ‘sitting quietly' seems to describe a peculiar characteristic which several informants mentioned, and which I noticed particularly. There was, at times, a stillness about her which somehow conveyed an immensely powerful personality. It was not done consciously and she was quite capable of throwing off the mood with a bright remark, ‘Oh for heaven's sake, let's have another drink!'

On Saturday 19 March 1927 the colony read the following announcement in the
East African Standard
over their breakfast coffee:

Clara Kirkpatrick and her two Kirkpatrick sons were now living at Limuru. When her second husband died he left her the sum of £173, and she was therefore forced to rely upon the generosity of her relatives for her income. Probably her allowance provided a better standard of living in Kenya than in England, otherwise it is difficult to know why she chose to resettle there. If she sought a reunion with her daughter she was disappointed. Beryl enjoyed the company of the two young boys and referred to them as her brothers,
⁷³
but she was always cool towards Clara, though she saw her often and even stayed with her on occasions. Pamela Scott remembers Clara and Beryl as being ‘very alike physically. Both were very tall and slim, with brown hair and blue eyes, and both were very striking.'
⁷⁴

The engagement was far from a blissful interlude, and spiteful rumours regarding Beryl's behaviour circulated in Muthaiga and throughout the colony.
⁷⁵
Whilst preparing for her forthcoming marriage to Bob Watson, she continued with her career and at the July race meeting she not only won the two major events but also won three races on each day. She was in great demand socially and despite the ostentatious presence of a large engagement ring was seen out ‘on the town' with several well-known gentlemen. One of these was Mr Mansfield Markham. Karen Blixen again: ‘Bror, whom I met in town last Monday…has been taken on by Mansfield Markham, and his brother Sir Charles Markham.'
⁷⁶

The colony had hardly digested the news of the Watson–Clutterbuck engagement announcement, and decided whether or not to accept the wedding invitations, when another announcement appeared on 27 August 1927. This time Beryl's surname is given as Purves rather than Clutterbuck, as in the previous notice.

This second advertisement not unnaturally provoked a great deal of amused speculation within the colony, whose chief occupation and innocent delight was social gossip. But the amusement was not confined to the colony. The story reached London, and the watchful eye of Rose Cartwright, who was back in London for a while, working for the
Daily Express
on society stories.
⁷⁷
The next morning UK readers were able to discover:

The English papers got it wrong on two counts; firstly there was a gap of five months between engagements, but the news of the first engagement had only reached London in August, hence the ‘story'; secondly the ‘late' Mr Clutterbuck was very much alive and was only ‘late of Njoro'! I was unable to discover any information about the first engagement except a generally held opinion that ‘Watson had a lucky escape!'

Tania Blixen kept her mother up to date on Beryl's affairs with the report that she was lending her house to Beryl and Mansfield to use for a honeymoon: ‘Beryl's wedding takes place on Saturday and I am going into Nairobi for it so I don't know if I will be able to write on Sunday, but I will send a postcard anyway…I do hope they will be happy, and won't express any more of my well-known doubts about marriage – but this one seems to be more of a lottery than usual!'
⁷⁸

The newspaper reports of the wedding followed shortly, as promised, only a week after the engagement announcement.

Tania's weekly letter home recorded: ‘The wedding took place yesterday and went well in every way – the ceremony…and lunch at Muthaiga. Delamere gave away the bride, who looked so lovely – I had provided the bouquet of lilies and white carnations. We were 65 at lunch. Delamere and the bridegroom spoke…the lunch was excellent. I sat on the bridegroom's right, then the “best man” and then the bride's mother, so that was really very nice. They went off joyfully covered with confetti, poor things.'
⁸⁰
Later, mentioning a blocked tear duct which was causing her problems, Tania wrote that tears had been running down her face at Beryl's wedding ‘so unceasingly that everyone must have thought I [was] in despair at not getting Mansfield myself – or plunged in the most sorrowful memories…'
⁸¹

The wedding photograph pictures Beryl with her brown hair worn close-cut in a shingle. Her wedding outfit is the height of 1920s fashion, and she is surrounded by a host of friends including her mother and two small half-brothers, and leading members of Kenya high society, among whom were Lord Delamere and Tania – Baroness von Blixen.

