White Mischief (28 page)

Alice brought supplies, especially books, to Broughton in jail each day. She became fascinated by the trial, and filled with anxiety that Broughton might be convicted, a feeling she communicated almost daily to Patricia Bowles.

Pembroke had been expected to keep out of the public eye since his banishment but the trial, where he was a witness, and his subsequent relationship with the notorious Alice had exposed him once again. Pembroke applied for a transfer and in July 1941 he was posted to Cairo. This finally broke Alice’s spirit.

The letters that Alice began writing to him, even before they parted that month, describe her own pathetic decline, and represent as well the last rites for Happy Valley. Pembroke’s feeling towards her can be measured to some extent by the care with which he kept her letters until his death in England in the late 1960s.

The first letter was written in Wanjohi on July 23rd, 1941.

My darling Dickie,

It does seem absurd—even grotesque—to be sitting opposite you and writing you a letter. However with the length of time it seems to take. I’d rather send you—or give you—some silly nonsense to read from me on your arrival, than to envisage weeks more of lack of contact when you reach Egypt.

We’ve just had our “toasties” with much talk about the virtues of real or pseudo caviar.

For a moment I’m going to say sad things—& when the
G & T with dash has worked a little—cheer up again. I can’t imagine the immediate future at all. Joss gone, then Dina.
*
now you—who mean the most of all. Even Paula [Long] is gone in a way. Our way of life lies apart and her big. bold paramour has changed her nature a little.

Lizzie is going.
†
Even you reproached me lately for being a little hard on him. I’ve never meant it really, for I count on him a great deal and am really fond of him. Anyway all of you are gone or going and my self-pity wells up when I realise that I can follow no one. You will surely smile with me when I say. “Thank God one can still recognise self-pity as such and not give it any greater dignity than just that.” And now—what I said flippantly to Lizzie in my note. I mean with all my heart. Thank God I seemed unreasonable and was firm. We’ve had—for me at least—a lovely week. I hope I
can
bear the end, which is tomorrow, decently. I don’t think I could have borne only the two days without being difficult and making your departure hard.

The next letter is undated, written from the Norfolk Hotel, soon after Pembroke left.

My Beloved Dickie.

… There are not a great many things to say, but there are a few. Firstly—that you have made me inconceivably happy for exactly five months and four days. There is not one single thought or word to break the continuity of that happiness in my memory.

Secondly the fact of you going away in these uncertain times, even for only a short time, as we hope, is pure and absolute pain … P.S. Funny how small and irrelevant thoughts intrude. One is that I forgot to tell you that if you have occasion to use that morphia, squeeze one good drop out of the needle before injecting in order to expel any air which hurts and blisters. Also do not take U93 for more than four consecutive days (3 a day
after
meals)—3 days is better. It will probably make you feel a bit mouldy, but should you feel really ill stop it at once. Some
people don’t tolerate it at all. Take it for a heavy cold and also if you have any sort of infection which won’t readily clear up such as veldt sore.

At the end of August, Alice was discovered to have cancer of the womb and was waiting to go into hospital for a hysterectomy. She had also suffered another, bitter loss.

I really had to laugh—gloomy as I felt on arrival. The greetings I got from the Matron and the Nurses (almost all of which I’ve known for years) was for all the world as if they were welcoming me to a party. The night sister startled me a good deal by saying “There’s plenty of your maté tea here if you want it. You left a whole packet here last time and it’s hardly been touched.” I had intended sending out for some this morning!

Flo came down [to Nairobi] with me. We had a hideous trip—two punctures and of course no spare the second time. We arrived here at 7 but I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want the dinner, whereupon the Matron said “
I
know what you like—you used to drink gallons of chicken broth last time,” and everybody laughed heartily and I had a cup of chicken broth!

As to the operation itself—that is cheerfully referred to as “the op” and with much thumping of pillows and shaking of towels one is told how well one is going to feel. This part is all parallel with people telling you—“you
must
see this film or that play—you’ll love it.”

