“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 vengeance.
“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…’
“Every word fell like a hammer blow. Every word destroyed my hopes and dreams for a ‘normal’ life. I was devastated. I cried for two days and nights while Eric showed hardly any emotion.
“While I wept, Eric turned his wrath on his fellow officers. He wore a permanent stern expression on his face which struck terror into his subordinates. It wasn’t long before Eric’s superiors caught on to the fact there was something seriously wrong with him.
“From some of the other wives I learned that discreet inquiries were made about him. It wasn’t long before they discovered Eric had had psychiatric treatment. Things happened pretty fast after that. Eric was ordered to take further psychiatric treatment and was immediately posted to RAF Leeming in Lincolnshire. After years flying one of the RAF’s most sophisticated aircraft Eric found himself doing what he had always dreaded: flying a desk.
“The psychiatric treatment didn’t work and Eric spiralled out of control… as I discovered one morning when I was awoken by a noise in the kitchen of the cottage we were renting.
“I have always been a heavy sleeper, and it took a lot to wake me. But something jerked me awake in the middle of the night. Cutting through the silence was a sound that literally made my hair stand on end. It was a sort of rasping, scraping noise that for some unaccountable reason reminded me of the swishing of a scythe.
“Heart palpitating I stumbled to the top of the stairs; the sound appeared to be coming from the kitchen. Slowly I descended the stairs, every nerve in my body jumping. I looked into the kitchen, and my heart stopped.
“Eric was sitting at the kitchen table, bathed in a shaft of moonlight. He was stark naked, and a trickle of blood ran in a little rivulet down his chest. In his hand, glinting wickedly was a large woodcutter’s axe we kept in the garden shed. He was slowly sharpening the axe with a file. The rasp, rasp, rasp of the file was the noise that had awakened me.
“I stood in the doorway, but Eric never looked up, so engrossed was he with the sinister task he had given himself. I stood there for a long time trying to make sense of what was going on. In the end I stammered, ‘Eric, darling what on earth are you doing?’
“Eric slowly raised his head; it seemed to take an age before his eyes met mine. Even then I could tell by the blank stare that he hadn’t focused on me. He gazed at me for a long time before I finally detected a flicker of recognition.
“At last he spoke. In a matter-of-fact tone, chilling in its normality, he said: ‘What am I doing? I woke up and I had the idea that I might quite like to kill you. Then I might kill myself…’
“The horror of what he was doing suddenly left me and was replaced by rage. I rushed over to him and slapped him as hard as I could across the face. As his head jerked backwards, I wrenched the axe from his grasp and threw it into a corner.