Brighid’s Diary: We all have experiences that we lock up inside ourselves

Brighid McLaughlin. Picture by Gerry Mooney

Brighid McLaughlin

April 04 2021 01:13 PM

It was an interesting week, that’s for sure. Recently I noticed a slim, elderly lady with a jaunty blue cap being led by a gorgeous black Labrador guide dog. I said hello. Her name was Gerda and she spoke with a soft German accent.

After a week or so, Urny, her dog, would pause on the path opposite the cottage, push against Gerda until she patted him approvingly, then trot across the road, and sit outside my half-door. “He misses people talking to him,” she said. “Before Covid we used to have lots of visitors and they spoilt him. Urny is ever so social.”

Well, Urny knew a good thing when he landed at my door and before long he was coming over daily. I’d give him a bowl of water while Gerda and I would have the chats.

On Tuesday I found Urny dozing in the sun at the half-door, as Gerda stood across the road laughing. I brought a comfortable seat out on to the lane, put the kettle on and listened to her story. She had a bright face, full of youthful vigour, but her world started out like a fast track movie reel.

You would never know that this little woman lived a life that was beyond compelling.

“I was born at the end of 1942, in Alsace,” she said, feeling her way to the chair. “My mother, a Dubliner, met my father in a town called Guebwiller in Alsace. When the Germans occupied Alsace, my mother tried to flee. She was afraid of being tarred and feathered if she was caught escaping. You see my father had a French birth certificate but joined the German army. He could be seen as spy.

“My earliest memories are of sitting on the hills with my mother, watching the trains, hoping we could jump on one. Eventually we succeeded.

“My mother and I had no passports, no food or water on our journey. I remember she bought our two cups up to the steam engine to moisten our lips. When we got back on to the moving train, it was bombed.

“We were seated in the first two carriages and escaped, the remaining passengers died.”

According to Gerda, her mother was “a small, capable woman”, a bit like Gerda herself I suspect.

“She never panicked in time of calamity,” she said. “It was only afterwards, when the war was over, that she broke down.”

We all have experiences that we lock up inside ourselves and I sense that this is what happened to Gerda’s poor mother.

“When I first came to Ireland we lived with my granduncle, on Palmerstown Road. I adored him. One day, I overheard my mother saying that when the French took back Alsace my father was going to be killed because he was a Nazi.

“I was completely unaware that my father was a Nazi. The French kept him as a political prisoner for 10 years. Alfie Byrne, the Lord Mayor who helped bring us into Ireland as refugees, also helped my father.”

I must remind you dear readers that Alfie Byrne, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, allegedly had links with the Nazis. Byrne was a firm ally of Patrick Belton, a Nazi supporter and Oliver J Flanagan, a fierce anti-Semite and admirer of Hitler. The spectre of pro-Nazism under Eamon de Valera had dogged Ireland’s reputation for years. Dublin must have been a strange place then.

I asked how it felt, knowing her father was a member of the Nazi party?

“This is part of history, Biddy. There is nothing I can do. I never knew about his background until later. Looking back now, I felt very estranged from him. When he finally arrived in Ireland I was only 10 and he spoke only German.

“Once, a neighbour dropped a large basket of windfall apples into our kitchen. My father beckoned me to take one.”

Gerda noticed a worm entering a small tunnel on her apple and placed it back in the bowl. Her father had a complete meltdown, snapped and lashed out at her.

“He was absolutely enraged, roaring in German at me when he saw me put the apple back,” she said.

“Later, I overheard him telling some friends stories of being captured as a political prisoner. He had to walk 20 miles a day with just two teaspoons of flour as nourishment. He once spotted a piece of mouldy bread floating down a river as they marched and he and some other prisoners ran out of line to retrieve it. They were beaten. I suppose he knew hunger and that caused his fury over the apple.”

I personally wouldn’t have any sympathy for the bastard’s plight considering his past, but Gerda is remarkably sanguine about it. She is an extraordinary lady: philosophical, accepting and wise.

Gerda was declared legally blind aged 40. It may seem hard to believe but it doesn’t seem to bother her at all.

“You see the universe gives us things… I find everything fascinating. I always remain calm no matter what happens. It’s just the way I am.”

Later, she married an Irishman from Monkstown in Dublin, with whom she had four children.

“My husband was very intelligent, but he was hard going. I suspected he suffered with Asperger’s. When he left me, I felt a sort of relief. Thankfully I have an awful lot of friends.”

You can count me as one, I tell her.

On Thursday, as I trotted down the stone steps to White Rock beach, I kept meeting middle-aged folks with what looked like wooden slatted bread boards under their arms.

They had these wide beatific grins on their faces. They weren’t Dry Robers or in any way the cool set, and happier for it, but they were definitely swimmers. I recognised one fellow who used to swim nude, I remember he had a dongle twice the size of a battered sausage which he used to love swinging from side to side. He drove me nuts. Sure God help him, he should have looked up instead of down. His chin was longer.

Eventually after spotting a gentleman in striped shorts with a board under his arm, curiosity got the better of me. “Do you mind me asking what these wooden things are for?” I asked.

“Dry arse boards,” he laughed.“Stops our behinds getting wet after a swim.”

Now that’s a phenomenon I hadn’t expected.

“Our friend Stephen started making them for us. We park ourselves in that beach cove. We call it the ‘Temple of Delphi’ because the white-washed walls and turquoise paint reminds us of Greece.”

Well, I never. Dry arse boards. The bould Stephen may have a booming business on his hands.

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