The Bitter Winds of Love

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1938Lydia Bryant replaced the telephone receiver and stood still. It was late in the afternoon and it was growing dark in the narrow well-like hall. The only light came from the roof and the darkening sky shed a sombre and unearthly dreariness through the rain-stained glass. To Lydia it seemed as if she was entombed in this silent and gloomy house, which she had always hated. Then slowly to her mind came the thought that she was free. She could not realise it and could not accept it without question the news that she had heard but a moment ago in the crisp Military tones of her brother-in-law’s voice. “Donald died this morning,” he told her. “I am arranging for the funeral to take place on Friday. I will let you know further particulars later.” Donald was dead! If she was honest with herself, she had been waiting for this, yet now that the moment was upon her, she could remember her husband only as she had first seen him, nearly seven years ago, tall and distinguished and looking down at her from his great height. “How handsome he is,” she had thought as they had been introduced and in those first seconds of their acquaintance when he had held her hand a little longer than was necessary. It had been a swift courtship. Barely two months later Lydia had walked down the aisle of the little Greystone country Church as the wife of Donald Bryant. Thinking of him now, those first weeks of married life passed before her in a succession of happy memories. Donald swimming beside her in the blue water of the Mediterranean, sun-bathing on the hot rocks, laughing at her efforts at aquaplaning and holding her close in his arms, an ardent, possessive, always masterful lover. She had loved him, yet in her affection there had always been a touch of fear, not only because of the disparity in their ages, as her friends had pointed out seventeen years was a big difference, but, because there was something else that had made her shrink from her husband even in their most intimate and passionate moments. Any young girl might easily have found Donald too ardent and almost unbalanced in his lovemaking. When the first rapturous days of their honeymoon were over, Lydia knew that, while she reciprocated his adoration, her husband was still in many ways a stranger whom she feared rather than understood. There was always something odd about him, she remembered now, but his headaches had come on gradually. Then, preluded by moods of querulousness, of depression and unreasonable demands on his wife, they grew worse until finally he had become unrecognisable, a man who was hardly human, a monster from which she shrank terrified and trembling. Slowly, as though she was now awakening from a nightmare that gripped her still, Lydia moved across the hall and opened the door that led into the drawing room. The curtains were not yet drawn to shut out the dismal damp landscape, but there was a fire burning brightly on the hearth and it threw a glow of warm light into the room. Once again she could hear the doctor’s gentle voice as he told her the London specialist’s verdict after a prolonged examination. “Your husband was only very slightly wounded in the War, Mrs. Bryant,” he said. “At the time it seemed so unimportant an injury that it was treated only at the Base Hospital and he was not even invalided home. But that glancing piece of shrapnel dislodged a small bone and this is causing all the trouble today.” Seeing the hope die from Lydia’s white face, he added, “I am sorry, but there is nothing more we can do.” Even he did not realise that he was condemning a girl of twenty-one to a life of torture and torment. It was not only when Donald was in one of his moods that Lydia experienced agony. There was the misery of anticipation, the wondering each time they were separated how he would be when they met again. Sometimes for three or four weeks he would be himself, normal, charming, considerate and then would come the first signs that she grew to dread, the twitching of the fingers, the restlessness, arguments with the servants and a suspicious attitude towards their neighbours and anyone who he came into contact with. Every moment of her day would be spent in tense terror, often she would creep away to her room praying fiercely to herself. ‘Let this pass, oh, God, let it pass, just this once don’t let him get worse.” Yet always the storm would come, the raised voice and the violence and then finally the aftermath of tears and repentance. As the years passed by, Lydia grew to hate most of all the scenes of repentance. There was something degrading about Donald grovelling in his misery. She grew even to prefer her bruises to the times when he tried to kiss them well again. She felt herself growing colder, increasingly apart from her husband until finally, try as she would to evade the truth, she knew that she hated him. She wondered how long she could have continued to live with him, how long before her pride broke down and she appealed for help. But that humiliation was spared her. Donald, in one of his wilder rages when he became quite irresponsible for his actions, grievously injured one of the farm hands. He was taken away to a Private Nursing Home. At first Lydia used to visit him there, his family expected this of her and once a month she would set out, driving herself in the small car to where, high on a hill overlooking the valley where he had lived, Donald was virtually imprisoned. Always as she drew nearer to the big, ugly red-brick mansion Lydia then found herself driving slower and slower. She dreaded the interviews, disliking the days when Donald was most normal, more than when he hardly recognised her and seemed in no way related to the man she had loved and married. Then gradually her visits began to upset him. “I am afraid he is always worse when you come,” the nurses told her. Finally she was asked to stay away. She had no one to whom she could confide her relief that she was not wanted. Donald’s immediate relatives were an elder brother and his wife. They had never approved of the marriage and, while doing what they considered their duty towards their sister-in-law, were not inclined to be intimate or friendly with her. Donald’s brother, Colonel Bryant, seldom sent Lydia her quarterly cheque without him stressing how necessary and important was strict economy. When finally he took over the management both of the house and of the estate, she was thankful and content to try and pay her own necessities with the small income she had of her own, which had been left to her on the death of her parents. An orphan since she was sixteen, Lydia had been brought up by her mother’s brother, the Rector of a small Church in Shropshire. He had died shortly after her second year of marriage and with his passing she had found herself without relations except for a few distant cousins who were far too engrossed in their own lives to be interested in hers. Only to Evelyn Marshall who had been her mother’s friend did Lydia write and receive in return letters that in their deep affection and common sense brought her a breath of another world. Mrs. Marshall also sent her books and these became to Lydia the true companions and friends of her years of isolation. It was an unreal life that she lived, eating, sleeping and reading and surrounded only by the figures of her imagination, moving alone in the fastness of the silent house that she had come to so eagerly and happily as a bride. Who could have foreseen at that moment that Donald would have become as she had last seen him – a beast rather than a man, screaming and crying out against her, striving to injure her with mad savage hands? A coal falling noisily into the grate startled her. She rose to her feet and, smoothing back her hair, turned on the light. When she had done so, she looked for just a moment into the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece, staring at her own reflection, seeing two deep-blue eyes below dark hair drawn back from a broad forehead. ‘I am twenty-seven,’ Lydia thought to herself. ‘Twenty-seven! And now I have to begin life again.’ The opening of the door startled her. She turned abruptly as if ashamed of being caught looking at herself. It was the manservant entering with the tea. For a moment Lydia watched him arranging the silver teapot and putting down the plates of sandwiches and cakes that she rarely touched and then she said, “I have had a message from Colonel Bryant, Marsham.” Quite suddenly and unexpectedly she could say no more. Her voice seemed arrested in her throat. Marsham, however, appeared to understand. He looked at her and asked, “It”s the Master, isn’t it, madam?” Lydia nodded. “The last time he was over the Colonel told me he was bad. I was expecting it, madam.” He drew a deep breath and Lydia knew that he was in the most correct and traditional fashion about to offer his condolences. Suddenly she felt that she could not bear it. With a cry she turned and ran from the room. She hurried up the staircase, feeling rather than seeing the way and, rushing blindly into her bedroom, she pushed the door to behind her and it slammed. Flinging herself onto the bed, Lydia found tears coursing down her cheeks and she felt herself shaking all over with the fierce force of agonised weeping, but even while she cried, she felt control sweep from her and she knew that she wept in relief rather than bitterness. “I am free,” she sobbed. “I am free,” – and was shamed by the sound of her own voice.