My Bonnie: How dementia stole the love of my life. John Suchet

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was a way of saying to myself that although things were going well so far, I shouldn’t be arrogant because it could all go wrong tomorrow. I remember consciously deciding not to say anything as foolish as At ITN I will, or At ITN I have…That would be tempting fate.

      Now, nine years or so into my career at ITN, it really did look as though I had so far. Ah yes, so much success, from junior writer to senior writer, to reporter, to correspondent. I truly didn’t stop to give those insignificant little words so far another thought. But things were soon to become very bad indeed.

      In the early months of 1981, I prepared myself and my family for the move to the US, scheduled for July. My three boys were aged 10, seven and five. Moya and I needed to sort out schooling, rent our house out, arrange shipment, and so on. It would be a mammoth task. But hey, in 1979 I had earned plaudits for my coverage of the Iran Revolution (had I not flown from Paris to Tehran with Ayatollah Khomeini?), then I had returned to a greatly changed Tehran to report on the American hostage crisis, as the new Islamic Republic of Iran under the Ayatollah flexed its muscle. At the beginning of 1980, it was off to Afghanistan to cover the Soviet invasion. I went into Afghanistan no fewer than five times, the last three with the Mujahedin, dressed as one of them. Once, my camera crew and I found ourselves in front of what we thought was a Soviet firing squad, up against a wall after being captured at gunpoint by Russian soldiers. Good old Boys’ Own adventures. Just what I had always dreamed of doing. Plaudit followed plaudit. My career was on track, and the track was golden.

      Imagine my state of mind in 1981. I had landed the plum job at ITN, against all expectations. There could not have been a more exciting time to take up the Washington posting, with a new President in the White House. It was mine, all mine. On the personal level, I was leaving behind that beautiful and gorgeous woman I had been secretly in love with for almost a decade, and whom I had kissed in one unforgettable moment in the pouring rain. But she had given me hope by saying she would try to get over to the US to visit her family, and if she did maybe we could see each other.

      We’re down in France. Bon loves it here so much. She gets gently confused, though. This morning when I brought tea up to bed, she had already dressed. I have learned not to snap now. So I quietly said, Take your clothes off and get back into bed, then after tea you can shower. She said yes, I didn’t need to get dressed.

      She went into the bathroom and I listened at the door. She was whispering to herself, ‘Right, clothes off and then I shower. OK. Right, take my clothes off first…now shower.’ It was quite a relief when I heard the water come on.

      That remark Bonnie had made, albeit a year or more before, about how sad it was that I wasn’t seeing my parents, had simmered in me. What I was doing to my ‘old’ family, was wrong, plain wrong, and I had to do something about it.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