In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (2 page)

She continued to think of this as she drove in her tiny white van, back through that part of town known as the Village, back past the University, with its growing sprawl of buildings, and finally along Zebra Drive itself, where she lived. She had been so disturbed by what she had seen that she had quite forgotten to do the shopping that she had intended to do, with the result that it was only when she pulled into her driveway and came to a halt beside the kitchen wall that she remembered that she had none of the items she needed to make that night’s dinner. There were no beans, for example, which meant that their stew would be accompanied by no greens; and there would be no custard for the pudding which she had planned to make for the children. She sat at the wheel of the van and contemplated retracing her tracks to the shops, but she just did not have the energy. It was a hot day, and the house looked cool and inviting. She could go inside,

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make herself a pot of bush tea, and retire to her bedroom for a sleep. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and the children had gone out to Mojadite, a small village off the Lobatse Road, to visit his aunt, and would not be back before six or seven. She would have the house to herself for several hours yet, and this would be a good time for a rest. There was plenty of food in the house—even if it was the wrong sort for the dinner that she had planned. They could have pumpkin with the stew, rather than beans, and the children would be perfectly happy with a tin of peaches in syrup rather than the custard and semolina pudding that she had thought of making. So there was no reason to go out again.

Mma Ramotswe stepped out of the tiny white van and walked round to the kitchen door, unlocking it to let herself in. She could remember the days when nobody locked their doors in Botswana, and indeed when there were many doors that had no locks to lock anyway. But they had to lock their doors now and there were even people who locked their gates too. She thought of what she had seen only a short time before. That woman who had stolen from the trader with the wide-brimmed felt hat; she lived in a room somewhere which she no doubt kept locked, and yet she was prepared to steal from that poor man. Mma Ramotswe

sighed. There was much in this world over which one might shake one’s head. Indeed, it would be possible to go through life today with one’s head in constant motion, like a puppet in the hands of a shaky puppeteer.

The kitchen was cool, and Mma Ramotswe slipped out of her shoes, which had been pinching her recently (could one’s feet put on weight?). The polished concrete floor was comfortable underfoot as she moved over to the sink to pour herself a glass of water. Rose, her maid, was away for the weekend, but had tidied the kitchen before she left on Friday evening. Rose was conscientious

and kept all the surfaces scrupulously clean. She lived in

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a small house on the far edge of Tlokweng, which she maintained with the same rigour as she devoted to her work for Mma Ramotswe. She was one of those women, thought Mma Ramotswe,

in whom there seemed to be an unending capacity for hard work. She had raised a family—and raised them well—with little help from the fathers of the children. She had provided for these children on the small wages that she had earned as a maid and by the payment, scant though it was, that she received for the sewing work that she undertook. Africa was full of such women, it seemed, and if there was to be any hope for Africa it would surely come from women such as these.

Mma Ramotswe filled the kettle from the kitchen tap and put it on the cooker. She did this automatically, as one performs familiar tasks, and it was only after she had done this that she noticed that the kettle had not been in its accustomed place. Rose always left it on the small wooden chopping block beside the sink, and the children, Motholeli and Puso, knew to leave it there too. That was the kettle’s place, and it would not have occurred to anybody to leave it on the low wooden dresser on the other side of the kitchen. Certainly Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would not have done that—and indeed she had never seen Mr J.L.B. Matekoni touch the kettle in all the six months since their marriage

and his arrival in the house on Zebra Drive. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni liked tea, of course—it would have been very difficult to marry a man who did not like tea—but he very rarely seemed to make any tea for himself. She had not thought about this before now, but it was rather interesting, was it not, that somebody

might believe that tea just happened along? Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was not a lazy man, but it was remarkable to reflect how most men imagined that things like tea and food would simply

appear if they waited long enough. There would always be a woman in the background—a mother, a girlfriend, a wife—who

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would ensure that these needs would be met. This should change, of course, and men should learn how to look after themselves,

but very few men seemed to be doing this yet. And there was not much hope for the younger generation, looking at the two apprentices and how they behaved. They still expected women to look after them and, unfortunately, there seemed to be enough young women who were prepared to do this.

It was while she was thinking this that Mma Ramotswe noticed that one of the drawers in the kitchen dresser was not as she had left it. It was not fully open, but had definitely been pulled out and then not closed properly. She frowned. This was very strange. Again, Rose always shut everything after she used it and the only other person who had been in the kitchen since Rose left had been Mma Ramotswe herself. She had been in there early that morning, when she had got out of bed to make breakfast for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and the children before they went off to Mojadite. Then she had seen them off on their early start and had gone back into the kitchen to tidy up. She had not needed anything from that drawer, which contained string, scissors,

and other items that she would only use from time to time. Somebody else must have opened it.

She moved over to that side of the kitchen and opened the drawer further to inspect it. Everything seemed to be there, except … and now she noticed the ball of string which was sitting

on the top of the dresser. She picked this up and examined it. This was her ball of string, indeed, and it had been taken out of the drawer and left out by the person who had opened the drawer and, she imagined, who had also moved the kettle from its accustomed place.

