Love's Obsession (8 page)

Once more, the Stewarts closed up Park Cottage and sailed for Cyprus, where they would set up house in Bellapais. The village of Bellapais hangs from the northern face of the Kyrenia Range, the ruins of its Gothic monastery perched at the edge of a natural terrace overlooking the plain and sea below. The Abbey de la Paix, originally an Augustinian monastery, was founded by Aimery de Lusignan around the year 1200 but later came under the strict rule of a Frankish order of monks, the Norbertines. Royal benefactors contributed to the abbey's wealth and its bishops grew in importance. The Venetian rulers of Cyprus shortened its name and it came to be known as Bellapais. When the Turks conquered the island, the abbey became an Orthodox Church but the buildings were neglected and fell into disrepair. The church itself continued as a parish church for the village that grew up around the abbey, its inhabitants mostly the descendants of the monks.

The Vounous cemetery was situated on a hill in the northern foothills of the Kyrenia Range, with a wide and picturesque outlook.

On a clear day the Taurus Mountains in Asia Minor stand like a cloud along the northern horizon, and eastward the tongue of the Karpas peninsula can be seen almost as far as Cape Plakoti, while to the South the sheer mass of the Kyrenia mountains curtails the sunlight on a winter afternoon.
62

Over the next year and a half Jim and Eleanor would excavate eighty-four Early Cypriot rock-cut tombs there, located in two separate burial grounds. They would remove a vast quantity of artefacts, many now exhibited in museums in England, Australia and America: wonderful and quirky pottery, large and bulbous, often burnished red or black. In their publication of the site, Jim and Eleanor named the landowners on whose property they worked, a respectful acknowledgement of Cypriot ownership. They employed local workmen, many of whom would remain lifelong friends.

The Stewarts set up house in the abbot's quarters adjoining the abbey. Their workspace was a huge room, originally the Abbey's Great Hall, facing the village square. Opening off this room were smaller rooms, used as bedrooms and a kitchen. Two teenage boys worked at the benches mending and drawing pottery—one of them, Andreas Stylianou, came from a very modest background but would go on to have a distinguished career as a Byzantine scholar. He married one of the museum volunteers, Judith Dobell, who worked with Joan and Eve in the Karpas. Andreas Diamantis, a teacher at the Nicosia gymnasium, did much of the drawing during the school holidays and came recommended by the Cyprus Museum. His children were forever running in and out of the workroom as they played.
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It was not unusual to find a cat curled up asleep in a half-mended pot waiting to be drawn. When it could spare her, the Cyprus Museum lent Eve Dray to help with the drawing.

Jim and Eleanor had little time for a social life. Eleanor's sister visited once and helped to type lists of finds for the Cyprus Museum and prepare photo negatives for filing.
64
She entertained the locals by taking them for their first car ride, driving somewhat erratically in the Stewarts' convertible.
65
Eleanor took a break from work to join Margery Dray on an expedition to the famous frescoed chapel of Asinou in the Troodos Mountains.
66
O.G.S. Crawford, the editor of the journal
Antiquity
, planned to buy property nearby and visited Jim and Eleanor in their ‘eyrie'. He mistook the square bottle in the fridge for water and found he had slurped down raw gin.
67
Virginia Grace, from the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, also visited. Later she wrote in admiration at the ability of Jim and Eleanor to maintain complete catalogues of finds at the same time as they were digging.
68
At some stage Jim, never robust, contracted malaria and recuperated in the home of a retired high court judge, Sir Stephen Murphy, and his wife.
69

At twenty-three, Eleanor looked delicate, with short blonde hair cut in a bob, but years of travelling in the Near East had burnished her English complexion and she was sturdier than she appeared. She seemed happy playing second fiddle in Jim's orchestra and worked beside him in the workshop, arranging pottery on the shelves ready for Andreas to draw. Most days they spent together in the workshop, or Jim worked in the field digging with the workmen. Once a fortnight they would take a break from the routine and, with a cat in her arms or draped over Jim's shoulders, set off to visit Margery Dray and her ‘mousey' daughter. Eve was the same age as Eleanor, small and quiet, her complexion more naturally brown than Eleanor's. At night in the still evening, the four of them sat around the kitchen table playing Monopoly. Sheep bells rang in the clear air, or joined the muezzin's call. Sitting with the board laid out before them, they felt a long way from Pall Mall or Mayfair.
70

