In July 1981, days before leaving for the US, I braced myself and made a journey. I invented an excuse for leaving the house a couple of hours earlier than usual (‘need to sort stuff out in the office’) and travelled up to London. Instead of going straight to the ITN office, I stopped off in Baker Street. Heart pounding, I entered the large block of flats immediately over the tube station, the block where I had grown up. Where my parents lived. There was a porter behind the desk, quite elderly. I recognised him. He smiled broadly when he saw me. ‘Hello, Mr John. It’s been a while. You’ll find them upstairs. Second floor. They’ll be so pleased to see you.’ I nodded, couldn’t say anything, throat closed up.
I walked along the corridor, the sights, sounds, smells of my childhood invading and battering my senses. I stood outside their door, paused, fought back tears, breathed deeply to steady myself, and rang the bell. A woman I didn’t recognise answered the door. She looked at me, frowned, then gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘There, in the kitchen,’ she said in a foreign accent, pointing to her left.
I walked to the back of the entrance hall and took the few short steps to the kitchen. Then I saw them. Mum was sitting at the kitchen table, Dad was standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. Their mouths opened, shock in their eyes, bewilderment on their faces. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. My eyes filled up. Mum leapt out of the chair and flung her arms round me. I cried into her neck. Finally I looked at Dad. He had tears in his eyes, and a false-angry look on his face. ‘About bloody time,’ he said, or words to that effect. ‘Come on down to the sitting room.’
We sat and talked and talked and talked. Just one or two things to catch up on. Like several years, and three grandchildren. I gave them photos of the boys I’d secretly had printed. The years melted away. I couldn’t stay for long. I had to go in to work. I told them I was sorry from the bottom of my heart for what I had done to them, and that I would make it right again. I would be in Washington for four years, I said, but I would stay in touch, albeit surreptitiously, and one day, not far off, everything would be normal again.
They hugged me till I thought I would burst. It was the Prodigal Son. If Dad could have killed a fatted calf, he would have.
I didn’t tell them about Bonnie, because I could see no way of making my dream come true. Nor did I tell them that if it hadn’t been for her passionate remark, and the power of that kiss, I wouldn’t have had the strength to do what I had done that day. A shameful admission, but true.
I was at the computer just now. Bon came in and recited her full name—first name, middle, then surname. She smiled at me in triumph. Before I could stop myself, I said yes, that’s right, but why did you say it? Because it’s true, she said, raising her fists in triumph. This is the woman who 10 years ago taught me how to use the computer, and almost 30 years ago was responsible for my long overdue reunion with my parents.
Things in Washington began well enough. I filed reports for News at Ten from around the US. Mostly they were ‘soft’ items, as Americans rediscovered their pride after President Carter’s disastrous handling of the Iran crisis. Ronald Reagan told his people they were not to blame, there was nothing morally superior about Islam, and in his State of the Union address in 1982 he memorably defined the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’. Nobody had stood up to Communism like that before. We were not to know it, but it was the beginning of the process that would culminate seven years later with the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism. President Reagan had been right.
But something strange was happening to me. I was not settling happily into my role as US correspondent. I found the ‘soft’ stories, Look at Life stories as I dismissively called them, difficult, and when it came to political stories in Washington, I was struggling. With hindsight, I can see it clearly (in fact, I saw it clearly just a few years later): I was a ‘fireman’, it was what I had always wanted to be, and I had proved to be quite good at it. What I was not good at was unearthing stories, finding them, tracking them down. Give me a plane crash, a sudden disaster, a war, you name it, and I was in my element—get there fast, turn out report after report, come home. There was another kind of story I was also proving to be less than good at: politics. I was not, never have been, and still am not, a networker. Not for me the working lunch with contacts, probing them discreetly, getting the inside story. I had very little interest in the workings of Capitol Hill—not ideal for a US correspondent. I can state all this now, but at the time it was not quite as glaringly obvious. Me? Not good at something? Don’t be ridiculous, it must be the something that is at fault.
One further fact increased my unease. My opposite number, the BBC’s US correspondent—against whose work mine would be judged—happened to be one of the best of our generation, he of the white suit, the future Independent MP Martin Bell. Martin had already outgunned me once, covering the handover of independence to the Central American country of Belize. While I attempted to follow Princess Michael of Kent’s official schooner to an offshore island, by hiring a rickety boat with two outboard motors, one of which broke down, leaving my crew and me stranded, Martin filed a comprehensive report on the state of Belize’s economy.
I sensed that all was not right. I was given to understand, subtly but to the point, that there were rumblings in London that maybe I was not up to the job. I wasn’t fazed. Hell, I would ride it out. A good strong story or two and they would see what I was made of. But I was about to be found out.
On 2nd April 1982, Argentine forces invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. From out of nowhere, Britain was on the brink of war. The United States administration took it upon itself to lead diplomatic attempts to prevent conflict, in the shape of Secretary of State Alexander Haig. He undertook a triangular diplomatic shuttle between Washington, London and Buenos Aires. The London end was covered by our political editor, a senior reporter was dispatched to Buenos Aires, and it fell to me to cover the Washington angle. This involved attending regular press conferences at the State Department, as well as off-the-record briefings by the British ambassador, Sir Nicholas Henderson, at the British Embassy.
At the State Department I was not asking the right questions, and my reports failed to capture the nuances of America’s negotiating tactics. My understanding of the subtleties offered to us at the ambassador’s briefings escaped me. So came the word from the foreign desk in London. One day the phone in the office rang and on the line was David Nicholas. The top man. The boss. ‘Are you properly plumbed in to Capitol Hill?’ he asked. ‘Of course, David,’ I replied. ‘Then tell me which senators you are speaking to. Who is briefing you? Who are you having lunch with?’ ‘Er…’
Still I was not overly concerned. Can you believe that? It would still come right, I was convinced. My posting was for four years. These were early days.
Then something happened that was to take my mind thoroughly off work-related matters. I heard from Bonnie that she was coming to the US to visit her family in New Jersey.
It is a cold wet Easter Saturday afternoon down in France and we have just watched the 1960s film 55 Days At Peking on the television, starring Charlton Heston as the hard-as-nails heroic American major and David Niven as the suave, cool and stiff-upper-lipped British ambassador. In real life, one died of Alzheimer’s, the other of motor neurone disease. Once you get caught up in the dreadful subject of brain disease, you tend to be aware of things like that.
It is getting dark by the time the film finishes. I say I will pull the curtains in the séjour. Good idea, Bon says, I will help you. Then into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher. A few minutes later she goes into the séjour and opens the curtains. I say nothing, but when the dishwasher is empty I say, gosh, it’s dark and wet, I’ll pull the séjour curtains. Good idea, she says. We do them again together. A few minutes later she goes back into the séjour and opens them.
I see the funny side and give her a big hug. She doesn’t know why she has deserved this, but she smiles.
It was all I could think of. I had to see her. I had to. I called her at home in