The Ghosts of Happy Valley

by Juliet Barnes

  Then, later in 1949, A. Cesaroni is recorded as applying for water rights on the Turasha River. This rises on Kipipiri and joins the Malewa near Gilgil, going nowhere near Slains or the Wanjohi Valley.

  I asked around Kenya’s Italian community, hoping to discover more about Lyduska, even learn her thoughts on the Erroll murder, until I was given the mobile phone number of Lyduska’s closest friend, Signora Moretti, whose grandson happened to have been at school in Scotland with my daughter. Giuliana Moretti, now in her nineties, gave me directions to her Kileleshwa appartment on the edge of Nairobi. After negotiating roadworks and snarled-up traffic, I finally stepped into the elegant sanctuary of Giuliana’s apartment, with its view over a tranquil green garden, its verdant surrounds exploding with riotous pink and red bougainvillaea and mauve jacarandas. Over a shot of espresso coffee, the sprightly Giuliana talked about her own life and her friendship with Lyduska.

  In 1954 she was teaching at a very smart private school in Genoa, armed with a degree in Italian literature and philosophy. But her life took a dramatic turn when her brother sent her a ticket to Kenya, with the ulterior motive of getting her away from an unsuitable boyfriend. Brother and sister met at Mombasa, but the young Italian civil engineer couldn’t waste any more time showing his entranced sister the delights of the exotically tropical port, for he was building a bridge in Tsavo. Thus Giuliana, who spoke no English, found herself in the middle of dry, dusty nowhere.

  Back in Italy she’d read that Nairobi was ‘paradise on earth’. This seemed a far cry from such promises – no power and a long-drop toilet. When she was attempting to get to the latter a large male baboon threw stones at her: he’d learned that trick from the road workers. Giuliana rushed to her brother in horror, but he was unsympathetic and threatened to put her straight back on the ship, which was going on to South Africa. But then he chanced upon a lift to Nairobi from Mzima Springs and sent his sister off to find her earthly paradise. She did – although on arrival in the city, she looked in a mirror with dismay: her hair stuck out in all directions, dyed red by the dust. But Giuliana quickly fell in love, with Kenya – and with a young Italian farmer called Domenico Moretti. And both were loves, she told me, that had never diminished, although she’d been widowed for some time.

  Unfortunately, soon after she’d fallen in love with a new man and country, her mother died, so Giuliana returned to Italy. But a year later she was heading back to Africa, taking a free passage in a banana ship to the Somali port of Kismayu. She was lowered out in a banana basket, with her wedding dress in a box and a rose in a pot, a gift from her father.

  The newly married Giuliana’s new home was at Colobus Farm, near Kipipiri, the old stone house – now a school – we’d visited some years back. She described it as ‘a lovely stone house with many glass windows, built as a hunting lodge by an Italian architect. Every room had a fireplace and the furniture was beautifully made, also by Italians.’ Here she was to experience a very different lifestyle: the bathwater was brown, power only worked if the generator did and there was no phone. But hardship was countered by exciting new things: when the toto jikoni, the young kitchen apprentice, brought her a chameleon one day, she was fascinated – especially by its changing colour. She laughed as she told me that she’d adopted a chameleon lifestyle herself, learning to change colour in order to fit into life wherever she was, whether on Colobus Farm or visiting Italy.

  The beautiful and sophisticated Italian girl was thrilled when her new husband suggested a shopping trip to Ol Kalou. Imagining that at last she’d sample some culture, she put on her chic designer two-piece for the occasion. On the way they stopped at a South African neighbour’s house where the housewife was so drably dressed that Giuliana began to worry she might end up looking equally plain if she spent too long on a farm. When she saw the woman’s barefoot, feral-looking children, she couldn’t get away fast enough, still hoping as they bumped along the dusty road to Ol Kalou that their local shopping town might offer some comfort. It didn’t. Their first stop was the butchery where an entire carcass swung from the roof, to the delight of thousands of flies. At the one and only shop – known, she learned, as the duka – a few other white farmers were doing their monthly shopping. Giuliana glanced at a nondescript-looking man, but looked twice when she noticed the tiny, crocodile-skin shoes – this was Anne Spoerry. However, later she realised the worth of their local doctor, who would come at all hours along prohibitive roads to attend to a sick baby, and who was a godsend in times of need.