Chapter 4
War, 1940–45

Hindsight can blind us to the past. Because we know how events transpired it can be hard to imagine a time when that future is unknown. We know the end of the story and can't believe the characters do not see what is coming. During the 1930s Europe moved, we now know, inexorably towards war. Fears there certainly were of a slide toward a dark abyss, but there was no guarantee that the fall would occur, and hope remained that it could be averted.

Late in 1938, with her Cyprus archaeological experience behind her, Eve joined a group of budding young archaeologists in northern France. They went to investigate Iron Age hill forts in Brittany under the direction of Mortimer Wheeler. At Camp d'Artus, Eve again worked again with Kim Collingridge, along with Kitty Richardson and Jean Cormack.

‘We set out to make a detailed survey of hill-forts built by Gauls of the pre-Roman period', Kim explained to the Australian press when she returned home. ‘Our headquarters were in a rather primitive village, and we used to go round to the peasants' cottages asking for information about the forts. The peasants were extremely kind, but knew absolutely nothing, and when the international situation became tense they mistook us for spies.
1
Mortimer, a notorious womaniser, soon became besotted with Kim.

Eve spoke French fluently and enjoyed both village life and camping in the countryside close to the excavations. She admired the skills with which the local patron of the hotel could make an omelette using thirty-eight eggs and delighted in wandering around the local markets. With a group of students she posed to be photographed in costume at the village fairgrounds and dressed up for dinner at the local hotels. Every weekend the students danced the foxtrot at a small local casino and Eve remembered one occasion when a man carrying an umbrella kept changing partners, sidling up to a couple on the dance floor, giving his umbrella to one of the dancers and whirling off with the other. It took some time to realise he was satirising the changing politics and diplomatic manoeuvring of the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who still hoped there would be ‘peace in our time'.
2

The following year a smaller group returned to Normandy. It was not a successful season. Having completed a survey at Fécamp they moved the focus to Duclair. Wheeler was obsessed with a new wife, Mavis de Vere Cole, although his wandering eye kept a lookout for Kim. Mavis joined the group in France but was no archaeologist and tired of the whole enterprise. Eve remembered only the farcical elements of Mavis's shifting passion and Wheeler's vanity.

Mavis sat looking bored for a while and then some young men she knew turned up and she went off with them. Wheeler borrowed Theodora's car and went chasing after her. He wasn't certain whether or not to take out his teeth while he sat in the car all night, waiting for first light.
3

War loomed. As a veteran gunner from the First World War, Wheeler was not only preoccupied with his wife's affairs but eager to return to soldiering. On 25 August he suddenly left, abandoning Norma Richardson and Theodora Newbold to wind up the unfinished excavations and pack for Dieppe. Eve wrote to her mother: ‘Kim and I have just spent our day here on the way back from Duclair after a 3 day hill-fort hunt. Most of the things we saw were duds but we found two Iron Age camps (small ones) yesterday'. Later, from Dieppe, she described the town filling with English trying to flee and warned it might take some time before they would be able to get their six expedition cars across the Channel.
4
She photographed the general mobilisation at Dieppe that September—clusters of anxious crowds lining the streets, children tugging at their mothers' hands, men in suits and uniforms. Her postcards to her mother are re-addressed to the friend they had recently made in Cyprus, Mr J.R. Stewart, Kingsdon, Taunton, Somerset. One is dated 2 September 1939.

A day earlier Nazi armies had, without warning, invaded Poland. A day later, on 3 September, England and France declared war on Germany.

A week after returning from France, on 12 September 1939, Eve enlisted for general service in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She was twenty-five, five foot two and weighed 103 pounds. She gave her vocation as ‘archaeologist' but added that she had training in draughtsmanship and elementary surveying.
5
She joined the 1st London Motor Division as a driver.

