by Paul Spicer
Enclosed with this particular letter was an article about the Wanjohi Valley written by George Kinnear, editor of the East African Standard newspaper and a friend of Alice’s. Alice asserted that George was a good writer and that his description of the valley and the moutains was apt. Of the stunning Wanjohi Valley, Kinnear wrote poignantly, “The trees and the streams and the great mountains, the cattle and the sheep and the horses, the plump, chattering Kikuyu women picking daisies in the fields are still at peace.” While Alice always included descriptions of Africa such as these for her children to read, Nolwen and Paola were never invited to join her in Kenya. Now, with the advent of war, this would have been impossible, even if Alice had wished it.
In her letter to Aunt Tattie just before the war, Alice suggested that she had signed up as a Red Cross volunteer, but there is no evidence that she ever served in this capacity. For his part, Joss, like many of the colonists, was deeply engrossed in the war effort. He had been given a temporary commission in the Kenya Regiment as a second lieutenant, quickly rising to assistant military secretary. There were fears that after the plagues of locusts and the recent drought, Kenya would simply be unable to produce enough food to feed its populace, especially with so many young and able male farmers being called up for the army. Events in Abyssinia continued to make the conflict feel very close to home: Everyone knew that Mussolini would likely ally himself with Hitler and the invasion of British Kenya would be the logical next step. Colonial troops had already been assembled on the northern borders and there were plans to have parts of the highlands evacuated in the event of an invasion. Joss was very much involved in these arrangements.
A month after the outbreak of war, Joss’s wife, Mary, who had been virtually housebound since the summer, finally succumbed to her illnesses. The cause of death given was kidney failure. She was buried that October at St. Paul’s Church in Kiambu, eight miles outside Nairobi and the main town in her husband’s constituency. Alice did not attend the funeral. The money Mary had left, she willed to Joss, but after the extravagances of their marriage, the amount was far from substantial. After Mary’s death, Alice confided to her neighbor Pat Fisher that she would like to get back together with Joss. Evidently, this did not happen. Although short of cash and thrown off kilter by Mary’s death, Joss was disappearing into his work and social activities, while also continuing his affair with Phyllis Filmer. He was ever more engrossed in his war time duties: The following year, in June 1940, Mussolini declared war on Great Britain and the threat of Kenya’s invasion by the Italians redoubled. Bombings were expected and Nairobi was blacked out in anticipation of air attacks; sandbags surrounded official buildings, and hundreds of new military personnel flooded the city.
Meanwhile, Alice’s ever-delicate grasp on her moods was worse. Like many people suffering from cyclothymia, Alice found her illness was becoming more severe as she grew older: Her mood swings were becoming more pronounced, and her unhappy periods were lasting for a longer time. The effect of the light and altitude of the highlands was failing to work its magic as it had done in the past. It has been shown that various psychosocial factors—for example, stressful circumstances, complicated living conditions, and personal difficulties—can play a large part in exacerbating symptoms of the disease. Alice, who had been dogged by depressions since adolescence, now had to deal with the considerable stresses of war time, solitude, illness, and middle age (she had turned forty in September). Over the years, she had learned to ameliorate her condition with alcohol and used barbiturates to help her sleep. Now she seldom awakened before noon. Alice was entering an altogether disquieting time, with the outbreak of war foreshadowing the beginning of her sad decline.
Ten
The New Elements
IN 1940, ALICE WAS GIVEN HER OWN CHANCE TO PLAY a role in the war effort. Joss, in his capacity as assistant military secretary, had decided that his old friend Lizzie Lezard (real name Julian Joseph Lezard) of the King’s African Rifles should be stationed at Wanjohi Farm in order to undertake intelligence work in the area. Alice knew the Wanjohi Valley and its residents well and could help Lizzie report back on any local events that smacked of subversion. Alice was excited at the prospect of serving as an intelligence gatherer. For his part, Joss was evidently making a protective gesture toward his old girlfriend. Alice was alone and isolated at Wanjohi. Lizzie, meanwhile, had a reputation as a joker, someone who was excellent company. Joss was correct in his assumption that the pair would get along: Lizzie and Alice became good friends and, for a time, lovers.
