CHAPTER TWELVE

1941–1944

Beryl’s declared preference for New York State or Connecticut as a place to continue her work may have been prescribed by Saint-Exupéry’s return to the East Coast, but she obviously changed her mind, for after leaving the Bahamas she travelled directly to California. In Los Angeles she stayed with friends for a few weeks whilst she looked for permanent accommodation, having given up her old apartment before her departure to Nassau. Shortly after returning to California she was introduced to Raoul Schumacher at a party.

The writer Scott O’Dell had for some time been working at Paramount Studios and knew Beryl through her work on Safari. He told me, ‘I invited Raoul along because I thought she might like him. He was very entertaining, extremely handsome and fair-haired – no picture I ever saw of him did him any justice.’¹ Another friend told me, ‘Raoul was very well-read and remembered anything anybody had ever written, he was a sort of walking encyclopedia.’²

Schumacher was thirty-four years old, five years younger than Beryl (though for some years Beryl had been hiding her real age, even in formal documents).³ At the age of twenty he had inherited some money with which he bought a small ranch in New Mexico. This venture was successful, and when he eventually sold out he made a considerable profit. After an extended trip to Europe where he had relatives, he returned to the USA in 1936 and spent some months in New York working as a freelance journalist. When this proved unsuccessful he spent two years ranching in Mexico before moving to Santa Barbara, California, in 1939, and Los Angeles in 1941.

When he and Beryl met in August 1941, Raoul was living in South Spalding Drive, Beverly Hills.⁴ Several people recalled Raoul’s claims to have been working in Hollywood at the time on one of the anonymous writing teams employed by the major studios, but no record exists of any such employment. An item in the Santa Barbara News Press some years afterwards also stated that Raoul ‘was for some years actively engaged on scenario writing [in] Hollywood’,⁵ but he is not listed on any studio employment register or other studio records of the period. He was not registered as a scriptwriter, nor did he belong to a writers’ union. Scott O’Dell said he had never heard that Raoul worked for the studios.

Another well-publicized rumour is that Raoul was a ghostwriter. There is no proof of this activity prior to his meeting with Beryl, although in 1945 he told a magazine journalist: ‘I once ghost-wrote a full-length Western novel on the dictaphone in seven days.’ Adding disarmingly, ‘It was a worst seller.’⁶

His greatest asset was charm and Beryl fell deeply in love with him. Scott O’Dell told me about their meeting: ‘There was an instantaneous attraction between them – almost a conflagration. It must have been purely physical because she knew nothing at all about him. Next thing I knew they’d disappeared together and it was about four months before they surfaced again.’⁷

During these months Raoul acted as Beryl’s editor. The few pages of manuscript for West with the Night which survive reveal editing in Raoul’s handwriting which certainly added polish, but cannot be regarded as major changes to her own words. It was almost certainly at his suggestion that the design of the book was altered so that it became a series of remembered incidents with no strict chronological order. Pages have been renumbered and chapter headings revised. Small episodes were discarded and the entire manuscript was ‘tightened up’. ‘Cut school at Nairobi – use Balmy story instead,’ he scribbled across one page.

It is impossible to overstress the importance to Beryl of this type of practical support. A close friend of many years standing said, ‘Help and encouragement have always been very important to Beryl. She was always able to do things for herself but she needed to know that there was someone to whom she could turn if she needed guidance.’⁸ This need for a prop, created by a basic insecurity and a lack of confidence in her own ability, had initially been filled by her father, and subsequently by arap Ruta, Denys Finch Hatton, and Tom Campbell Black. Since Tom’s death there had been no man in Beryl’s life who filled this important role of supporter, until she met Raoul.

Houghton Mifflin were enthusiastic about the work she had so far submitted to them:

September 19, 1941

Dear Miss Markham,

I have just heard…that you are back in California. I also gather the book is nearing completion. All this is very good news. As you know we are very enthusiastic about as much of the manuscript as we’ve seen so far. The last batch we received through Ann Watkins’ office was Pages 110–132 on July 16. Is there more manuscript on the way?

