On my own in my bedsit, with weeks still to go until Bonnie’s arrival, I pondered my position. My career, I finally acknowledged, was in trouble. I had been given the biggest reporter’s job in ITN’s gift, and it appeared I had blown it. What did the future hold for me professionally? I had no idea, but it was not looking good.
How bad did I feel about this? How worried was I? This may shock you, but really I was not all that concerned. Why not? Because soon my Bonnie would be with me. Soon my new life would begin.
We fly back from France and at Stansted use the moving walkway. I go ahead and come off first. Mistake. Bonnie is wandering from side to side on it, lost. A man pulling a suitcase pushes angrily past. I try to gesture. Another pushes past, jostling Bon and making her distressed. As he walks angrily off, he says, ‘You’re supposed to stand on the right’.
I feel a surge of anger. I want to shout, ‘My wife has dementia, you idiot.’ Instead I say, ‘Fuck off’. Even as I say it, I know I shouldn’t. I should just take Bon by the arm and calm her down. I hope he doesn’t turn round and start a scene. He doesn’t. He is in too much of a hurry. Good. I must learn to stay calm, whatever. My priority is Bon, not getting my own back on some idiot.
I was living the life of a bachelor and finding it quite a challenge, albeit a rather enjoyable one. Breakfast was a boiled egg and a cup of tea, and in the evening I cooked myself a leg of chicken with frozen spinach. To vary it, I would cook chicken breast with frozen peas. Occasionally I bought pork, but it was a bit bland. I tried to cook steak but always overdid it.
I didn’t mind having confined surroundings. I am by nature tidy and the few clothes I had brought with me were neatly stacked on shelves. It reminded me of my university days. I set up the old manual typewriter Mum and Dad had given me for my 17th birthday, and which had now been round the world with me, and typed page after page of my longing for Bonnie and the joy that I knew lay ahead. (You are spared—I have long since shredded it.)
There was, inevitably, a cloud. I wasn’t seeing my boys. I saw Rory once—we went 10-pin bowling on one of those difficult single-parent outings. Kieran was at school in Maryland, Damian at boarding school back in the UK. I spoke to Moya several times on the phone in an effort to see the boys, but her response was always that they didn’t want to see me. I know now that was untrue, though of course I didn’t know it at the time. Fair enough, I thought, I had left the marital home, made their mother unhappy, and left them without a dad in the house. I knew they would need time and that I shouldn’t force things. In the end, I was sure it would turn out all right. (Just as I had felt over my parents. I should have known better.)
One Sunday morning I went across the road to a café and ordered a coffee. A disheveled man sat at the counter next to me. Bearded, shabbily dressed, baggy eyes half-closed from a no-doubt sleepless night, in typical American fashion he opened conversation with me. I scarcely listened to his drawl, and he finally gave up. He looked like a man who had recently left his wife and set up in a bedsit somewhere. Why would I want to talk to him?
An utterly traumatic 24 hours. As I write this, in mid April 2009, I realise it is 26 years minus one week, my Bonnie, since you flew to America and we began our new lives. Yesterday we went to the christening of your granddaughter, your son Hereward’s daughter. As a christening present, we took her a beautiful emerald ring, the ring I bought you for your 60th birthday. How you loved it! It sparkled on your finger, catching the sparkle in your eyes. You wore it to so many special occasions. I took it out when you were getting ready for the RTS awards ceremony last year when they made that dreadful mistake and gave me the piece of engraved glass. You said what a lovely ring. I asked if you could remember when I had given it to you, but you shook your head and smiled. I mentally smacked myself for asking. I tried to fit it on your finger, but it wouldn’t go over the first joint. I stifled my disappointment, said never mind, and hastily put it back. You didn’t seem concerned. So then I thought why not pass it on to your granddaughter? Keep it in the family.
Your ex-husband was at the christening, naturally, since he is grandfather. He pecks you on the cheek, you smile, but I don’t see recognition on your face. Later, ironically, it is he who drives us to the station. You get another couple of pecks, I get a cursory handshake (he is hardly going to treat me like a long-lost buddy) and we walk to the platform. I know I shouldn’t ask you this, but as nonchalantly as I can I say, ‘Did you recognise that chap, the man who drove us to the station?’ You say, ‘No’. I don’t say anything more.
In bed later I lie awake for some time, profoundly depressed. You didn’t recognise the man to whom you were married for the best part of 20 years, with whom you had two children. It didn’t worry you. You showed no distress during the whole day, although I know that your son, your grandchildren, other members of the family were lost on you. It has made me realise that if I were to go away for, say, a month, maybe two, you would probably forget who I am. This has been the strongest evidence yet of what this dreadful disease is doing to your memory, and I shudder at the thought of what stage it will be at in a year’s time, or less. But in a curious way I am calm. The big issues seem almost easier to cope with than the minor ones.
This was concrete evidence, undeniable, unambiguous. I feel so sorry for you, it is impossible not to become tearful. These words I am typing are shimmering through a tearful veil. It makes me all the more determined to be patient with the smaller issues, the minor eccentricities that are part of the same affliction and not just some bloody-mindedness on your part.
I shall return now to writing about the glorious past, when so much lay ahead of us, so much seemed possible. That’ll cheer me up. Maybe.
I like Billy Joel’s songs. There, that’s a cheery thought. I was in my bedsit one evening when up came his latest on the small TV. It was called ‘Uptown Girl’. The video showed the model Christie Brinkley pulling into a petrol station in her chauffeur-driven limo, stepping out and shimmying arrogantly across the forecourt in swaying summer dress, killer stilettos and wide-brimmed hat, pursued by a gang of oil-stained mechanics led by Billy Joel, half crouching as they trailed in her wake, clicking their fingers as he sang about his ‘Uptown Girl’.
I yelped with recognition. Ms Brinkley, blonde, pale-skinned, beautiful, smiling seductively, the arrogance an act, pursued by olive-skinned, dark-haired Joel in an impossible bid to gain her attention. At the end, of course, she climbs onto his motorbike and off they ride together, her hat in her hands and her long hair waving in the wind. It was Bonnie and me.
A few weeks ago, I downloaded that video onto my laptop and watched it for first time in 26 years, headphones clasped to my ears. Oh boy, did the tears run down my face. There, all depressed again.
The date was set. She said she was flying over on 27th April.
I informed London I wanted to take a week’s holiday in early May and booked a small apartment on the seashore in South Carolina. On the morning of the 27th, I picked her up at Baltimore Washington International and drove her back to my bedsit. She did that twirl, and I knew our lives would never be the same again. We were at last together.
I am an amateur photographer. My grandfather was a professional—a Fleet Street photographer for 50 years. In a way I have followed him professionally, and like him I always have a small camera at the ready. My photographs are not arty—my brother David is the one for that—but they capture the moment. (Recently, at a family reunion, David ran around with his super-slick camera missing all the shots while he set the focus, aperture, timer, this and that, in between gulps of wine, crying ‘Missed it’ every time he pressed the shutter, while I captured every moment, albeit out of focus and poorly framed.)
The purpose of relating this is to help you understand why I took that photograph of Bonnie and me at our first dinner in the bedsit, and why there are so many photographs of her in this book. From the moment she joined me, I made