  Then she heard another woman shouting and swearing. Giuliana sneezed politely and the woman whipped around. ‘Is this your wife?’ she said to Dominico, in Italian, with a snort of laughter. ‘Oh dear! Well you had better bring her around!’ This was Lyduska.

  Domenico duly took his wife to Slains, where Lyduska declared that she would show the newcomer around – on a horse. Giuliana, who’d never been riding in her life, didn’t dare argue: you didn’t, with Lyduska. The small, slim Giuliana was kitted out in Lyduska’s boots and trousers, which were several sizes too large. Lyduska rode Donnina, the beloved horse she had shipped out from Italy – ‘Donnina always shows me the way to go,’ she explained, as they embarked on a two-hour ride into the wilderness.

  Domenico and Lyduska’s boyfriend, Nanni, were beside themselves with worry – it was the middle of the emergency. But Lyduska, who’d always flouted regulations and authority, was immune to such ‘fussing’. Giuliana explained that as a child Lyduska had polio and had thus been very spoiled by her grandmother. She grew up as the rebellious owner of a fierce temper, ‘the family black sheep’ who’d formerly delighted in shocking her aunt’s smart friends – arriving filthy from grooming her horse, presenting herself to them without bothering to change. And now, here Lyduska was living the wild and free life of her choice, with her farm manager and boyfriend.

  Lyduska was a great character and a true friend, but she had a fiery temperament, Guiliana explained: ‘After an argument she would gallop away on her horse, leaving Nanni to fret and fume.’ Once, after a row following one of Lyduska’s typically extravagant shopping sprees in Nairobi, she’d ridden off in the dark. A frantic Nanni had to search for hours in the forests, worrying about her meeting up with terrorists.

  Giuliana was often left alone on Colobus Farm with a gun, which she was supposed to carry all the time but lived in dread of using. On one occasion she was walking without the gun, but with a bottle-raised gazelle the tractor driver had brought her. It wore a bell around its neck so that she could keep tabs on it. When it suddenly ran into the forest, Giuliana chased after it. But her path was blocked by an African man with wild dreadlocks, who spoke to her in English. Giuliana asked him to speak Swahili (which her cook had taught her) as she knew no English, then for the next half hour she prattled away to him all about herself, where she lived and anything else he might want to know. Finally she retrieved the gazelle and walked home. Domenico later, after recovering from the shock of thinking about all the dreadful things that could have happened to his wife in the company of a Mau Mau terrorist who hated white people, told her that she’d probably saved her own life by virtue of being a chatterbox. She remained safer than the gazelle, which was subsequently taken by a leopard, breaking her heart.

  Giuliana quickly discovered that as a farmer’s wife in Africa, amongst all the other things she had to learn, she was expected to be a doctor. One morning when Domenico was out, the tractor driver arrived with a head injury, bleeding profusely. She was squeamish and terrified she might faint. Remembering she’d read somewhere about cognac reviving you after fainting, she poured herself a tumbler with trembling hands and downed it in one. Her husband arrived back later to find the tractor driver had been thoroughly bandaged, while his wife, who never drank anything, was snoring in bed in a haze of alcohol fumes.

  One thing that had always puzzled Giuliana was her husband’s preference for an old tin teapot rather than their lovely china one – a wedding gift. She event
ually discovered that his teapot taste went back to his POW days, when six officers shared one tin teapot at tea time after work: a cherished part of the day. Her eyes shone as she told me proudly, ‘I still use the tin teapot.’

  After their first meeting, Lyduska and Giuliana became very close friends. The Morettis visited Slains every Sunday. Once when a rich American aunt of Lyduska’s was visiting, she told Giuliana that she was living in ‘merdo’. The younger woman was shocked at this liberal use of a word her grandmother would never even have heard of. One Easter Sunday, a priest visited Slains to take Mass. But Lyduska said repeatedly, ‘I sleep here,’ fixing him with her blue-eyed gaze, although he failed to understand that she was attempting to explain she was living in sin. Lyduska did eventually marry Nanni, in the early 1960s.

  When Giuliana’s father visited, then took Domenico to Canada to visit her brother, she took her baby, Dianella, and the ayah, to stay with Lyduska. It was during Mau Mau – nerve-wracking times for white women alone on farms – and Giuliana was disconcerted to find there were no bars on the large, low windows at Slains. ‘Lyduska would never have approved,’ she laughed, ‘if she had known the ayah sneaked back in at night and slept beside the window. That was a great comfort for me.’