…When may we hope to see the complete manuscript? To do a proper promotion job, we like to have a manuscript about six months before publication. So you see, there is no time to be lost.

Sincerely Yours
Paul Brooks⁹

12340 Emelita Street
North Hollywood,
California
23rd September 1941

Paul Brooks,
Houghton Mifflin,
2 Park Street
Boston

Dear Mr Brooks:

Very many thanks for your letter, which cleared up a lot of things in my mind. I hope I can maintain your present enthusiasm for the manuscript in the succeeding chapters.

My moving here from Nassau took up a certain amount of time, but in spite of this, I have managed to complete about fifteen thousand words since arriving in California. Ann Watkins has had a good part of this for some time and will receive the remainder shortly. I am, of course, sending her a first and second copy – one for your office and the other for her own use. Margot Johnson suggested that I send the material in large batches, rather than a chapter or so at a time. I would be willing, however, to send it along as I turn it out, should you prefer it. Naturally, I would like to have your opinion of it, as it progresses.

I was interested in your information concerning publication dates in general. I knew very little about any of these things when I was writing to Lee, and I realize more than ever that there’s no time to lose.

As to when it will be completed, I hope to have it on your hands by November 1st – at least not later than the fifteenth. That was the approximate date I gave to my agent when I signed the contract.

By the way, I asked Lee if my book had any chance of being considered for one of your fellowship prizes, but so far have had no reply, or is this type of thing not eligible.

My Best Wishes
Beryl¹⁰

Brooks replied that he would prefer the manuscript in ‘large chunks…or complete, rather than chapter by chapter’ and telling her that it was too late to consider the book for a Literary Fellowship. ‘Fellowship projects have to be considered as such from the very beginning. In any case, I doubt whether this is just the sort of book to come under that plan.’

By October Beryl had found a more permanent residence in North Hollywood.¹¹ This was a single-storey house, not large but roomy enough for Beryl and her friend Dorothy Rogers, with whom she shared. The costs of travel and house moving may have been responsible for a request to her publishers for a further advance. An unsigned memo dated 17 October in the Houghton Mifflin files has an interesting addendum. The original typewritten script reads: ‘Mr Linscott would like the Beryl Markham blank back before next Tuesday.’ Scrawled on this memo are two short handwritten notes. The first: ‘Drawing prepared. Author wants money’, is capped by a terse query written in another hand. ‘Or what?’

MEMORANDUM

To Mr Greenslet From RNL Date Oct 20 41

Last June we signed up a non fiction project entitled WINGS OVER THE JUNGLE written by Beryl Markham and sent us through Ann Watkins, with a contract calling for $250 on signing and $250 more on receipt of a satisfactory manuscript. The author has now written us, through Lee Barker (who strongly seconds her request) asking if she can have $100 more at the present time in view of the fact that she has now sent us 199 pages of manuscript and expects to send us the rest next month for publication early in 1942.

Beryl Markham is a famous aviatrix who was brought up on an African ranch, become a professional horse trainer, learned to fly, and for years operated a sort of air taxi service for African hunters during which time she had innumerable adventures. This book is the story of her life, written with really extraordinary vividness and dramatic quality. We gave her a contract on the basis of the first chapter and the material received since more than lives up to our expectation.

Beryl Markham is now in this country, has put aside all other work to finish the book promptly, and has apparently, run out of funds and needs this small amount to tide her over for a month while she completes it.¹²

October 23rd 1941

Dear Miss Markham,

Hearing from Lee that you need some small further advance immediately, I have mailed a check for $100.00 to Margot Johnson at Ann Watkins. We continue to like the manuscript better and better. When may we hope to have the whole thing ready for press?

