Beatle

Chapter 5 (Continued)

Hi! So I know this update is short but I really wanted to update because I feel bad and unreliable....

This chapter is almost over, I know I have one more addition to make to this chapter after this current update, but it needs edits so I'm gonna work on that. Good news is I will upload it soon after this, so you guys get a whopping two in a row that you can count as one! Yay!

Thank you to everyone who recently voted, followed me, left lovely comments, the like. You are all wonderful (not to be all cliché and totally overly mushy). I hope you enjoy!

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The days following mine and John’s visit to Julia were the beginning of July, and the next time I ended up making John’s acquaintance was, coincidentally, on the Fourth of July. It hadn’t occurred to me when I told Anne I wanted to spend the summer with her that, along with spending my birthday in England, I’d also be there for, ironically, an all-American holiday.

Nonetheless, it seemed that Anne, despite having chosen the single country from which we won our independence to settle down in, was keen to carry on with her American spirit. Indeed she spent the day before and of the fourth of that hot month sticking small American flags in the front yard and going out into town to get red, white and blue streamers to tape over the front doorway and to wrap around the upstairs banister. I had barely entered the kitchen that day before I was undoubtedly aware of the patriotic kitchen ware Anne had replaced our regular things with, from the star spangled hand towels to yet even more flags stuck in a vase of flowers in the center of the table. The celebration even seemed to extend to the breakfast itself, as it was served on blue plates that were decorated appropriately with white stars accompanying red cups and white napkins.

Anne stood in the midst of it all, decked out in an American flag apron as she finished making breakfast. Her back was to me as I entered, and she hummed along to “America the Beautiful” that by some miracle she’d managed to find on Radio Luxembourg and was currently crackling from the small speaker mounted on the wall next to the cabinets.

“Sure you’re not overdoing it Auntie Anne?” I asked as I sat down at the table to eat, feeling very out of place and unpatriotic in my knee-length, mainly pink, floral dress.

“Never!” she cried en lieu of greeting, whirling to face me and brandishing a pan of eggs. “If you don’t support your home country then what are you?”

“Not a nationalist?” I guessed, but I only made her laugh.

“Very clever you are,” she said, joining me in her seat across the table and scooping some eggs out onto my plate for me.

“Actually,” she leaned forward with a smile, “it’s a pretty funny story. See, when I first moved here, I put out a flag or two in the flower pots, nothing big. I figured that since I’d moved to England, I didn’t need to make a big deal about my home country, America was in the past and I was sure I wouldn’t be back there to live again.”

            “But,” here she snorted with laughter, trying to continue to tell me the story, “I was talking to John the next day, he stopped at the gate on his way to somewhere, and he told me Mimi thought I had ‘some nerve’ being new to the neighborhood and dragging in ‘those wretched decorations in a place like this!’” She paused to throw her head back and laugh and I couldn’t help but join her. “So nowadays I go big because I know it gets a rise out of her, but she won’t say anything because she’s Mimi!”