by Maeve Haran
Claire’s Lemon Tart
For the pastry:
250g plain flour
75g icing sugar
180g butter
3 egg yolks
Put the flour, icing sugar and butter, cut into small cubes (as cold as possible straight from the fridge), into a bowl and mix until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. (Immaculata protested she didn’t believe in food processors so this had to be done by hand!) Add the yolks and stir thoroughly. Bind by hand. Leave it to rest in the fridge wrapped in cling film for 45 minutes.
Roll out the pastry and press into a 24cm flan base. You can ease it in with your knuckles so don’t worry if it’s not perfect. Bake blind with baking beans on greaseproof paper to stop it rising at 150°C for 20 minutes, pricking the pastry first.
For the filling:
300g butter
300g caster sugar
6 eggs
9 egg yolks
130ml lemon juice
Zest of 6 lemons
Mix lemon zest, juice, sugar and butter on the hob until butter is melted slightly but not so hot that it will curdle the eggs when you put them in. Whisk the eggs and add to the saucepan. Stir over a medium heat until it thickens into a custard, then whisk lightly (NB: Albert Roux, the king of lemon tart, advises not to over-stir the custard) and pour into the pastry shell. Fill halfway then up to the top, as full as possible. Cook the tart for 40–50 minutes at 150°C until set on top. When cooled down dust heavily with icing sugar and finish off with a blow torch. You can put it under the grill but it tends to burn the pastry, so a blow torch is preferable.
‘Right, where are we going to find a blow torch?’
The response was that there might be one in Luigi’s shed.
‘Aie!’ cried Immaculata when they managed to light it. ‘È pericoloso! It will be dangerous!’
‘It would be if you let Giovanni near it.’ But Claire was made of sterner stuff.
‘Why have you made two tarts, Signora Chiara?’ Immaculata wondered.
Claire smiled and handed her one. ‘One is for you and Beatrice and the others.’
Immaculata took the tart with the reverence usually accorded to Holy Communion.
Beatrice had laid out dinner on the terrace. Monica was down first, wearing her new trousers with the best of her old tops. She helped herself to a glass of wine and stared down at the sea. It was one of those amazing pearly evenings when the sun had just gone down and left a soft pink glow over the terraces and the gardens, and a gentle mist had settled over the sea as if the hard lines of daytime had been rubbed gently by an unseen finger.
Claire appeared next, having showered off the flour from her cooking demo. Monica looked at her closely. She, too, had a glow like the setting sun. How interesting. ‘I hear you’ve been making mayhem in the kitchen.’
Claire laughed. She looked like a different person from the rather careworn woman who had seemed to carry the burden for her entire family. ‘Yes, I have shocked Immaculata with my twenty-first-century cooking tools. The results come later.’
‘Hello, girls, plotting the downfall of Western civilization?’ Sylvie swished past them and breathed in the night air theatrically.
Claire giggled. ‘Well, I made a start. Immaculata wants digital scales.’
Sylvie shook her head. ‘Where will it all end? How were the lemon groves?’
‘We have to call them “gardens”. The locals are very particular. Or “paradises”.’
‘So you’ve been in paradise all day. How was it?’
‘Heavenly,’ Claire laughed. ‘Actually, it was pretty heavenly. The smell of lemons and lemon blossom. Do you know they have the flower and the fruit on the branch at the same time?’
‘Oh my God, she’s going native. She’ll give up catering in East Cheam and move in with the lemon grower.’
‘Twickenham, actually. Anyway, don’t be so ridiculous, Sylvie,’ Claire replied with sudden brusqueness. ‘Where on earth’s Angela got to? She’s much more likely than I am to abandon us for one of these five-star hotels she’s been checking out. You know how she’s been missing room service.’
‘Not tempted to do any such thing.’ Angela had just joined them on the terrace. ‘I was just having a rather delicious bath. It’s such a glorious night I left the window open. Though point taken about room service. It would have been even more perfect if I could have ordered a glass of fizz.’
‘You should have shouted your order out of the window,’ Monica suggested. ‘You might have got Giovanni!’
