Between Heaven and Hell

by Alan Rimmer

  In early 1958, Denson departed for Australia where Britain had a permanent base deep in the outback called Woomera. Shirley received several letters, which suddenly ceased in March. By secret mail, she was told her husband had been sent to Christmas Island, a lonely coral atoll slap in the middle of the Pacific.

  The penny finally dropped that her husband was involved in the hydrogen bomb tests then taking place. Shirley had just about reconciled herself to not seeing her husband for some time when out of the blue a signal arrived by special courier from Eric’s commanding officer at Bassingbourn.

  “To my intense joy, I was told Eric was being sent home immediately for what was called “operational reasons. I was assured my husband had not done anything wrong, but that he had just ‘exceeded his limit.’ In my happiness, I never considered what that meant. I remember someone telling me that Eric had received a bit too much radiation, but not for one minute did I consider he had been harmed in any way. I had too much faith in the RAF to worry about anything like that.

  “In any event, all I could think about was getting him home. I rushed to tell mummy and daddy and we planned a big welcome home party. I never considered the possibility that the man who came back to me would not be the man I had waved goodbye to. But that is what happened.

  “The dear, sensitive man who had kissed me so tenderly was gone. Later, flashes of him would come back, like finding old pictures in a photo album, but they became increasingly rare as time went by. It was as though he was being slowly sucked into a vortex and I was powerless to pull him out. Something terrible had happened to my darling man.

  “The change in him was apparent within a few hours of his arriving back from Christmas Island. I had been beside myself with excitement as I waited for him to walk up the pathway.

  “He rang me the day before to say, ‘I’m back…’ That’s all he said, but that didn’t worry me. In fact that was typical of him, because he wasn’t a very demonstrative person. At last the taxi came and out stepped Eric.

  “I burst out of the door and threw myself into his arms. I was five months pregnant at the time, but I went down the pathway like an Olympic sprinter. I kissed him all over his face, and he smiled. For a while we just stood and looked at each other. My beautiful dear man was back at last.

  “Mummy and daddy, who I was staying with at the time, looked on from the door, smiling. Then Suzanne, our two-yr-old daughter, came running down the path. My heart nearly burst with pride when she shouted ‘daddy’; I had shown her pictures of her daddy every day since he left. I was determined she wouldn’t forget him, and I had succeeded. We were a family again, and it felt so good.

  “We ushered Eric into the house and later the whole family had tea on the lawn. It was so wonderful. Suzanne tumbled with her pet rabbit in the grass and we all laughed. Then we just sat for a while and watched the most perfect of English sunsets as it spread a golden light across the meadow at the bottom of the garden. The world seemed at peace.

  “Eric seemed to be in a contemplative mood and a companionable silence descended upon us. I took the opportunity to give my man the once over. I had already observed he had lost weight; not much, but enough to notice. I had never known him to lose weight, or gain any for that matter. I didn’t like the colour of his skin, either. He looked pasty and pallid, an unhealthy tinge to his complexion; you wouldn’t know he’d been in the tropics. And I didn’t like the look of the dark smudges under his eyes. He looked as though he hadn’t slept for days.

  “When I thought about it, he didn’t look healthy at all. I gripped his hand tightly, and asked him if he was feeling well. He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze and said he was feeling fine. But I could sense there was something different about him. Mummy and daddy must have sensed something too, because they soon made their excuses and left us alone.

  “After a while I asked Eric if he wanted us to go to bed, but he might not have heard. He just stared into the distance and spoke about the heat, dust and sand of Australia. Then he said suddenly, ‘Have you any idea, what the aborigines would give for the peace and coolness of an English garden? You can’t put a price on such beauty, you know.’

  “It was a lovely thing to say, but I must admit I was a bit taken aback. I had never known Eric to wax lyrical before. I had heard him talk about flight paths, wind speeds, maps and fuel consumption. But never about English gardens. He was a deeply reserved man and never really said anything unless it had a practical outcome.

  “Now I suddenly found myself confronted by a stranger, a man who seemed to want to talk about everything under the sun. There was no coherent theme to his discourse. It just seemed he wanted to talk about everything and anything. He talked about God. God! I’d never heard him talk about God in his life. The nature of Evil! Where did that come from?

  “Just as suddenly we were in the Australian deserts and towns. And then he was 40,000 feet above it all, describing the endless expanse of the continent as he flew over it God-like and omnipotent.

  “Then we were back in England and back to his childhood, a childhood incidentally that I’d never heard of before. Most bizarrely he started philosophising about the nature of the universe and mans place in it…this was a totally different Eric Denson than I was used to.

  “I was flattered and extremely interested, of course and I tried my level best to follow his drift. But I just couldn’t keep up with him. After a while I began to feel alarmed. He was talking non-stop, gabbling almost. ‘Where’s my Eric?’ I asked myself. I finally persuaded him to come to bed and we went together hand in hand.

  “We made love of course, but later he just carried on talking and talking. He was like a record that had become stuck. It seemed as though Eric was on some sort of mission to tell me everything he had ever known, knew, read or learned in his lifetime.”

