Minna fingered my duffel coat as I slipped free of it in a restaurant. ‘There’s no lining,’ she said. ‘This coat’s useless.’
A man had bought it for me during the Sydney winter just past. In my black duffel coat, a black poloneck and narrow black jeans, I became Bold, Intelligent Woman. Proof arrived in the realisation that I was wasting my time with the man.
The next time I saw Minna, she led me to a secondhand clothing shop in a pungent street. A rack held suit jackets of the kind North Africans wore. Minna went straight to the winter coats. ‘This one,’ she said.
It was a man’s coat, a dusky-green herringbone tweed, weighty to lift. The lining, pale grey silk, was ripped around one armhole – my hand slid into the lining rather than the sleeve. Minna said, ‘Lots of my London friends have big old coats like that. They’re really taking off.’ She walked around the shop, chewing a fingernail, yanking clothes from racks. She flattened a purple mohair jumper against herself and pulled a face. I bought the coat.
We’d plunged into friendship, Minna and I, like addicts immersing ourselves in a drug. It sustained and surrounded us. We swam about in it, pulled each other in deeper. We used silly translations, saying ‘Stale Mail Street’ for Rue de l’Ancien Courrier, ‘twice-cookeds’ for biscuits. In the street, we linked arms and stared avidly into the faces of passers-by. We’d whisper to each other, ostentatiously covering mouth with hand and sniffing each other’s hair. Anything – a man flinging his scarf over one shoulder, a mannequin in blue lace underwear – could make us laugh so hard that we had to cling together to keep from collapsing. Crammed onto the twirly seat of a photo booth, we grimaced or vamped it up for the camera – what became of those strips of snaps? We stumbled upon The Most Beautiful Woman in France and would gaze respectfully at her through the window of the travel agency where she worked. She was full-bodied, sumptuous. She had cornrows fastened into a chignon, and pastel suits that glowed against her skin. ‘Great colours,’ said Minna judiciously, ‘and awful clothes.’
Our giggly nonsense must have been maddening for Nick – I see that now. At the time I felt only resentful when Minna left me to head home to him. A vague undercurrent ran between Nick and me. For one thing, we were slightly competitive when it came to speaking French. My accent and grammar were better than Nick’s, and my vocabulary wider. But his holidays in France had given him an ease with the language – he slipped into it like a shirt softened by wear. Novels set in the countryside had provided me with words for the natural world, for beech tree and vole and a rut in the road, but I’d arrived in Montpellier not knowing how to ask for a chequebook. Nick knew the name of the leader of the Communist Party and that une clope was slang for une cigarette.