Beryl is seated next to her groom, but on her face there is none of the radiance one might expect in the bride of one of the richest young aristocrats in the colony.

l927–1930

Mansfield Markham was the wealthy son of the late Sir Arthur Markham, Member of Parliament for Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and the first holder of the baronetcy created in 1911. Sir Arthur died in 1916 leaving three sons, the eldest of whom, Charles (father of the present Sir Charles), was only seventeen when he inherited. The two younger sons, Mansfield and Arthur, also inherited a great deal of money at a very early age. Too early, in the opinion of the present Sir Charles, for the two elder brothers had both run through their entire fortunes within two decades.
¹
After leaving Radley, Mansfield spent the best part of a year in a Swiss sanatorium undergoing treatment for tuberculosis which involved painful liver injections. At the age of twenty he was appointed honorary attaché to HM Embassy in Paris. He went to Kenya in early 1927 aged twenty-two, intending to go on safari and explore East Africa.
²

Safaris had become a fashionable pursuit in the early part of the century. A new field of sport had been opened up to the wealthy, and stories filtered back to England and America of a ‘paradise on earth' where unlimited game, exciting sport and a marvellous climate combined to provide the best of everything. After the much-publicized Roosevelt safari
³
there was ‘a virtual flood of wealthy young sportsmen from the aristocratic and officer classes'.

Bunny Allen, a youthful big-game hunter in the twenties, remembered that: ‘Life was pretty wild, very colourful, and it took a long time to get anywhere. Every time you went out in a car you got stuck in the mud, so most of the safaris were done on horses, mules and donkeys, that's why they took so long.' Bunny's first safari car was a Rugby ‘with wooden wheels that squeaked and squawked, a radiator which spurted water the whole time, always ready to make a cup of tea, in fact I used to put cornmeal in the radiator to seal it up at times!' The famous hunter Philip Percival would send out his staff and all the supplies days before the hunters were expected to arrive. The journey to camp could take up to a week and often the safaris lasted months ‘but it didn't matter in those days because people not only had money to burn, but time to burn too'.
⁴

Bror Blixen introduced Mansfield to Beryl in Nairobi after the Markham party had returned from their safari.
⁵
Mansfield fell for the striking young woman immediately, despite the fact that she was engaged to someone else. Sonny Bumpus said of Mansfield: ‘He was a nice enough young man, a bit quiet, but there was nothing extraordinary about him.' Several friends commented ‘I don't know why she married him,' which of course could equally be said of Mansfield. Beryl told friends that she ‘wasn't in love with Mansfield, but she rather liked him'.
⁶
Perhaps it was this which occasioned Tania Blixen's remark that Beryl's marriage was ‘more of a lottery than usual'. Mansfield was slim, rather slight, not much above medium height, fair-haired, good-looking and a man of considerable, quiet charm and cultured intelligence.

After the wedding the pair spent some time at Tania's farm. She wrote, ‘I have had such pleasure lending my house to my newlyweds – but the climate out here makes everything like that easier.'
⁷
They repaid their hostess by presenting her with an unusual gift. ‘This morning a lorry came out with the bed the Markhams have given me – it's as big as a car in itself!' their hostess wrote after they had left her farm.

‘They had ordered it to be made 7 ft wide, but I managed to get that altered, but it is 58 69 and could not be made any less by the time I had a hand in it. In a way it is wonderful to have such a wide bed but my sheets are not wide enough – and I have had to buy two blankets and sew them together as I have no bedspread either, or can't use the beautiful coverlet Aunt Lidda gave me as a wedding present, which is a shame, but I have made one out of a curtain which will do quite well. I didn't think I could refuse it as it really was nice of them to have ordered it for me – and they paid £45 for it you will hardly believe, to extortioners in Nairobi. I have had it put with its back to the window and you can lie in it and see the Ngong Hills through the door out to your veranda…'
⁸

The newlyweds sailed for Europe to continue their honeymoon and en route to London stopped over in Paris where Mansfield introduced Beryl to a lifestyle hitherto unknown to her. The constant round of diplomatic parties and social engagements demanded a wardrobe she did not possess. Mansfield took her to Chanel, and bought her a wonderful trousseau including evening dresses and furs.
⁹
No expense was spared, and probably Mansfield got as much pleasure out of this as Beryl did, for there was undoubtedly an element of satisfaction to him in engineering the transformation of the handsome country girl into a chic, bejewelled international beauty.

If Beryl had been a success in the small, albeit smart circles in Kenya she was doubly so in Paris and London. With her tall, slender figure, so perfect for the 1920s fashions, draped in beautifully designed and cut clothes, she was seen and admired everywhere. Despite her unconventional upbringing her clear light voice had the cultured accents of the English upper class, and there was a charisma about her, a luminosity which attracted men to her side without fail. Soignée is a word often used to describe the young Mrs Mansfield Markham,
¹⁰
but there was also a quiet presence and an appealing combination of radiance and childlike insecurity to which men could not fail to respond.