  In the end I just couldn’t take any more. It was about five in the morning when I finally called a halt. I have always needed my sleep…and I was five months pregnant. ‘Eric, darling, please!’ I cried at last. I took his head in my hands and told him I simply must have my sleep. I told him I had to be up with Suzanne in a few hours time. But he might never have heard me. He just carried on talking and was still talking as I drifted off to sleep.

  “My dreams were troubled and, exhausted as I was, I awoke a few hours later to find Eric drenched in sweat. He was fast asleep, but it was a troubled sleep. He was twitching and groaning as though he was having a nightmare. Instinct told me something was very wrong. I switched on the bedside light and I noticed a rash on his chest.

  “It was an angry red colour, stippled with tiny white blisters, and stretched from his neck to just above his waistline. I had never seen anything like it. I bathed it gently in cool water and Eric woke. I asked him how he had gotten the rash, but he was non-committal. He said it was nothing. But that didn’t satisfy me. I remember thinking he had picked up some tropical disease and the next morning I asked daddy to take a look.

  “He made an examination but said he hadn’t a clue what it was. It was beyond his experience. Of course we realised much later that it was probably a radiation burn, but at the time it was a mystery.

  “Eric never discussed with me what had happened on Christmas Island. The only time I heard him talk about it was a few days later with my father. They were sitting together and daddy suddenly said, ‘What was it like, son?’ I remember Eric thinking about it for a while before making a decision.

  “He said he had almost lost control of his aircraft as it went into the mushroom cloud. His plane was tossed about by the most incredible forces. He said the only way he could deal with his fear was by reciting the line from the Charge of the Light Brigade, ‘Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell, rode the six hundred…’ over and over again.

  “He also told daddy he had been very sick when he landed at Fiji to refuel on the way home. He had never mentioned this to me, and I asked him about it later. But he absolutely refused to discuss it. He said he would get
into the most serious trouble if he talked about it in any way.

  “He seemed very scared about what had happened to him and I think that he knew deep down he had been seriously affected by his experience. I never did find out what Eric had been told about his mission or the possible dangers. But I knew he would have been extensively briefed and I recalled how upset he had been when he came home to tell me he was being sent away.

  “As the weeks went by, Eric’s odd behavior continued. Both sets of parents noticed the change in him and were openly voicing their concerns. They suggested he got treatment for his ‘rash’ as well as for other ailments ranging from sudden allergic reactions, to chronic breathing problems. But Eric absolutely refused to visit the RAF doctor at the base. He said you had to be in A1 condition if you wanted to stay in the service and the first hint that all was not well could easily lead to a discharge…or worse still, as far as Eric was concerned, a one-way ticket to a boring desk job.

  “But after some considerable persuasion he was prevailed upon to book into a private clinic. Eric had an operation for sinusitis at the clinic, but it was his deteriorating mental condition that was causing most concern.

  “He was becoming more and more frenetic and hyperactive. His brain was racing all the time, like a piece of machinery that didn’t have a stop button. It was an awful time and our marriage began to suffer. We never discussed anything anymore.

  “Before he was sent away, we always talked about everything and were always planning the future, having dreams together, what we hoped for the children, things like that. From wanting to talk about everything under the sun when he came back, he now didn’t want to discuss anything, and try as I might I couldn’t get close to him.

  “He often seemed like a shadow, someone who was with me all the time, but elusive and insubstantial. It was as though he was trying to run away from something and at the same time desperately searching for something. He was drawing deeper and deeper into himself and I simply couldn’t reach him.

  “Eric started to do things that were completely out of character, like ‘forgetting’ to give me my housekeeping money. I friend of mine remarked that I was letting myself go. I was only in my twenties, but she said I was beginning to look much older. I said everything was all right, but one day she said to me, ‘Shirley, look at your feet…’ I looked and she was right. It was a freezing cold day, but all I was wearing was a pair of cheap, plastic sandals and my feet were blue with cold.

  “The problem was I simply did not have the money to buy myself a new pair. I simply couldn’t make ends meet on what Eric was giving me. I don’t think he was being mean to me deliberately. I really do believe, he just forgot…but of course that didn’t help me. Looking back there were so many indications of the changes in him.

  “At the annual Cranwell ball, something that was so special to me, he was completely out of character. He was no longer the perfect gentleman I had fallen in love with. He drank heavily and rather ignored me. We had two children and we couldn’t be late home. But when it was time to go, he told me to go on ahead.

  “He didn’t come in until the early hours and to make matters worse was sick on the bathroom floor. This was so out of character. I know these things taken individually were no big deal. But taken together it added up to a very serious change in Eric’s personality.

  “I soldiered on hoping that one day the old Eric would come back to me, and did my best to lead as normal a life as possible. But I was beginning to realise just how distant and out of touch we had become. He was changing before my eyes. He became aloof, when once he had been approachable; he was cold, when once he had been warm.

  “He barely liked to be touched when once he had been so tactile. I was so upset and worried, but Eric didn’t care. I wanted him back and yearned for the days, before he went to Christmas Island when we always kissed and cuddled in bed. It was the natural thing for us to do. I longed for that wonderful closeness. I tried to cuddle him again, but he had become unbelievably cold and frigid.

