I’m half Greek. I spent many a childhood summer in the back of my parents’ lime green Renault 12, crossing the borders of mainland Europe on the way to Greece. We once spent a fortnight just driving across what was then Yugoslavia. I feel connected to the continent in a way that goes beyond geographical coincidence or political expediency. And when it comes to the question of staying or leaving the EU, it’s personal, not political. I admit it might be better to weigh the arguments in a more detached fashion, for and against. But I won’t. I’m European. Pro the big fat dysfunctional family.
So we’re sitting outside the deli in Painswick, waiting for our scones to arrive, and an elderly but spruce couple sit down at an adjacent table. Like a plant leaning towards the sun, the female half of the couple, soon to celebrate her seventieth, in style, in a Wiltshire village, turns towards us for her essential nutrients. Conversation, solicited or not. Wasn’t it a lovely spot. (It was). Were we staying here? (We were). And so on. The drinks arrived. Then, out of the blue, her otherwise taciturn but fidgety husband piped up. We haven’t touched on Brexit yet, he said. Indeed we hadn’t. Politics, in a quintessential Cotswolds village? Whatever next. My husband squirmed. He’s an economist. Deeply averse to leaving on economic grounds. Mildly intolerant of any non economist, lay person type, piling in on the subject. I spoke in place of him. I’m Greek, I said, as if that explained everything. To which the husband retorted that he was half Czech and half Irish but he wanted the hell out.
His aggression took me aback. I nodded, sympathetically, in the hope that our obvious non meeting of minds would render the topic null and void. But the conversation wasn’t about to die.
Cameron says he’s won concessions from the EU, he said, with a fervour that caused his spindly body to shake. But where are these concessions? Have we felt their effect? The scones arrived in the resounding silence that followed. His wife took up the baton.
It’s a sovereignty thing, for me, she said. We’re better off making our own mistakes, the way I see it. At least we wouldn’t be wasting any one else’s money. I nodded again. My husband was busying himself with a scone. Cream, jam, etc. But our neighbour wasn’t about to to bow out. On she went, spuming against the bureaucracy, waste of talent, bloated salaries and fundamental unnecessariness of the EU. And as she talked, another story began to emerge. A sub text that was more personal than political. The voice of sibling rivalry. Now I’m no psychoanalyst, but I’ve two children, and I know just how vicious and deep-seated a thing sibling rivalry can be. It turns out our neighbour’s sister had worked for the EU, and as a lavishly rewarded EU bureaucrat, had reaped all the benefits of being on its indisputable gravy train. As had her children. Oddly, it occurred to me to ask whether her sister was still alive, possibly picking up on some dark, unexpressed wish. She was. Living in London. The husband drummed his fingers on the table irritably. I’ll get the bill, he said, suddenly.
There’s a rococo garden in Painswick, I said, taking advantage of the conversational lull. But our Brexiteer neighbours had run out of time. The birthday celebrations lay ahead. It was going to be a family gathering. Their daughters and son in laws would be there. The grand children, too. But not, I deduced, the sister.
Ariadne Birnberg 