“Then one day he arrived back at our little flat and I sensed immediately there was something wrong. I was in the kitchen cooking dinner, but Eric didn’t give me a little cuddle at the cooker like he always did. I went into the living room and Eric was just standing there with his back to the door. To my utter surprise I could see tears in his eyes. I knew it was serious, then. I had never seen Eric cry in my life. It just wasn’t the sort of thing he did. He was only 25 at the time, but old beyond his years. I rushed up and put my arms around him and I remember saying, ‘Darling, whatever is the matter…?’”
It was some time before Eric could reply. Finally he led her gently to the sofa and informed her he had to go away on a top secret mission, and he would be away for at least six months.
Shirley was distraught: “I could hardly take it in. Six months was a lifetime for me to be without my husband. I asked him what it was all about and he said he couldn’t tell me because it was top secret. I told him I would go with him, but he said I couldn’t because he was being sent to a remote base in the Pacific Ocean. He said he would be involved in some very special training before he left, but he couldn’t tell me anything about it. He looked very worried as he told me, and I just knew he wasn’t telling me everything. It was as though he had a premonition that something terrible was going to happen. I had never known him to be so vulnerable. I couldn’t help feeling that it was all so unfair. After all Eric was a married man with a small child. But we were both very loyal to the RAF and our country, and in the end reconciled ourselves to the task in hand.”
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.