Straight on Till Morning (23 page)

Whilst Beryl must have experienced disappointment that Tom was making a record attempt without her (for undoubtedly she had hoped to be part of any record attempt made by Tom), she was reassured by his statement that he would be returning to Kenya after the race. All would be well then. If he succeeded, she reasoned, Tom would be famous and then they would have no trouble in gaining sponsorship for other joint feats of airmanship. However she badly wanted to be part of Tom's attempt – if only to see him during the build-up to the race.

The idea of flying at once to England became irresistible, but Beryl could not afford it. She must have discussed her thoughts with Blix, for he came to the rescue with a solution to the problem. His nephew Gustaf ‘Romulus' Kleen, who was then farming in Tanganyika, was just about to depart for Europe and would undoubtedly be glad to pay the expenses of the trip if Beryl would fly him there. The flight was hastily arranged and two weeks before the planned departure Romulus went to Nairobi where he stayed with Beryl at her cottage at Muthaiga.
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A few days before the flight planned for mid April they flew to the Carberrys' farm Seremai, where Beryl's Avian was overhauled by J. C.'s flight mechanic. Torrential rain had submerged the airstrip at Seremai on the day of departure, making a fully-laden take-off inadvisable, so it was decided that the aeroplane should be flown to nearby Nyeri aerodrome by Sidney St Barbe. Beryl and Romulus were to drive there with the luggage which would then be loaded on to the aeroplane while it was receiving its full load of fuel for the trip.

The rainwater which submerged the runway at Seremai also covered an unseen hazard. In the heavy downpour a deep channel had appeared across the runway. On its take-off run the Avian hit this furrow and turned over. Luckily St Barbe was unhurt but the aeroplane was slightly damaged and the propeller broken. A new propeller would take a month to arrive from the UK and to Beryl's dismay the flight had to be abandoned.

‘As it turned out,' Romulus told me, ‘the accident was a piece of luck, for Beryl went down that same evening with an attack of malaria and had to be taken by hospital plane to Nairobi the following day.' Although very gravely ill, with alternating acute chills and burning fever, sometimes barely conscious and often delirious, Beryl fiercely refused to go to hospital. Romulus and the devoted
arap
Ruta nursed her back to health in the cottage at Muthaiga and as soon as she was out of danger Romulus departed for Europe by boat. They did not meet again for a quarter of a century.
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It was six weeks before she was able to fly again and by then the Avian was still not airworthy. Carberry therefore loaned Beryl a Klemm to get around in the meantime. The Klemm was a low-wing mono-plane of German manufacture. Carberry was very pro-German and his feelings were reflected in his aeroplanes and cars. However the Klemm was powered by an engine of British manufacture – a 90-hp Pobjoy, which enjoyed an almost unrivalled reputation for unreliability. Beryl disliked the Klemm. Its only saving grace seemed to be its ability to glide on its huge wings for long distances. Its engine she described as ‘so feeble as almost to require of the pilot the sensitive touch of a pianist to keep it in harmony with the weather and wind'.
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She did a few taxi jobs in the Klemm in June and July, but it was not until the Avian was repaired at the end of August that Beryl took up her work again. She made only seven flights between April and August, and probably she had not fully recovered her health, for even after the Avian was returned her initial flights were short hops.
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It was not until November that she was able to continue her work scouting for elephant. She persisted in this despite the warnings of her friends about the risks, and they were many, for it was lucrative work paying nearly twice as much as other charter jobs.

It is true that had Beryl had a forced landing in such country she would have been in deep trouble. In 1986 David Allen, who runs a flying safari business in Nairobi which is the present-day equivalent of Beryl's, was in no doubt. His work today takes him over much of the territory that Beryl flew over in the 1930s. ‘I wouldn't like to do it in a single-engined aeroplane and no radio, landing wherever you could get the plane down. It would take some doing.'
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During July and the first part of August Beryl stayed with her father, making an unusually long recovery (for her) from her illness. The month-long convalescence with its recurring ill health, headaches and muscular pains, was purgatory to her. In a way it was a blessing she did not know what was occurring in England, for the purgatory would have become hell.

