Frances Osborne’s book had enabled us to gain new understanding of Idina. A heart wounded many times and an intelligent mind had – in the way of the old British stiff upper lip – forced down an accumulation of agony. One didn’t speak of such things, so instead she indulged in escapism. Perhaps all the free sex Idina promulgated during Happy Valley’s most hedonistic days was purely a bid to run from her feelings. It could have become an addiction. Psychologists have recognised a compulsive pattern of driven, insatiable sexuality as sexaholism. A sexaholic uses sex to narcotise deep-seated angst. Idina apparently died with Euan Wallace’s picture by her bed and Osborne believes she had never got over him. Knowing her sons were calling another woman ‘Mother’ must have intensified that pain. A psychotherapist might say that Idina was, after Euan, subconsciously attracted to the ‘wrong’ men, so that she never again had to endure such heartbreak. ‘Idina liked horrid men,’ Hugh, the 5th Baron Delamere, had recently told me. ‘Bird used to squeeze the dog’s paw until it yelped.’
Idina’s friends believed she truly loved Joss too – the only other man she had a child with. Perhaps she found it hard to ever completely leave go of the two men who had fathered her children. There would always be the pain of that twisting knife – however minuscule – somewhere inside. Idina must have steeled herself not to broadcast her suffering – or even show her daughter with Joss that she cared about her too – until it was almost too late. All the other husbands and lovers, including Gordon, Boy Long, Langland, Haldeman, Soltau and Bird, were perhaps just filling in gaps in her troubled heart. Like Alice de Janzé, Idina had not received much fatherly love either. Her father ran off when she was only four. Alice had been indulged until the age of thirteen by the father whose cruelty killed her mother. After that she was removed from his care. Both women seemed to have spent the rest of their lives searching for something they’d never had, while negating those uncomfortabe feelings with addictive behaviour.
They’d both been heartbroken at the death of their beloved friend and lover, Joss. But had either of them any idea who’d killed him?
I suddenly had cramp, as if Idina’s pain had driven a knife into my abdomen. Luckily I didn’t have to sit for any longer – Sophie paints quickly, but something was spooking her out. ‘I can’t go on,’ she declared. I felt a little odd myself – as if I wasn’t alone on that dusty window seat. I was glad to move across to the doorway where the easel stood among the floor’s carpet of maize cobs. I looked at the picture – the figure in blue on the window seat drawing my eye, somehow shocking me: I was wearing blue, and the face was impressionistic, but I knew it wasn’t me Sophie had painted.
‘That’s Idina,’ I whispered into the silent space of the darkening room as I stared at the painting. Then Grace hobbled up, looked at Sophie’s picture too and asked me in Kiswahili, ‘Why has she not painted you? Why has she painted that white lady who used to live here so long ago?’ It was as if she knew what Idina looked like, had met her spirit walking through the rooms, slipping sadly away into her neglected gardens.
I shivered. Back in the garden again we laughed about it. The others were ready to go and felt, perhaps, that some of us women were being affected too deeply by this place. Solomon was still out looking for the colobus or he would have felt spooked too.
I made one final visit to Clouds as my book neared completion. Needing to be alone, I wandered into Idina’s old orchard, feeling that somehow I needed to share my thoughts with Happy Valley’s first lady, who hadn’t been among the drunken, dishonest and unreliable witnesses in court. I wished for the thousandth time I could have met her, asked her what she thought had happened to her wayward third husband – and why?
My thoughts replayed the Erroll murder. I imagined the Buick heading from Karen to Muthaiga – fast and furious. Perhaps the Earl was feeling irritated by Diana that evening, for whatever reason. Work was stressful, it was late, he was tired and possibly he was afraid he might be a political target.
It would make sense to pick an attractive woman to waylay him at the road junction, although there are plenty of ways to stop someone on a lonely road at night. Then it would all have happened fast: bright torches in his eyes would have prevented his recognising anyone he knew lurking in the shadows, so even if Dickinson was out muddying his boots, while the others were wandering between bedrooms and corridor-creeping in Karen, he wouldn’t have showed himself to his victim. Nor would Joss have seen Broughton, or Broughton’s Somali driver, if they were involved in the action. It wouldn’t have been possible to get away, even if he’d tried, and in those last minutes as bullets were fired in rapid succession, Joss wouldn’t have known much – or suffered for long. There would have been several cars, plenty of people who all knew exactly what they must do – and in a short time the car would have been placed by the gravel pit with the body stuffed into the footwell. Everybody would have got away quickly before early workers might pass and, meanwhile, a cloak of darkness hid all but the lights of the Buick, dimmed as it was wartime.
