Peter was born on 12 May l958, also at the Queensway Nursing Home in Dar es Salaam. We phoned Dr Lovell and told him that the contractions had started and he promised to come straight away and meet us there. In the event he didn’t turn up until some time after the birth. I was taken to my room and a nursing sister, who I heard telling the other nurse that she hadn’t done any midwifery for years,  came in and tried to shave me. I told her that the baby was arriving any minute and in fact, I couldn’t keep still and was rolling from side to side. In the end she gave up the shaving lark and Peter arrived without much trouble soon after. Dr Lovell appeared and examined me, remarking that the unsuccessful attempts to shave me had left me looking as though the rats had been at me and she had better make a decent job of it. He gave me some stitches which I wouldn’t have required if I’d had a half decent midwife and that was it. About a week after the birth I had a considerable haemorrhage and passed out in the bathroom of our upstairs flat. I crawled to the door and shouted for the house servant and managed to get him to phone for Jack who was at work. I ended up lying in bed for a week with the foot of the bed raised about eighteen inches. Breast feeding Peter was quite a performance as he had to drink uphill as it were! All this was due to some of the afterbirth having been retained – more inefficiency. The doctors I was working for at Medical HQ  were quite smug, since I had scorned the Government Hospital. We were living in an upstairs flat near Selander Bridge and unfortunately the flats on either side of us were occupied by batchelors who had lots of roudy friends. They were rather unsympathetic to babies who woke them up when they were asleep, despite having kept the baby awake with their noisy parties. So we spent a lot  of time motoring around in the evening trying to get the baby to sleep, which he always did immediately we got motoring. 

We were posted to Zanzibar and I think arrived there about September.. during the intervening months I took Graham and Peter up to visit  Eldoret and Peter was christened. I don’t remember Jack being there so perhaps he’d gone ahead to Zanzibar.

In Zanzibar we had a huge old Arab house with a vast central room and rooms at each corner. There were massive oak double doors at each end of the main room and at each side which shut with a heavy bar slotted through wood and brass keepers. From the main room ceiling there were metal hooks which I suppose had been used to hang beds or nets or curtains. Out on the sea side there was a small lawn with palm trees and then a sheer drop to the sea. A small winding path went down to a very small beach where at one time Jack had Matilaba up for painting, but we didn’t use it otherwise. In the front, a long lawn studded with palms went down to the road. An enormous courtyard at the side went to the kitchen and quarters for servants.

The company provided us with a gardener and a house servant and we employed a lovely rotund ayah called Fatuma. She adored Graham and Peter and would rock the baby on her shoulder and sing nursery rhymes in broken English. There were a small number of commercial firms operating in Zanzibar and a lot of Government offices. We were soon into the social swing and met everybody. I especially made friends with Lorna Cameron and also Elizabeth and John Stringer, Libo and Bill Barton, who was a doctor and many others. On one occasion I had left Peter in his cot and was having a bath when I became aware that someone had pushed the heavy wooden bar across the bathroom door locking me in. I realised that it was Graham and I heard his little feet pattering off to where Peter lay in his cot and then realised that he was trying to unbolt the side and let it down in order to get Peter out. I was desperate and tried everything from threats to bribery to get him to unlock the door but nothing worked. Finally I wrapped a towel around me and went to the barred window. Down at the bottom of the garden I could see the gardener and after a good deal of shouting he came up to the window and I told him to come inside and unbolt the bathroom door. Fortunately Graham had not succeeded as Peter was too heavy to lift and he had managed to climb in beside him! I was too relieved to be cross with him. Joan and my father came down and stayed with us and we went to a barbecue on one of the many lovely beaches. We had brought deck chairs for Joan and Dad and I remember sitting beside them after much eating and drinking in the late evening and watching the various amorous goings on. There was a lot  of half serious wife swapping, cuddles and flirting and all four of us were quite shocked by it. Many marriages came to grief in Zanzibar. The wives had nothing to do except enjoy themselves, swim, party and play tennis and gin was only fifteen shillings a bottle. There was no duty paid so all alcohol was cheap. I made some good friends in the short time we were there. Shortly after their return to Eldoret, Joan became very ill indeed with typhoid and was rushed to the Maria Carberry Nursing Home in Nairobi, the very same place in which Rene had died, which  was very hard for Dad. I took Peter and flew to Nairobi to give him some support leaving Graham with Muara and stayed with my brother Jock and his wife Daphne. Happily Joan recovered and they returned to Eldoret.  

Back in Zanzibar, on New Year’s Eve, there was a fancy dress dance to which we all went. We had a baby sitter and didn’t get home until about 3am. I got up at 7am and got Graham and Peter up, put Peter in his playpen and asked Fatuma to get his pawpaw ready and call me so that I could give him his breakfast and went back to lie on my bed. Shortly after, Fatuma rushed in and said there was something wrong with the baby. I found Peter lying on his side and not breathing.  I held him upside down and banged him on the back, put my finger down his throat but could find nothing, so I yelled for Jack  who was down on the beach scrubbing Matilaba. I told Fatuma to look after Graham and we rushed him the mile and half into the local hospital. It was New Year’s day so there was only an elderly lady doctor on duty. Dr McKenzie tried everything but could not revive him. So we went home without him as she said there would have to be a post mortem. We cried in each other’s arms. I had never seen Jack cry before. Later that morning the Commissioner of Police called on me. I don’t remember much about it all and I just sat in the sittingroom. I was distraught and my ears kept ringing and I felt as though my head was full of cottonwool. Jack took Graham off to play with him. The Commissioner was extremely nice but said he needed to talk to Fatuma and then examined the playpen and took away some things from it.

We sent telegrams to our parents saying that Peter had died of an unknown cause pending post mortem. It turned out that he had reached up to a string of little celluloid horses that had some little bits in them so that they would rattle. He was teething at the time. Normally they were strung across his pram but at this time they were hanging on  the side of the playpen. He had bitten off a piece of celluloid which impacted behind his vocal chords cutting off his breathing. It was New Years Day and everyone was off in different parts of the Island. The Presidents wife had Peter dressed in a little sunsuit and laid in his little coffin for Jack and I to say our farewells, but I was too upset to do so, which I now regret so much. We had been there such a short time that we knew very few people and, as it was  New Year all the residents on the Island were off having picnics. Nevertheless they all came to the service at the graveside. Peter was buried in a little cemetery somewhere near the airport. Years later Graham and I tried hard to find it but never did. I had taken some photos of Peter a few days before he died and I collected those and was so glad to have them as they are the only record I have of the little fellow. He was just seven months old. Dr Barton was extremely kind to us and assured me that there was nothing any doctor could have done to resuscitate Peter – and if they had, his brain would have been badly starved of oxygen by that time. He tried to make me understand that instead of my seeing it as a cruel and violent death, Peter had been taken in all his beauty and innocence straight to God.