Straight on Till Morning (7 page)

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,

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 barefoot
⁴⁵
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.

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 Macgregor 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

A contemporary remembers a visit to the Clutterbuck farm around 1915 to enable her mother to ‘talk horses with Clutt…My mother found us sitting in the corner of a huge loose-box, watching in awe and admiration, as Beryl groomed a large, and very beautiful but reputedly savage imported stallion. He was squealing and snapping but never touched her. She had a truly wonderful gift of understanding and handling animals. She adored them and was quite fearless.'
⁶³