Jim and Eleanor Stewart spent the early months of 1939 unaware that their world would soon fall apart. They finalised their work from Turkey and Cyprus. Jim sent notes and photos of Babaköy to Kurt Bittel, he and Eleanor prepared for a lecture and exhibition of Vounous pottery at the Institute of Archaeology in London, and they organised the distribution of finds to their excavation sponsors. They completed their report on the site, Eleanor dealing with the finds and Jim reporting on the tombs. Most of the descriptive work was done by the end of the year but they had written no analysis nor drawn any conclusions.
6
Jim in particular was reluctant to give an opinion on the Early Cypriot period as a whole.

Alfirios Westholm visited in September, the month that Germany invaded Poland, and stayed a fortnight. The three friends sat up late into the night, talking archaeology and arguing details of little interest to Eleanor, although she enjoyed the company of this affable Swede. On his departure Jim wrote anxiously: ‘I wonder if Sweden is safe from the Russians?
'
7

Like many of his class and conservative persuasion, Jim worried as much about Bolshevism as Nazism. One minute he hoped the army would overthrow Hitler,
8
the next he put his faith in German Royalists.
9
The war was not popular in England, he said, and as the weeks passed Jim expressed increasing optimism that it would end quickly. Hope faded in early 1940 and on the night of the Nazi attack on Finland Jim wrote to Westholm, ‘What brutes! There is much sympathy for Finland here'.
10
By March he believed the war might last twenty years.
11

Frustrated and directionless, Jim turned to what he did best. Planning. He proposed to lead a major expedition, along the lines of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, also to Cyprus.
12
The idea was for three years of survey work across the island, investigating sites along the North Coast (Mylos, Karmi, Vasilia, the copper mines), and in the districts of Paphos, Limassol and Famagusta. He intended to excavate Classical and Medieval as well as Bronze and Iron Age sites. He longed to excavate a stratified Early Cypriot settlement. He needed a draughtsman and assistant, although why he believed the assistant should be ‘preferably married' is a mystery. He wanted an anthropologist for the final season and would employ a permanent local workforce, a donkey man for transport and women for pot washing. In toto Jim envisaged six years work, three spent in the field and three cataloguing and analysing finds. Regular leave from work would be necessary and he anticipated long periods each year. ‘An archaeological expedition is in a sense a perpetual emergency, and nerves are apt to become tense.'

The proposal was far-reaching, not only in its scope of planned excavations, but also because of what Jim saw as its political purpose:

Apart from the scientific value of this proposed work, there is the important consideration of propaganda value. There has never been an English Expedition to compare with the Swedish work in 1927–31, or even with the American Expedition now operating at Curium. It would both enrich the Kyrenia villages and demonstrate the fact that the Archaeological importance, and therefore the Imperial importance, of the Island is not overlooked.
13

Jim fired off detailed questions to Peter Megaw. What voltage and current were in use in Nicosia and Kyrenia? Could he buy a second-hand Morris 8 tourer? What was the price of a large oil refrigerator? Were axes, shovels and wheelbarrows available locally? How stringent was the petrol rationing? Was a blackout mandatory? Peter Megaw, more attuned to the world he saw coming, replied patiently, but toward the end of the year cautioned, ‘it is difficult to look so far ahead these days, circumstances may completely change in the course of two years'.
14

Alan Wace, as ever, was supportive and took Jim's proposal to the government but doubted the British Council would give anything other than ‘their blessings'.
15
The council's support, as expected, was lacklustre; they were happy for him to mount an expedition under their auspices, ‘though they could not undertake any legal or financial responsibility'.
16
Persuaded only by his own enthusiasm, Jim continued to believe it would happen. He prepared lists of essential equipment, everything from dinner jackets and dress collars, five pairs of pyjamas and khaki shirts, to travelling mirrors and toiletries. He calculated the costs of equipment, one-off and recurrent expenses. His estimate of £9586.18.6 for two years work needs to be seen in context. The total expenditure for the excavations at Karphi on Crete, run by Jim's Cambridge colleague and fellow Wilkins scholar, John Pendlebury, between 1937 and 1939, had only cost £250.8.8.
17

Restlessness hung over the nation during this ‘phoney' war. At Park Cottage, Jim sat at his desk, looking out on a peaceful Somerset landscape of green fields and dappled cows, but in his mind he saw a harsh Cypriot sun and rocky mountains. Pages of typescript grew as he bashed out an argument, typing with six fingers, two of them holding a glowing cigarette. Work on writing up their findings from Vounous and producing a manuscript for publication continued, but Jim was more interested in the future than the past.

