Straight on Till Morning Read online

  Beryl had already been told by her father not to trust this animal, but she ignored the warnings. In 1911 she was attacked by Paddy. How serious the attack was seems to differ in the telling. Beryl’s own description is a dramatic and highly readable account.36 But Margaret Elkington claims it was no more than ‘a slight scratch’.37

  Margaret’s version of the story may have been coloured by a natural sense of injustice at Paddy’s fate, for the eighteen-month-old lion was thereafter confined to a cage for the rest of his long life. It is quite likely that Paddy had merely attempted to play with Beryl in the way he was used to tumble about with other members of the Elkington family. Beryl, though, claimed that he attacked and would have eaten her, if she had not been rescued by Jim Elkington and some of his servants. It does not need a lot of imagination to picture a fully grown lion in his prime attempting to romp with a nine-year-old girl. From the child’s point of view it must have been a terrifying ordeal, whatever the lion’s motives.

  Beryl soon recovered from her adventure. She even regretted Paddy’s incarceration. She often saw him in his cage, for as she grew into womanhood the Elkingtons (including Paddy in his cage), moved from Nairobi up country, and Beryl was a frequent visitor to their home.38

  In 1914 tragedy struck the Clutterbuck relations at Molo. Henry Clutterbuck had been ill for some time, and after major surgery, performed on the kitchen table, he died, leaving the valiant Annie and her two sons on a farm that was, like most in Kenya, mortgaged to the hilt. Annie’s troubles were not restricted to grief, for in the general hysteria which surrounded the advent of war, no unprotected women and children were allowed to remain alone on isolated farmsteads. All their farming implements were confiscated and Annie had no option but to pack up and leave. She took the two boys to stay at Green Hills for a while before returning reluctantly to England. Hardships there may have been, but few settlers gave up and went home willingly. At this time Beryl was a lanky twelve-year-old.

  Her cousin’s last memory of her was of a typical Beryl prank. She packed the huge fireplace in the sitting room with tinder-dry kindling and set it alight. It virtually exploded into life, setting the chimney on fire and threatening the nearby thatched huts and dry grassland surrounding the house. For a while there was utter pandemonium. ‘Beryl simply looked on in wide-eyed amazement at all the fuss as though she had nothing whatsoever to do with it,’ Nigel Clutterbuck told me.

  Earlier the same day she had, with the assistance of her cousin Jasper, killed a black mamba – one of the most poisonous snakes in Africa – with sticks. The two children then paraded around the yard with the dead snake held aloft on poles. ‘She was absolutely wild and would try anything, no matter how dangerous it was,’ her cousin Nigel recalled.39

  As she grew to womanhood, Beryl’s close association with the Africans, of whom she undoubtedly saw a great deal more than she saw of her father or any other European, continued to shape the young girl. It was her African friends who provided her with a companionship she enjoyed, and an education which she preferred to her dreary textbooks. In many ways it was the education given to a young boy of the tribe. She was tall, lithe and strong, fearless to a degree, or if she knew fear she quickly learned never to show it.

  It was the Africans who taught Beryl to handle a spear, to shoot with a bow and arrow, and to play the complicated mathematical game of bao using stones or tiny round sodom apples in shallow depressions in the earth. She joined the young men and listened to the advice given to them by the tribal elders. The instructions meted out regarding hunting were given in the knowledge that hunting was a life or death affair to the young audience. When the African youth hunted lion, no friendly white hunter stood at his shoulder with a covering rifle should the spear fail in its attempt to kill the quarry. Beryl’s version of such a hunt – a young man’s test of skill and courage to determine his fitness to hold the title moran (warrior) – has about it the realism of a scene actually witnessed by the writer:

  The lion breathed and swung his tail in easy rhythmic arcs and watched the slender figure of a human near him in a cleft of rock. On one knee now [Temas] waited for the signal of the lifted spears. Of his comrades he could see but two or three – a tuft of warrior’s feathers, a gleaming arm. He gripped the shaft of his spear until pain stung the muscles of his hand. The lion had crouched and Temas stood suddenly within the radius of his leap. Around the lion the circle of warriors had drawn closer, and there was no sound save the sound of their uneven breathing.

