White Mischief (10 page)

They went out by boat via South Africa. They discovered that because of the shortage of accommodation in Nairobi, a permit was needed to enter Kenya. While they waited, news came through of the divorce decree granted to Vera in London. Broughton’s marriage to Diana did not follow immediately. Cockie Hoogterp, then the Baroness Blixen (Bror Blixen’s second wife after Isak Dinesen) met the couple in Johannesburg a few weeks before the ceremony finally took place and detected some uncertainty on Diana’s part. Cockie made a dinner date with Broughton, and then, when her husband arrived unexpectedly from war duties, she proposed that they go out as a foursome. “Jock said we’d better make it another time,” she said. “When I saw him later and said that I thought it would have made a
partie carrée,
he said, ‘Oh, Diana and I never go out together. I always go out separately.’” Driving with Broughton to the Country Club, Cockie asked him if he was serious about marrying Diana. “There’s many a slip,” was his reply.

Cockie began to wonder about the happiness of her old friend. “Jock asked me not to write to anybody in Kenya about Diana. He had already asked for an entry permit, and had given the impression that the Lady Broughton he was bringing would be Vera.” Nevertheless she did write—to Lord Francis Scott. “He asked me what I’d written and I told him that he was with an extremely glamorous girl, but I thought she had a heart of steel and that she was a gold digger. He said, ‘You’re quite wrong, she’s not like that at all.’ Perhaps I was wrong in the end.

“When I met Diana, Jock asked me if she would like Nairobi. I said she would adore Nairobi, but did he realise that every man there was going to fall flat for her. He said, ‘Oh, that’s all right. I’m not the least bit jealous.’ I thought, that’s very lucky for you.”

Six weeks before the marriage, Broughton entered into
a peculiar contract with Diana which was quite separate from their marriage vows. If Diana fell in love with a younger man, and wanted a divorce, Broughton, in view of the difference in their ages, agreed not to stand in her way, and to provide her with a gross income of her own of £5,000 a year for at least seven years after divorce. It was a generous deal which made no demands on Diana and seemed to expect remarkably little of the marriage.

The ceremony took place in a Durban register office on November 5th, 1940.

*
Blenheim Palace belongs to the Dukes of Marlborough and the Spencer Churchills.

6

SUNDOWNERS TO SUNRISE

The newly wed couple arrived by boat in Mombasa on November 12th, 1940, where they met up briefly with Hugh Dickinson, who was now a Lieutenant in the Signal Corps, and had been posted to Kenya. In fact Dickinson, although married, had organised his transfer to be near Diana, and had arrived only five days previously. That same day, with their new white lady’s maid, Dorothy Wilks, the Broughtons flew to Nairobi.

On the same flight was a sadistic, satanic character called John Carberry, whose exploits any new arrival in Kenya would quickly hear about. His wife, June, was at Nairobi airport to meet him. She and Diana struck up an instant alliance and were soon to become “best friends.”

Somewhere along the way, probably at public school, Carberry, who was born John Evans-Freke and had become the 10th Baron and 3rd Baronet Carbery at the age of six in 1898 (the barony, as opposed to the family name, was spelt with one r), developed a violent dislike for his native England, which he now called “Johnny Bull,” and an equal passion for America. He had been educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, in Switzerland and at Leipzig; and had served during the First World War in the Royal Naval Air Service. In 1919 he had taken out American naturalisation, papers, which were withdrawn
because of his involvement in bootlegging, and in 1920 in Kenya had changed his name by deed poll to John Evans Carberry, dropping his title. Carberry had even acquired an American accent, addressing Beryl Markham, the celebrated Kenyan aviatrix, for example, as “Burrrll.” His first wife divorced him for cruelty in 1919. His second wife was Maia Anderson, another flier, who died piloting her plane in 1928. In her daughter Juanita’s view, this was suicide provoked by the bullying and. cruelty of her husband.

Carberry had by now become a Nazi sympathiser out of pure anti-English sentiment. Earlier that year, 1940, at a wedding party at the White Rhino Hotel at Nyeri, he had proposed the toast: “Long Live Germany. To hell with England.” He was reported to the police but it was thought best to let the matter lie.