Paul Brooks
Managing Editor

P.S. We all feel that the present title WINGS OVER THE JUNGLE, does not do justice to the book. It applies to only a small portion of it and is also rather conventional. Will you rack your brains and send me some alternative suggestions within a day or two? We want to prepare a selling sample but are stopped until the title is decided.¹³

Probably the suggested title originated in the offices of Beryl’s agent, Ann Watkins. One can almost sense Beryl’s delicate eyebrows being arched in the second paragraph of her reply.

October 25th

Dear Mr Brooks,

Thank you so very much for your letter and your kindness in sending Margot Johnson a cheque for me. I wouldn’t for a moment have bothered you, except that things became just a bit difficult in the last couple of weeks.

I am very much encouraged by your comments regarding the latter part of the manuscript, but where in the world did you get the title WINGS OVER THE JUNGLE? It surely is not mine and was never suggested by me in any letter to anybody – it sounds like a title chosen by a protégé of Osa Johnson! (Not to be unkind).¹⁴

The title that I have selected is: THERE FELL MY SHADOW, taken from a line out of the book. It seems to me appropriate in more ways than one, but if you think not, let me know and I will try again.

Yours very sincerely,
Beryl Markham¹⁵

October 27th 1941

Dear Miss Markham,

I don’t know where the title came from either, but I had every intention of changing it. THERE FELL MY SHADOW is certainly better, though I’m not sure it’s perfect. Could you put on your thinking cap and produce a few alternatives?

Yours sincerely
Paul Brooks¹⁶

October 31 1941

Dear Mr Brooks,

I am still in search of a perfect title, at your suggestion, which I must say is quite a mark to shoot at. I understand that it must be appropriate to the book, and at the same time have appeal to the buying public.

Here, after wearing myself to a thin white centre, is all I am able to offer. If you find none of these to your liking however, please let me know what angle I ought to aim at.

1. STEPS TO THE SKY

2. ONCE IN THE WIND

3. CATCH THE QUICK YEARS

4. KWAHERI MEANS FAREWELL

S. KWAHERI! KWAHERI! (Swahili)

6. ERRANT IN AFRICA

7. STARS ARE STEADFAST

8. NO STAR IS LOST

Sincerely yours,
Beryl Markham¹⁷

November 4th 1941

Dear Miss Markham,

In the absence of Paul Brooks I am writing…to say that our own title preference is for ‘There fell my shadow’, with a second choice, ‘Once in the wind.’

Sincerely,
R. N. Linscott¹⁸

November 12th 1941

Dear Mr Linscott:

Thank you for your letter. I am glad that your choice of a title is the same as my own, though from Paul Brooks’ last letter, I gather he thinks a better one might still be found. At this point, however, I have no further suggestions. THERE FELL MY SHADOW seems to apply all through the book also, the title appears in a line from one of the later chapters which I think adds to its authenticity.

Meanwhile the work goes on and I hope to have it ready for you shortly.

Sincerely
Beryl Markham¹⁹

November 18th 1941

Dear Miss Markham,

You’re right – I’m still far from content with THERE FELL MY SHADOW. It seems a little pretentious, and the double entente [sic] is not evident until one knows a little more about the book. The perfect title would suggest that you are writing about Africa, not as a traveller or an explorer, but as one who has lived there and grown up there. It has been suggested that AFRICA IS MY HOME, while very simple and literal, gets this idea over very well. How does it strike you?…We must decide immediately. I wish that you would send me a day letter, at our expense, giving your opinion of the title mentioned above and suggesting other alternatives which accomplish what we have in mind…

Sincerely yours,
Paul Brooks²⁰

COLLECT DAY LETTER NOV 22ND 41 NORTH HOLLYWOOD

PAUL BROOKS. MOST ANXIOUS CO-OPERATE BUT FEEL SUGGESTED TITLE NON INCLUSIVE COLOURLESS AND HAS MISSIONARY FLAVOUR. OFFER FOLLOWING ALTERNATIVES. RETREAT TO FLIGHT. THIS TOO IS AFRICA. AFRICAN MOSAIC. PAGE OF A LIFE. STILL TRYING HARD IF UNACCEPTABLE. BERYL MARKHAM.²¹

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.

