7 Miles Out

by Carol Morley

  Brynn moved a lot over the years. Her life’s work was buying The Lady and looking at the classifieds. Here she would find a house or flat to let, usually owned by an aristocrat, who would rent it out in return for a small sum and some babysitting. She presented herself as a widow, and never told them about Bobby, who would covertly come to live with her. She lived in a few places like this, as well as squatting a flat in Eastbourne at one point and living in a car for a few weeks. She remained a wanderer, always looking for something elusive that she tied up with being in the right house, the right flat, the right area, which she never seemed to find. On her sixtieth birthday she revealed that what she had always wanted to be was a bag lady.

  My mum’s first stroke, before the one that would kill her, took her to a ward in Rhyl Hospital in North Wales. I visited her, got out of the train station and walked by the shut-down shops and pubs to the nearby hospital. She woke up from a deep sleep, her speech slurred, and said, ‘Well, I’ll never be able to say double-barrelled names again now.’ She dozed again and I looked out of the ward window, at the fine landscape that surrounded a town that looked like it had been torn apart and forgotten, and I thought about her constant need to move, to find something that was always out of reach. When Brynn woke up again she looked at me kindly and said, ‘When I’m in heaven, will you be all right without me?’ I realised by the fond way she said heaven that it was somewhere she was enthusiastically anticipating as her next major move.

  Brynn didn’t survive the second stroke she had. When she died I experienced a different kind of grief than when Dad had died. My adult experience of parent bereavement seemed easier to cope with. I felt a physical pain that concentrated itself in my chest, and I found I was able to cry, which eased the pain. I realised that when my dad died I was at an age when my life was tied to his in such a significant way it was difficult to unknot the complications after he’d gone. Brynn had lived to her early seventies and I wasn’t dependent on her any more for my day-to-day life. I never did look after her when she got old, as I had threatened her in my teenage argument, so she wasn’t dependent on me; we were untied.

  After Brynn’s death, I had no problem dreaming about her. She seemed to be in my dreams often, sitting drinking a mug of tea, talking about another house move, surrounded by hilly piles of ripped fabric, making the rag rugs she loved to make, but there was one dream I had of her that also featured Dad. It was only the second dream I have ever had that he was in. It felt as precious as a rare celluloid silent film and I tried to preserve it by repeating it constantly in my mind. The dream was similar in look to the Japanese brush strokes of the horse picture that my mum and dad had bought together. Through this black and white landscape, Mum and Dad, young again, walked together, arm in arm, deep in private, unheard, conversation.

  I think of film-making as a form of making dreams come to life; of asking questions too difficult to ask in real life; of constructing something meaningful out of messy and difficult experiences. I think back to being the eleven-year-old girl the day the police came to the door to tell us the news about Dad. I’m no longer frozen in that moment. I’m no longer her. But she’s part of me, and I know that my father’s suicide gave me the desire to truly examine what it is to live, to find a way to try and make sense of the world and to resurrect the lost. It is, without a doubt, why I became a film-maker.

  acknowledgments

  Thank you to all the following:

  Cairo Cannon, Jane Grisewood, Brenda Reid, Joan Scanlon, Chris Wyatt and Bev Zalcock for being early readers and for their support and advice.

  Louise Lamont and Emily Thomas for the journey into the light.

  Jane Burnard and Oliver Holden-Rea for noticing and Karen Browning for bringing it to notice.

  For being there, and here: the Morleys: Paul, Jayne, Madeleine, Natasha, Florence; to the Mitchells: Sally, Andrew, Sian, Lizzie; and to Matthew Bates, Jane Cannon, Sara Chambers, Susan Ferguson, Liane Harris, Dave Haslam, Liz Levy, Polly Leys, James Lobjoit, Heidi Locher, Kate Norrish, Maxine Peake, Darren Philpott, Claire Rasul, Zah Rasul, Tony Roche, Luc Roeg, Archie and Joann Southgate, and Tracey Thorn.