Carmel remembered the old and rather dour, heavily bearded man whose pictures had been splashed all over the papers the previous May at his anniversary. Apparently, though, his son who would become Edward VIII was nothing like his father. ‘Now that is what I call handsome,’ Aileen said, one day in the hospital dining room. ‘A real man.’ There were hoots of laughter around the table. ‘Bit out of your league,’ Jane put in. ‘Anyway, he’s spoken for.’ ‘You don’t mean that Wallace Simpson?’ ‘Who else?’ ‘Well, he’ll have to give her up now he’s the King,’ Aileen said. ‘Yeah, could you see us all accepting an American divorcee as Queen?’ ‘He couldn’t marry her, could he?’ Sylvia said. ‘Even if she wasn’t an American, I mean. He couldn’t marry a divorced woman and stay King because he will be Head of the Church of England then.’ ‘But the Church of England allows divorce, doesn’t it?’ Carmel said. ‘Isn’t that one of the differences between that and the Catholic Church?’ ‘Ah,’ said Sylvia.
