In our early days together, I told her I would fill album after album, and then in our extreme old age, probably in a care home, we would turn the pages of the albums together, and remember. Yes! she would exclaim joyfully. In the years that followed, she never minded me whipping the camera out. I rarely needed to ask her to pose. Each camera I’ve had clearly fell in love with her; no camera is capable of taking a poor picture of her.
I kept my word. I filled album after album. Only in recent years have I stopped, because it became clear that the illness was preventing her from enjoying the pictures. Instead of an album, I now put pictures digitally on a picture frame, so they are running the whole time—the family, children and grandchildren, us. But she doesn’t look at them. I think it’s a defensive mechanism on her part, to avoid having to try to remember who the pictures are of. I occasionally draw her attention to one, mentioning the name, but she just smiles without saying anything.
So far in writing this book I have used just my memory. That picture of the first dinner has been on my laptop for years. Now I am about to write about South Carolina, and that means going to Album Number One. More tears.
South Carolina, ah South Carolina. Isle of Palms, to be precise, a short distance east of Charleston. Our private domain, our little corner of paradise. It has faded from your mind now, my darling, but to me, well, if I close my eyes tight I can smell it.
You on the beach, you in the sea, you at the cooker, you relaxing on the sofa. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You insisted on taking the occasional picture of me. I didn’t know my face was capable of smiling so wide, the corners of my lips reaching halfway round my head. Oh boy, was I happy.
We went to bed together, woke up together, ate together, laughed together. We were a couple. With every passing hour, I learned more about you—what you thought, what you believed, what you read, what you liked. I told you I liked big modern American novels—John Steinbeck in particular, James Jones, Herman Wouk. So did you. You said you loved history, the American Civil War, the history of the Deep South. I said I did too. I said I wasn’t religious; in fact, I found organised religion with its bizarre rituals and ridiculous rules about what you could eat and couldn’t eat, absurd and even dangerous. You agreed. At one point, as nonchalantly as possible I asked, ‘Who is your favourite composer?’ You thought for a moment. ‘I think it has to be Beethoven,’ you said. It wouldn’t have mattered if you had said Stockhausen, but you didn’t, you said Beethoven. I told you that I had listened to Beethoven endlessly in the difficult weeks before I left Moya, the Eroica Symphony in particular. You told me your favourite Beethoven was the Pastoral Symphony, but you asked me to teach you the Eroica, tell you how Beethoven had come to compose it, what it meant, what to listen out for. I thrilled to hear that. No one had ever asked me to teach them anything about art before. (I couldn’t have known just what a meeting of minds it was, given that I was to go on and write five books about Beethoven, all with Bonnie’s endless encouragement.)
And so I explored your mind. Of course, I explored you in other ways too, and you encouraged me. I had never been so happy.
We spent a day in Charleston. We had lunch in a balcony restaurant in an old antebellum building. I took pictures of you at the table. A Dutch couple at the next table couldn’t help smiling as I took picture after picture, my face beaming happiness from every pore. ‘Here,’ said the man, ‘let me take a picture of both of you. That’s what you really need.’ The picture he took shows two people totally in love, with not a care in the world.
The week soon came to an end, and if there had been no care in the world down in South Carolina, that was not the case back in Washington. I filed the occasional story, with no encouragement from London. Then, on 18th June, the space shuttle Challenger took off with a female astronaut on board. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. It was a big story and News at Ten wanted a piece from me.
It was the sort of story I knew I excelled at. Plenty of good pictures, with a strong storyline. I put a report together, and for the last 15 seconds I overlaid a song, ‘Ride, Sally Ride’, which had been written and recorded to commemorate the event. I was pleased with my efforts.
Sadly, London was not. They took my voice off the report and gave it to a London-based reporter to re-edit and script. That was just about the most humiliating thing they could have done. I was mortified, and maybe for the first time began to understand the true import of what was happening. It seemed that I had gone past redemption. I could have gone up on that shuttle myself, become the first journalist in space, and still they would not have been satisfied.
I didn’t know what to do, but knew I had to do something. I felt aggrieved. Were my reports really that poor? Was I failing in the job quite as much as my bosses judged I was? The answers didn’t matter. They thought that, and that was all that mattered. Still I pondered what to do. But it wasn’t long before my mind was made up for me.
One afternoon the phone in our little love nest rang. It was ITN’s managing editor in London. ‘The editor wants you in his office tomorrow afternoon, 2 o’clock.’ ‘But I’ve…I’m not sure…The flights…’ ‘Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, in his office,’ and he hung up.
I put the phone down, thought for a moment, and turned to Bon. ‘I’ve got to fly to London tonight. David Nicholas wants me in his office at 2 tomorrow afternoon. I think they may be about to sack me.’ I braced myself for I knew not quite what. At the very least, I expected dismay from her, at worst frustration, even anger, that I had allowed things to come to this, put my job on the line, our future at risk.
She smiled. ‘That’s all right,’ she said, ‘we’ll do something else.’
I remember that moment as if it were yesterday. I can hear the managing editor’s voice, remember his words and my words to you exactly, my Bonnie, and of course your response. It was a seminal moment in our fledgling relationship. The full import of it didn’t immediately sink in, but it didn’t take long. What you were saying was that for us to be together was not only more important than my job but the only thing that truly mattered.
I remember returning your smile, and feeling as if a ton weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
Memories. So wonderful when shared, so painful when not. Today is 27th April 2009. I am writing these words 26 years to the day since I collected you at Baltimore Washington airport and we began our life together. I have not mentioned this date to you for some years now, my Bonnie.
Tonight I cooked dinner, a pretty motley affair, which relied on the microwave. We sat eating together, not talking much. You said a couple of things. They made sense, but bore no relationship to what was happening. When I said the carrots tasted good, you said of course they did, you had made them specially.
Then a nice bubble bath, except that for some reason you hate it, and those little sobs as I get you ready cut into me like needles again. But once I get you out, into your nightie and into bed, you are happy. You are sleeping peacefully now as I write about our past together.
We flew to London and took our suitcases to my parents’ flat in that block in Baker Street. I walked to ITN in time for my 2 o’clock meeting with the editor. I was in a pretty grim mood, made worse by the few familiar faces I saw in the building, including the receptionist, all looking at me as if I had the plague. Word was out. So was I, or at least I was about to be. I thought better of putting my head round the newsroom door. Frankly I just wanted the axe to fall and the sooner I got out of the building, the better.
Reuters, the BBC and now ITN. All flops. Good going, John. Bon’s words were, of course, ringing in my ear, in a kind of gentle sound loop. That’s all right, we’ll do something else. It was wonderful to know I had her support, particularly since I had so little right to expect it. But the question remained: what else could I do apart from journalism? In a word, nothing. I had always wanted to be a professional musician. I wasn’t bad on the trombone, but turn professional? I hadn’t touched it for 15 years or more. I could busk in a tube station. The thought brought a wry grin to my face.
Even the editor’s secretary wouldn’t look