I don’t know how long my father farmed at Nandi but, like many others in the area, his farm was stricken with coffee berry disease and the situation became so bad that he had to leave the farm in the hands of the Headman.
We moved into Eldoret where he bought a house, Tulgiwood, and found employment working for Capt. McNab Mundell, running a business selling farm machinery. At some stage he became a partner in this business and later bought McNab Mundell out altogether. He was joined by Eric Wolston Beard who became the accountant. Eric was a faithful right hand man to my father for all the years he worked there. As children we were fascinated by the fact that his right arm was tethered to his side with a silver chain. This was to avoid him flinging it out (even turning a ledger page too energetically) which would dislocate his shoulder. In his youth he had been a very daring young man, the proud owner of Pilot’s licence No.12 and would also ride the “wall of death” on his motorbike.
My brother Jock was sent to a very good boarding school, Kenton College, near Nairobi, and was quite happy there. My mother wrote to him frequently and I have gleaned from her letters, passed to me recently by Jock, that she and Jock were very close. She made constant excuses for my father not writing, generally because he was so busy, but also mentioning the many sporting events in which he was involved. He joined the Eldoret Golf Club and the Tennis Club and travelled to various tournaments and he also played rugger.
The large bookcase in the sittingroom held rows of silver cups, mugs and other sporting trophies. He kept all the newspaper cuttings recording the various teams, sometimes with photos attached. I think my mother must have been very lonely, but I really know very little about her life. I think we were estranged from her family or possibly the distances in those days was considerable with the roads being rough and no tarmac.
I have the impression that my mother was not keen on any social activities and I think the marriage was not a happy one. Both Jock and my mother suffered bouts of malaria. She also developed cataracts and I remember her getting very short tempered with people sending her notes that she couldn’t read. She would call me and we would walk down the road to our nearest neighbours, Ethel and Charles Newton, and she would ask Ethel to read the note to her. Later she made a trip down to South Africa to have the cataracts removed and she came home with two pairs of glasses, one for reading and one for long sight.
While she was down in South Africa I was put to stay with a family called Allchurch who lived in Nakuru. I remember very little about this except an incident when I was playing with their children and ate a lot of violet leaves as ‘lunch’ in the game we were playing. Everyone became very alarmed and I remember having to drink salt water to make me vomit – which I never did, but survived nevertheless. This was also the last time I met and stayed with Granny Costello, my mother’s mother. She had very long white hair which she sometimes wore loose and reached to her waist. She was reputed to have rushed out with her long hair flying and wielding an axe to deter trespassers! I believe that the reason I never saw her again was that she blamed my father for taking my mother away and she said she never wanted anything to do with us.
Best Beloved 