Love's Obsession by Judy Powell Read Free Book Online Page A

in England, had worked alongside Porphyrios Dikaios at the Neolithic site of Khirokitia in the south of Cyprus and had wide and varied experience undertaking rescue digs across the island. Now she would direct excavations on the northern shore of the remote Karpas Peninsula, where the discovery of a patterned marble floor near a small church had held up plans for tourist developments in the area. For three seasons, Joan was the Department of Antiquities representative at the excavations at Ayios Philon, work that was sponsored by the Cyprus Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Both institutions would share the excavated finds.
    The Orthodox church of Ayios Philon sits facing a small ancient harbour and the setting sun. Along the shoreline the remains of a Roman jetty enclose a tiny harbour and stone blocks fitted together with sockets for iron clamps lie just above the high tide mark. Rock-cut tombs from all periods line the shoreline to either side. This is the site of Carpasia, said to be founded by the Phoenician, Pygmalion of Sidon. Archaeological investigations would span periods from the Bronze Age to the fifteenth century CE but primarily focus on the Early Christian basilica.
    In the spring of 1937 Eve joined Joan for the third season of excavations. Judith Dobell teamed up with the two friends and with another of Eve’s pals from London and Maiden Castle, the Australian Margaret (Kim) Collingridge. For the girls this was a great adventure. They lived in a two-storeyed house that was let out to English holiday-makers in the summer, furnishing the downstairs room with camp beds and tables and chairs. The ceiling was made of matting and an odd assortment of small creatures, centipedes or spiders, often dropped onto them at night. There was an outside ‘convenience’ and in the evenings their cook brought a large tin tub of hot water to their bedrooms so they could bathe.
    Judith worked with Joan at Ayios Philon, while Eve and Kim worked at a nearby site, Aphendrika, excavating Hellenistic tombs. They rode to the site each morning on their donkeys, with bundles of fresh lucerne attached to their saddles. The return trip, with cardboard boxes full of pots tied onto the wooden saddles, was decidedly less comfortable. 11 Eve and Kim excavated with twelve workmen who had, they laughed, ‘improbable-sounding names such as Sophocles’. The girls giggled at the incongruity of instructions to their workmen. ‘Pericles, your work is very bad! ’ 12
    On the last day at Ayios Philon the boxes of pots and the beds and other furniture from the camp were loaded on a truck for Nicosia, while the girls spent their last night in the inn at the village of Rizokarpasso. As honoured guests they were given the best hand-woven sheets whose geometric patterns in green, red and yellow camouflaged the fact that the beds harboured fleas. As Judith crossed the landing to get the tin of Keating’s Powder (in those days used for protection from fleas) from Joan, she found the landing outside their room ‘carpeted’ with half a dozen sleeping men! 13
    As she had in London, Eve found work drawing archaeological material. Her drafting was skilful and in demand. Soon she began drawing for a young couple excavating a large cemetery called Vounous, near Bellapais, only a few miles from Kyrenia. Jim Stewart was Australian, his wife Eleanor English. The Stewarts were both aged twenty-four and well travelled. This was their second visit to Cyprus. In 1935, en route to Turkey, they had stopped to visit friends. Both fell in love with the island, its history and landscapes and they left determined to return. When not travelling or working abroad, Jim and Eleanor lived not far from Eve’s English family, at Park Cottage in Somerset. Now in Cyprus, Eve and her mother became the couple’s friends.
    Eve, Jim and Eleanor were close in age and background. Except that one was blonde and the other brunette, Eve and