The summer vacation, seemingly interminable, finally came to an end. My much-loathed cousins Chloe and Charles came to Oma Warner’s house for the afternoon, ostensibly to bid me a fond farewell, though there was no affection wasted between us. Oma Warner sent us into the garden to play so that she could drink tea with Aunt Liz. As usual, we went down to the bottom of the garden to climb up the railings and watch the trains speeding by on their way to London.
There was just enough room on the one stretch of railings not obscured by bushes for us all to squeeze in if we squashed up together. Charles and Chloe, first to climb up, did not want to squash together with me. I tried to climb up anyway, just to annoy them; there was a short struggle and Chloe fell off, with an affected shriek.
“You did that on purpose,” said Charles, and gave me an almighty shove with his meaty hand, intending to push me into the dust, quantities of which his sister was now brushing off her pink sweater with disgust. I hung on for grim death, and then I kicked him in the shins.
“Fuck, fuck,” he squealed, then he flung himself upon me and began prizing my fingers off the railings.
I tried to kick him again, missed, let go of the railings, and slid down to the ground. Undeterred, I gave him some of his own medicine. “Fuck away!” I hissed, taking a swipe at him with my open hand.
“Fuck away?” Charles laughed contemptuously. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She means fuck off,” supplied Chloe. They looked at each other and laughed theatrically.
“Can’t she speak English?”
“No, she can’t.”
“Ner-errr…” They both flopped up and down in displays of simulated imbecility. “Fuck away!”
“No, you fuck away!”
“Scheissköpfe,” I told them; having reached the borders of my knowledge of English there was no option but to relapse into German. “Ich hasse euch beide, ihr seid total blöd.”
“That’s German, is it?”
“Fuck away back to Germany, you… German.”
“You Kraut,” added Charles, dredging up a word he could only have learned from Uncle Mark. “Fuck off with the other Krauts.”
“Go back where you came from.”
“Gerne,” I told them. “England is Scheisse, Middlesex is Scheisse, und ihr beide seid auch Scheisse.”
“Kraut, she’s talking Kraut,” said Charles delightedly. “Hey, Chlo’, I can’t wait until she tries that at school.” He pulled a face. “Hey, Mrs. Vilson, I don’t vont to do zis homeverk.”
“God, she’s not going to be in my class,” said Chloe in disgust. “They’ll put her in Batty’s.” She glared at me. “With all the other dummies who can’t speak English.”
“Good, I am not going to your school,” I said disdainfully.
Chloe shrieked with malicious delight. “Oh, yes, you are.”
“No, I am not going.”
“Yes, you are.”
They looked at me expectantly. Then Charles elbowed his sister in the ribs. “She doesn’t know.”
“I don’t know what?” I demanded.
They both burst into laughter. “Look,” said Charles eventually, in the voice of someone speaking to the terminally stupid, “where do you think you are going to school?”
“Sankt Michael Gymnasium,” I answered suspiciously.
“And where’s that, then?”
“Bad Münstereifel.”
“You’re going to need a plane to get there,” Charles taunted me.
“I don’t understand,” I said resentfully.
“You want me to spell it out, dummy?” asked Chloe, hands on her almost nonexistent hips. “You’re coming to live in England.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“Yes, yes, yes,” chanted Charles.
“Quatsch,” I told him.
“Quack? What’s that?”
“German for ‘duck,’” supplied Chloe. They guffawed at me. I stood there in silence and looked at them. “I am not living in England.”
“Oh, yes, you are. Hasn’t Aunt Kate told you yet?”
Impulsively, I turned on my heel. “I will ask Oma Warner.” I started up the garden path toward the house. Behind my back I heard Chloe and Charles hissing at each other. “Idiot-she doesn’t know.”
“Mum didn’t say not to tell. Anyway, you started it.”
“Stop her. Mum’ll go mad.”
“You stop her.”
By the time they had finished arguing and started after me, I had reached the back door. They piled into the house after me, and were so close on my heels that when I pushed open the living-room door the three of us almost fell into the room.
“Oma Warner,” I blurted out, “I don’t want to live in England.”
Aunt Liz and Oma Warner turned startled faces toward me. Aunt Liz put her cup down on its saucer with a rattle and looked furiously toward Chloe and Charles.
“Chloe? Charles?” There was a silence. “What have you been saying to Pia?”
“Nothing,” said Chloe quickly.
I glared at her mutinously. “She says I am going to school in England, not in the Sankt Michael Gymnasium.”
“Oh, Chloe.” Aunt Liz made a sound like a long sigh. She looked at Oma Warner and rolled her eyes. “Where do they pick these things up? I haven’t discussed it in front of them, not even with Mark.”
“Little pitchers have big ears,” said Oma Warner grimly.
“It’s not true,” I said. It was a question, not a statement. Oma Warner looked at Aunt Liz.
“Chloe and Charles shouldn’t have said anything to you, Pia,” said Aunt Liz eventually in the soulful listen-to-me-little-girl tone that I sometimes heard from my mother when she had something serious to impart. “Your mother and I were really just discussing what it would be like if you ever did come back to England to live. You know, the idea. Maybe your family won’t always want to stay in Germany. People move, you know.”
I pursed my lips and shook my head as emphatically as I could.
“Bad Münstereifel is very pretty, but it’s just a small town, you know, and besides…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yes, Aunt Liz?” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Oma Warner shaking her head. Aunt Liz saw it too and a frown flitted across her face.
“There are other nice places to live,” she finished.
“Not like Bad Münstereifel,” I said.