COLLECT OVERNIGHT TELEGRAM NOV 29TH NORTH HOLLYWOOD

PAUL BROOKS. MAILING ADDITIONAL 15000 WORDS TOMORROW STOP EXPECT FINISH BOOK DECEMBER 15 BUT MAKING EVERY EFFORT TO FINISH EARLIER STOP STILL THINKING ABOUT TITLE MEANWHILE FOLLOWING MIGHT BE CONSIDERED STOP NO OTHER AFRICA = BERYL MARKHAM²²

PAID TELEGRAM DECEMBER 5 1941

BOSTON BERYL MARKHAM. FEEL CERTAIN WE HAVE FINALLY DISCOVERED PERFECT TITLE QUOTE I SPEAK OF AFRICA UNQUOTE USING TITLE PAGE LINE FROM SHAKESPEARES HENRY FOUR QUOTE I SPEAK OF AFRICA AND GOLDEN JOYS UNQUOTE PLEASE WIRE COLLECT YOUR OKAY SELLING SAMPLES UNDER WAY REGARDS. PAUL BROOKS²³

COLLECT NIGHT TELEGRAM DEC 5TH. NORTH HOLLYWOOD

PAUL BROOKS. DELIGHTED WITH YOUR TITLE AND LINE FOR TITLE PAGE FULL MARKS TO YOU AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE REGARDS BERYL MARKHAM.²⁴

PAID TELEGRAM DEC 22 1941

BERYL MARKHAM. GLAD TO HAVE FOUR MORE CHAPTERS AND EAGER FOR BALANCE WHEN MAY WE EXPECT TOTAL. PAUL BROOKS²⁵

COLLECT NIGHT TELEGRAM DEC 23 1941 NORTH HOLLYWOOD

PAUL BROOKS. HAVE HAD BAD ATTACK OF FLU HOWEVER MORE MATERIAL IN MAIL AND LAST TWO CHAPTERS UNDER WAY XMAS WISHES. BERYL MARKHAM²⁶

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.

3 March 1942

Dear Mrs Markham

Your kind letter of February 27th is at hand and we were indeed very glad to hear from you and your offer of assistance in the Civil Air Patrol is greatly appreciated. You may rest assured that we will be very happy to see you and may I suggest you call my secretary…for an appointment at such time as may be convenient to you.

Yours very truly
Bertrand Rhine
Wing Commander for California
Civil Air Patrol²⁷

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.²⁸

Years later she told friends that she spent some time during the war training pilots, but that she hadn’t enjoyed it.²⁹ 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:

When a book like Beryl Markham’s West with the Night comes along it leaves a reviewer very humble. Words of praise used for other works seem trite and thin. For West with the Night is more than an autobiography; it is a poet’s feeling for her land; an adventurer’s response to life; a philosopher’s evaluation of human beings and human destinies. To say that Beryl Markham captures the spirit of Africa would be presumptuous and ridiculous; Africa has captured hers, and she speaks with eloquence close to enchantment of the things it has meant to her.

Rose Field, Books, 5 July 1942

[Miss] Markham has made a real contribution to the literature of flight. Her background is more romantic than Ann Lindbergh’s, her perception as delicate. Here are the jungles and excitements of Osa Johnson…At a moment when our constant thought is of danger and destruction in the heavens it is good to read some of the poetry of flight, to experience secondhand the wide solitude of the sky.

E. M., Boston Globe, 17 June 1942

Here is more than a mere autobiographical work. Here is an interpretation of Africa – A scrutiny into its age-old secrets and a glance into its future. As for the stylist, he will find Miss Markham’s writing distinguished. It has strength, it has the precious quality of unexpectedness; it is unfailingly intelligent, like the mind of the woman who shaped it. For her thinking is bold, original and challenging as her life has been.

