The Life of Jane continued

                                   Life in London Continued


    Jane and Don McWilliam were now lovers and Jane had now broken off with John Tytherleigh. She'd last seen John just before she'd set off for England. They both agreed they shouldn't marry. "Have a great time Scooter," John said, using his nickname for her. "I'm sure you'll shake up those Brits." Then he waved goodbye and walked quickly away down a Fredericton. She hadn't seen him since.
    Now with Don, Jane set out to explore London and parts of England. Things from her brief childhood stay in Britain brought back the past. She found again fish and chip shops and munched  the food they offered which was still wrapped in newspaper. She took Don back to Barnet with her. They strolled along the town's main street and she pointed out the apartment she'd stayed in close to 13 years ago. They wandered into the back of the apartment to look at the grass covered yard she'd played in. Like many other revisitors to their childhood past, Jane noticed how everything  in the backyard, including the trees and plants had shrunk in size.
     "They haven't shrunk Jane," Don said when she mentioned how things seemed so much smaller. "You've
just grown, that's all." She looked in the street for rag and bones men who used to trundle along in horse carts looking for junk to buy and sell. But they were gone, replaced by cars that whizzed along city streets and motorways.
 Together Don and Jane visited the usual tourist sites. They went to the Houses of Parliament and even saw Winston Churchill sitting in the House of Commons. They climbed up the stairs at the Tower of London and gazed at the masterpieces in the National Gallery.
   But sometimes Don's statements disturbed her. He was so happy to see Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan wromp to victory over the Labour Party in the 1959 general election." Thank God that Britain's tired of socialism," he said in his American Midwestern accent . "That's fantastic." 
   Jane's mother often leaned to the left politically and had once told Jane that the British Labour Party had done some good things. Don flatly disagreed. Studying Milton Friedman and having him as a teacher, Don said, "showed me that a country can only prosper under free enterprise."
    Don's America-first patriotism seemed to override all other peoples and nations in the world. This bothered Jane too.
 "The U.S. is the hope of the world,"he said one Sunday morning as he scanned the pages of the Observer newspaper, while stretching out on Jane's bed. "Why don't these Englishmen know that? They keep putting us down. Without the United States, Britain would have lost the Second World War. And we saved the Brits and the French in World War One too.We're also the main reason why the communists haven't invaded Western Europe  and swallowed up England also."
    Jane tried to ignore these statements, for she enjoyed Don's energy, optimism and being with a good looking man.  And though she still feared getting pregnant, she enjoyed their  lovemaking too. She realized that she was in love and she enjoyed the happiness it brought her. She got used to the smallness of her room and the crowded sometimes scruffy streets she often walked along. Life seemed to her to be very good.