We didn’t go to Le Maghreb very often, which suited me. It was pricey. And the Minna who appeared there could make me squirm. She was given to ostentatious mateyness with the Moroccan staff – extravagant tips, questions that bordered on intrusiveness. Anyone could see that the waiters were rushing on those busy Friday nights, but Minna would keep them at our table while she asked about their lives. That night we’d had an anxious young waiter, Jamal. He kept glancing over his shoulder, while Minna attempted pleasantries in her stumbling French – at last he excused himself and moved away.
Her remark about Dieter annoyed me because we all knew that his family was only moderately well off. His parents ran a delicatessen, and he was one of six children – the cousin who’d married well created a false impression. ‘Maybe he doesn’t have much money for tips,’ I said snappishly.
Nick laughed. ‘Not much money.’ He lifted Minna’s hand and kissed her wrist. ‘The thing is, Lili, Minna hasn’t the least idea what that means.’
That’s how I learned that she was rich. It was less easy to gauge in those days when punk’s scruffy, secondhand aesthetic was in vogue. And then, I only knew Minna out of context, in a provisional, foreign setting. Still, I felt foolish. There were the Belgian chocolates, the flowers that always stood by the window. One of my mother’s sour sayings came back: ‘Fresh flowers in a house means money to spare.’ Why had I assumed that Nick and Minna were making do with his salary? My own struggles with les fins de mois should have exposed that blunder. Dependent women and breadwinning men: the Bold, Intelligent Woman had relied on a conventional script.
Earlier that evening, we’d exchanged Christmas presents over drinks in Minna’s apartment. I gave her a Split Enz cassette and Nick a copy of de Beauvoir’s L’Invitée. My present was a dress. Minna had cut off the bodice of a blue and green dress I’d seen her wearing and replaced it with a flea-market find, a pink top threaded with lurex. ‘I wanted to give you something that was mine and not mine,’ she said. ‘It’ll be me and you both.’
Bringing out my own offerings, I’d wanted to apologise: Ce n’est pas ang-ter-es-sung. They were tame purchases from the Fnac. I’d never be bold enough to wear the dress – it was for astonishing, not wearing – but Minna had created something singular and arty. Recalibrating our exchange after I’d parted from the others, I gave in to a petty calculation: I’d spent far more on Minna and Nick than she’d spent on me. It’s the thought that counts – so I’d been raised to believe. But I had more than one thought going on. There was the thought of art versus commodity. There was the thought of rich Minna versus poor Lili. There was the thought of white Minna versus brown Lili. It was the thought that counted, as I made my way home under unsurprised stars. But which thought counted enough?