And now I have one thing to tell you which I cannot bear to write about beyond the bare facts. “Minnie” [Alice’s dog] is dead—I killed her entirely painlessly, she knew nothing—because that car hysteria was no longer limited to cars. Her distress was so great that I put her out. I feel as if I’d committed a murder. She trusted me so, all the time I was breaking my heart feeding her Nembutal in some of your pâté … I look forward to all these moves with an indifference amounting to distaste. I can’t imagine what Wanjohi will be like without “Minnie” for company and the train journey to Diani. You once said to me impatiently “Life must go on.” Well, it need not. Look at Joss, look at Minnie. Life need
not
go on. In Joss’s case
someone
decided that, in Minnie’s case
I
did, and the length of our own
lives lies entirely within our own hands (unless someone else gets at us first!)

September 17
. I am OK surgically speaking and since yesterday quite healed up, but I feel simply frightful, weak and ill. I suppose this will get right but it seems very long. The Matron who is
charming
gave me a talking to before I left and said that I must expect to get periods of depression for some time and not to let them get me down. You know the books “What every young girl (wife) (mother) should know”? I felt this lecture could be incorporated in the series under the title, “What every old hag in the forties should know.” What these periods of depression will be like,
plus
the ones I get anyway, I can’t imagine … What I can see of the garden from my bed looks well and full of colour. The Eland was standing in the pyrethrum by the road as we came in yesterday and has become quite enormous. Quite terrifyingly big.

It is desolate beyond words without Minnie. She is the last person and I mean “person” except for Paula, left … I went out to Joss’s grave, day before yesterday and I was glad to see that someone has put new pots of growing flowers there. Since the middle of May there have been only odd bunches of dead flowers there, and nothing kept up …

September 20
. Bill Allen
*
is coming to lunch today. I’ve had long talks with him. He first said that he thought Jock incapable of “things” because he said he was one of the greatest cowards (in ordinary life) he’d ever met. He’d known him for years. He liked him. however. When I stressed the fact that the murder was about as cowardly as one could imagine he agreed entirely and thought it consistent. She [Diana] is a great friend of his ex-wife’s (an awful woman. I know her) so I asked his opinion of her. He said he’d met her several times and took her to lunch etc. He said “I see nothing whatever in her,” and that he’d been “abysmally bored” at lunch. Now that surprises me. for though I don’t pick her as you know, I’m surprised at
anyone
—even Bill, finding her lacking in all interest. However he sticks to this.

Alice made one try at suicide shortly before her final successful attempt, on September 23rd. When Patricia Bowles, her neighbour and friend, went to her rescue, she discovered that Alice had already marked each piece of her furniture for distribution to her friends. Patricia Bowles said:

Our house was at Kipipiri with the mountain behind it. Nancy Wirewater, Joss Erroll’s old flame, was living at Clouds while Dina was away. And there was a joint birthday party of Alice, and someone else. All the guests were arriving. Flo Crofton was with Alice and sent a note over saying Alice wouldn’t be coming because this time she’d done it successfully. The party was starting. I went to Gilgil to get a South African medical unit and he and I both got to work on the stomach pump. I felt awful bringing her back. She wanted to go. I spent the night with her trying to keep her off the Nembutal, which she had obviously hidden. She had her gun in the bed and passed out before she could use it. The second time she used it. I didn’t go that time. I was terrified of having to do it again. It was absurd. We were always apologising to each other. Me for bringing her back to life and she for causing me inconvenience, and all the time almost asking me not to do anything.

Alice wrote two letters after the first attempt. To Dickie Pembroke:

My darling, I don’t suppose for a moment you can understand why I am doing this. We think so differently.

Anyway please, please, believe that from my viewpoint at least I’m doing right.

I’m writing this in my garden on a glorious morning—drinking in sun and colour and peace, by the middle pool.

I love you very much as you know—too much to meet you as a different being later on.

