Straight on Till Morning (34 page)

Brooks replied that THIS TOO IS AFRICA was the best so far, but that she should come up with more ideas if she could. He was worried about getting the complete manuscript and asked her to cable him collect with a definite date.

The final work was delivered before the end of January and the book was produced for a June 1942 release. In the event, the title became
West with the Night
. It is not known who was responsible for this title; no correspondence exists and Beryl could not remember, but she did recall that she had suggested the title
Straight on Till Morning
, from which the eventual title evolved. The line: ‘I speak of Africa and golden joys. Henry IV, Act V sc. 3' appeared on the title page and the book was dedicated to ‘My Father'.

In addition there was an acknowledgement: ‘I wish to express my gratitude to Raoul Schumacher for his constant encouragement and his assistance in the preparations for this book.' Beryl could never have imagined how controversial this short dedication was to become some forty years on.

While she waited for her book to be released, Beryl surprisingly decided to throw in her lot with the war effort, which, after Pearl Harbor, had escalated dramatically. In 1986 she told me that Raoul was overseas with the US Navy at the time and she was lonely, so she wrote to the California wing of the Civil Air Patrol, enclosing a résumé of her flying experience and asking if she could be of any help.

Until that time women had not played any sort of flying role in the CAP and though Beryl had a meeting with Wing Commander Rhine to discuss the matter, nothing ever came of it.
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Years later she told friends that she spent some time during the war training pilots, but that she hadn't enjoyed it.
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There is also a story, widely believed, that she flew look-out patrols along the Pacific coastline, but neither of these stories can be verified by official service records, and such service, if any, must have been very short, for from early June she was fully occupied with other interests.

When
West with the Night
was released at the end of May 1942 it was acclaimed by the critics. Not renowned for generosity, they were almost effusive in their praise, and in literary circles at least Beryl was lionized for a time. A selection of reviews is printed below:

One of Houghton Mifflin's most popular and productive authors of the period was Stuart Cloete, a South African who from time to time reviewed the work of other authors. He and his writer/illustrator wife Tiny were to become friends of Beryl and Raoul, who moved in the same literary circles in New York. At the time Beryl's book was published Cloete had not met her, but he was sent the book to review by Dale Warren – Houghton Mifflin's publicity agent.
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Cloete liked it very much and Houghton Mifflin used his neatly written praise in their own publicity releases.
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The book should have been a great success. It was not. Timing is everything in publishing. With the United States firmly committed to the war effort the public taste for works of a poetic nature seems to have waned. The royalties provided Beryl with a modest income for a year or so and then the book vanished.
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No reprints were ordered. An edition was published in England by Harrap & Company, on the very poor quality paper allowed to publishers at the time, but sales were limited and before long that version too, faded from sight.

However, encouraged by the book's initial success Beryl had moved to New York. Later Raoul joined her. By now their relationship had deepened and they decided to marry. Beryl contacted Mansfield, at last agreeing to the divorce which he had sought for the past decade. It is difficult to understand her previous reluctance to formalize her separation from Mansfield. Perhaps it was pique at his refusal to support her, or perhaps she felt a measure of security in technically remaining a member of the aristocratic Markham family. In August she moved to Wyoming where she rented a house in order to establish a ten-week residency, which would enable her to obtain a fast severance of her existing matrimonial ties.
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On 5 October she filed her plaint, charging that Mansfield had subjected her to ‘intolerable indignities'. Her case was accepted and the divorce was granted on 14 October. Raoul and Beryl were married in Laramie on the following Saturday and left Wyoming immediately for a month's honeymoon in Virginia at the home of friends.

In a letter to Dale Warren in November, shortly after the couple's return to New York, Stuart Cloete reveals, ‘I saw Beryl and Raoul yesterday. Funny they should [have been] staying with a cousin of mine in Virginia – the grand-daughter of Lady Northey who was Evangeline Cloete and one of the most beautiful women I ever saw…'
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Beryl had previously written to say she had ‘more or less been brought up by [Cloete's] cousin Lady Northey in Kenya when Major General Sir Edward Northey was Governor there'.
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This is an obvious overstatement of the facts. Beryl did know Lady Northey well at a social level, but she was already married to Jock during the Northeys' years in Kenya (1919–22). If Lady Northey helped the young bride on matters of social etiquette this was probably the sum total of her influence.

Back in London, Mansfield was experiencing difficulties with the validity of Beryl's divorce papers. He eventually had to go through the English courts since they would not accept the American judgement. It took him a year to obtain a Decree Absolute which was granted only after he was able to produce ‘proof of adultery' which consisted of a letter from Raoul admitting that he regularly slept with his own wife.
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Mansfield was at last free to remarry and his second wife Mary took over as stepmother to Gervase who was then at Eton.

Through the winter of 1942–43 Beryl lived alone in New York and the Cloetes ‘saw a lot of her'.
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‘What happened to the cowboy she married?' Cloete scribbled at the foot of a letter to Dale Warren. Raoul returned in January 1943 and shortly afterwards the couple departed for a small ranch in New Mexico.
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It was no more than a piece of arid land with a small wooden shack, but they made it their base for about six months. Beryl hated the cold and bleakness of winter in New York and had gone with alacrity towards the sun. Her friend Stuart Cloete wrote sadly to Dale Warren at Houghton Mifflin:

Despite Cloete's condemnation the move was not merely whimsical. The Schumachers were already experiencing the first of their persistent financial problems and could no longer afford to live in New York in the style which Beryl had adopted on the expectations of her book's success. The royalties from rapidly diminishing sales of
West with the Night
and the rent she received from her Kenyan farm Melela would hardly have covered the couple's drinks bill. In addition there was her annuity from Prince Henry, but she continued to experience great difficulty in having this paid to her in the USA during the war years, due to sterling transfer restrictions. Raoul's contribution to the couple's budget is hazy but this does not necessarily mean that it was non-existent.

Melela had been leased since Beryl left in 1936 and she now wrote to her agents in Nairobi asking for advice about whether or not to sell the property. It seemed highly unlikely, then, that she would ever return to Kenya permanently and at the time she wrote it was far from clear who would win the war. The agents' advice was to sell while she could. Beryl took the advice and subsequently received the sum of £400. Ten years later when Beryl was in Kenya and virtually destitute, Melela was sold again for £40,000.
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Beryl spent most of the summer of 1943 running the ranch and raising turkey poults. Her remarkable affinity with all animals enabled her to keep the chicks alive through a long spell of wet weather to which they are particularly susceptible.
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When I interviewed her in 1986 she repeated claims previously made to others that Raoul was often absent and that she did a little writing, mainly to help overcome boredom and loneliness.
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It is difficult to explain these regular absences of Raoul's. Despite almost a year's research with the assistance of the US Military Personnel Records Office I was unable to locate any record of service for him during this period, although he did serve with the US Coast Guards for while, later on. Scott O'Dell too was puzzled. ‘I never heard of Raoul serving in the Navy.'
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