Straight on Till Morning by Mary S. Lovell

occasions, Beryl claimed, she did some nocturnal typing for him. 3 Her involvement went further than typing. In an apparent attempt to raise money quickly she sent off some of Cloete’s short stories under her own name, to the literary agent they shared, and when a short time later, Cloete also sent the same stories to the agent ‘there was a very awkward situation’. Beryl consequently left the Cloetes and they never saw her again, but after her departure Tiny found that many of Stuart’s hand-made silk shirts and scarves had also left, and that Beryl had charged numerous items of cosmetics, expensive French perfumes and clothes to their charge accounts. ‘She had charm, but no warmth and was completely amoral,’ was the opinion of her understandably disillusioned hostess. 4
    On many previous occasions Beryl had abused the kindness of friends by obtaining credit in their name. She lost many friends because of her complete lack of integrity regarding financial obligations, and she seldom repaid loans. But she could not have hoped to keep her breathtakingly blatant attempt at plagiarism hidden, so why had she attempted such an outrageous fraud? The only explanation seems to lie in a deteriorating health condition which seriously affected her judgement. The same condition had also possibly affected, for some time, her ability to write. But I think that writing had never been an ‘easy’ thing for her and that whilst she was able to cope with writing personal reminiscences (in the way that many people are capable of writing an autobiography but never attempt other works) she could not write to order. She did not possess the sort of imagination that could invent plots; indeed Rose Cartwright – an old Kenya friend – was forthright about this lack of imagination. ‘She had no imagination whatsoever, it had never developed in her as a child and I think that this was why she was often brave to a foolhardy extent,’ she told me.
    After leaving the Cloetes, Beryl spent a period in Durban with her father, who had enjoyed considerable success as a trainer in South Africa. 5 This was no mean accomplishment, for racing in South Africa is a far cry from Kenya. The Cape horses were international class and the competition for the huge prize money was fierce. It was one thing to succeed in prewar Kenya among trainers who were for the most part amateurs, but quite another to emulate that success in the racing world of the Cape.
    But what Beryl really wanted was to get back to Kenya. She was at a crossroads in her life and could not see where her future lay. It did not lie in staying with her father for she could not share him with Emma, Clutterbuck’s faithful partner. She was bad-tempered and abusive towards Emma and created total disharmony in the Clutterbuck household. Eventually, Beryl’s ill-natured behaviour irritated Clutterbuck to such an extent that he told his daughter to leave. Again, her appalling behaviour seems to have been partially caused by her physical condition. Clutterbuck gave her enough money to buy a second-hand car, an old Buick saloon, and to pay for the petrol and oil for her proposed journey to Kenya, and she left South Africa to drive alone to Kenya via Rhodesia. When she arrived in Nairobi in April 1950 she was destitute 6 and entirely dependent on the generosity of old friends. But in her usual way she managed, living on her wits and credit, and was seen often in smart night spots such as the New Stanley Grill, always immaculately turned out and looking very glamorous.
    She stayed for some time with a friend in Nairobi and subsequently on an up-country farm, but they were stop-gap solutions to the long-term problem of finding somewhere permanent to live. It was no time for a peripatetic existence. Kenya was beginning a period of great trauma, the result of growing nationalism among the Africans, and a desire for self-government. At its extreme this flared