Joan

by Simon Fenwick

  Forgive this rambling boring letter. I keep being interrupted and I have just spent a nerve-wracking half hour at the B. Consulate swearing on a stack of bibles about my divorce.

  Give my love to Amy [Smart] and best love to you

  Joan.4

  Most of the last pages of Joan’s pocket diary for 1945 have been torn out. However the entry for 30 December remains and simply reads ‘PADDY’ and ‘72452’ – presumably a telephone number. He had been back to Cairo – perhaps for a final party – and the doors of Tara were closed for the last time. In Greece, there was new company to be found and the British Council and institute were soon at the heart of ex-pat cultural life. This expanding social circle also embraced the artist Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, the poet and critic George Seferis, George Katsimbalis, a poet and editor of the Hellenic Review, and Osbert Lancaster. However unlike Joan, who had reasons to stay on now that her work was finished, Osbert soon returned to England. After Warner, Joan and Paddy, there also arrived Graham’s Eton contemporary Mark Ogilvie-Grant, who was recovering from four years as a German POW.

  ‘Pretty Joan has turned up, everybody very pleased to see her,’5 wrote Nancy Mitford, who had worked at Heywood Hill’s bookshop throughout the war – not that she and Joan were ever close. For Paddy it was time to break old ties. At Easter he went to Paris to say goodbye to Denise Menasce for the last time. Afterwards she sent him a postcard of la place de la Concorde, writing, ‘only a line to tell you how delighted I was to see you even if I didn’t show it. It is wonderful to think that whatever happens it will always be the same between us . . . As ever, impishly, Denise.’

  In Athens, the staff of the Council and institute continued to grow, Steven Runciman was made head of the British Council in Greece, while Maurice Cardiff was demoted to the role of acting assistant. Cardiff was more than happy to accept this inferior position. He was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the volume and nature of his responsibilities, such as superintending the innumerable packing cases sent out from London. The vast consignment of harsh British government service lavatory paper prompted aggrieved comments, especially from Greek colleagues and visitors. Runciman had begun the war as a press attaché for the Ministry of Information at the British legation in Sofia, until the staff had to evacuate hurriedly when the Germans invaded Bulgaria. Afterwards he served in Cairo and Jerusalem, and in 1942, at the Turkish government’s request, he was appointed professor of art and history at the University of Istanbul. Paddy had first met Runciman in Sofia in August 1934, when on his way to Constantinople – ‘suave and suede-shod and urbanely clad’. Although they eventually became friends, in 1946 relations between Paddy and Runciman were strained. And Cardiff admitted that Runciman terrified him. Friendly and charming though he was when they were introduced, he felt prompted to attach a mental label to his new boss – ‘handle with care’.

  Maurice Bowra, in his role as chairman of the British Council Humanities Advisory Committee, came out to lecture and was introduced to the staff of the institute. Given his strong feelings for Joan, he would have looked on Paddy as some sort of rival, and could not have been the most unprejudiced of observers. That said, in the subsequent report he wrote on the British Council in Athens, his reaction to Paddy unquestionably carries more than an element of truth:

  A misfit is Mr P. Lee-Fermore [sic] who has many excellent gifts but is unfit for office work. With his experience in Crete he has many unusual acquaintances, which is a great asset, and he might be better employed on a roving commission of making contacts, for which he is admirably fitted.6