As Jim's plans for his survey grew more and more detailed, he persuaded himself that he had been asked to do it, whereas in fact the idea was entirely his own. Eventually he conceded that he would have to fund the work privately but admitted he had no idea where the money might come from. Modern events made him increasingly conscious of the survey's political purpose.

The aim is to relieve the disasters caused by the war and to establish some sort of cultural centre where Cypriots and English can meet. I don't know where the money is to be found, but I feel that if the idea is not carried out the result would be bad. For a start it is an admission that Archaeology is a social science of some value, and that is something new in the general English way of thinking. Then we may do something to bridge the awful gap between the English and the Cypriots.
18

Writing to Westholm Jim bewailed the current state of archaeology.

I am afraid that all English archaeology has stopped. Woolley is at the War Office, Garstang relieving Turks, Miss Lamb farming her estate, Wace in Athens. I'm sorry to say that our School in Athens in closing; that seems to me a big mistake when Germany still works at Olympia. But only slowly are we learning that culture is as good propaganda as you can find or invent. No idea is good in England unless William brought it from Normandy in 1066—but then I'm an Australian!

He invited Westholm to visit if they made it to Cyprus to carry out their survey. ‘I don't suppose we ever shall. It is too good and too great an idea to succeed.
'
19
Jim's fears were well founded. In early February his Cyprus proposal was ‘official' but by March 1940 was ‘off'.

In its early months, this was a strange war. The army did not need or want any but specialist volunteers and some existing officers were sent on leave because there was so little for them to do. Matters changed in the early months of 1940, with Germany attacking France, Holland and Belgium in May.

All imperial troops were volunteers, which Jim applauded. ‘It's a good idea,' he wrote, ‘to make this war a crusade' that will unite the peoples of the Empire ‘by blood' and create a different, but stronger, Commonwealth. On 16 May he applied for registration in the Army Officers' Emergency Reserve. He was interviewed in London three days later and when asked to list three regiments to which he hoped to be posted and his reasons, he gave only one—the Cyprus Regiment, because of his ‘professional acquaintance with the Colony'.
20
A week later, Dunkirk fell and their friend Eve Dray, now a sergeant with the Auxiliary Transport Service (ATS) helped hand out hot tea and pies to the evacuating troops arriving at the Addison Road train station in London.

Jim was formally notified of his acceptance in mid-July, the decision to join the Cyprus Regiment reflecting his passion to return to Cyprus and his love for the island. It made him a legend amongst Cypriots, who believed, perhaps wrongly, that he could have found a more attractive post with the Australian or English forces and who were delighted and honoured that he chose to serve with them.
21

There was so much to do. Although much of the text for their publication of excavations at Vounous was written, the detailed description of finds was not finalised. Jim continued to feel the need for a corpus and was irritated that Schaeffer and Dikaios had failed to publish so much of what he had wanted to include. Westholm offered to help edit the volume and Jim now gave the rights of Vounous to the Swedish Cyprus Expedition. The offer came as the British School, the original sponsor of the excavation, closed because of war and in the will that Jim wrote before leaving England he left £300 to the Swedes for publication costs and bequeathed his personal library to the Cyprus Museum.
22

There is no record of Jim and Eleanor's movements in June, July or August of 1940 but in September, before joining his regiment, they sailed for Sydney. Later Jim would say that the voyage was an unhappy one and it is likely they were both anxious about what the future held. They spent nearly two months in Australia, so were not in England to experience the massive German bombardment of London or the raid on Coventry. Leaving Eleanor to sit out the war in Australia, Jim sailed from Sydney on 28 December. On arrival at the port city of Haifa on 30 January 1941 he was instructed to report to the Cyprus Regiment base, and was posted to the 1006 Pioneer Company at the end of February.