The Old German Lady.

A real happening!

I had stopped to fill up with diesel in the interesting but distinctly unfashionable county of Lincolnshire. The small garage was in the tired village of Moulton. This is a regular stop for me.  Regular because it does favourable deals on promotional trading points. These are given for both petrol and groceries.

On the garage forecourt was an old red VW Passat estate.  It rested, parked and empty of any occupants, near one of the pumps.  Certainly, it was a very old car!  Its wings were rusted, the maroon paint was faded from continual daylight.  The car was German yet it had British registration plates and it was a right hand drive.  The car body sat awkwardly on its supension.  Complete weariness settled heavily over the, worn, exhausted, automobile.

With  van filled  up and the fuel cap locked on, I strolled past the old VW car and into the garage.  It is a petrol station, sure enough. Mostly, it is the Cooperative village store. Serving the good people, of the windmilled, Lincolnshire, village,  Moulton!

I waited in a short queue and it was then that I first saw the old German lady.  She must have been eighty or so.  She was short and not wearing sufficient clothes for the cold weather.  She had no bag of any sort. Her hair fell grey and untidy. It lay resting on her grey cardigan just past her collar. Her white blouse and dark grey skirt were grubby and stained; her stockings were twisted and holed. She walked arthritically on large, plimsoled, feet.

She turned to a lady assistant who sat at the post office counter. The old German Lady broadcast  "May I haff Vine?"  Throughout her life the old German lady's English had remained accented, heavy as the River Rhine.
"What sort?" Queried a pixie-like shop assistant.
"Do you haff Blue Nun?"
"No" responded the baffled  pixie as she trawled the wine cabinet.  "Anything else?"
"Liebfraumilch!" asserted the old German lady becoming flustered and impatient.
"No" repeated the store lady who picked up the old German lady's agitation.  "Anything else?"
"Riesling!"  shouted the old German lady and the whole Cooperative store hushed to listen.
"What country?" queried the nervous sales assistant.
"Germany, Germany" repeated the old German lady, now pinking with rage and confusion.
"We don't have German wine, sorry." explained the shop keeper, who was ruffled and most uneasy.

At this moment the old German lady became speechless.  She tossed back her head.  Then with a painful theatrical twist she turned, facing me.  In her display of delicious (though furious) Prussian chutzpah her steely blue gaze momentarily pierced my eyes.  Through this stare I absorbed some of her frustration and fury. I tried to speak some soothing words to her.  My tongue twisted like a spring so no kind syllables passed between my lips.  I gaped silent, open mouthed, as the old German lady proudly, awkwardly, marched through the grateful automatic doors.

I waited to pay for my fuel. The old German lady had left my brain racing with questions.  Who was she?  Was she a refugee who had fled the storm troopers before the war?  She may have been Jewish.  Was she a holocaust suvivor?  Perhaps her family had been killed in the Dresden bombing?  Maybe a Lincolnshire infantryman had saved her from the rape and violence of Soviet East German Bloc?  A British Tommy may have married her!

Why was she here looking for the wines of her youth?  Why did her tragedy make me nostagic and feel berieved of my lost, golden, years?  Why was she not dressed for the cool weather?

I paid for my fuel and left through the automatic Cooperative doors.  I looked, eagerly now, for one more view of my flinty, tough, Valkyrie.  Yes! There she was sitting in the weary, old, red, Volkswagon Passat, estate-car.  She sat alone in the passenger seat!  Of course, she was far too old to drive!

We were alone!  She was quite unaware of me.  We were the only two people outside of the Cooperative petrol station in Moulton. Ours were the only two remaining vehicles.  The only company nearby was a Cooperative brick building with green and yellow petrol pumps.
 
Intriguingly there was no sign of any other person accompanying  the old German lady.  Who or what was she waiting for?  There she sat, peering upwards at the sky. Her head cocked downwards, looking under the sun visor.

I wondered, as I climbed into my van, was her red Volkswagon a rusty Tardis?  Was she a Teutonic Time Lord, who had miscalculated 40 years and tried to buy her favourite wines decades too late?  Was she the spirit of the chaos resulting after World War Two?  Was she a ghost haunting and living in my own past?  Why was that indomitable, German, female alone, in that German car?

My vehicle chuckled into life.  I looked back, one more time, at the old German lady. One more glance to say "Goodbye".  There was nothing!  No Passat!  No dear old German lady!  It was like the instantaneous departure of a time machine.  Flick the switch and you are gone.   I wished her well and thanked her for a shaft of silver light through a dull day.

How I wish I could give her some solace or at least a bottle of " Blue Nun,  Leibfraumilch, Riesling."  

Author's Note

It makes you think!

Reviews

[Donald Meikle]

went right on by plimsoled feet letting it slip into my vernacular as easily as if it had always been there. Nice read Ron

[KAREN]

This was outstanding! I couldn't stop reading! I loved how she might have turned out to be a ghost! Excellent write and read!

[Thurston]

Ron, This is a wonderful piece of writing. You showed us what you meant by "interesting". Your first sentence becomes a quality product.
But yet so bland at first.
Ron, You have a true, true ear. This must now be published as PDF to your files. Then to hold as ready to go where it will best be suited. That may be as an example of your writing.
But, one important change: First sentence. Should read: " I had stopped to fill up..."
Second word s/be "had".
This is a marvellous piece of writing. It's got everything, including absolute normality. Questions posed by Ron are a sure touch of class in a lovely piece.

[Thurston]

Ron, You are without doubt, a gifted writer. This vignette sat on its suspension like a page from a Somerset Maugham short story. Outside, the car: inside, the German Frau, achingly juxtiposed -- and between them, to observe, the writer Ron and perforce, we the readers.
The conversation between Frau and P.O. assistant -- and I say this humbly and honestly -- is as sure-footed, as smoothly imagined, as Maugham at his most sublime.
The one paragraph conversation is reveals in Ron a masterly observer of human nature, and close inspector of the idioms and iodiosyncracies of dialogue.
Better than brilliant. Endearing, enjoyable, intrguing.

[Samuel Dickens]

What an amazing little tale and yes, it does cause me to wonder just what the explanation is. Surely there is a logical one, but then....? I enjoyed this immensely, Ron, and I commend you on telling it so well. Oh, I think you are correct in word selection, and "were" is appropriate.