  Bowra’s view was almost certainly shared by Steven Runciman. But the Greek political situation had shifted again. The communist guerrillas retreated from Athens to the north of the country and the British Army information officers thought that the British Council could set up some outposts to help counter their influence. When one of these outposts was opened in Salonica, Runciman decided that Cardiff and Paddy should go out and see how it was progressing. They could also make a tour through some of the more important towns, to assess what more might be done to further the Council’s and the British government’s aims. Joan accompanied them. Paddy’s fractious relationship with Runciman and his unsuitability for office life now enabled them to escape Athens and see more of Greece. At the Ritz Hotel in Salonica – chosen because it sounded the grandest – the barman not only offered drinks but brought out for their inspection cocaine and hashish. Cocaine had no appeal, but the latter had romantic associations. Joan mildly disapproved, but Paddy and Cardiff bought a minute block of what the barman assured them was the best on the market. They stretched out on twin beds and puffed away conscientiously while Joan sat watching and complained that they ought to have eaten first. Joan, Cardiff observed, was much more withdrawn than Paddy, although her intelligence matched his. She was a wonderful person to travel with – but rather given to ‘moaning’. She need not have worried. Inhale as deeply as they could, the joints had no effect other than to make Paddy and Cardiff giggle; they found the situation comical, anyway. The trio stayed several days in the city before setting off again over mountainous roads in an old army vehicle – a kind of half-open barouche with seating for twelve – and all the while Paddy regaled them with his tales. The stories would often climax just as Cardiff, who was the driver, heaved the barouche around a perilous hairpin bend or scraped the rock face on one side to avoid a chasm on the other. Sometimes envy would make him question if the tales were really true. But, of course, they always were.

  Cardiff, for his part, had formed two early perceptions which helped smooth his own relationship with Runciman. At the time, Runciman was already at work on the history of the Crusades that would cement his reputation. If Cardiff needed to consult him he would open the door a little in order to give Runciman just enough time to cover his Crusades work – which he was doing in office time – with an office file. The second observation was more important. In response to any proposal, Runciman would invariably say ‘yes’, but the manner in which he said ‘yes’ varied. If his ‘yes’ was short, even curt, he meant it; if the word was long and drawn out on the other hand, this signified ‘no’. Paddy did not grasp this fine distinction and he thought – or he allowed himself to think – that over the course of the summer of 1946 he had been given permission to go off on a six-week tour of the Greek islands or a trip around the Peloponnese.7

  Xan Fielding was still in Saigon when he discovered that Paddy had found a means of getting back to Greece:

  Paddy, me old dear, you’re the worst of all monsters. Why this long impenetrable silence? I’ve written you several times but have had nothing from you since the delightful scribble from Garibaldi’s. Anne has mentioned you in several letters but never told me where you were or what you were doing. Yesterday I picked up an old copy of the Evening Standard and now at last I have some idea as to your whereabouts and occupation – Deputy Director of the British Institute at Athens! I envy you. I picture you in romantic white clothes sucking down retsina in Kolonaki – oh the gorgeous Helenistic [sic] fornication – pepper trees, sweet almonds and double beds. Give all my love and 2 or 3 of my tears to all our friends there – Christ I wish I were with you.

  Life out here apart from 2 months in the Himalayas has not been much fun. Colombo was tedious, Calcutta foul, Rangoon worse – And Saigon itself troublesome but worse. Fortunately I managed to get away on my own for six weeks into Cambodia – the sunniest, most smiling country I’ve met east of Suez. As usual, I found myself backing an attractive, amusing minority against the unattractive established authorities; was involved in various intrigues, both erotic and political, with the royal household, and after a very thorough immersion in drink, sex and opium and after a personal rocket from the G.O.C., I’m once again back in Hq – but not for long. I hope to be in Bali or thereabouts by Christmas.

  I’ve seen nothing of David [Smiley], the Bill & Co for ages. I gather most of them are on their way home & I begin to feel lonesome ag
ain – lazy, old and discarded and unwilling to settle down. All I want now is a sunny wine-producing climate and no responsibility. Maybe I’ll achieve this in time.

  Xan8

  Xan was a proud but difficult man, never comfortable in his own skin. He feared humiliation most of all. At the end of the war there was no lack of highly talented ex-officers in search of employment, and many commissioned war veterans ended up as secretaries of suburban golf clubs or running chicken farms. Xan was typical of those who placed personal advertisements in the agony columns of The Times:

  Tough but sensitive ex-classical scholar, ex-secret agent, ex-guerrilla leader, 31, recently reduced to penury through incompatibility with the post-war world: Mediterranean lover, gambler, and general dabbler: fluent French and Greek speaker, some German, inevitable: would do anything unreasonable and unexpected if sufficiently rewarding and legitimate.9

  Paddy would have told everybody about it, but Xan did not. So far as one can tell, the personal advertisement brought no success – it was just another small private shame.10

