Читать книгу Siobhan's Miracle - They Told Us She Had Weeks to Live. Then the Most Amazing Miracle Happened - Ellen & Derek Jameson - Страница 9
ОглавлениеPeter Jameson and Siobhán met in the summer of 1989. At that time Siobhán was living in America and maintaining a transatlantic relationship with long-time boyfriend Gary Eason, the couple having first met as undergraduates at Cambridge University. Gary subsequently joined a graduate training scheme on the Wolverhampton Express & Star. Siobhán was offered a place on the same course but declined.
‘I pictured myself having a glamorous career in London or New York,’ she used to say. ‘Wolverhampton held no attraction for me – though I did enjoy visiting friends in the Shropshire countryside at weekends and for holidays.’
Peter was working as a sub-editor on the Wolverhampton Express & Star’s sister paper, the Shropshire Star. Gary and he became firm friends and drinking buddies.
At Dulwich College, where he had finished his education, Peter had found a degree of fame or notoriety as winner of a mock election. He swept the board in student votes with a creation of his own, the Punky Lazar Independence Party, an offshoot of his rock group, the Punky Lazar Hot Five.
Having gone against his father’s wishes by refusing to wear the school’s signature headgear – a straw boater – Peter brought further disappointment when he left with poor A level results, having previously won a scholarship to Dulwich. He turned his back on the option of university and instead went straight on a journalist training course. So it came about that he was an experienced newspaperman while still in his early twenties, perhaps emulating his father, Derek Jameson, who became editor of four national newspapers.
On one of Siobhán’s early visits to Shropshire, Gary invited Peter for a meal and to meet his girlfriend. Peter fell under Siobhán’s spell. ‘She made a huge impact on me,’ he recalls. ‘She was beautiful, intelligent and funny.’
Sadly Peter’s impact on Siobhán was less favourable. With remarkable candour he reveals the answer she gave when asked her first impressions of him. ‘He was sloppy,’ Siobhán confided. ‘He would come to dinner, drink too much and fall asleep at the table. That happened almost every time he visited us. I was not impressed.’
Obviously Siobhán’s view mellowed with time. Twenty years later, in the foreword to a guide book she wrote on Dublin, she paid homage to ‘my jazz-playing, football-loving, whisky-drinking, star-gazing Jewish husband’.
When she visited Shropshire from London and later from her teaching post at New York’s Columbia University, Siobhán would stay in the small flat Gary rented in the new town of Telford. Friends remember that she brought her own brand of exotica and Celtic magic to the place.
Her dress style was individualistic and evoked a bygone era, casual yet eye-catching. She favoured vintage rather than fashionable and loved clothes with an unexpected twist. One sombre black embroidered coat opened to reveal a shocking-pink silk lining.
Peter admits to being besotted with Siobhán from their first meeting. ‘Although I deliberately engineered being in her company at every opportunity, she was the girlfriend of my best friend so I was not crass enough to make a move. Though I never hid my feelings for her, I disguised a quiet, desperate kind of unrequited love in a public display of flirting, joking and self-deprecation.’
Peter and Siobhán shared a passion for the cinema and when the couple moved to Belfast near the end of Siobhán’s life, Peter fulfilled a long-held ambition. He became a mature student and studied for a degree at the Film School at Queen’s University.
With his romantic cinematographer’s vision Peter offers a perfect picture of his late wife. ‘In my mind’s eye,’ he says, ‘I have this wonderful soft-focus image of Siobhán sitting in the flower-filled summer garden of a cottage in Wales. She was wearing a long, flowing pastel-coloured dress; her dark, wavy hair was tumbling over her shoulders. Lounging back in a wicker chair, she was sipping a mint julep.
‘How could I not be in love with her?’
In time it became clear to Siobhán and Gary and their friends that their relationship was heading for the rocks. Whenever the couple had one of their regular break-ups, Peter would be there with a box of tissues and a shoulder to cry on.
Peter himself was in a long-term relationship in Shropshire with a girl named Jo. They often made up a foursome in outings with Gary and Siobhán. Almost inevitably, both relationships came to an end and when they did Peter had a succession of what Siobhán described as unsuitable and unstable girlfriends. He was inclined to agree with her.
Meanwhile, in America, Siobhán met, dated and received proposals of marriage from several high-flying career academics. Peter sensed that his unrequited love for her was destined to stay that way. ‘Although I had not yet made her aware of my intentions,’ he says, ‘I knew that I had to take affirmative action before it was too late – though I had no real reason to believe she would be interested in a serious relationship. I didn’t really feel worthy of her.’
However, one strange prediction gave him hope. He had a tarot reading from a girl at the public relations firm where he worked. In the course of the reading she identified a ‘Dark Princess’ who held the key to his future happiness. Peter had no doubt of the identity of the dark, feminine presence revealed in the cards.
Guided by the tarot, Peter was advised to pursue this challenge – but was warned that the ‘Dark Princess’ wanted a long-term, committed relationship. Anything less than total dedication to a joint union would be destined to failure. Peter accepted his mission and set off for America to conquer his princess.
