I have a dear English friend I’ll call Penelope Featherstonehaugh, that being a suitably English sort of name, whom I once invited to my house on a Sunday afternoon for a cup of tea.

“Congratulations on the new job,” I said when she arrived. Penelope had just been appointed President of a nosebleedingly cutting edge tech company.

“Thank you,” she said, as English people will. “It’s thoroughly silly, but quite fun, I suppose.”

“I’m sorry about your brother-in-law,” I said as I took her jacket. Penelope’s brother-in-law had been disastrously caught in a giant financial scam and was facing large-scale ruin both financial and – since his wife was not of the sympathetic sort – domestic.

“Mm,” she said, as English people will. “It’s all a bit of a bore, really.”

“Did you hear about the bishop?” I said as I led her into the kitchen. A high-ranking cleric had been discovered to have a basement stuffed to the gills with S&M equipment of any description you can name and several you can’t, along with the scant remains of his church’s poor fund, which he had been using liberally to subsidize his secret and not so sacred hobby.

“I did,” she said, as English people do. “He’s been rather a naughty boy, hasn’t he?”

“Well,” I said as we sat down at the table. “Shall I pour you that cup of tea now?”

At the mention of the specific refreshment for which she had been offered and accepted an invitation to my house, Penelope’s shoulders sagged. Her lips parted longingly, her eyes lowered to a half-mast gaze of fervent yearning.

“Ohhhh,” she breathed, incredulously, as one who had staggered for days across the Sahara and was now being offered, not only water, but the wine with which Antony had seduced Cleopatra. “I’d looove a cup of tea!”

It’s not as if a cup of tea is an unusual occurrence in a British person’s life. Most of them have one with breakfast; almost all of them have one in the middle of the afternoon; and there is rarely an hour before or beyond that when the offer of the cup that cheers would be considered inappropriate. They are, to sum up, swimming in the stuff. Yet each and every time a cup is suggested to them, it arouses in their usually restrained souls an intensity of passion the likes of which nothing else – not triumph nor tragedy, love nor disgrace, scandals in high places nor tales of derring do on the seven seas – can begin to rival. It is Beatrice to their Dante, the Holy Grail to their Knight of the Round Table. It is … well, it is a cup of tea, and, to a Brit, a cup of tea is what Nirvana dreams of growing up to be.

It was the Dutch traders who brought the Chinese drink to Europe in the early seventeenth century; it was Catherine of Braganza, Portuguese-born wife of England’s King Charles II, who made it fashionable in English aristocratic circles as the century wore on. In the eighteenth century, it was enjoyed in moneyed households, but was too expensive for popular consumption, until in 1783, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, in a bid to squash the burgeoning tea smuggling trade, slashed the tax on it, and it thus became accessible to – and immediately popular with – all.

During World War Two, the drink became a symbol of national unity, resilience and caring for one’s neighbors; and although I have no concrete historical evidence to support this, I surmise that it was around that time that the cup of tea began to divide itself, subtly, as British institutions will, into two ranks. There is the regular cup of tea, which is tossed down – albeit accompanied by inexplicable swoons of amazed excitement – on each and any occasion. And beyond that, there is the nice cup of tea, which is a different animal entirely.

A nice cup of tea is a great deal more serious than simply a cup of tea. A nice cup of tea means that something serious is afoot; that one’s house has been destroyed in the Blitz, or one’s nearest and dearest declared missing in action. One does not trivialize the offer of a nice cup of tea by attaching to it the theatrical flourishes one attaches to discussing a simple cup of tea. One stiffens one’s lip, and accepts it with a gruff or tearful nod and a choked “Thank you.” To many English people, a nice cup of tea still speaks the old English ways, the scent of violets, and bluebirds flying over the white cliffs of Dover. A nice cup of tea suggests to this day that our boys will come safely home from Dunkirk and peace reign in the land.

Pleasant as it would be to relate that all people who offer this sacred cup are honest and upright wielders of a straight cricket bat and followers of the Queensbury Rules, such is, sadly, not the case. I once had dealings with a visiting British publicist I’ll call Lying Liz – the name being fictitious, the adjective not so much – who had contacted me out of the blue with the assertion that a marginally famous actress, wanting to publicize her new television series, had at last decided to break her years-long silence on her love affair with a world famous politician, and would my editor be interested in the scoop?

