White Mischief by James Fox Page B

brother officer in the Coldstream Guards, and regimental etiquette had demanded that he apply for a transfer. The lady did not follow Major Pembroke, however, and he was in the jargon of the day, something of an “extra man.” Occasionally he played bezique with Broughton. And he, too, fell in love with Diana. She thought him the dullest man she had ever met, and after their first dinner together she remembers asking him to remind her what his name was. “Dickie,” came the answer, “Dickie Pembroke.”
    There was nothing astonishing to Broughton about these “sorties” of Diana’s. He had made a pact: she was allowed to enjoy herself. And yet he seemed to work his side of the bargain with a fastidiousness that was more than passivity; he seemed almost eager to concede his first claim.
    Then, on December 5th, the Broughtons moved from the Club into their house at Karen, the Nairobi suburb named after Baroness Blixen. It was a solid Sunningdale Tudor structure, with twenty-two acres of grounds. Fifteen servants were engaged and put in the charge of Wilks and the head boy, Abdullah bin Ahmed, who was a “catch” from the Muthaiga Club. Broughton approached Sir FerdinandCavendish Bentinck, Chairman of the Production and Settlement Board, and an old acquaintance, for a job. They seemed all set for the duration.
    On December 18th, Broughton suddenly went to stay with Erroll in his house at Muthaiga, near to the Club, leaving Diana at home for four nights. They were reunited on December 22nd, when Gwladys Delamere held a joint birthday party for herself and Diana at the Club with forty-four guests. There was dancing “from sundowners to sunrise,” at what turned out to be one of the last soirées of the ancien régime . The guest list must have included many of Erroll’s former girlfriends, including Gwladys herself and Alice de Janzé, and possibly Idina. Paula Long described Diana and Joss dancing “as if they were glued together.” When two people find each other supremely desirable, as Broughton said later, there is nothing to be done except give in or run away. It was wartime and there was nowhere to run to.
    Over Christmas the love affair crystallised. Most of their friends noticed that by early January the new couple were inseparable—particularly Diana’s other “licensed” escorts, like Dickie Pembroke, who said, “Anyone who saw them at that time would have thought they were in love.” Some acted as accomplices, particularly June Carberry, who was to become a kind of handmaid to the romance. But Broughton’s awareness only came slowly—at least so it appeared, and so he behaved.
    By January 3rd, the deception of Broughton had begun. Diana and Erroll went to June’s house at Nyeri for the weekend, June having discreetly disappeared to Malindi, on the coast. On Monday 6th they returned to Nairobi. Broughton picked up an anonymous note from his rack at the Muthaiga Club which read:
    You seemed like a cat on hot bricks at the club last night. What about the eternal triangle? What are you going to do about it?
    He showed it to Diana at the Club that night and said, “What do you think of this?” They all laughed. And yet Broughton knew what was happening. He had tackled Diana on the subject of their trip to Ceylon, planned for that month, and received the excuse that the decor at the Karen house would not be ready and needed her supervision.
    Broughton was forced to confront the problem when he and Diana gave a dinner party at. Karen on January 12th. Around the table sat Gerald Portman, Richard Pembroke, a Miss Lampson, Erroll, the Broughtons and Gwladys. Much of the energy that evening was generated by the Mayor of Nairobi, who picked a fight early on with Major Portman about the relative contributions of Britain and the colonies to the war effort. The shouting match was unstoppable. A glass candlestick was broken by someone hammering on the table.
    “Did that improve matters?” Portman was asked