Love's Obsession by Judy Powell

Author:Judy Powell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book, BGT, HIS004000
ISBN: 9781743052747
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2013-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Travels, 1955–56

The SS Oronsay lay at anchor at Suez, waiting in line to enter the canal. Sharing a beer in the ship’s glass-windowed lounge, Jim and Eve sat quietly, both lost in thought. Eve recalled family camping trips through the Egyptian desert as a child, her mother swathed in a long fur coat, her father at the wheel of their open-top car. How quaint it all seemed now, another world. When she had left Egypt as a child, she never expected it would be so long before she returned. Jim had met his company near here in 1941 and, in 1947, had passed through with Eleanor, both in sad and sullen silence.

At dawn Eve rose to watch the sun lighten the pink cliffs at the edge of the Eastern Desert, which seemed to rise directly out of the blue waters of the Red Sea. Later she sat with Jim as the great ocean liner entered the canal behind a group of tankers and freighters. A young boy leaned over the railing and shrieked with delight at his first site of a camel. Eve thought it possible to forget you were on a ship, the canal so narrow it gave the impression of sliding in graceful silence over the land. On one side of the liner was nothing but sand and on the other, a fringe of cultivation.1

Eight long and messy years after arriving in Australia, Eve mentally replayed the mad rush to finish work and her excitement at preparing for the trip back to the world she had left behind. Optimistic and upbeat, she hoped that if all went well they would bring back enough ‘loot’ to impress doubters and win over Sydney University. They might, she thought, get their institute after all.2 Although on leave from his job at Sydney University, Jim had obtained official support for these planned excavations from Melbourne University, although Melbourne gave little by way of financial backing and Jim seems to have covered most of the expenses himself. Plans that had once been attached to an Australian Cyprus Expedition now came under the aegis of the Melbourne Cyprus Expedition.

As she folded their clothes and packed suitcases in the cool Bathurst evening, Eve marvelled at how long it had been since she’d travelled. Although relieved to turn their backs on Sydney and their failed plans, leaving The Mount was not easy. They fussed over the house, worried at the decline in wool prices and A.A.’s health, and fired off detailed instructions to Basil.

Remember to smooge the house cats (Pooh, Bub, Fiz, Tabitha, and Chilly), try to coax Chilly back in to the drawing room, remember to shut the china cupboard doors as the cats are always anxious to explore, here is a list of hens to be eaten off, remind Callan to keep the lambs indoors during winter.3

In Sydney they boarded the Oronsay and were shown to their cabin. Built only four years earlier, the ship had become a regular visitor to Sydney Harbour

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