  Xan’s time in the Far East was ended. He was back in Europe and had made his way to Greece where he accompanied Paddy and Joan on their travels and visited Lawrence Durrell on the island of Rhodes. Durrell was living with his lover Eve Cohen whom he intended to marry. Their house, which consisted merely of a studio, a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom, stood in the eucalyptus-filled garden of the Mosque of Murad Reis, together with a pair of Turkish mausolea and a number of white marble tombstones. They talked about books into the early hours, whilst Eve sat silent and submissive at Durrell’s feet until, exasperated, the mosque’s mufti would rattle his shutters to get them to stop. In the morning they all went down to bathe in the sea at the Mandraki waterfront, a few minutes’ walk from the house. One day they took a trip to the ancient ruins of the city of Cameirus, where Joan (whom Durrell called ‘the Corn Goddess’) took photographs of Xan, Paddy and Lawrence Durrell re-enacting ancient rituals, including a mock circumcision of Paddy. ‘Our exploration reached an extraordinary climax when Xan leaped a couple of yards from the coping of a high ruined wall on top of an Ionic column twelve feet high which rocked frighteningly on its stylobate for several seconds. At last, as we watched with held breath, it became static with its new arrival poised on the capitol – for some reason, but most appropriately, with nothing on – with a flying stylite,’ wrote Paddy.11 Xan, he thought, looked just like Eros.

  Joan took her camera wherever they travelled, snapping shops, bars, beaches, temples. That year, on Ithaca, she took a photograph of the head of a classical statue lying flat on the ground, where it may have fallen centuries past. Its features are still clear and discernible, although slightly weathered by time, and it is part covered by sand. Probably the picture was taken near to a beach, or actually on one. Beside it in the album where Joan kept her photographs, she placed a photograph of Paddy recreating the pose. This too is a close-up, so much so that one can see the very pores of the face and naked shoulders of a man whom Maurice Cardiff called ‘Byronically handsome’. Paddy’s eyes are closed, but everything about the photograph tells the observer how deeply attracted Joan was by him and the intensity of her need for him.

  There are also two photographs of Joan which must date from around this time. During the war fashions had changed. From the Kurdistan pictures of May 1945 onwards she was wearing her hair long, as was the fashion of the late 1940s. In the first of the two Joan is lying in bed on her front, her head and shoulders are bare, as is her back, which emerges from under the sheet. Her elbows press into the pillow and she holds her head in her hands. Head, shoulders and arms make a simple triangle, her face and her expression are averted – she appears to look downwards – as if she was more truly herself when she did not look into the camera. In the second picture she is standing with what appears to be a sheet draped around her and falling onto the floor; it is gathered so tightly at the waist that she seems extraordinarily slender, like some kind of statue. She is only inches away from the mirror of a wardrobe door, with her arms raised in front of her face. The light comes from a window on the left, making the picture into a long, simple rectangle of alternating shapes of light and dark. Once again Joan’s face cannot be seen. We do not know who the photographer was, but its style is quite unlike her own. These are intimate pictures done for the eyes of a lover. They are sensual, somewhat aloof and deeply private. This is Joan.

  At the end of their stay with Lawrence and Eve, Paddy and Joan left separately for the island of Patmos. Just before they reached home, Joan wrote to Durrell:

  I had a fantastic journey to Patmos. 4 days, 2 staying at Simi at the almost deserted monastery then Cos & Leros. The Abbot & I spent a lot of time lying in the hold on bales of fertilizers to keep dry. Patmos was lovely, everyone very kind. The monks pulled their beards a lot but that was all. Paddy arrived 2 days later when I had given up hope of ever seeing him again & was just leaving myself. He has been writing a lot & is about to send you some poems. I hope you got the book from the hotel. Come back to Athens; we shall be there in about 10 days. Love from us both to you & E. Joan.12

  In December, back in Athens after much travelling, Paddy discovered that Runciman was displeased with his use of British Council time and money, and his contract would not be renewed. Paddy was angry and unhappy to be forced out of a job he loved – the only peacetime post he had ever held, or would hold, in his life. After so many years away from England, both Joan, who was also without work, and he would have to return home for good. He too wrote to Durrell.