Recalling Carberry forty years later, a woman who knew him then retained a vivid image of his magnetism. “He was not only tall and handsome, but the way he swung along the beach at Malindi was … captivating.” He had a house at Malindi, an airstrip—he was a trophy-winning pilot—and a bar called the Eden Roc, where the drink measures contained marbles. He owned another house and a ranch at Nyeri called Seremai (a Masai word meaning “Place of Death”), an historical scene of bloodshed between the Kikuyu and the Masai. There Carberry ran his liquor still with his partner, Maxwell Trench, whose Jamaican parents had taught him the art of distilling cane. They made cheap gin, Jamaican rum, crème de menthe and eau de cologne.

In 1930 Carberry was married for the third time, to June Mosley, the only woman who proved able to stand up to his monstrous behaviour. Dushka Repton remembers meeting the couple in Paris that year:

At seventeen she couldn’t put two words together, and she was common as hell. J.C. introduced her as his “baby.” “That’s my dumb baby,” he said, in a broad American accent. Some
baby
. We went out for dinner. She had this ghastly outfit. She wore a scarlet jersey dress and a burgundy red hat and it really looked twopence halfpenny. I think she had brown shoes. I said. “Where the hell did you get that outfit?” But she was very pretty. Huge, rather
à fleur de tête
eyes, long lashes, long hair and very painted lips. She looked like a very pretty chorus girl. When she married Carberry she said, “I refuse to have any presents,” and she was rather careful with his money. Carberry took her up in a plane, soon after he met her. and asked her whether she would like him to do some stunts. “Now, baby, wanna do some stunts?” She undid her safety belt to show she wasn’t a coward. Luckily all the stunts were perfect, and that’s how she won his heart.

Later she was described as a “terrifyingly unnatural blonde. Deep bass voice. Tough as boots. But a wonderful person, warm hearted and totally unjealous. Cut her in half, you’d find mostly gin.”

June’s drink in fact was brandy and soda, and she drank it all day, as she chain-smoked. Carberry drank too, but never after dinner. The couple used terrible language to each other and they had violent rows, but Carberry adored his wife, and admired her tenacity. She had many affairs and Carberry usually didn’t mind. Once when June went off with Derek Fisher on a trip to Meru while Carberry was away, he came back unexpectedly. When he discovered his wife gone, he took off again and caught up with the couple driving across Cole’s plains. He had loaded the plane with medium sized rocks, with which he bombarded their car from the air.

His servants called Carberry by the Masai name, “Msharisha”—the long whip with which oxen are driven—because he was tall, and because he used to lash them on the slightest pretext. His attitude to the African race is best described by Lady Altrincham. “I took a great dislike to him. Once, when some petrol had gone missing, he said, ‘Blame it on the boy.’ I said, ‘But he didn’t do it.’ ‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Carberry.”

Animals as well as humans were subjected to Carberry’s
distinctive brand of sadism. Once, for example, he took a particular dislike to a hen which June had adopted and which had a privileged position in the Carberry household simply because June, who loved animals, had taken a fancy to it. It had even been allowed to lay its eggs on the sofa. This was too much for Carberry. The hen, he declared, must be subjected to a test of worthiness. He bet the manager of the Seremai estate that it would fly if he dropped it from his aeroplane, or, at least, fly well enough to survive. The guests at Seremai that day remember the hen dropping out of Carberry’s aeroplane like a stone. It was at first presumed dead, but some hours later it was found limping lopsidedly through the coffee shamba. Only then was it allowed to resume its privileges.

A table for three had been booked for lunch on the day of the Broughtons’ arrival (November 12th) at the Muthaiga Club, where they would stay while they looked for a suitable house. Their guest was Gwladys Delamere, the Mayor of Nairobi. Broughton had known her well during her first marriage in England and considered her a close friend. Gwladys was the Tsarina of Nairobi social life, and Broughton was wise to pay his first respects exclusively to her. Perhaps Gwladys, too, thought he would be arriving with Vera. Diana would require her approval.

Walking past the porter’s lodge and into the chintzy sitting rooms of the Club, Broughton, after thirteen years of absence, must have found it somewhat shorn of its former grandeur. The Club then had usually been almost empty on weekdays; now it was humming with activity, with officers up from South Africa, or shuttling between England and Cairo. Nairobi and the Muthaiga had become recreation centres for troops on leave.