Well, yes, my editor would indeed be interested in the story of the actress and the politician, so we set up a date, and at the appointed hour, I presented myself at a photographic studio in Santa Monica, armed with my tape recorder, a list of questions, and a sudoku in case of delays.

“She’s just having some photographs taken,” said Liz. “But she won’t be long. Maybe ten minutes.”

I found a seat and parked my tape recorder. And waited. And waited.

“What’s going on?” I asked Liz after about half an hour.

“She’s nearly ready,” said Liz. “Just another ten minutes should do it.”

Ten minutes came and went. And then another ten and another. And still no sign of the actress.

“I have some other stuff to do today,” I said to Liz. “I can go away and come back later if that works better for everyone?”

“Oh, don’t leave now,” said Liz. “She’s almost ready. Just give her ten minutes and she’ll be with you.”

I waited some more. I finished my sudoku. I sent texts rearranging my day. I admired the art deco details of the studio’s ceiling. I drew up the list for my birthday party. Occasionally, I looked out of the window at the people going about their business on the street below, and wondered if I would ever see my home or my loved ones again.

“This is ridiculous,” I said when at last Liz reappeared. “I’ve been waiting for two hours. What on earth is the hold-up?”

“Oh, dear,” said Liz, who had specified the hour at which I should arrive, and had let me in when I had. “Have you been waiting all this time? That’s terrible, you poor thing. What can I do for you?”

“Maybe get me into the interview?” I suggested. “The one that was supposed to start two hours ago?”

Liz glanced around the room and spotted amid the coffee supplies in the corner a box of dusty-looking teabags.

“Can I make you a cup of tea?” she asked.

I did not want a cup of tea. I wanted the interview with the actress now, the rest of my day back afterwards, and a happy editor to whom to report tomorrow. But it struck me that if I had a cup of hot liquid in my hands, I would be less likely to use them to throttle Liz, so, not even pretending graciousness, I accepted.

At my grunted assent, Liz’s face lit up like dawn on a meadow gemmed with the first dew of a summer morning.

“I’ll make you a cup of tea!” she cried. “No – I won’t just make you a cup of tea, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea! Because it’s not just a cup of tea at times like this, is it, it has to be a nice cup of tea. A nice cup of tea! Oooh, I’ve gone all English.”

She shook her shoulders, shimmied her hips, and mysteriously began to employ a Yorkshire accent which had not been in evidence before.

“I always say a nice cup of tea cheers you up,” she said. “There’s nothing that doesn’t feel better with a nice cup of tea, is there? How do you take yours, love? Milk and no sugar? Oooh, lovely. One milk and no sugar coming up, hot and strong, just like it should be. Plum duff. Jam roly poly. On Ilkley Moor baht ‘at. I met Prince William once, he’s a lovely chap, his Mum would have been so proud, and he loves a cup of tea, and so does she. Here you are, love, a nice cup of tea just the way you like it, drink it up and she’ll be ready in about ten minutes.”

The actress was not ready in about ten minutes, nor even in about twenty. She was very nice when she did appear, however, and clearly had no idea of how long I’d been kept waiting. Nor, it quite quickly became apparent, had anyone thought to let her in on the secret of our proposed topic of conversation, since – as she explained politely at the start, while Liz in the background nodded in calm corroboration – “I never talk about that part of my life.”

The event was a disaster for all concerned. I lost half a day of such as are left to me, and the commission to boot, because, with all goodwill in the world to the actress – who was nothing but friendly and professional, and was certainly entitled to set whatever privacy boundaries she chose – the interview she gave me was just not the one Liz had promised she’d give. My editor, deprived at the last minute of his planned main interview, was left scrambling to find a suitable replacement. The actress missed out on a sizeable jolt of publicity, as did her new TV series. And I can’t think anyone was particularly pleased with Liz when it all came tumbling down.

But Liz was delighted with herself. Because, you see, she had made me a nice cup of tea.

A NICE CUP OF TEA

The Immigrant Chronicles