Self-consciously, Peter admits he always felt it was amazing good fortune on his part that Siobhán fell in love with him and agreed to become his wife and mother to his children. ‘Even now I have to pinch myself to believe it,’ he says. ‘I always felt there had been some administrative error in the great celestial relationship record book which teamed her with me.’
For her part, Siobhán did not make it easy for her eager suitor.
Peter advances the theory that she deliberately misunderstood his intentions because she was protecting herself from future hurt and did not believe him capable of maintaining a mature and enduring relationship.
‘I had treated my long-term girlfriend Jo and a string of other women pretty shabbily,’ Peter admits. ‘Siobhán would make transatlantic phone calls, usually early in the morning, to berate me and urge me to change my ways. Somehow the fact she showed such interest convinced me that she must see some potential in me.’
Moving out of the house they shared in Telford, Peter and Jo split the proceeds of the sale of the house they had bought jointly. Peter, determined to make a fresh start, resigned from his job and packed his bags for America. ‘The official plan was for me to travel around America, but in reality I had made up my mind to try to persuade Siobhán to marry me,’ he says.
Siobhán invited him to stay at her New York apartment and the two spent quality time together socialising and getting to know each other away from the pressures of past relationships. Siobhán delighted in the fact that Peter proposed to her on the second date. While admitting it was probably true, Peter says it actually took him much longer to pluck up the courage – and risk what he felt was inevitable rejection.
However, he did buy an engagement ring – of sorts. He had been hanging around Siobhán’s apartment for weeks, while she gently hinted that it was time for him to move on and take to the road. Eventually she agreed to accompany him on the first stage of a planned trip to the Deep South. Peter, a skilled guitarist, had been anxious to make a musical pilgrimage, visiting the legendary home of country and western music, the blues and rock ’n’ roll. ‘Siobhán and I had taken a fantastic, adventure-filled road trip from New York to Tennessee,’ he says excitedly. ‘She then flew back to her teaching post at Columbia and I went on to New Orleans.’
During an extended stay in New Orleans he secretly bought a ring and determined to propose. ‘The ring was a pink tanzanite in a delicate, filigree setting. It wasn’t expensive but given my state of penury at that time, having been in America for almost six months and unable to work because of visa restrictions, it was a genuine and heartfelt gesture.’
Peter had moved back into Siobhán’s apartment and now was seriously in danger of outstaying his welcome. She urged him to hit the road again and explore other areas of America before his visa expired and he was legally bound to leave the country and return to England.
‘It was kind of embarrassing,’ he says, laughing at the absurdity of it all. ‘I wanted to marry her and she kept urging me to be on my way. Finally I knew I could put it off no longer, and put my master plan in place.’
He took her to the cinema to see Sea of Love, starring Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin, and on to what he thought would be a romantic dinner in a restaurant in a New York restaurant featured in the film. However, events did not turn out as planned. The restaurant, an Italian eatery, looked nothing like it had on screen.
‘The romantic setting I envisaged,’ he says ruefully, ‘was in fact a film set. In reality the restaurant was mediocre. I almost abandoned my grand plan. I had wanted something special and memorable – not memorable for being such a letdown.’
Brushing aside his disappointment, Peter decided to seize the moment anyway. As he tells the story, it sounds like Woody Allen trying to woo an elusive Diane Keaton: he full of doubts and angst; she confident, assured and faintly amused by his discomfiture.
As if in slow motion Peter can still recall the proposal frame by frame. ‘In my head I was down on one knee, proffering the open jewel box with the glittering betrothal ring and saying, “Will you marry me?”
‘Cut to Siobhán. Eyes sparkling, dazzled by the ring, thrilled by the longed-for proposal. Rewind… It did not quite play out that way,’ admits Peter wryly. ‘What really happened was that I pulled the ring out of my pocket with no preamble, thrust it at her and said, “I thought you might like this ring.”’
Siobhán wasn’t going to make it easy for Peter. Instead, without ceremony, she took the ring and hesitated before expressing an opinion. ‘Yes,’ she said cautiously, ‘I like it.’ Peter agonised as she toyed with the ring, seemingly contemplating whether to put it on the third finger of her left hand. He held his breath as she slipped the ring on to her engagement finger. Then she changed her mind and moved it to the other hand. Satisfied that it fitted the right hand, Siobhán carried on eating as if nothing had happened.
Peter never did pluck up courage to ask his Dark Princess to marry him. Gradually, though, as he prepared to return to England, an understanding was reached that he would go back and look for a house for them to move into together.
Siobhán was increasingly homesick and the failing health of her ageing parents worried her. She was ready to return home, take up a post at a British university and settle down with Peter.
The two married in the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Shrewsbury on 29 August 1992.
Siobhán was a radiant bride in a glamorous floor-length wedding gown with a Renaissance-style gold skirt and embroidered ivory bodice.
Surrounded by family and friends, the couple took their wedding vows and faced the future with the traditional unspoken wish that they would live happily ever after.