  Giuliana also revealed a sadder side to her fearless and determined friend. Lyduska had many miscarriages and remained heartbroken that she’d never had children. ‘Later in life, as a widow in Karen, she only had one fear, which was dying alone.’ She asked her old friend from Happy Valley to be there to hold her hand when her time came.

  Giuliana was in Italy and Lyduska was supposed to join her, but became too unwell. She’d fired Nyongo, her faithful old ‘boy’ who’d been with her for decades, and had been through endless employees ever since. Towards the end she’d been in a lot of pain and had become cantankerous and difficult. Her relatively new member of staff was taking the dogs for a walk when Lyduska died.

  It was Giuliana who told me that Lyduska’s adored uncle, who’d originally brought her to Kenya, was called Pula. He’d died before Giuliana arrived in Happy Valley, but she’d continued to speak of him very fondly. It seemed he’d also been very much an individual – like Lyduska – and thus they had understood one another. Francesco, Giuliana thought, was a nephew of Pula’s.

  I asked about the mysterious Count Cesaroni. Giuliana had met him and his wife, although she never knew them well. She was aware there’d been a falling out, possibly something to do with their joint cheese-making business. She believed he’d been Lyduska’s manager at one point, but said that he had not been good to Lyduska, unfairly bad-mouthing her.

  I felt I’d settled old stories at Slains, rounding off Lyduska’s many years there in my mind, while sitting in the afternoon warmth, enjoying such engaging conversation with her delightful old friend, somebody I hoped to see again. Before I left I asked if Lyduska had any opinions on the Erroll murder. But it wasn’t a subject they’d discussed. Too long ago, Giuliana said.

  28

  Exit Happy Valley, Enter Diana and the Rest of the Entourage

  Solomon and I had ‘done’ Happy Valley, some might say to death. I’d been visiting and revisiting the old houses for over a decade now, and had discovered unexpected layers of history concealed within those ruined walls. I felt I’d been on a long archaeological dig into tragedy, scandal and dubious legacy, beside which Erroll’s murder almost paled into insignificance. I’d visited and revisited Clouds and Slains, explored more old houses than I’d ever intended to, and been drawn into more contemporary issues in Happy Valley, especially Solomon’s conservation efforts. But none of that had totally extinguished the faintly glowing question at the back of my mind. Who did commit the murder – and why?

  I needed a sabbatical, perhaps, and so did my Land Rover. After all, a brisk 40-minute walk would take me to one of Diana’s former homes – and she remained a murderess in the minds of many. Needless to say, my thirst for the quest took over remarkably quickly and I was soon on the road to Nairobi and the Broughtons’ first home.

  All Diana’s Kenyan homes have survived largely intact – far more so than those Happy Valley houses, apart from Ramsden’s Kipipiri House. Solomon would doubtless put this down to Happy Valley’s ‘bad spirits’, but judging by the poor state of the area’s schools, roads and hospitals when I first visited – before the great road of China – the Kenyan government hadn’t bothered much to promote prosperity in the area.

  Diana, although many mistakenly imagine she was one of Happy Valley’s prima donnas, never lived there. She first arrived in Kenya after Happy Valley’s heyday. It was late 1940 and the Second World War was well under way. For the brief time Diana’s affair with Joss was conducted from opposite sides of Nairobi, between Muthaiga and Karen, she would have had no reason to visit Happy Valley. The area’s ageing doyenne, Idina, had no time for the younger Diana, a glamorous and determined blonde who’d been openly conducting her affair with Joss in front of her new husband, Sir Jock Delves Broughton. After Joss died, Idina united in grief with his mistress before Diana, Phyllis Filmer, whose husband wouldn’t have been in any mood to comfort her. Phyllis had supposedly been invited by Idina to come and stay at Clouds, which she did – for four years. Diana would have been less welcome than ever.

  The subject of much gossip from the moment she arrived, the general consensus was that Diana had only married ‘poor old Jock’ on the rebound from her first, much younger and better-looking husband, whom she’d mistakenly married thinking he was rich. Jock offered her a wealthy lifestyle and a passage to Kenya, where she’d almost immediately met the irresistible Earl of Erroll, although their relationship had no time to grow beyond that infatuated first flush of new love before he was dead. Naturally it was Jock who was arrested as the prime murder suspect.

