Final year of school
In the last few years of high-school I developed a real crush on Margaret’s sister Ann. I’d always thought she was attractive, albeit pint sized. But my interest began in earnest after a holiday at the coast where Doug Carney came with our family and the Patterson’s were there at the same time. They were staying at a very grand hotel called the Nyali Hotel in Malawi, while we were in boori huts right with a bar right on the beach. The advantage of the girls staying at the Nyali was that it hosted a lot of dances and balls. Almost every night we would sneak down there in our best clothes, try and look as old as we possibly could and saunter nonchalantly past the doormen and hotel lobby staff. The girls would keep an eye out for us and we could usually get quite a few dances in before her father would start looking suspiciously at the young men who seemed to be occupying so much of his daughter’s attention. We would then leg it before he decided to investigate- discretion being the better part of valour.
Unfortunately one night we got a bit carried away and two large hands were soon thumped on our shoulders. We looked up into Mr Patterson’s forbidding visage as he told us it was time to get out or be kicked out. We got out. We hung around disconsolately outside for a bit wondering what to do with ourselves when I heard a “psst”. Ann had come out of the back of the hotel and motioned us through a different entrance. I was impressed. Even more so when she and Margaret sneaked us upstairs to their room. It was a long sneak…every time we heard steps we would be shoved into a nearby broom cupboard! But it was a memorable night and Ann became my official target of my attentions from that moment on.
Margaret, Ann and some of the gang
Back in Nairobi we would go into town and have a drink in the New Stanley Hotel, one of the big hotels in town which was a big meeting place for everyone in Nairobi at the time. It had an enormous lounge plus an open quadrangle in the middle of it and both could fit hundreds of people. Because children and teenagers were allowed in the lounge we could often get a drink at the bar on busy days because nobody had the time to take much notice of underage drinking! I made the most of it and it was a favourite past-time of mine to impress the girls.
We also went to a couple of high school dances together as a group. When I reached 16 I was allowed to borrow my father’s saloon car to take the group to the dance. It was a Morris 25 and it looked exactly like a Rolls Royce. It was a very high class car and in fact it had been formerly owned by Lady McMillan, a friend of my parents. This of course made me impressively popular and I basked in it during the lead-up to the dance. On the day of the dance I got it all polished up and picked up the girls and Doug and went up to the high school and had a good night. As the hall packed up and the band went home we headed to the car. The girls got into the back, chattering and giggling, and I tried to start the car. That terrible moment when the key turns and the car doesn’t start. It just did a sick kind of coughing. I had taken four girls to the dance and now I made them all get out, in their expensive ballgowns, and push the car until we hit a downward slope which thankfully wasn’t too far away. I think it’s fair to say they weren’t overly impressed and my popularity stakes plummeted. Not only that but they lost no time in informing the rest of the school of my stupidity either. I suppose the battery had probably gone flat. Being 16 I had no doubt left the lights on.
We all finished high-school and Ann and Margaret moved out to Karen where her parents had built a new house. But their father died soon after they moved there. He’d been steadily drinking himself to death following his return to Kenya and had now succeeded.
At about the same time my own father suffered a serious bout of tick-fever. During the long slow recovery he suddenly suffered a stroke and died also.
My father
Both men were Masons so neither Margaret nor I nor our mothers were allowed to go to our father’s funeral. It left us with an unreal feeling that he might still walk through the front door any moment.
My father’s death devastated my mother and afterwards she operated in a kind of daze trying to keep some semblance of normality about our family life. But she was in no state to deal with the sorting out of his business affairs which were complicated to say the least.
That was why, in the opinion of us kids, she let herself be victimised by Uncle Ken when they were sorting out his affairs.
Dad had never left a will but all the businesses were in his name or the company name of Sands and Co. Uncle Ken had worked for my father but as a book-keeper. As far as any of us knew he had never been made a partner. Yet Ken suddenly announced that he had been an equal partner and was entitled to 50% of everything.
My mother didn’t like it but felt incapable of resisting. Together Uncle Ken and his lawyers carved up Dad’s empire. By that time it was quite extensive including our house and the five acres it was on as well as the home farm on the Athi River. In addition there was another 6000 acre farm with an aerodrome, a 10,000 acre cattle block on the Mombasa rail line. There was also the big hall where the poultry sales were held twice a week selling 6-700 chickens in an hour. Near that was the auction house where they would sell everything and anything. He also had a share in an abbatoir outside town and a freezer-works as well as 20 acres on where there were cattle sales every week. Lastly, there was an office block- prime real estate in the centre of the city. Even in old days money Uncle Ken ended up with assets worth a couple of million pounds which he sold off.
It never caused an open rift in the family because my Mother insisted family life and gatherings should continue without incident, but all us kids were ropable.
We had kept the Athi River farm, because Ted and Jean said they wanted it. Ted had been working on tea plantations in the north of Kenya and Jean had just completed her agricultural degree. I’m never sure if that is what she actually wanted to do. She was packed off there after school because she had started seeing a bloke my mother didn’t approve of- I’m not sure why- he was quite respectable and from a good old Kenya family- but nevertheless Jean was packed off to college in South Africa to get her out his vicinity.
After school I also went to work on the farm with them but it wasn’t a good mix. I was no doubt pretty arrogant for my age. In my opinion they gave me all the shit jobs and refused to listen to my opinions, which included the fact I didn’t think they were doing a very good job.
For the sake of lasting family relations it was no doubt very fortunate that I was soon offered an apprenticeship on a nearby dairy farm owned by FOB Wilson. I was pretty happy as it was renowned as one of the most modern and extensive operations in Kenya at the time.
As for the farm I don’t think Ted really liked running the farm and Jean had met Doug Semini by this time so soon married and moved away. The farm ended up being sold a couple of years later.
himalayan epiphany 