Lizzie was Jewish, a striking-looking man of thirty-eight at the time of his arrival in Kenya, with hooded blue eyes and a mass of curly black hair. Born in Kimberley, South Africa, in 1902, he later attended Cambridge University, where he studied law between 1918 and 1922. He was a talented tennis player and captained the University Lawn Tennis Team and later represented South Africa with distinction in the Davis Cup matches. When Alice first met him, he had recently separated from his wife, Hilda Wardell. She had filed for divorce after tiring of funding Lizzie’s gambling, which resulted in considerable losses. With war imminent, he joined the military, where his quick-wittedness and poise attracted the attentions of the Field Intelligence services. He was immediately commissioned as a lieutenant and posted to the Sudan and then later was reassigned to Kenya. Lizzie was known for his talent with women: He was a good listener and perceptive, usually in a humorous way, but always with enough flattery thrown in that his girlfriends would instinctively think, Here at last is someone who really understands me—the real me. He also had a habit of speaking his mind. Throughout the first drive to Wanjohi, he complained bitterly to Alice about the abysmal road conditions. It was pouring rain that day, and the DeSoto was slithering from side to side as Alice battled to negotiate cavernous water-filled potholes. “Stop the car!” Lizzie is said to have cried out. “I can’t take any more of this. I don’t want to be a pioneer in Kenya. I’d rather be a bloody shit in London!”
Despite this unpromising start, Lizzie went on to enjoy his stay at Wanjohi, conducting his field intelligence duties during the day and playing hours of backgammon each evening with his hostess. Most likely, he lost often, as Alice was an expert at the game. Lizzie’s natural diagnostic ability would have drawn his new girlfriend into telling him about herself, especially as her trust in him increased. Alice may also have enjoyed their more intimate relations: During his time in London, Lizzie had earned a reputation as an accomplished lover, and he was always the first to boast of his skills. “You see, I was regarded as rather intellectual and interesting, and that gave me a special position,” he would explain. “Yes! I used to be London’s ethereal lover!” According to Pat Cavendish O’Neil, in her memoir, A Lion in the Bedroom (2004), Lizzie was also in possession of an exceptionally long penis, which he sometimes produced while playing bridge: He would announce, “Full house,” and everything went on display. Whether this knowledge had reached the ears of Idina, we do not know, but it is possible that she had heard something, because on a visit to Clouds, Lizzie was prevailed upon to play the “sheet game.” This unusual after-dinner game involved stringing up a sheet with holes in it across the living room. Half a dozen men could stand on one side with their penises through the holes and an equal number of women would stand on the other side, selecting their favorite appendage by calling out a number. Lizzie often joked that he had been the “Number 3 lover in London in 1934,” and so there would have been plenty of cries of “Three!” from the women in attendance that evening. After his stay with Alice, Lizzie returned to Nairobi, where he took up residence in Joss’s two-bedroom cottage in Muthaiga, continuing to fulfill his field intelligence duties, while still finding time to show off his serves at the Muthaiga Tennis Club. The brief relationship with Alice petered out, naturally and without rancor.
Then one night at the Muthaiga Club, Alice met another military man stationed in Nairobi. He was Richard (“Dickie”) Pembroke, a charming and good-looking Col
dstream Guards officer who had been transfered to Kenya in 1939. Alice immediately marked him out as a possible conquest now that her affair with Lizzie was over, but to her dismay, Dickie turned his attentions elsewhere. His object of interest was a cool blonde with blue eyes, Lady Diana Delves Broughton, who had just arrived from London in November 1940. At the time of Diana’s appearance in Nairobi, she was newly married to Sir Henry Delves Broughton, the eleventh baronet of Doddington—known as “Jock”—an imposing man with slicked-back dark hair who walked with a limp due to an old war wound. At twenty-seven, she was thirty years younger than Jock and had been his mistress for five years when she agreed to travel with him to Africa soon after the outbreak of the war. Although the timing of this emigration might seem unusual, Jock was, in fact, entitled to land under the 1919 Soldiers Settlement Scheme and saw his departure to Kenya as a means of being useful in some way to the war effort. By the time the Delves Broughtons reached Cape Town toward the end of October 1940, Jock’s divorce from his first wife was official, and the couple were married in Durban on November 5. Before the two married, they agreed on the following unusual terms: If Diana wished to separate, Jock would let her go.