The reason it was so intolerable for me saying goodbye at Kampala, was that I knew then it was final.

All my love Alice.

Give my love to Lizzie. I simply can’t write again, and there is nothing more to say. A.

To Patricia Bowles, she wrote,

Me voilà encore!
You wrote me a perfectly charming letter. It was sweet of you and gratefully received in the spirit of the moment.

But you see what I did not make clear—life is no longer worth living when you no longer care whether you are wanted or not.

I won’t say more, but I think you’ll understand, partly anyway.

If you will not talk of this at all, no one will need know that it is not post-operative depression. It is kinder towards Dickie and my children and better for you and Flo and William [the doctor who operated on her].

Love Alice

Love to Derek too.

When she finally succeeded, Alice tidied her bedroom and filled it with flowers, dressed up and put on her best bed linen. She left several notes. One was to the police—its contents were never released. The rest were to her children, to Dickie and one to Patricia Bowles: “By the time you get this,” it read, “I’ll have done it again. This time, I hope successfully.” She also asked that a cocktail party be held at the grave.

*
Alice is possibly referring to the fact that Lady Idina had been taken away from Happy Valley by her fourth husband.

†
Lezard. too. was on the point of being posted to Cairo.

*
Once married to Paula Long: became head of British Secret Service in Ankara.

16

THE GREATEST POUNCER OF ALL TIME

Broughton did have one loyal friend in England who had followed the case with close attention. This was “Porchy” Carnarvon (the Earl of Carnarvon). When he heard that Broughton had been acquitted, Carnarvon sent him a cable which was framed and hung on the wall of White’s at the insistence of Jimmy de Rothschild. It read, “Hearty congratulations on winning a neck cleverly.” How Broughton must have treasured it as a sign that he was still accepted in the fold of his fellow officers and peers! Lord Carnarvon has written about his old racing friend in his memoirs.
No Regrets
. The two men had met in the army in 1914, and it is clear from the book that Carnarvon considered he knew Broughton better than anybody. In May 1980 I wrote to him, asking for an interview.

There was a period in the early 1970s when Lord Carnarvon was a star of the television talk shows in Britain, playing the role of the unashamed feudalist and plutocrat. He was the size of a jockey, but looked more like a bookmaker who had been out in a lot of bad weather, and sometimes he spoke like one. He winked a lot and told dirty jokes, and talked about women’s legs and ankles. When he laughed it all came out in one loud syllable: “Hah!”

Forty years after Carnarvon had sent his cable to
Broughton, I drove down to his home. Highclere Castle, in Berkshire, with Tessa Reay, grand-daughter of Vera and Jock Delves Broughton. It was a warm morning late in May, with patches of coolness in the air and a bloom across the landscaped park. Golden pheasants stepped through the unfenced grass along the gravel drive. It seemed that nothing here had changed for centuries; certainly not since Broughton had come as a guest for the racing weekends in the 1920s.

I rang the bell at the front door, but there was no answer, so we made our way into the great Victorian Gothic hall, lit from a skylight, with its soaring pillars and leather wall coverings. In search of Lord Carnarvon we wandered into a large room glimmering with perfect Empire furniture, the chairs and sofas otherwise upholstered in the dark green leather favoured by the St. James’s Street clubs.

Great clocks ticked together, yet next to the armchair beside the fireplace was a cheap green alarm clock with a black face and luminous hands—the only hint of present-day occupancy. Possibly this was the room where Lord Carnarvon took his naps. We called out into a passage beyond the brown baize door, but our voices echoed back. We separated and searched the ground floor. In the cloakroom was a sauna bath and a record of the Earl’s daily steam temperatures. There were the usual racing caricatures and cartoons and a rhyme on the theme of declining sexual power.

His sporting days are over

His little light is out

What used to be his sex appeal

Is now his water-spout.

Then Lord Carnarvon appeared and briefly mistook me for Cyril Connolly. Half an hour later a butler also appeared and apologised for the doorbell being broken.