Angela suddenly walked to the balcony and looked down at the lights below, which were just beginning to come on. ‘It’s quite a place, isn’t it, the Villa Le Sirenuse?’
‘So how were all the posh hotels?’
‘Surprisingly uninviting. The last one had potential, though. Sylvie, I wondered if you’d come and look at it tomorrow? There are aspects of it we might find useful.’
Beatrice arrived with the first course of squid in tempura and they all sat round the table on the terrace. Angela didn’t seem even to think of sitting at the head.
‘Let’s get it clear what we’re doing here.’ Sylvie sipped her wine. ‘We know Stephen has had an offer to sell the place to a hotel chain. How serious is it, I wonder?’
A sudden silence followed, almost like the announcement of a death as they contemplated the villa being handed over to a soulless hotel chain.
‘I don’t think I could bear to see this lovely place ruined.’ Claire voiced what they were all thinking.
‘Surely it would be better if Stephen did it himself?’ Sylvie suggested. ‘And I’m not just pitching for the work.’
‘But would he really?’ Monica enquired.
‘He’d have to get someone else to run it,’ Angela pointed out.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Claire conceded.
‘Well, thanks for the enthusiasm,’ replied Angela.
‘Unless, of course, he’s considering a major life change.’
‘I can see why the staff would be so worried.’ Monica hesitated for a moment, wondering if this was the moment to voice her suspicions about what was happening with the fruit and vegetables.
‘Well, of course. They’ve worked here forever. They’d lose their jobs.’
Monica decided to take the plunge. ‘And a nice little sideline. I think they’ve got a scam going on selling flowers and vegetables. I was walking round outside the other day and came across a veritable market garden with polytunnels and everything, all hidden behind high hedges and pergolas of wisteria and clematis. There’s far more of everything than we could ever eat. And flowers too, yet they keep buying them in Naples. It’s really fishy.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Monica,’ Sylvie scoffed. ‘Beatrice and Immaculata as black-market profiteers? It’s like accusing your granny.’
‘Remember Giovanni and the argument with the chef over the zucchini?’ Monica reminded them.
‘That was nothing. Everyone does that. This is Italy after all.’
‘And why do they import roses from Naples when they’ve got glorious roses growing everywhere here?’
‘Maybe they don’t like garden flowers? They might believe posh long-stemmed roses are more sophisticated.’
‘Oh well,’ Monica shrugged, ‘I could be wrong.’ All the same, she’d have another word with the antiques-shop lady about why it was ‘the wedding house’.
As if to demonstrate the madness of Monica’s suspicions, Immaculata came out onto the terrace at that moment carrying Claire’s lemon tart as if it were more precious than gold, frankincense or myrrh, with Beatrice behind bearing a candle and Luigi and Giovanni in their trail singing the Italian version of ‘Happy Birthday to You’.
‘It’s a bit late, I know,’ Monica whispered, ‘but best wishes all the same!’
Beatrice held out the candle for Sylvie to blow out.
‘We did not want to put the candle in the tart,’ Beatrice explained.
Sylvie then had t
he honour of trying to cut it, which actually proved quite difficult, as the top layer was the hard and shiny crust of sugar, but all was well when she tasted it.
‘Claire, this is divine! Absolutely the best lemon tart I have ever tasted. Are you going to try some, Beatrice?’
‘Signora Chiara has made a tart just for us. We are going to eat it now in the kitchen. Would you like some coffee to go with your dolce?’
‘Too late for me,’ Claire said, and she and Monica both shook their heads, but Sylvie and Angela, the alpha females, both opted for espresso.
‘Let me know what you think,’ Claire asked the housekeeper. ‘Of course, it isn’t better than the Italian version, just different.’
‘Oh, Claire,’ Sylvie shook her head, ‘how can we stop you being so irredeemably nice?’
‘Isn’t nice a good thing?’ Claire asked.
‘Not always a good thing for you,’ Angela said, smiling.
‘Come on,’ Sylvie got up, ‘we’ve got to see what they really think of a British tart.’
The others followed as Sylvie tiptoed down the dark passage towards the kitchen, her finger on her lips.
