The Film Buff Pt. 2 ( VILLAGE TALES EP. 14 )

Terry and Jill discover more about Terry’s past sparked by what they saw

 on the film in Terry’s collection.  Terry’s hobby has become a successful business. 

Would that alone have led eventually to a family reunion?

Now where was I? Oh yes, I was telling you about Terry Marshall our local film buff. From an early age his passion had been the moving image and had amassed quite a collection of old cinematic films, particularly when VHS had arrived in the eighties and people no longer wanted the old technology or the many cans of film. For a while Terry was the senior projectionist at our nearest cinema but has since moved on to greater things. 

Terry’s girlfriend, Gill, shared his passion for old films in general but was fascinated by his collection of amateur movies dating back to before the wars. Someone had filmed a carnival with gaily coloured floats, bands, vintage cars and people lining the street and waving flags. Terry was more interested in the cars but Gill recognised a building in the background as being local to where both she and Terry grew up. What appeared to be a family group caught Terry’s attention, a brightly coloured blanket covering a child in a push chair led him to believe it was his, he was that child, and the woman holding onto the push chair was his mother.

‘No way!’ Was Gill’s reaction, then she suggested that the tall man next to the woman in the film, wearing a dark suit and holding another child, was Terry’s father. Terry said it wasn’t. Gill said maybe he was just younger, and the child in his arms must be Terry’s brother, to which Terry answered that he didn’t have a brother.’

The rest of the spool was filled with England’s world cup celebrations but neither Terry nor Gill were paying much attention. 

Gill told me that she had sensed something life changing had occurred. It’s a fascination to me the immense repercussions that small events can have, what is called the butterfly effect. In my experience a chance meeting or a missed one can change a life forever and it’s in the lap of the Gods whether it’s for the better or for the worse.

Terry was still working as a projectionist so Gill didn’t get to see him for a week or so. When they did what they had seen was hanging over them both and Gill suggested he would  have to talk to his mother about it.

Gill heard nothing and began to worry that she had interfered. Another week went passed before Terry got in touch and was able to explain to Gill over a drink in the Drum that his mother had eventually admitted that the man in the film actually was his real father, and ,yes, he did have a brother. It was a shock that he was having to come to terms with and rather than their relationship being threatened, Terry explained that he needed her even more.

The story went as follows, after the war and up into the seventies there was an emigration policy, you may remember the ‘ten pound pom’ description of those starting a new life ‘down under’. It was his mother and father’s intention to do that. Due to Terry being no more than a few months old it was decided that his father, Philip, would travel ahead with his older brother Tom. Phil would find a place to live, get a job and in a few months, Dorothy, Terry’s mum would follow. She explained in letters to Phil that baby Terry was not yet well enough to undergo a sea journey of several weeks, but this may have been an excuse. Dorothy’s family were dead set against her emigration, not surprising in those days when it was unlikely that parents would ever see their children, or their grandchildren, ever again. Without Phil’s enthusiasm and support Dorothy became less keen to go. Eventually she admitted to Phil she was staying. Soon afterwards she met Ron and Terry grew up believing him to be his father. I asked Gill about such details as marriage? She told me that after two years Dorothy was able to get a divorce, then she married Ron. 

My only comment was that it would have come to light eventually, these things always do. 

A week later Terry approached me in the Drum with two beers and the implication was obvious. He sat down and made some small talk then there was silence before . . 

‘Thing is,’ he started, ‘mum couldn’t bring herself to tell me when I was little, I wouldn’t have understood. As I got older she knew she had to, but teenagers, you know, I’d have called her a liar and walked out, well that’s what she feared. Every year was the year she was going to tell me Ron wasn’t my dad, in Australia there’s my real dad and a brother, but she couldn’t do it. A lie might start small . . . ’

‘Not that small,’ I pointed out.

‘And over time it gets bigger and bigger,’ Terry said, ‘until its so big you daren’t confess to it. Whatever the excuse the guilt just grows and grows.’

‘So how is your Mum?’

‘Relieved, actually. Having always said that she had lost my birth certificate, mum produces it, then she bursts into tears, like the dam had burst.’

‘What do you think now?’ I asked. Terry gave me a long look.

‘It’s complicated. I can remember saying to Gill in here a couple of weeks after we saw the film, life’s isn’t like what you see in the films. What we’d seen some weeks before projected onto my living room wall was a happy family with two children and loving parents, but they knew that the following day two of them were travelling to the other side of the world, and one parent, maybe both, knew they would never see each other again. Of the hundreds of old films I’ve got, I like seeing the cars best. I get requests now I’m in that business to see if a particular car, or even the exact one, is in my collection. You wouldn’t believe what they pay, but that’s not the point, the cars, many of them, still exist. Their moment goes on, my real family didn’t, and in most of the old films I have, the people don’t. That brief moment of their lives on my films is all some of them leave, that’s all that’s left of them. It makes you realise how little time there is, and how valuable life is. I didn’t want to waste my life. I didn’t want a photo or two, or a few seconds of me on social media to be all I leave. I wanted a life, and more important, a family. So that’s when I asked Gill to marry me, right here, actually where we are sitting.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Well, obviously you know.’ Terry replied.

Whether Terry and Tom would have discovered they were brothers is not impossible. Tom Marshall works as a free lance film producer in Aussie and has collaborated on several projects with the BBC, one of which was about the post war immigration to both Australia and New Zealand, something obviously dear to his heart. Who should they approach but Terry who has turned a hobby into a very successful business supplying vintage film clips for documentaries, advertising, and all sorts of other purposes.

‘Actually,’ Terry continued, ‘she didn’t say yes or no, she said, ‘of course I will, it’s the only way I’ll get to see the rest of your films for free.’

‘Sounds like Gill,’ I observed and right on cue Gill approaches across the bar.

‘Not long to go?’ I point out.

‘Two weeks,’ she replies, ‘just come back from a check up, all good.’

I look at Terry, and he looks back with the proud smile of a father to be.

Listen to Village Tales and other short stories from the HONKEYMOON CAFE

 on Spotify, Anchor FM, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, 

Google Podcasts, Breaker and other platforms. 

Written and read by Barkley Johnson.