The Life and Death of Lord Erroll: The Truth Behind the Happy Valley Murder. Errol Trzebinski
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Idina would always have her detractors; she was too successful with men not to attract criticism. Being well read and knowing absolutely ‘everybody’ – from Diana Cooper to Florence Desmond – she did summon a certain envy. And her legendary sexual appetite did not endear her to people. Even her future son-in-law Moncreiffe, not prone to exaggeration, pointed out, ‘My mother-in-law was a great lady, though highly sexed.’52
Some time after their visit to Coblenz to make peace with the Kilmarnocks, Joss and Idina Hay sailed off with all their chattels, ready for their first home together. Joss was embarking on his first voyage to the Dark Continent with the recklessness of a schoolboy gambler. Their fellow passengers would have consisted of government officials, business entrepreneurs, missionaries and big-game hunters. During the voyage attempts were made by most of those expecting to stay in Kenya to study a slim volume called Up Country Swahili. However, Idina and Joss were up to their usual pranks, courting scandal in a manner for which they were soon to become infamous. After a week or more cooped up on board Joss found himself shoved into a lavatory in one of the state rooms with the key turned on him by his female companion, ‘in order to escape an outraged husband’.53 Joss had narrowly missed being caught in the act of fellatio when the woman’s husband had arrived at their stateroom door wondering why on earth she was taking so long to dress for dinner. She apologised coolly and promised to join him after she had completed her toilette. Meanwhile, as the sun went down, Idina had been sipping ‘little ginnies’ in the ship’s cocktail bar. She recounted the incident with evident relish and amusement to someone who, on a visit to the British residence in Coblenz, relayed the anecdote to Bettine Rundle. According to Bettine’s informant, Idina had blamed herself for Joss’s behaviour; he had learned from her how to be such a rake.54
*In those days, applicants also had to prove they received a private income of at least £400 per annum.
*Menzies had served with distinction in the First World War. There was a widespread belief in the services that he was the illegitimate son of Edward VII. He was certainly closely connected with court circles through his mother, Lady Holford, who was lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary. He also had considerable influence in important government circles, and ‘as a ruthless intriguer’ used it shamelessly. In personal relationships Menzies was polite but never warm, ‘hard as granite under a smooth exterior’, as the wife of one of his Security Service colleagues observed. He drank heavily, loved hones and racing and was a club man (Philip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession, p. 112). When he took over the SIS after Admiral Sinclair’s death in 1939 he was forty-nine. His successor, Sir Dick White, noticed that the file on Menzies was missing from the registry. The wartime chief had deliberately avoided any records ‘to preserve the fiction that he was the illegitimate son of Edward VII. “I paid ten shillings,” laughed White, “and got the name of his real father from Somerset House.”’ (Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War 1935–90, p. 209).
‘Africa – the last continent with a soul of its own’
Carl Jung
Joss decided to call his first home in Africa after his ancestral castle. This new Slains was backed by a dramatic forested ridge and watered by it streams, reminiscent of a Scottish landscape; the setting seemed to pay implicit homage to Joss’s past. Dinan, his heir, would begin her life here in the Wanjohi Valley, whose occupants were not so far removed in temperament from his ancestors: here too settlers had laboured, suffered, loved and lost. Instead of the fog that curled up from the North Sea to engulf icy ramparts, in Africa soft morning mists rose and rolled towards a rambling farmhouse to dissolve under the hot mid-morning sun.
When their ship dropped anchor off Mombasa’s old town, Joss and Idina were rowed ashore with their steamer trunks and all their heavy luggage. Two flags fluttered over the old Fort Jesus, built by the Portuguese: the Union Jack and the scarlet bandera of the Sultan of Zanzibar.
Joss was an experienced traveller in Europe, but nothing would have prepared him for the scenes in Mombasa’s old town. Its narrow streets were peopled with many different races. Women veiled in black purdah strolled among near-naked non-Muslim women, moving nonchalantly along in the heat with their unevenly shaped loads – such as bunches of green bananas or even a bottle – balanced perfectly on their heads. Commerce was noisy, shouted in many tongues as locals haggled for business; government officials, turbaned Sikhs and Indian dukawallahs* seemed oblivious to the stench of fish and shark oil hanging on the air. In MacKinnon Square, another Union Jack hung limply from its flagpole above the District Commissioner’s office with its rusting corrugated-iron roof. Feathery coconut palms, blue sea and sky gave a feeling of infinite peace, yet Fort Jesus and the cannon standing resolutely beneath its low walls spoke of a history of bloodshed and strife.
The Hays spent one night at Mombasa Club, dining under the moon on its terrace, sleeping under nets as protection against mosquitoes; translucent geckos about the length of a finger darted about the walls, consuming the insects. One train per day left for Nairobi at noon, and the three-hundred-odd mile crawl on the single narrow-gauge track up country began, taking about twenty-four hours.1 ‘Penniless, dashing, titled and an accomplished sportsman’, as he was described in a newspaper profile a decade after his arrival in the colony, Joss would now make Kenya his home.2
Kenya would suit him because he was not afraid of the unexpected. Africa is nature’s Pandora’s box and the gambler in Joss would respond to its uncertainties. Idina loved everything about the colony too; she ‘could muster wholesome fury against those who she thought were trying to damage the land of her adoption’.3 Her instinct that Joss would share her enthusiasm and strong feelings had been right. Life in the colony demanded hard work, rough living and life-threatening risks, but for an adventurer like Joss, who had all the right contacts and, thanks to Idina, plenty of money, Kenya offered the promise of the Imperial dream fulfilled. In addition, Joss had an open, inquiring mind and a willingness to seek advice from those more experienced than he was.
The Uganda Railway, by which the couple travelled to their new marital home, had been completed in 1901. The Maasai called it the ‘iron snake’ and those who opposed it the ‘lunatic line’. It ended at Port Florence (later called Kisumu) on Lake Victoria, and was a formidable achievement that took five years to complete, traversed wilderness and cost a staggering £5,500,000 without a jot of evidence to justify the expense. The Foreign Office, adept at muddling through, had then enticed out white settlers with cheap land flanking the railway-line.
Joss and Idina journeyed on the train from Mombasa in square compartments, nicknamed ‘loose-boxes’ – there were no corridors – and the train jolted ceaselessly while on the move, stopping, only for meals, at a series of Indian dak-bungalows. These breaks were refreshing on a long journey, which could be drawn out further if elephant or rhino blocked the line. Choking red dust coated every passenger. Any attempt while the train was at a standstill to remove the wire screens at the windows to get more air was met by a scolding from the invariably Goan stationmaster: ‘Bwana! Mosquito bad, Bwana. Malaria bad.’ The first stop at Samburu for tea was accompanied by toast and rhubarb jam. Menus were always the same.
Dinner was taken at Voi, where large hanging lamps like those suspended over billiard tables were bombarded by insects, dudus, which bounced off to lodge themselves in the butter or the lentil soup. The fish was smothered in tomato sauce to disguise its lack of freshness, and followed by beef or mutton,