  The lion crouched against the reddish earth, head forward. The muscles of his massive quarters were taut, his body was a drawn bow. And, as a swordsman unsheathes his blade, so he unsheathed his fangs and chose his man…

  He charged at once, and as he charged the young Temas was, in a breath, transformed from doubting boy to a man. All fear was gone – all fear of fear – and as he took the charge, a light almost of ecstasy burned in his eyes, and the spirit of his people came to him.

  Over the rim of his shield he saw fury take form. Light was blotted from his eyes as the dark shape descended down and upon him – for the lion’s leap carried him above the shield, the spear and the youth, so that, looking upward from his crouch, Temas, for a sliver of time, was intimate with death.

  He did not yield. He did not think or feel or consciously react. All was simple – all now happened as in the dreams, and his mind was an observer of his acts. He saw his own spear rise in a swift arc, his own shield leap on the bended arm, his own eyes seek the vital spot – and miss it. But he struck. He struck hard, not wildly or too soon, but exactly at the ripened moment, and saw his point drive full in the shoulder of the beast. It was not enough. In that moment his spear was torn from his grasp, his shield vanished, claws furrowed the flesh of his chest, ripping deep, and the weight, and the power of the charge overwhelmed him.40

  In the evenings she sometimes sat around the fires with the African totos and listened to the endless legends handed down from generation to generation. These traditional fables concerned moral attitudes or myths about man’s origins. ‘Long ago,’ runs one,

  in the days when mountains spat fire, elephants were men and these men were very rich. They had ngombi, kondo, mhuzi, kuku [cattle, sheep, goats and chickens] in numbers like grass on the plains. They were indeed so wealthy that they had no need of work. They simply lolled about all day, covering themselves with oil and red earth and making love in the noonday heat. They had so much milk they did not know what to do with it. Then one day one of them washed in milk, and when the others saw him they did the same thing, so that it became a practice with them, every morning and every evening to toss this white water over their polished bodies. Well. it came to pass on a certain evening that Muungu [God] came through the forest to see if all was in order with the animals he had created – with the rhinoceroses, with the hyenas and with the lions, and with all the others. And all was in order. On his way back he suddenly caught the sound of man’s laughter and turned aside to see if they also were doing well. Now it chanced that it was the time of their evening washing, and when God saw the good milk splash over their bodies he fell into a great passion. ‘I created cows to give them the white water of life and now they throw it away or do worse with it.’ And he called the men to him as he stood there in the shadow of the forest. And the men, when they heard God’s voice louder than the roaring of a lion when its belly is full, trembled and came creeping to him on hands and knees like so many baboons. And God cried out, ‘In so much as you have proved yourselves unworthy to receive my gifts…you shall become Nyama [wild animals], a new kind of Nyama, bearing on your head milk-white teeth so that you will be constantly reminded of your guilt.’ So God transformed them all into elephants and they moved off into the forest, huge grey forms with gleaming tusks set in their bowed heads for ever and ever…41

  Beryl never tired of hearing the stories which began ‘Long ago…’ or ‘There once was a man…’

  In her unique upbringing, she
had two very special African friends, the stately arap Maina, (assigned as Beryl’s personal servant by Clutterbuck), who was to die in the 1914–18 war, and his son Kibii, who was a little younger than Beryl. It was with him that she formed her greatest childhood friendship.42 Another companion was Arthur Orchardson, but he was too hampered by obedience to his mother to join in Beryl’s more adventurous exploits. As a leggy teenager Beryl’s other constant companion was her dog Buller, named after General Buller, the reliever of Ladysmith in the Boer War. Buller the dog was the unlikely cross between Clutterbuck’s favourite bull terrier and the old English sheepdog left at Green Hills by Clara. The cross had failed insofar as he resembled neither. Though thoroughly unlovely to many eyes he was possessed of undeviating loyalty to Beryl and she could not have had a more suitable companion for her youthful adventures. To her at least he was beautiful, for in 1986 she still recalled him as ‘my lovely dog’.43