In August Tom had flown Lord Furness to the races at Le Touquet where he was introduced to the dazzling young comedy actress Florence Desmond. She was relaxing after a successful run in the show
Why Not Tonight
and had been to Paris to buy some clothes. Immediately attracted to ‘Dessie', as she was known to all, Tom spent the evening telling her about the forthcoming race to Australia. She thought he was either mad or had been drinking too much champagne. England to Australia in three days? An impossible idea!

Shortly after she returned to England Tom phoned Dessie at her cottage in Hertfordshire and she invited him down for the day. He said he would fly down in Furness's Puss Moth if she would place a sheet in the biggest field near her house so that he'd know where to land. This incident not unnaturally provoked interest in the village, coupled no doubt with some lively gossip about ‘that actress lady and her pilot friend'. Even the village policeman got in on the act, pedalling portentously down to Dessie's cottage ‘to take particulars. In the weeks to follow,' wrote Dessie in her autobiography, ‘it became a regular week-end treat for the village – the arrival of the little Puss Moth. People were beginning to take a big interest in the forthcoming air-race to Australia, and the fact that Tom was taking part in the race added to their interest and curiosity to see him when he landed.'
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By October when he took off for the race, Tom's feelings for Dessie ran deep. His letters to her are a far cry from those he wrote to Beryl and it is hard not to make comparisons. Whilst he was in training for the race he wrote to Dessie:

Dessie went to see Tom on the eve of the race. She found the circus that surrounded him with the thousands of avid spectators, press and photographers, aircraft designers, backers and manufacturers, as well as the atmosphere, which was charged with tension,

Dessie did not want to watch the take-off, which was at dawn on the following day, and as Tom walked her to her car he asked her to marry him. Emotionally upset at the parting and knowing that in the morning Tom would experience a take-off in the Comet carrying for the first time a full load of petrol, as the preliminary to the flight of over eleven thousand miles, she felt that it was the wrong moment to make such an important decision. ‘Tom,' she said, ‘I'll tell you when you come back.'
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The next days were anxious ones for Dessie. When a reporter called and asked if it was true she was going to marry Tom, she told him she did not know. ‘I told him Tom had asked me to marry him before he took off on the flight, and that I would give him his answer when he got back.' Finally the news came through that Tom and Charles Scott had won the race in 2 days, 22 hours and 59 minutes. Dessie's joy turned to outrage when she saw the newspapers: ‘Campbell Black racing for a bride. [Miss Desmond says] “If you win the race I will give you my answer.”' What if Tom thought she'd actually said that? Tom, when he telephoned her from Australia, laughed at her concern, ‘Stop worrying about it. Will you marry me?' But she still didn't give him an answer. She felt that the race had no bearings on her feelings for him.
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The welcome given to Tom and Charles when they arrived in England was something seen these days only on occasions such as royal weddings. It was followed by receptions, parties, press conferences, an endless round of dinners where Tom had to speak – he always came up with some amusing little line to offset the more dramatic (though completely factual) descriptions given by Scott. But despite their acclaim and reputation, the two men made almost no financial gain from their flight. They had been backed by A.O.E. Edwards, owner of the Grosvenor House Hotel in London's Park Lane, who put up £5000 to buy the Comet. The prize of £10,000 and the Gold Cup worth £500 went to Edwards, and he received besides an unknown amount of benefit from the flight because the words Grosvenor House were on the front of every newspaper in the world. Tom and Charles Scott received no share of the prizes and Edwards eventually sold the Comet to the Air Ministry for £7000 for research purposes, though Tom pleaded with him to sell it back to him for the £5000 it had originally cost him. The only proceeds Tom received out of the venture were the fees people paid to see the Comet, when it was put on show in London, together with payment for a few newspaper articles and advertising copy, and a cheque from Lord Wakefield in respect of services to aviation. A little while later Dessie came to a decision, and next time Tom asked her to marry him she agreed.
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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,
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but Beryl was shocked to read the succeeding paragraph:

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
.
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