Straight on Till Morning by Mary S. Lovell Page B

With Parnell as her stable-jockey, Beryl changed the face of racing in Kenya, and set standards for performance on Kenya turf. Parnell thinks she could have done this anywhere in the world. ‘No matter where you are you have to beat the competition. That’s what she set out to do and she could have done it anywhere. She proved that when she went down to South Africa with her Kenya countrybreds and won there, against top-class horses…’
    I asked Buster to tell me about some of Beryl’s owners and he obliged, characteristically:
    That whole period was a fusion of talents and coincidence. Beryl, Soprani, Block and me. In particular Block and Soprani provided the money for Beryl to really show what she could do. She never could have done it all without them. Between 1962 and 1964, Block and Soprani had something like sixty-five horses with us – Soprani was a coffee baron up at Thika. She gave them what they wanted in the way of winners, but she certainly got her money’s worth in return. She used to sit outside the Stanley [one of Block’s hotels] in the Thorn Tree café 15 and say to the manager, ‘Send that funny little thing out to me to do my nails.’ And then, while holding court like the Queen of Sheba, she’d have her nails manicured by one of the girls from the beauty shop. ‘Send the bill to Tubby would you?’ she’d call out as she left.
    Sir Derek Erskine was another owner. He was a wonderful old boy; a charming man. He had a lisp and couldn’t sound his Rs. He built a huge swimming pool on the first floor of his home and when asked why, said, ‘To keep the fwogs out of course.’ He was immensely wealthy and owned a rather lovely Bentley. Once at the race course he ran out of petrol. ‘Lend me ten shillings would you old chap?’ he asked. Him with all that money and me on a jockey’s pay! ‘You must be joking,’ I said. ‘Ten bob’s worth of petrol in that thing won’t get you far.’ ‘No, but it will get me to the gawage, where I have a cwedit account.’ I never got the money back! He had the best string of polo ponies in the country, but he wasn’t a great player. He used to gallop up and down all day wearing them out and not scoring goals. Sometimes, when you won a race on one of his horses Sir Derek would give you a present in kind. He had a grocery/greengrocery wholesale business (which was why we called him the Galloping Greengrocer), and usually you got a case of something which had been ‘sticking’ in the warehouse. Once I was the lucky recipient of a case of tinned prunes. I thanked him, not quite sure of my luck, and he peered at me, saying earnestly, ‘They’re warver good for you, you know. Only twy not to eat them all at once.’ When he got his knighthood I congratulated him. ‘Yes,’ he said brightly, telling me he had to go to London to be touched on the shoulder by Her Majesty. ‘Fwightfully nice of her wasn’t it?’ I loved him, and so did everyone else.
    Living in isolation sometimes had its drawbacks, such as the time Buster recalled when one of the horses developed a hernia.
    It was Rio Grande, a big colt who showed a lot of promise. We called in the vet but he was a new chap. Had never even castrated a horse, let alone operated on a hernia. We had no electricity, just candles…There wasn’t enough pinker, pinker , to get electricity out to the stables. Beryl got John Pettifer on the phone from Limuru. He gave instructions by phone and I ran between Beryl and the new vet with instructions and questions. It was a total success and a month later at Nairobi, Rio was the biggest certainty of the day.
    Mickey Migdoll, a great chum of Beryl’s, had put a very large bet on him, the biggest bet he’d ever had on a horse in his life, and now he was sweating on it. When we started Rio jumped out of the stalls in front, really full of