Although Diana evidently adored her new title of Lady Delves Broughton, she was not so enamored of Jock. It seems the issue of marriage had been forced, because it would have been extremely difficult for Diana to gain entry into Kenya as an unmarried woman. After disembarking from the train at Nairobi, the newlyweds took up temporary residence at the Muthaiga Club, where Diana made it clear to the members of this male-dominated establishment that she was very much available. For his part, Dickie was smitten with the glamorous Diana, but Diana was less enthusiastic. Although Dickie was wealthy—having inherited his money from his grandfather, Edward Pembroke, chairman of the Baltic Exchange—he, unlike Jock, lacked a title. Although the affair was over before it had begun, Dickie’s attentions to Diana proved to be of immense annoyance to Alice, who found herself rebuffed in favor of Diana. Alice had never had any problem attracting men before. When she had first arrived in Kenya in 1925, it had been Alice who was the new girl in town, gaining the attention of all the prominent men of the settler community, Joss included. But this was 1940. Alice had turned forty the previous September, and although her beauty was still very much in evidence, her looks could not last forever. To make matters worse, she was in ill health and becoming increasingly reliant on alcohol and sleeping pills. She could only watch as this younger interloper drew the gazes of the most attractive and available men in Nairobi.
Everything about Diana conspired to irritate Alice. Not only was Diana younger; she was Alice’s exact opposite in terms of looks and temperament, blond and extroverted, whereas Alice was dark and complex. While Diana was obviously voluptuous, Alice was delicately slender (her Kikuyu servants nicknamed their mistress “Wacheke,” meaning “the thin one”). Simply put, Diana had the kind of blatant sex appeal that often inspires an instinctive dislike in other women. Alice was also alert to Diana’s social ambitions. Diana had been born into a solidly middle-class English family—in her younger years, she had been a working girl, serving for a time as a hostess in a somewhat seedy cocktail bar in London called the Blue Goose. Although Diana had hoped to meet a wealthy and titled husband, she ended up marrying a piano player named Vernon Motion. The marriage lasted less than a year, at which point husband and wife discovered that neither had any money. When Diana met Sir Jock Delves Broughton at the Blue Goose in 1935, she wasted no time in becoming his mistress. Now she seemed to be casting around for another titled lover from the pool of available Nairobi men. Alice detected Diana’s underlying ambition and found it distasteful. After her time as a French countess, Alice knew exactly what it was like to be judged by one’s pedigree (or lack thereof) and she had developed a considerable antipathy for those who valued titles over substance. Writing to Raymund in Parkhurst, she described Diana as a “new element” who had upset the delicate balance of a number of relationships within the close circle of Kenya society.
In the end, Alice did not have to wait long for her chance with Dickie. Diana quickly rejected Dickie on the grounds that he was “dull,” clearing the way for Alice to begin a relationship with the handsome Guards officer. Dickie was thirty-six at the time of his affair with Alice. Unlike Raymund, another ex-officer in the Coldstream Guards, he took a certain pride in his status as gentleman soldier. His manners were polished and his courtesy to all, including Alice’s staff, made him both popular and respected. In many ways, this new boyfriend constituted another Frédéric figure in Alice’s life—someone who was dependable and loyal but who lacked the spark that had ignited her relationships with Raymund and Joss. For Dickie’s part, the affair with Alice offered him newfound happiness after a very difficult period in his own life. Born at Epsom on December 18, 1904, he later attended Malvern School and then the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. On graduation he was offered a commission in the Coldstream Guards, which he accepted, beginning a career that included steady promotions. But just prior to his arrival in Kenya, Dickie had begun an affair with a fellow officer’s wife. As punishment, he was put on temporary leave, seconded to the Colonial Office, and made a brigade major in the King’s African Rifles. Such a turn of events constituted an enormous embarrassment for Dickie, who took his military career extremely seriously, and he was anxious to make amends. He retained his Coldstream cap star and always wore his Coldstream Guards uniform and buttons during his time in Kenya. After the disappointment of being seconded and then cast aside by Diana, Dickie quickly embraced the relationship with Alice, spending plenty of time with her, not just at Wanjohi but also at her cottage in Nairobi and her beach house at Tiwi, where they were photographed together. But even though Alice had succeeded with Dickie, a rivalry with Diana had been established.