Gwladys claimed the honeymooning couple for dinner as well as lunch that day, and added another guest, Broughton’s contemporary, Jack Soames, who came in from his farm at Nanyuki. There was much to talk about: Britain
under the blackout, the difficulties of keeping an estate running during the war, Turf Club gossip. They ordered Bronxes before dinner, and champagne. The subject came up of why Broughton had wanted to leave England. He made a reply about a man his age not being able to find any proper war work in England. Furthermore, he thought a new life deserved a new background and he was looking forward to showing Diana this country.

Almost immediately the couple set off on an up-country journey to introduce Diana to Broughton’s old friends. They visited Lord Francis Scott, Mervyn Ridley, Soames, and “Boy” and Paula Long. It was the Longs’ first glimpse of Diana and they were surprised that the new bride should say in front of her husband and her hosts, “I’m not sharing a room with
that
dirty old man. I insist on having a room to myself.” This, it seemed, was the unwritten part of the pact. The couple never did share a room, either before or after the marriage. Broughton appeared to be besotted by Diana, but she had clearly already begun to find the relationship unbearable after the years of semi-freedom, of flying and dancing and escaping with her beaux to the 400 Club.

Diana’s impressions of Old Etonians abroad cannot have been improved by their visit to “Commander” Soames at Bergeret. At school he had been a contemporary of Broughton, and they had travelled on the long journey out to Kenya together in 1923—Broughton for the first time. Soames had divorced Nina Drury some ten years before the Broughtons’ arrival. But even then, although she never suffered directly from his peculiar habits and compulsions—all acted on surreptitiously—she was keenly aware of them. “He could be so charming to people that they were often never aware of the other side of it,” she said. Soames had developed a sinister and morbid imagination, and had become a voyeur with an alarming style. He would drill holes in the roof above the guest bedrooms and peer down at them.

“It was all becoming rather paramount even before I
married him,” said Nina Drury, “and people had started to become wary of him.”

He had also become bad-tempered and tyrannical towards his servants. On one occasion a guest complained that the houseboy had “buggered up the bath” by omitting to fit the plug properly and thus draining the supply of hot water. Soames picked up a gun and hunted the terrified houseboy all through the property, swearing to kill him. When Gloria, his mistress, and later his wife, told the servant who brought the tea to take the remainder of the chocolate cake for himself, Soames said, “You’re not going to give the cake to those baboons, are you?”

One morning when there was nothing better to entertain his guests, Soames suggested target practice. No one needed reminding that there was a war on. Broughton was all in favour: it was essential, he felt, that Diana should learn how to defend herself with a revolver. A target was set up. Broughton, Diana and Soames, watched by other members of the house party, shot fifty or sixty rounds into the undergrowth. Diana usually hit the target, but most of Broughton’s shots went wide.

Broughton and Diana returned to Nairobi around November 25th. Broughton left again almost immediately to visit the farm in which he had an interest, on Lake Naivasha. He was away for the Caledonian Ball at the Muthaiga Club on November 30th. That was the night that Joss Erroll and Diana met for the first time.

Diana had been upstairs in her room writing letters before dinner. As she came down the staircase she saw three men sitting on the sofa, all laughing, one of them dressed in a kilt. When their eyes met, as she recalled later, “I had the extraordinary feeling, if you can understand it, that I was suddenly from that moment the most important thing in his life.” Erroll asked her to dine with him. She asked how many people would be there. She
knew it would be impossible for them to meet alone without showing her own feelings. She had, after all, been married for less than one month. Erroll, on the other hand, was free. His marriages were in the past, and his current affair with Mrs. Wirewater was conducted now by correspondence between Nairobi and Cape Town, where she had gone to install her children in school.

When they did find themselves alone for the first time, and even before the first embrace, before, as Diana described it, “there had been anything in any shape or form,” let alone a declaration of love on either side, Erroll said to her, “Well, who’s going to tell Jock? You or I?” It was in fact almost six weeks before Erroll and Broughton met to discuss the topic. In the meantime, Diana had fallen in love for the first time in her life.