In the kitchen, the staff were all gathered around the big table. They each had glasses of limoncello, plus a plate of Claire’s wonderful creation. They also had an unexpected guest. It was Luca, Beatrice’s nephew. They tasted the tart in turn and nodded their heads approvingly. A lemon-flavoured bomb had clearly hit Lanzarella.
Luca was about to propose a toast when he noticed Claire and the others watching from the passage. He beckoned them into the kitchen and led Claire to the front, taking her hand. ‘Thank you for taking my lemons and performing a miracle.’
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Sylvie, watching the scene with fascination, whispered to Angela. ‘I think we may have witnessed a serious threat to Claire remaining nice.’
They were about to leave when Luigi approached Monica. ‘There is a message for you, Signorina Monica. The old ommosessuale who lives next door would like you to join him at Antonella’s Pizzeria domani at one o’clock.’
Monica had to hide her face so as not to laugh. She wondered if Constantine had given Luigi a message deliberately to wind him up rather than using more conventional methods of getting in touch.
‘Claire gets Luca and his lemons and I get the old omosessuale,’ Monica whispered. ‘Do you think we could persuade Luigi to be a bit more PC?’
Angela nodded vigorously. ‘Absolutely. Why don’t you give him a brief resumé of why he should describe homosexuals as gay people?’
Claire, up early as usual, stretched in the sunshine and smiled for no reason at all. Maybe it was the place, the jewel-like beauty of it, the flowers everywhere, the overwhelming scent of wisteria. She tried to pin down what was so utterly special about the Villa Le Sirenuse and decided that it was the sense of being almost out of time.
She was tempted to have another dip with her nymph but twice might look deliberate, as though she actually wanted to attract Giovanni’s attention. She couldn’t help comparing Giovanni and Luca. The one so obvious, his attractiveness that of the bad boy at the fairground, and Luca, subtle, sophisticated, full of passion not for seducing random women, but for continuing a way of life full of beauty and meaning.
Claire had to be honest with herself. It must have been hard for his wife when he changed his lifestyle so dramatically, but wasn’t that part of marriage? With a pang of guilt, she thought of Martin but the only thing he was really passionate about was his movie posters. What would she do if he suddenly announced he wanted to move to Eastbourne and open a poster shop? That it was the dream of his whole life? She didn’t want to think about that.
She remembered what the others had said. Maybe it was true that she was too bloody nice. So she stopped worrying about the implications and decided to accept Luca’s invitation to show her his other lemon gardens the other side of the valley. After all, it couldn’t do any real harm, could it?
Angela sat on the terrace looking very smart in a white linen trouser suit with an attractively battered Panama hat.
‘You look nice,’ Claire commented, pouring herself a coffee.
‘Thanks.’ Angela smiled back.
Sylvie had clearly decided that visiting a grand hotel needed a more than usually colourful response. The orange of her Matisse-inspired silk outfit could have blinded a receptionist at twenty paces. It also perfectly matched the colour of the toenails peeping from her vertiginously high-heeled sandals.
‘Will those be OK on cobbles?’ Angela enquired. ‘We’re not going by taxi.’
Sylvie looked shocked. ‘Why ever not?’
‘Because it might be a half-hour taxi-ride down to Lerini but Lanzarella’s only ten minutes down the drive!’
‘I’ll be fine. I’m tougher than I look.’
Angela smiled. She suspected there was a resilience in Sylvie, possibly born of a lonely childhood, or maybe as a side effect of her boundless energy, that would see her through most things. Though maybe walking on cobbles in four-inch heels might not be one of them.
The grandly named Hotel degli Dei – the Hotel of the Gods – in Lanzarella was busier today but the staff and other guests could hardly fail to notice the arrival of Angela and Sylvie, since Sylvie’s first action was to walk up to the receptionist and ask for a corn plaster.
Unsurprisingly, this was met by a blank stare.
Sylvie pointed to her toe, now looking red and uncomfortably swollen.
‘Ah,’ the barman today was Italian, given to standing for long periods in too-tight shoes and suffered from corns himself, ‘the signora has need of un callifugo!’