In England that winter the couple hunted with some of the smarter foxhound packs known years earlier to Beryl's parents – The Belvoir, Cottesmore and Quorn. Beryl had never ridden sidesaddle and after inspecting the stiffly fenced country, sensibly opted to ride astride. This was still unusual enough to cause raised eyebrows at meets in high Leicestershire, but her bold cross-country riding quickly put paid to any disapproval.
¹¹
Furthermore a beautiful woman, well turned out and with a good seat on a horse, is difficult to resist. It was whilst hunting in Leicestershire that Beryl first met Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who was a regular visitor to the Melton country and a keen rider of hounds.
¹²

During that season Beryl was presented to the king and queen, presumably sponsored by her mother-in-law as convention dictated. The formal portrait of this event shows a serious, dark-haired young woman, dressed in a richly embroidered satin gown with a train, and the requisite plume of three Prince of Wales feathers atop a twenty-seven-inch white veil adorning a bejewelled contemporary headdress. The normal rules were circumvented to allow Beryl to make her curtsey to their majesties, for in 1928 divorced women were not presented at court.

However the Markhams' marriage ran into difficulties almost from the start. Beryl's remarks that she was not in love with Mansfield imply a less-than-ideal relationship. Mansfield was not a highly-sexed man,
¹³
while throughout her life Beryl was regarded as having a warm sexual appetite. He may well have been jealous of her popularity with other men.

Mansfield's nephew, the present Sir Charles Markham, also felt that the couple ‘were poles apart. Mansfield had come from an entirely different background, had attended public school and though not an intellectual he had been very well educated and had been brought up in a very rich background with a large number of well-trained servants. He was sophisticated and not very keen on living in the middle of the wilds surrounded only by horses. In contrast, Beryl had received a scanty formal education, had virtually no conversation but horses, and was very much an outdoor girl.'
¹⁴

Doreen Bathurst-Norman, a close friend of Beryl's, stated that Mansfield was ‘simply not up to weight'. On Mansfield's side, after initial infatuation and pride at having captured the colony's golden girl, he found her lack of sophistication irritating. Moreover her openly casual morals were not at all to his taste, and though he was not himself averse to ‘a bit of slap and tickle in the back of a car', it was not the sort of behaviour he expected his wife to adopt.
¹⁵
Beryl's code of morals had been forged in a country where relationships outside marriage could hardly be disguised, and where few people bothered to hide participation in illicit love affairs – wasn't it all part of the fun? Mansfield's upbringing in England had taught him that love affairs were necessarily handled with the utmost secrecy and discretion.

In March 1928 the couple returned to Kenya and immediately called upon Tania Blixen, asking her to look after their two dogs (a borzoi or Russian wolfhound, and a red setter) for a fortnight, while they went to look at a farm property near Njoro where Beryl could take up her role as trainer again. ‘Lady Markham told me the marriage was a complete fiasco,' Tania wrote to her mother, ‘but I thought they seemed very pleased with each other. Beryl looked well and lovely and I had the impression that she is very keen on behaving properly and making a success of it.'
¹⁶

Before leaving England the couple had been to the sales at Newmarket to buy some bloodstock to take back to Kenya. A horse called Messenger Boy, which had the reputation of being totally savage and unmanageable, was put up for sale. It had killed its groom, put the famous English trainer Fred Darling in hospital, and was considered by many to be unrideable. This did not influence Beryl in the slightest, she was after its breeding line and she picked up the horse at a knock-down price. Mansfield was a little doubtful but Beryl was confident that she could handle him. She wrote a story about this horse many years later, as usual in her writing subtly moulding the incident to her dramatic purpose and renaming him Rigel:

Within weeks of Messenger Boy arriving in Kenya, Beryl was riding him out every day. The present Sir Charles Markham said, ‘Mansfield told me she had absolutely no fear of anything. One could only have the greatest respect for her courage.'
¹⁹
Doreen Norman was told the story of Messenger Boy by Beryl. ‘I asked her how she had managed to subdue and ride him. She told me in an off-handed way that she had just turned the horse out in the field for a few weeks and then got on and ridden him. However, much later she admitted to me that he had been a
bit
of a handful at first.'
²⁰

The couple must have left England in the latter half of February in order to be back in Nairobi by mid March when they called on Tania, for they returned by steamboat and ‘one had to allow a good three weeks for the journey'. They had brought a gift for Tania ‘…the sweetest, loveliest deerhound you can imagine – Beryl asked if I would keep her two for another fortnight so my whole life at present is in the Sign of the Dogs – I now have six of all sizes and shapes from Beryl's big borzoi to my or Denys's little Sirius…'
²¹

The Markhams were up country looking at farms for two weeks and then were occupied with settling in, but they called towards the end of the month for tea and to collect the dogs. Poor Tania had had a wretched and worrying time for the borzoi ran away and Tania and Denys had to go out searching for it on horseback – only to find it ‘standing as large as life in front of the house' on their return.
²²