  Buller and many other canine companions shared Beryl’s mud rondavel, away from the farmhouse. It had a floor of beaten earth and cow dung, trodden down to the consistency of polished tile. An unglazed window looked out on the breathtaking Liakipia Escarpment.44 Whenever she thought she could get away with it, Beryl escaped from the daily round of chores and lessons, clad in khaki shorts and shirt, and sometimes merely in a lungi (a single piece of material tied lengthwise around the body), always barefoot45 and carrying her Masai spear, accompanied by her eager accomplice, Buller, before her father and the household were around to put a stop to her plans.46

  With her African friends Beryl would disappear into the Mau forest to hunt one of the species of buck – reedbuck, waterbuck, bushbuck – or the species of wild pig, the wart hog. The Mau forest is all gone now, but then it was dense with junipers.

  Their trunks were straight and tall and a sort of lichen hung like drooping grey-green whiskers from their crown of dark foliage…dwarfing the paler olives which shared the mountain with them. All through the forest were natural glades where a traveller walked suddenly into bright sunlight after the cold gloom of the woods. Brilliantly coloured butterflies darted in and out of the shadows and hovered, orange and turquoise blue, over the tall pale grass. In the morning you might come upon a party of grey-furred waterbuck grazing in the open, spangled all over with tiny shining beads of dew. If you rustled the grass they would freeze instantly into immobility and listen with heads lifted and big fur-lined ears erect to trap the faintest tremor of the air-waves. Then they would turn suddenly, dark and solid in the sunlight, and vanish noiselessly into the forest as though they had flown apart into a million particles of light and flecks of shade.47

  In the air birds flapped about and shouted raucous calls and monkeys screamed their sharp cry. On the ground ‘the subtle skinned leopard moved as softly as a current of air’.

  There were other dwellers in the forest. These were members of the shy Wanderobo tribe who hunted with poison-tipped bows and arrows, and with whom settlers occasionally established a trading relationship – honey in exchange for the soft colobus monkey skins, and meat in exchange for duties as trackers and guides.48 In those days the charming black and white colobus monkeys were numerous in the forests of the highlands, and would swing through the trees above the traveller’s head, or sit looking down with bright intelligent eyes, ‘like so many tiny nuns peering out of the branches’, one old settler recalled.

  Through these forests Beryl ran as a fair-haired, often half-naked girl carrying her spear.49 She had learned well how to move swiftly and silently, with animal-like stealth, on the balls of her feet so that she almost skimmed over the forest floor and disturbed not so much as a dried twig. She knew that the slightest noise would draw the instant contempt of her companions, as would any sign of weakness or exhaustion. This unique way of moving remained with Beryl all her life. ‘She walked and moved as though she had wings on her ankles until she was nearly eighty,’ said a friend.50

  Beryl’s hunting activities, which today appear somewhat sensationally unusual, are described in vivid detail in West with the Night.51 Many settler children enjoyed similar close relationships with the Africans, but as usual, Beryl went further. Women contemporaries interviewed for this book sometimes doubted the total accuracy of Beryl’s exploits as recorded in West with the Night. Indeed it seems, on the face of it, surprising that her father should have allowed the adolescent girl – tomboy though she then was – to roam about the forests, sometimes remaining away from home overnight engaged in hunting sorties. It also seems unlikely that native warriors would allow their hunting expeditions to be trammelled by the presence of a young girl, particularly a European child.

  However, close friends of Beryl in later years state that Beryl told them tales of her hunting exploits in the bush which were simply too detailed to have been imagined. ‘The Africans were her servants. When she wanted to go hunting she simply ordered them to take her. She was perfectly capable of commanding them to take her along. She was the memsahib kidogo [little memsahib] and very imperious even at that age. But it’s not surprising that Clutterbuck let her roam about as he did. I raised two children myself in Kenya,’ said an informant who knew Beryl well. ‘You always felt that the children were as safe out in the bush with the Africans as they would have been in Hyde Park with a nanny. They were infinitely patient with European children.