  I found Joan a week after leaving you, entwined like a sleeping beauty in the beards of Patmos, and stayed there several days rainy and thunderous like those described in your story. I thought very seriously of settling down there this winter. It is one of the most extraordinary places I’ve ever seen. We left for Samos by caïque, but a storm blew up, and we were forced to put in at a tiny island called Arki. As Joan and I stepped ashore, our bags were grasped in silence by a fisherman, who led us up a winding path through laurels to a large white house, quite alone among vineyards, but with all chimneys smoking. An old gentleman with white whiskers welcomed us gravely on the threshold, as though he had been expecting us, and led us into a great flagged kitchen, where in the shake of a lamb’s tail, we were seated with ouzos and mézé. A huge handsome old wife was clanking pots over the fire aided by an army of daughters of astounding beauty, the son of the house cleaning his fowling-piece with a bunch of partridges beside him. Dogs and cats were everywhere. Any amount of shepherds and fishermen were sitting about talking or eating, and we were soon given a delicious meal – avgolémono soup, fish, jugged hare and a splendid wine. All this with scarcely an enquiry as to where we came from. In fact we were addressed by our names with a gentle, incurious courtesy. It was very strange, and a bit eerie, like the arrival of Odysseus at the palace of Nausicaa’s father, or the way-laying and entertainment of travellers by magnificoes in Hungary. It turned out that ships are washed up there so often that their entertainment had become a matter of course. ‘One day last year,’ Mr Kalantakis said (he’s a Cretan), ‘the sea brought us seventy-two guests.’ We stayed there four days, living in lovely rooms and eating and drinking like heroes, and when the wind changed said goodbye to our charming and munificent host with real intentions to return another summer. One of our fellow naufragés was a Karaghioziman, unfortunately without his gear, but gave quite a good conjuring display to a kitchen crammed with neighbours and dependents, ending up with the most frightening bit of magic I’ve ever seen. He made us clench our hands tightly together, saying he would turn them to wood; shouted ‘ONE! TWO! THREE! ALLEZ-SANS-EMARCHE!’ And well over half of the company remained with their hands glued palm to palm, tugging and straining till the sweat poured down them, at last they fell apart when he touched their knuckles with his forefinger. He did it again and again on my insistence and once linked a daisy chain of half-frightened, half-giggling peasants helplessly together a
rm in arm. It had all the excitement, and all the unpleasantness of ‘Mario the Magician’. It had to be stopped in the end because the children were screaming . . .

  I’m leaving in about a fortnight, feeling angry, fed up, and older than the rocks on which I sit. Fucking shits. But I am writing quite a lot, and enjoying it enormously. I have, not very originally, written a long thing about the islands which I am sending you for criticism. Please do so, could you Larry, if it is not too much of a bore for you. Write here if it will get [to] me before the new year, if later to the Travellers’ Club, Pall Mall, London S.W.1., Xan’s and my address. Have had two letters and some more poetry, very good, from him . . .

  I am writing this from the stove-side in Joan’s room. We both think very nostalgically of you and Eve among your turbaned monoliths, and send love and kisses and every kind wish for Christmas. Write quickly, love Paddy.13

  On their return to Athens Joan also received a letter from Tom Driberg asking her about coming to Greece, but she discouraged him. She told him too that she had been unable to help find the whereabouts of a friend of his. Her reply was sent on a postcard depicting Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights:

  It would be nice if you were to have whole suckling pigs & barrels of strong red wine – all that is very pleasant of course but you can imagine the disadvantages of living in this embassy & in a totalitarian state. I can’t find your friend – perhaps he is one of the 300,000 still in prison since the Civil war or was one of the hundreds still shot daily. If you didn’t see this picture when you were here it is worth looking at closely. Love, Joan14

  Unhappy as they were about being forced to leave Greece, it was a good time to go. The civil war had started again and would continue for several years. The communists were gouging out the eyes of the icons in the churches – it was symbolic of what was happening in the country beyond.