If Broughton was out that night, someone would have dropped him at the gate to lessen the chances of his being seen or heard. Whether or not he’d ventured out of the Karen house after Joss had dropped Diana, he’d reportedly been restless throughout that evening – maybe he’d known, without being sure of the details, that something ‘bad’ might happen. It’s possible he reacted with genuine shock the following morning when told the Earl was dead, supposedly after a car crash. After all, Jock had immediately questioned whether it was really an accident.
Dickinson would have been useful as reserve hit man, even if he didn’t pull the trigger. Perhaps he knew more than Jock and Diana about what was planned for that night. Assuming they were all in the loop to some extent, they would have followed orders and reported back as necessary, doubtless for a good fee.
Diana’s reported emotions at the death of her lover, if indeed they were genuine, are harder to read. Her devastation (if it was) could have been worsened by her guilt over her own involvement – to whatever extent that might have been. The fact that the trio went away on safari immediately afterwards suggests they needed to be together, maybe to talk things through and prepare for the farce ahead in the High Court.
And when it was all over, either Jock’s continuing guilt contributed to his suicide, or they needed to eliminate him too by then. Diana, regardless of how much she knew, proved herself emotionally tough enough to pick herself up again and carry on pursuing her own ambitions.
It is highly probable that with superior numbers of Italian troops to the north of the British colony, and the British invasion of Somaliland imminent, it would have been considered too risky to allow Erroll to continue to be so deeply involved in colonial politics. Those making the decision would have also taken into account his ambition, his intelligence and certain secrets he might have known – maybe including a few about the royals and a possible bastard son, or two.
Sir Isaac Newton once said: ‘If I have seen far, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.’ I felt enormous gratitude to all the many writers on the subject, then sudden peace and a sense once again that I was not alone. I hoped I had exorcised something, if not laid Idina’s ghost, finally, to rest.
A shaft of sunlight broke through a cloud, lighting my way back to the car. Elizabeth had filled a bag with pears for Solomon and me. For Grace and her family it was time to go back to the slog of tilling the land to feed and educate their many children and grandchildren, waiting and praying for the rains not to fail. Kenyans are eternal optimists.
‘It is going to rain very soon,’ John told us.
By that evening, the whole mountain seemed to have caught fire: from my home on the plains of the Delamere ranch far below, I could no longer see Kipipiri or the Aberdares. The horizon was hung with smoke, shrouding Happy Valley and the hill which held Clouds in its folds – as if they didn’t exist any more. There were, I now knew, thanks to Solomon, more urgent issues than an unsolved
murder. While colobus monkeys and ancient forests were being removed from Happy Valley, the slaughter of elephants and rhinos for their ivory and horns was happening on an escalating scale all over Kenya. Securing the future of Kenya’s wildlife, integral to its tourism industry, as well as protecting and replanting those vital and valuable forests, needed urgent and immediate action. I thought of the people I’d met, and hoped for a miracle; that they and the rest of Happy Valley’s present inhabitants might be able to improve their lives, while preserving, even one day restoring, the area’s natural beauty.
After the fire came the cleansing rain: from my house the following day, I watched the dark clouds pouring a grey veil over the distant mountains and gave silent thanks, hoping it wasn’t too late to save some of that Kipipiri forest. It would have washed away all traces of our footsteps in the garden of Clouds by now.