‘Un callifugo!’ Sylvie repeated authoritatively, as if she’d known the word all along. Unfortunately, the hapless receptionist was not Italian but Romanian. ‘A corn plaster!’ insisted Sylvie, ‘I need a bloody corn plaster! Oh Good Lord, what kind of hotel is this where you can’t even supply a corn plaster?’
Angela dismissed all thoughts of trying to have a quiet look around and suggested that Sylvie go out and sit by the swimming pool and she would join her with some kind of first-aid treatment as soon as some could be located.
This arrived sooner than she expected. A suavely handsome man of roughly her own age in beige chinos and a crisp white shirt was approaching, a distinct smile of amusement lighting up his tanned features. He shook her hand. ‘Hugo Robertson. Welcome to the Grand Hotel degli Dei. If I’d known how damn hard that is to pronounce, I’d have insisted on something simpler. Unfortunately, I was only twelve at the time. I rather think your friend would like one of these.’
To Angela’s utter amazement he held out a corn plaster. ‘It was my mother’s. She likes to come for the whole of March.’
There was something in his tone that told Angela this was not an unalloyed pleasure. ‘Thank you. I’m Angela Williams. That was my friend Sylvie. We’re staying up at the Villa Le Sirenuse.’
‘I had heard of the interesting English ladies up at the villa. Lanzarella is roughly the equivalent of Little Snoring. And twice as gossipy.’
‘I didn’t think we’d done anything worthy of gossip.’
‘You’d be surprised. We have very little to talk about off-season. Any drama will do, no matter how small.’
As if on cue, a high-pitched woman’s scream came from the swimming pool, followed by a loud splash and a man’s shout of angry protest.
Angela, deducing correctly that this was something to do with Sylvie, instantly rushed outside.
To her horror she found Sylvie’s husband Tony waist-deep in the pool next to a bedraggled Kimberley, whose mascara had run, creating two black tram lines down her furious face. Clearly they had not gone to Positano after all.
‘How dare you, you overweight old harridan!’ she accused Sylvie.
Tony, meanwhile, was attempting to rescue what looked like an exercise bicycle from a row that had stood at the side of the pool for use by the more en
ergetic guests and was now heading for the deep end.
‘Don’t mind me, just think about the bike!’ Kimberley berated him.
‘Oh dear, what a silly accident,’ Sylvie tittered. ‘I mean, who would be stupid enough to want to ride an exercise bicycle next to the pool in one of the most beautiful places on earth?’
‘Just because you’ve given up on your ballooning body it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to!’ Kimberley spluttered.
Two waiters appeared from round the corner, looking horrified and debating what should be done.
‘Perhaps you could assist my husband in removing that object from the swimming pool,’ Sylvie requested and swept grandly into the Ladies’ loo, leaving the hapless waiters to deduce which object she was talking about.
Angela followed her. ‘Excellent. I think we have more than succeeded in our goal of having a quiet snoop around the hotel without attracting too much attention, don’t you?’
Before she could answer, Tony suddenly burst in. ‘Sylvie! I just wanted you to know that I had absolutely no idea that you were even in Italy, let alone staying in Lanzarella!’
Sylvie’s face softened for a fraction before she recovered herself. ‘Oughtn’t you to be soothing the ruffled feathers on your gym bunny rather than wasting your time with overweight old harridans?’
Tony looked as if he were going to say something then he shook his head and backed out of the Ladies’.
‘Can you soothe ruffled feathers on gym bunnies?’ Angela asked, trying not to laugh. ‘Sorry, Sylvie,’ she pulled herself together, ‘it must have been awful for you.’
‘Actually,’ Sylvie brightened, ‘I’ve been itching to do something ever since I caught them together. Where on earth did you get the corn plaster?’
‘You can thank the owner, a Mr Hugo Robertson. For the owner of a grand hotel he seems to have quite a sense of humour.’
As soon as Sylvie had tidied herself up and applied the corn plaster they went back upstairs to the bar. There was no further sign of Tony, Kimberley or indeed Hugo Robertson but the waiter approached them with two glasses of champagne and a distinct twinkle in his eye. ‘With the compliments of the management,’ he announced. ‘We hope we will see you again.’