  The Broughtons’ Karen home, where Joss dropped Diana in the small hours on 24 January 1941, a short time before he was shot, is today owned by a wealthy Kikuyu businessman and leased out as office space. As it happens, Jock’s former ‘wing’ housed the offices of a magazine I occasionally freelanced for. I drove up the long paved drive, which curved around to the far side of the imposing stone house, arriving at the front entrance. The trees had grown noticeably since the 1940s photograph and there were many newer outbuildings, as if someone had tried to expand it into a country hotel. The house had been enlarged since Diana’s day, too, on both sides and at the front. But the pond and entrance looked much the same, albeit framed in different foliage.

  Entering through the original wooden front door into an entrance hall, I climbed the wooden staircase and turned left on the upper floor into the older part of the house. Heavy wooden doors led into panelled rooms with en suite bathrooms. There was an empty feel about the house, with certainly no vestige of a disturbed atmosphere or brooding secrets. It would be challenging to walk silently up these creaky stairs – a point discussed rigorously when Sir Jock was accused of descending them secretly in the dead of night to murder Joss, before later having to ascend them silently once again.

  As I drove back on to Marula Lane, I looked at the many guesthouses that graced the large, treed grounds. Most of them were new, but it was still hard to tell which could have been the original guesthouse where the Broughtons’ friend, Hugh Dickinson, stayed when in town. Eventually I decided it was probably the one nearest the gate, well out of earshot of the house. I turned left and headed to the murram pit where Joss’s body had been found in his hired Buick, before dawn. It wasn’t far in a car, but it had been suggested (at the trial) that Broughton, or (by others since) even Diana, had walked back from there after shooting Erroll – it would be a fair hike in the dark, lions aside.

  Diana’s next home was built by Cyril Ramsay-Hill in 1925. It has also survived beautifully – in the hands of the Zwager family, who grow flowers as well as involving themselves in conservation and tourism. The history of their unusual home was well recorded by Charles Hayes in his Oserian, Place of Peace: Ramsay-Hill bo
ught 5,000 acres for £3,100 on the acacia-lined shores of freshwater Lake Naivasha and sketched out his ‘dream palace’, modelled on his grandmother’s Seville home. He wrote of ‘graceful arches and a fountain murmuring in a tiled courtyard’. The finished house did indeed have arches and a courtyard with Spanish tiles, as well as marble columns, domes, frescoes by Italian craftsmen and Indian teak floors. The farm was called Oserian, meaning ‘place of peace’ in Maasai. However, Cyril Ramsay-Hill’s marriage didn’t epitomise tranquillity: after his beautiful auburn-haired wife, Mary, ran off with Joss, she clinched Oserian from him. The house, better known nowadays as the Djinn Palace, became the marital home for the new Earl and Countess of Erroll. After Mary had died, Sir Jock contacted Erroll soon after his arrival in Kenya, wanting to rent the house at Oserian. This never materialised, although later Diana did end up there, having married the reclusive and rich landowner Gilbert Colville. Said by some to have been a manipulative woman, Diana persuaded Colville to buy her the house at Oserian as a wedding present. Colville, who himself had a Nairobi house in Muthaiga, opposite the golf course and conveniently close to the club, also bought Diana her Kilifi home, Villa Buzza, overlooking the turquoise Indian Ocean, where she spent an increasing amount of time in her latter years and which their adopted daughter has maintained to a high standard. Nobody has much idea about the welfare of the Nairobi pad, but as it’s situated in one of Nairobi’s most expensive suburbs, it’s likely to have survived too.

  Diana’s home with her fourth and final husband, the 4th Baron Delamere, is now the home of the 5th Baron, Lord Delamere, and his wife, the Lady Delamere. A Kenyan citizen, he still owns his Rift Valley ranch over a hundred years after his grandfather bought it, albeit significantly downsized. Today’s Soysambu encompasses the dry, rocky and waterless land adjacent to the alkaline Lake Elmenteita. Useless for agriculture, lacking in vital minerals and thus requiring livestock to be fed expensive supplements, the land is better suited to tourism – the direction in which Delamere’s ranch, now a wildlife conservancy, has headed. Known to me as Hugh and Ann, the Delameres are old friends and have been my closest neighbours for over a decade. Their home is a sprawling but modest bungalow set atop a ridge overlooking the lake. Flamingos usually flock there, along with a variety of waterfowl, many of them rare; pelicans, which breed on the lake’s rocky islands, fill the morning sky as they spiral up in air thermals before flying to neighbouring Lake Nakuru to feed.