“God save our gracious king. Long live our noble king. God save the king …”
Just as many people sang the British national anthem in London on Saturday, seven British-born women sang the same words as they gathered in Mountain Top for afternoon high tea at the home of Alison Gomes.
They added a “hip hip, hooray” for the newly crowned sovereign, as well as their good wishes.
“I think he’ll be a great king,” Gomes said. “He’s had a fantastic role model.”
If she could give King Charles any advice Gomes, who came to the United States more than 35 years ago to work as an au pair, said it would be “Just follow your mother’s path. She did not make a single wrong step.”
Gomes and her guests — Sheila Ryder, Mary Holzmann, Barbara Pikul, Jean Stevenson, Jane Jones and Laura Lenio — used to belong to a group known as the British Women’s Club of Wyoming Valley.
The club officially disbanded a few years ago as many of its older members died off, but the women who remain still get together for special occasions.
On Saturday they contributed such dishes as quiche, lemon curd tartlets, a fruit tray, sausage rolls, cream cheese sandwiches on bread from which the crusts had been trimmed, and appetizers of skewered pineapple, cheese and cured meat.
There was tea, of course, plus a champagne toast and, for dessert, a trifle.
Because today, May 7 is Laura Lenio’s 90th birthday, Gomes carefully balanced candles shaped like a “9” and an “0” on top of the trifle and the group sang “Happy Birthday” to her.
It was the kind of gesture the late Queen Elizabeth II likely would have appreciated; she was known for sending greetings to her subjects in honor of significant life events. When Gomes’ own parents observed their 60th wedding anniversary back in Bristol, they received a congratulatory message from the queen.
Brushes with royalty
And some of her guests treasure memories of other brushes with royalty.
“My father was in the Royal Air Force, stationed at Malta,” Sheila Ryder of Wilkes-Barre recalled. “She wasn’t the queen yet, but I remember when Princess Elizabeth came to my school.”
Guest Mary Holzmann recalled how she was a teenager, working her first job as a receptionist at a factory in Market Harborough, England, when Queen Elizabeth’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, visited and toured the building.
“He said something about sausages and I had to tell him we were a soup factory, not a sausage factory,” Holzmann said.
‘It really was lovely’
Long before they gathered for the afternoon tea, the British expats had awakened early to watch the live televised coverage of King Charles’ coronation, which began at 5 a.m. EDT.
“My favorite part was when (Prince) William kissed his father,” Gomes said, noting she thought she caught an exchange of “I love you” and “I’m proud of you” between the royal father and son.
“It really was lovely,” she said, noting she was also touched when, near the point in the ceremony where King Charles was to be anointed, “He was kneeling by the altar, just wearing a white shirt. I don’t think I ever saw him without a jacket before. He looked so vulnerable.”
“So human,” Holzmann added.
Guest Jane Jones said she greatly admired Queen Elizabeth as “a beautiful woman who did a marvelous job” and admitted she doesn’t have quite the same feeling about the new king.
Still, she said, “I think he’ll do well. And he’s with the woman he loves now. She (Queen Camilla) is a good support.”