  ‘Beryl often told me how she hunted with the Africans, there were some Nandi herdsmen on the farm. She was allowed to roam free…completely wild, like a little savage. She told me she wore nothing but a lungi tied around the bottom half of her body, and she went barefoot and carried a spear. I can vouch for the fact that she knew how to handle a spear, and a bow and arrow in exactly the way that the Africans did. It wasn’t the sort of thing you knew unless you were taught as a child.’52

  Doreen Bathurst Norman, one of Beryl’s greatest friends in later life, also recalled Beryl telling her of her hunting feats and has no doubts that the stories in Beryl’s book are based on fact. Another, perhaps surprising champion of this part of Beryl’s life was Ernest Hemingway, who met her during his African safaris and wrote about her book: ‘…the only parts I know about personally, on account of having been 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…’53

  That Beryl’s own poetic descriptions of the hunts were written from personal experience is beyond question; whether or not she exaggerated her own part in these activities will probably never be known. It is claimed by several informants that the Africans she would have accompanied on the hunting expeditions were members of the Kipsigis tribe, and not the more colourful warrior Nandis. Arap Maina and his son Kibii were Kipsigis – a tribe allied to the Nandi but with a more pastoral culture.54 However, the aristocratic Nandi are a more colourful and widely known race, and perhaps Beryl was merely indulging in a little poetic licence.

  Beryl certainly developed a relationship with the Africans and a knowledge of them which was rare. A close friend told me, ‘Beryl really thought more like an African than a European; she had no trace whatsoever of the expatriate view of Africans. She was almost the only person I knew who really understood them.’55

  Beryl seemed to tread easily between the two cultures, taking from each what she needed. Had she remained in England with her mother and brother, her life would have been vastly different and it is difficult to resist wondering what would have become of the supercharged child if she had been brought up within the confines of Edwardian county society. Had she been born African she would certainly never have been allowed to participate in the hunting pastimes which are purely the preserve of the male warrior.

  Beryl’s self-reliant nature was apparent at an early age. When she was ten years old and staying at the home of her father’s friend Berkeley Cole, who farmed in Naro Moru, she rode accompanied by arap Maina from Naro Moru across the Aberdare Mountains on her pony stallion Wee Macgreg
or in order to attend a party – a three-day journey there and back. ‘I can tell you,’ said the informant, ‘that it was pretty rough country then. She must have been some kid to have done it.’56

  In 1914 Beryl’s friend and possibly the only European woman she cared for, Lady Delamere, died in Nairobi. She was thirty-six years old and had been suffering from heart trouble for some time. Her death must have removed an important influence – certainly the only maternal influence that Beryl could ever remember. Lady Florence was charming and amusing. ‘Her courage and gaiety in the face of many troubles had won the admiration of all who knew her, and her death was a very real sorrow to the East Africans.’57

  Beryl’s riding skills led her to increasing contact with the children of European neighbours. Mrs Hilda Furse (née Hilda Hill-Williams) told me, ‘Our home Marindas at Molo was not so very far on horseback from the Clutterbuck home at Njoro, where Clutt had started a stud of thoroughbreds. We used to send our mares down to visit his beautiful imported stallions.’58

  One such stallion was Camsiscan, son of the 1906 English Derby winner Spearmint, and on his dam’s side, grandson of Carbine by Musket, ‘two of the best racehorses Australia has ever known’.59 Camsiscan was a magnificent horse, imperious, maintained in the prime condition required of a stud stallion, and difficult to ride. Thirteen-year-old Beryl nevertheless rode him out daily. Once during exercise with the string, Camsiscan threw her, and she suffered serious concussion.60 For weeks after her recovery Beryl fought a battle of wills with this horse until an understanding was gradually reached between them that neither was master of the other. During this time Beryl slept in his stable at night.61 She always bore the faint scars on her back of his teeth marks, and at the age of eighty-three she recounted how he had once picked her up in his teeth and shaken her ‘like a terrier with a rat…what a horse he was; wonderful breeding’, she recalled with a smile.62