Bibliography
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Glyn-Jones, Richard, Still Unsolved: Great True Murder Cases, ‘Who Shot the Earl of Erroll?’ Benjamin Bennett, Secaucus, NJ, 1990
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de Janzé, Frédéric, Vertical Land, Duckworth, London, 1928
Kenyatta, Jomo, Facing Mt Kenya, Martin Secker & Warburg, US, 1938
Leakey, Dr L.S.B., Mau Mau and the Kikuyu, Methuen, London, 1952
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, The Preservation of Personal Health in Warm Climates, The Ross Institute of Tropical Hygiene, London, 1951
Lovatt-Smith, Kenya, The Kikuyu and Mau Mau, Mawenzi Books, UK, 2005
Lovell, Mary S., Straight on Till Morning: The Biography of Beryl Markham, Hutchinson, London, 1987
Lovell, Mary S., The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family, W.W. Norton, New York, 2001
Markham, Beryl, West with the Night, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, 1942
Migel, Parmenia, Titania: The Biography of Isak Dinesen, Michael Joseph, London, 1968
Miller, Charles, The Lunatic Express, Futura, London, 1972
Murray-Brown, Jeremy, Kenyatta, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1972
Osborne, Frances, The Bolter, Virago, London, 2008
Owen Weller, Henry, Kenya Without Prejudice, East Africa Ltd, London, 1931
Parker, Ian, The Last Colonial Regiment: The History of the Kenya Regiment (TF), Librario Publishing, Kinloss, 2009
Plaice, Edward, Lost Lion of Empire: The Life of ‘Cape-to-Cairo’ Grogan, HarperCollins, London, 2001
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‘Kenya’s Clouded Future: Can the European Survive?’, Elspeth Huxley, Daily Telegraph, 1 March 1963
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost I am indebted to Solomon Gitau, both for showing me the old houses of Happy Valley and continuing to inspire me to visit and revisit, and for sharing his passion for the natural world. He earns my continued admiration for taking on the role of spokesman for Happy Valley’s endangered colobus monkeys and threatened forests, and a percentage of my writing proceeds about Happy Valley will continue to assist his causes. Without Solomon, this book would not have been written, and I am grateful to him for sharing his handwritten autobiographical stories, Born in Happy Valley, The Black Days and Face to Face with White Mischief Spirits. I remain grateful to the late Jean O’Meara and Astrid von Kalckstein for their inspiration and support of Solomon’s environmental causes, and for Astrid’s continued support of him and his family, as well as for sharing her archive of letters, e-mails and documents regarding Solomon’s conservation work.
I am also grateful to the UK team: my agent, Robert Smith, for believing in the book and for all his advice; to Graham Coster of Aurum Press, for taking it on and encouraging me with his enthusiasm and expertise; Steve Gove, my copy-editor for his tireless editing and endless patience; Melissa Smith, Lucy Warburton, Jessica Axe and Anne Bowman for their time and expert assistance, not to mention all those people in the London office who I don’t see or meet, but without whose work the book would never have come into being.
My family are integral to this book: both my p
arents, Peter and Margery Barnes, for many stories and passing on their love of reading; my mother for her patience in reading early drafts and my father for firing me with his own enthusiasm for exploring the obscurer parts of Kenya, as well as teaching me to drive on appalling roads. My children, Michael and Siana, have grown up with a mum who disappeared periodically in an unreliable Land Rover on eccentric missions, and who can be snappy when disturbed during writing hours, but they have also taught me so much. I also thank my late grandmothers, Phyllis Platt and Evelyn Barnes; and my aunts, Sue Bremner and Rosamund and her husband Keith Watson for their stories.
I remain most grateful to Lord and Lady Delamere for renting to me my blissful home on Soysambu, where I can write in peace, as well as for telling me many entertaining stories over a whisky, and for their generous and unconditional hospitality and unlimited use of their library, including copies of Boy Long’s Diaries.
I thank Nigel Pavitt for his photographs, and Veronica Finch for hers. I am also grateful to Janie Begg for being so generous with her time, for many entertaining stories and sharing old photographs. They and many other Kenyans or visitors have driven or accompanied me to Happy Valley and inspired my research, including Peter Mutua, Janey Ready, Alice Percival, Ben and Libby Hoskyns-Abrahall, Frances Osborne, John Heminway, the late Chris Orme-Smith, Leonie Gibbs, Sophie Walbeoffe, and Frank and Anne Daykin. My research has further been assisted by conversations and e-mails with Paul Spicer and Errol Trzebinski, while the latter’s knowledge and advice has been especially valuable.
Many other former settlers of the Kenya highlands, or their relatives, have kindly shared wonderful stories and photos, contributing invaluably to my research. They include Bubbles Delap, Tobina Cole, Joan Heath, Giuliana Moretti, Dianella Moretti-Proske and the late Lyduska Piotto. I am also grateful for letters and e-mails from Belle Barker (who also lent photos and cine films), Jean Konschell, Mary Evennett, Angelique Armand-Delille, Bruce and Don Rooken-Smith, Marge Nye-Chart, Caroline Hanbury Bateman, Linda Tomlin, Bryony Anderson, Sheila Begg, Sheila McLoughlin, the late Debbie Case, Alan Gray, Ray Terry, Maureen Barratt, Benjie Bowles, Richard Morgan-Grenville, Guy D’Olier, Sheilah Simons, Benjie Bowles and the late Mervyn Carnelly.
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