  “When he didn’t want to be touched he used to draw an imaginary line down the centre of the bed with his finger and say to me, ‘Don’t cross the line. Don’t touch me.’ I know most women would be reaching for the rolling pin at such behavior, but I was just absolutely devastated.

  “What upset me most was that this change in Eric had happened so abruptly. I may have been able to live with it if it had taken place over a long period of time; I may have been able to understand it. But this was as sudden as Jekyll and Hyde. It seemed as though one day I had a gentle, warm man and the next I had this cold, aloof creature.

  “It crossed my mind, of course, that he had another woman. I looked through his pockets for all the tell-tale signs. But I found no notes, no lipstick marks. No trace of strange perfumes on his clothes. What, then? What was causing this terrifying change in his behaviour? It was happening right in front of my eyes and was getting progressively worse. I felt so helpless because there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

  “The man that came home to me every night was still the same tall, broad-shouldered, handsome individual I had fallen in love with. But his body might just as well have been inhabited by another person; a cruel, mean individual who didn’t know how to love or be loved.

  “I remembered what a golden couple were once were and I shed bitter tears of regret. I yearned for his laughter, his quiet sense of humour, his kindness. Most of all I yearned for his kindness. These thoughts sustained me through many a dark night as our truncated, lopsided marriage stumbled toward the chasm.

  “If only he could have talked to me; tried to explain what demons I knew possessed him. Eric refused to even acknowledge that anything was wrong with him. But every now and then I would see something in his eyes, like the despairing look of a hunted creature, and my heart would go out to him.

  “I so desperately wanted to help him, but I didn’t know how to. All I could do was to assume a passive role and hope that one day he would come back to me. I loved him too much to divorce him.

  “Ironically the new Eric, the hard man persona, had unexpected benefits in his career. He had always been tough, but there was a new hard-edge to him which commanded respect. Men learned not to mess with him.

  “You only had to look into his eyes to know he was dangerous. He developed an air of authority and he was a natural leader in formation flying. His superiors promoted him to squadron leader, one of the youngest the RAF had.

  “After a while I came to terms with the new Eric, and I believed that was the way natural leaders behaved. And there were compensations. With Eric’s promotion came a smart, detached cottage set in a few acres near Cranwell.

  “The social life was good for me, and although Eric remained distant and aloof, his ‘condition’ didn’t seem to get any worse. To be frank I no longer had the time to worry about the way things were. I now had three children to look after, and although Eric had changed so much, I still loved him and was going to see my marriage through to the end.

  Besides, I had plenty of support from the other wives on the camp and we got on very well together. We supported each other. I joined the tennis club and I even went pony riding again, which gave me immense pleasure. It should have been perfect really, but, of course, deep down it wasn’t. We never spoke much, but his ‘condition’ whatever it was, was always there in the background.

  “Things deteriorated when we were moved to the RAF Watton in Norfolk where Eric was assigned to top-secret work involving low-level Canberra flights.

  “The work involved night flying under radar and was apparently immensely dangerous. There was this huge radar dish at the back of our home which hummed and buzzed all the time. It was transmitting 24 hours a day. Eric used to say it made his teeth chatter.

  “I don’t know if this had anything to do with it, but not long after his condition worsened considerably. The strain of his work began to tell in a big way and his mental condition, which had stabilised, returned with a ve
ngeance.

  “He became paranoid and was suddenly convinced I was having affairs with every Tom, Dick and Harry on the base. He watched my every move and it was a nightmare when we attended a dance or a function. He thought everyone I spoke to was having an affair with me. When not seething with jealousy he was hit with the darkest of dark depressions.

  “He withdrew deeper and deeper into himself, to a place I could never reach. He got into the habit of coming home from work and going straight to the bedroom. He never said a word, never complained of feeling unwell. He would just draw the curtains and lay on the bed. Try as I might I could never get through to him. He was in such misery, it was heartbreaking.

  “On the few occasions I got him to talk he said he couldn’t understand what was happening to him. He said he felt as though his brain was in a dark cloud. The cloud kept closing in on him and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push it away.

  “I went to see a doctor friend of ours who advised Eric to see a psychiatrist. To my surprise, Eric agreed, provided the visit was kept totally private. I went with him to the consultation in Norfolk. The psychiatrist was a lovely man who assured us that everything was going to be all right.

  “Eric had many consultations over a period of about six months and although I didn’t really notice any change for the better, I felt happy for the first time in years. I really thought the treatment would work and Eric would be cured. But my optimism was short-lived. At the final consultation, the psychiatrist called us both into his consulting rooms.

  “I remember every detail of what he said. ‘Squadron Leader Denson,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I have felt so helpless in all my life. I can tell you now. You are not a psychopath, you are not paranoid, you are not a manic depressive and you are not schizophrenic. The truth of the matter is I do not know what is wrong with you. All I do know is that you are suffering very, very deeply. I can see you are in agony. But I cannot do a thing to help you. It is totally beyond my experience…’