M.W., Christian Science Monitor, 8 August 1942

A book quite unlike anything that has been written by any other woman or about Africa, its natives, its hunting and its future by anybody. It is written as a book on such a subject should be, straight out of experienced knowledge. Its thought was born in the long, wide-spaced African silences. Its opinions are those of a woman who has always from childhood been very much a person in her own right, and by reason of a country where cut-to-pattern people do not belong. And it is written with exceptional simple beauty in a style that, without aiming at distinction achieves it unquestionably.

J.S. Southron, New York Times, 21 June 1942

The Chapters on flying over Africa are unusually thrilling…Her descriptions of the strange country over which she travelled are sensitive…and a little rapturous about the ‘feel’ of Africa.

Clifton Fadiman, New Yorker, 20 June 1942

Beryl Markham does more than tell of Africa. With admirable modesty, she offers us a thrilling as well as appealing saga of a very valiant and very human woman, philosophically pitting her skill, bolstered by limitless faith in herself, against relentless Nature in all her multifarious disguises, in the dank jungles, the desert wastes, and the boundless skies.

Linton Wells, Saturday Review of Literature, 27 June 1942

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.³⁰ Cloete liked it very much and Houghton Mifflin used his neatly written praise in their own publicity releases.³¹

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.³² 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.³³

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…’³⁴ 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’.³⁵ 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.³⁶ 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’.³⁷ ‘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.³⁸ 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:

Dear Dale,

…I have no favourite blond now that Beryl has gone with the wind and the shoemaker West into the snowy night…about the silliest thing I ever heard of as there is no food, no servants and damn few houses from what I hear…

Yours Stuart
(Cloete)³⁹

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 £40,000.⁴⁰

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.⁴¹ 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.⁴² 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.’⁴³

Beryl’s first short story, ‘The Captain and his Horse’, appeared in Ladies’ Home Journal in August 1943. This magazine had previously published a chapter from West with the Night under the title ‘Wise Child’ which had proved popular, and Beryl had no difficulty in placing another story with them. Interestingly the basis for the story was several discarded paragraphs from the manuscript for West with the Night, but she appears to have borrowed the idea from her friend Stuart Cloete according to the following letter:

September 7th 1943

To Dale Warren
Houghton Mifflin

Dear Dale,

Many thanks for your note. I’m glad you find the [cough mixture] good for a hangover. I had never heard of it being drunk for pleasure before but you are a great innovator.

Yes I have read Beryl’s magnificent horse story, and you will find my equally magnificent horse story in a forthcoming Colliers.⁴⁴ I wrote mine some time before Beryl wrote hers and read it to her when she was in New York.

Hon Y Soit Qui Mal Y Pense…

Yours
Stuart⁴⁵

By September when Houghton Mifflin wired her to ask if she would speak at a forthcoming book fair in ‘the East’ the Schumachers had left New Mexico for good and were living on a small ranch at Lake Elsinore in Southern California where she wrote ‘Something I Remember’, another short autobiographical story. Houghton Mifflin also wanted to discuss her future writing plans.

‘Something I Remember’ and ‘The Splendid Outcast’, both written in the winter of 1943–44, were written in the same style as West with the Night, and are based on actual incidents in Beryl’s early life. Her success in publishing these short stories provided the Schumachers with a potentially lucrative source of income and Raoul was not slow to recognize the marketability of Beryl’s name. However it was almost certainly Raoul who wrote the next two stories which appeared under the name Beryl Markham. Both ‘Your Heart Will Tell You’ and ‘Appointment in Khartoum⁴⁶ rely heavily on Beryl’s flying experiences in Africa for the story-line, but they are purely romantic fiction and are written in a totally different style to that of Beryl’s book and her earlier stories. This style is clearly repeated in ‘The Whip Hand’, a short story published under the name of Raoul Schumacher which appeared in Collier’s Weekly Magazine in June 1944.

