A Nice Cup of Tea
A NICE CUP OF TEA
To all my brave friends in Nice
ALSO BY CELIA IMRIE
The Happy Hoofer
Not Quite Nice
Nice Work (If You Can Get It)
Sail Away
CONTENTS
- Also by Celia Imrie
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Part Two
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Part Three
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Part Four
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Part Five
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Part Six
- Twenty-seven
- Postscript
- Acknowledgements
- Also available by Celia Imrie
PART ONE
PAIN PERDUE
Literally, Lost Bread – in the UK known as French Toast. Serves 8.
3 eggs
200ml milk
1 teaspoon orange-flower water
20g golden caster sugar
ground nutmeg, to taste
80g unsalted butter
8 slices bread or brioche
icing sugar, sieved
In a large bowl or a concave plate, beat the eggs, then add the milk, orange-flower water, sugar and nutmeg. Mix well.
Melt the butter in a frying pan, taking care not to let it burn. Dip the slices of bread into the mixture until they are well covered, then drop them into the melted butter. Fry until golden, turning at least once.
Serve after sprinkling with sieved icing sugar. Add fruit, lemon juice or jam to suit your taste.
ONE
Bellevue-sur-Mer. The name translates as ‘beautiful view on sea’. Looking out from Bellevue-sur-Mer certainly gave a beautiful view of the sea, along with the hazy headlands of the Côte d’Azur. The beautiful coast and its sheltered harbour had made Bellevue. At first, just a few fishermen’s cottages were built on the shore; then, during the nineteenth century, Bellevue grew into a small village with its own shops and church. Slowly the village spread out from the waterfront and up the hill until it became the town it was today.
Tucked neatly into a corner of a horseshoe-shaped cove, the old harbour was now a busy port de plaisance, a public marina, crammed with rows of brightly painted fishing boats, which bobbed in rhythm on the turquoise waters alongside the great white motor yachts of the rich. Luckily – or perhaps not – for the town, the waters were not deep enough for cruise ships, or the boats of the mega-rich which used a town a few miles along the coast. But for the medium-rich, the retirees and the businessmen out to impress, Bellevue-sur-Mer marina was a popular port of call, where they could moor their boats, restock and recharge their electricity while taking lunch.
If you were lucky enough to own one of those floating gin palaces, you might sail out into the bay and, once you hit the horizon, turn and glance inland. It was worth doing, for, from out at sea, the sight of Bellevue was as pretty as a picture-postcard village, with its pastel-painted cottages rising sharply up the hillside, the twisting lanes and roads zigzagging up to the brow of the green hill, behind which loomed the grey craggy foothills of the Alpes-Maritimes. If you visited during the winter months, from December to May, you might see the snowy caps of the ski-stations, a few miles inland.