Imagine Alice’s growing dismay, then, when it became clear that Diana was beginning a very public affair with Joss. By Christmas of 1940, Joss and Diana were seen regularly dancing together at the Muthaiga Club, their bodies locked together in a way that many of the club members considered indecent. Diana evidently found Joss irresistible: His good looks, high ranking in settler society, and title of Lord High Constable of Scotland made him extremely attractive to her. A mutual infatuation was under way. Alice sensed that the relationship with Diana was different. Joss was consumed with Diana in a way that Alice had never witnessed before. Still smarting from the Dickie-Diana affair, Alice felt herself dropped by her old friend Joss. Again, she wrote to Raymund about her fury regarding Diana’s appearance on the scene.
Jock Delves Broughton, meanwhile, seemed to be accepting his new wife’s infidelity with a degree of good humor. Joss and Jock were friends, they had attended the same school, Eton, and had been enjoying each other’s company now that they were living in the same part of the world. That December, the Delves Broughtons had moved into a large house in Marula Lane, in Nairobi’s Karen district, and Joss would often visit both of them there. The Delves Broughtons’ close neighbor in Karen, Derek Erskine, spent a good deal of time with the three of them during the last few months of 1940. Another old Etonian, albeit one with politically liberal leanings, Derek had arrived in Kenya in the early thirties to become the news announcer for the Kenya Broadcasting service, but because he had a lisp and was unable to pronounce his r’s, he mangled his introduction—“This is the Naiwobi Bwoadcasting Sewvice’—and soon quit the job. After starting up a bakery with his wife, Elizabeth, he went on to form a successful grocery business. In later years, Derek always maintained that Jock was surprisingly tolerant of the liaison between Joss and Diana. Derek recollected that on one occasion Jock was looking out of his library window, which overlooked the swimming pool at Marula Lane. That day, Diana was swimming in the nude. Joss was standing beside the pool and holding up a towel, ready for her exit. Jock opened his library window and shouted jokingly, “Joss! It’s my turn to dry Diana today!” According to Derek, the relationship between the two me
n was always grown-up and good-spirited, regardless of Jock’s hurt feelings. There was a sense of “no grudges” between these two men who shared the same alma mater and had been brought up to believe that all’s fair in love and war.
As 1941 began, it was becoming increasingly clear to Jock that his wife was in love with Joss. Like Alice, Jock could only look on as Joss and Diana yet again danced publicly and amorously with each other at the Muthaiga Club. What’s more, Jock was receiving anonymous letters via the club. The first read, “You seemed like a cat on hot bricks at the club last night. What about the eternal triangle? What are you going to do about it?” The next one was even more unpleasant in its insinuation: “There is no fool like an old fool. What are you going to do about it?” In mid-January, Jock decided that he would take it upon himself to confront his wife and her lover in order to discover their true intentions. As was later revealed in his trial, Jock went first to Diana, asserting his right to know the nature of her feelings for Joss. Diana did not lie: She told Jock that she was in love with Joss, saying, “It’s something I cannot help.” Jock then suggested that Diana go away with him for a few months in order to allow for a cooling-off period. If she still felt the same way about Joss after time away, he would agree to a separation. “I promise you, Diana, I will stand by it,” he said. “But let us give our marriage a longer trial.” Diana would not consent.