Although in later years Raoul claimed to friends that he had been a writer during the early 1940s, ‘The Whip Hand’ was the first time his name had appeared in print. His writing style was smart and snappy, contemporarily popular with the readers of a whole range of periodicals who lapped up escapist fiction at an astonishing rate. It is unlike Beryl’s more poetic, sensitive style of writing though it is known that she co-wrote these stories to the extent that she told Raoul of her experiences and provided background information about Africa. It seems that she was not able, or was not prepared, to write popular fiction to order.

Another story, ‘Brothers are the Same’, written in 1944 and published in Collier’s under Beryl’s name in February 1945, was almost certainly also Raoul’s work although, again, Beryl must have provided much of the detailed background information on the Maasai and Africa. Not enough it seems, for Raoul was driven to researching in a reference library for tribal customs of the Maasai which Beryl could not provide.⁴⁷ Nevertheless there is more of Beryl in this story than in the previous two and the Schumachers obviously felt they had found a successful formula. Raoul, who had been a frustrated writer, could be relied upon to turn out fictional stories based on Beryl’s adventures and experiences whilst Beryl herself could occasionally write a short autobiographical episode. In this connection Raoul’s subsequent claims that he had been a ghost writer appear to be true, although these activities seem to have been mainly confined to those stories he wrote under Beryl’s name with story-line help from her.⁴⁸

Scott O’Dell visited the couple whilst they were at Elsinore and found them working in the basement, the coolest place in the house during a heatwave. In a letter to Vanity Fair in March 1987 he recalled: ‘Beryl [was] dictating, Raoul copying; [they were] writing a short story and stewing in the torrid heat. A New York editor sat on the doorstep.’ The New York editor was almost certainly Kyle Crighton of Collier’s Magazine, who was known to have been in regular contact with Beryl at the time. Interviewed for Collier’s, Beryl admitted to being unsure as to whether the adventurous life she had led was a hindrance or a help to her as a writer. ‘That old adage “Truth is stranger than fiction” is so correct for me,’ she told Crighton, ‘that any inventive power I might have is stifled.’⁴⁹

The statement that Beryl was seen dictating to Raoul is an important one, though when I questioned Mr O’Dell later he revised this, saying that Beryl was merely ‘telling stories to Raoul and he was putting it into readable prose’. Unfortunately O’Dell could not recall the substance of the story on which they were working, but he did recall Beryl and Raoul’s relationship at this time, more than a year after their marriage: ‘They were deliriously happy and went about hand in hand, dressed in Levis, concha belts and matching calico shirts and hats. Modern lovers out of ancient times. Beryl had a horse, a cat and two Nubian goats to remind her of her African days. How I envied them and their Arcadian lives.’⁵⁰

Beryl too remembered this time for she had already told me that she and Raoul used to ride out ‘dressed as cowboys’, but she could provide no further details. She was promised a series of lecture tours and Raoul, having had ‘The Whip Hand’ published, now felt he could write under his own name. To all appearances the couple’s future as a writing team looked set to flourish and in the summer of 1944 Beryl and Raoul moved to a much larger, rented house in Pasadena, north-east of Los Angeles.

That winter Scott O’Dell noticed the first snags in the fabric of the once idyllic relationship. The couple were known for throwing numerous parties. O’Dell attended one of these parties and was sitting on the sofa next to Beryl when Raoul carried in a tray of martinis. Somehow Raoul spilled a drink and Beryl meaningfully whispered to O’Dell that this clumsiness was becoming a habit. It was a clear hint about the heavy drinking that was later to become a real problem for Raoul, and O’Dell was startled by the glint in Beryl’s eyes as she spoke. Later he spent some time alone with Raoul and they talked about writing.

I asked what they were working on…he said he was doing a novel about Africa. I said, ‘Why are you writing about Africa, you’ve never been there?’ He replied, ‘Are you kidding? I’ve lived there through Beryl and all her stories.’ He was quiet for a minute and then he said to me, ‘You are my best friend and I want to make a confession. I want you to know that Beryl did not write West with the Night, or any of the short stories. Not one damn word of anything.’

But did Raoul actually claim to have written them all himself? ‘Yes I’m sure of that, Raoul wrote them all,’ O’Dell stated. ‘But anyway that was when everything started to go wrong for them, when they were in Pasadena.’⁵¹

Some years later Raoul was to make a similar statement about his authorship to another close male friend, but the evidence does not substantiate his claims. I have no doubts that Raoul wrote three – or perhaps four – of the fictional stories published in Beryl’s name. They were clearly based on Beryl’s own experiences and it is obvious that she must have provided the background, probably in just the manner that Scott O’Dell witnessed. But I believe Raoul’s claim to have written West with the Night was a weak attempt to bolster his own ego when he was feeling the first icy vibrations of Beryl’s disapproval.

Certainly he had edited the manuscript, maybe he even became involved in the writing of the final six chapters, and this might well have led him to assume a closer identity with the work than was justified. He may have genuinely felt that his contribution entitled him to some claim to authorship. But there is nothing to corroborate his reported statement that Beryl wrote ‘not one damn word’. On the contrary, all the surviving documentary evidence points to Beryl having been the book’s author. According to the correspondence between Beryl and her publishers, Houghton Mifflin had already received one hundred and thirty-two pages of manuscript by July 1941, and a further sixty-seven pages had been sent to Ann Watkins before Beryl left Nassau for California. Yet although she wrote the final six chapters (of twenty-four) after she met Raoul, there is nothing in West with the Night which even hints at a change in writing style.

Saint-Exupéry’s death had been announced only weeks before O’Dell’s visit to the couple in Pasadena.⁵² Could it be that in making his surprising ‘confession’ Raoul felt that there was no possible danger of it being refuted?

These first signs of strain in the marriage that had at first been so happy also marked a new characteristic in Beryl. Where there had once been a childlike appeal, there now appeared a hardness in her manner bred out of a great disillusionment. There was a peremptory edge to her voice and the look in her eyes when she watched Raoul was now more often jaundiced than adoring. What had gone wrong for the couple in the months since O’Dell had last seen them? Was it only because of Raoul’s increasingly heavy drinking, or had she already discovered at this stage that he had male lovers?

O’Dell did not know the real cause behind the small manifestations of approaching disaster; he saw the Schumachers too seldom, he says, even to hazard a guess (though Raoul’s statement, ‘You are my best friend,’ sits uneasily in this light). He saw no evidence of homosexuality in Raoul. ‘To the contrary, I thought he was rather like me in that respect – too much the other way, and I knew he had earlier enjoyed several affairs with some high-flying women in New Mexico and Arizona,’ Mr O’Dell added.

But Raoul had been found lacking in some way, of that there is no doubt. The idol had feet of clay. He did not measure up. Perhaps at this stage in their relationship, it was merely Raoul’s failure as a provider that forced Beryl to recognize some disappointing reality in his make-up. That year of 1944 was the most prolific time for the couple as writers, but even then they only produced five short stories between them. Beryl’s short lecture tour had provided a much needed boost to the couple’s income and according to O’Dell she had received a large advance to write a book on Tod Sloane, the celebrated jockey, though if this is so it was from a source other than Houghton Mifflin and Beryl’s agent was never aware of the contract.⁵³

Perhaps, once again, Beryl’s marital problems were caused by her own promiscuity. Few men would have been tolerant of her attitude towards casual sexual encounters. But this seems unlikely, for almost imperceptibly Beryl now began to assume a dominant role in the relationship. Raoul was the underdog, (which hints that he was the wrongdoer) and nothing could have been more fatal for the survival of the marriage. Essentially Beryl needed support from a partner, someone she could lean on in times of stress and who could assuage her own deep-seated insecurity. Clearly she did not receive the support she needed from Raoul and anything less was almost guaranteed to earn only her growing contempt.