Mma Ramotswe stood quite still. It now occurred to her that there had been an intruder, and that whoever it was who had come into the house had been disturbed by her return. That perI

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son might have run out of the front of the house when she came into the kitchen, but then the front door, which provided the only means of leaving on that side of the house, would have been left firmly locked. This meant that the intruder might still be inside.

For a few moments she wondered what to do. She could telephone

the police and tell them that she suspected that somebody was in the house, but what if they came out to investigate and there was nobody? They would hardly be pleased to be called out for no reason at all and they would probably mutter comments about nervous women who should know better than to waste police time while there were real crimes to be looked into. So perhaps it was premature to call the police and she should, instead, go through the house herself, moving from room to room to see if there was anybody there. Of course that was risky. Even in peaceful Botswana there were cases of people being attacked by intruders when they came upon them in the course of a robbery.

Some of these people were dangerous. And yet this was Gaborone, on a Saturday afternoon, with the sun riding high in the sky, and people walking along Zebra Drive. This was not a time of shadows and inexplicable noises, a time of darkness. This was not a time to be afraid.

MMA RAMOTSWE did not consider herself to be a particularly

courageous woman. There were some things of which she was frightened: curtainless windows at night, for example, because one could not see what was outside, in the darkness; and snakes, because there were snakes about which were truly dangerous—puff adders, for example, the lebolobolo, which was fat and lazy and had great curved fangs, or the mokopa, which was long and black and very poisonous and which was well-known to hate humans because of some distant wrong in snake memory. These were things about which one should be frightened; other things could be frightening if one allowed them to be so, but could be faced up to if one were only prepared to look them in the eye. Yet there was something very strange about thinking that you were alone in the house and then discovering that you were not. Mma Ramotswe found this very frightening, and had to struggle with herself before she began her inspection, walking first through the door which led from the kitchen into the sitting room next door. She glanced about her, and quickly noticed that everything

was in its normal place and that nothing seemed to have been disturbed. There was her ornamental plate with its picture

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of Sir Seretse Khama—a prize possession which she would have been mortified to have lost to a burglar. And there was her Queen Elizabeth II tea cup, with its picture of the Queen looking out in such a dignified way. That was another thing that she would have been very upset to have lost, because it reminded her of duty and of the traditional values in a world that seemed to have less and less time for such things. Not once had Seretse Khama faltered in his duty, nor had the Queen, who admired the Khama family and had always had a feeling for Africa. Mma Ramotswe had read that at the funeral of Sir Garfield Todd, that good man who had stood up for decency and justice in Zimbabwe, a message had been read out from the Queen. And the Queen had insisted that her High Commissioner should go to the graveside in person, to the very graveside, to read out what she had to say about that brave man. And when Lady Khama had died, the Queen had sent a message too, because she understood, and that had made Mma Ramotswe feel proud of being a Motswana, and of all that Seretse and his wife had done.

She looked quickly at the wall to see whether the photograph of her father—her Daddy, as she called him—the late Obed Ramotswe was in place, and it was. And so was the velvet picture of mountains, which they had brought over from Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s house near the old Botswana Defence Force Club. There would have been many people who would have liked to steal that, so that they could run their fingers over it and feel the texture of the velvet, but it was safe too. Mma Ramotswe was not sure about that picture, and perhaps it would not be an altogether bad thing if somebody did steal it, but she corrected herself and suppressed the thought. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni liked that picture, and she would not have wished him to be upset. So the picture would remain. And indeed, if they ever did have a real burglary, when everything was taken, she was sure that the picture would

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somehow be left, and she would have to look at it while she sat on cushions on the floor, all the chairs having gone.

She moved over to the door between the sitting room and the verandah and checked it. It was securely locked, just as they had left it. And the windows too, although open, had their wrought-iron bars intact. Nobody could have entered by any of those without

bending or breaking the bars, and this had not been done. So the intruder, if he existed, could neither have come in nor gone out through that room.

She left the sitting room and walked slowly down the corridor to check the other rooms. There was a large walk-in cupboard a few paces along the corridor, and she stopped before this, peering gingerly past the edge of its door, which was slightly ajar. It was dark in the cupboard, but she could just make out the shapes of the items it contained: the two buckets, the sewing machine, the coats that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had brought with him and hung on the rail at the back. Nothing seemed out of place, and there was certainly no intruder hiding in the coats. So she closed the door and went on until she came to the first of the three rooms that gave off the corridor. This was Puso’s room, which was very much a boy’s room, with little in it. She opened the door cautiously, gritting

her teeth as the door creaked loudly. She looked at the table, on which a home-made catapult was resting, and the floor, on which a discarded football and a pair of running shoes lay, and she realised that no intruder would come in here anyway. Motholeli’s room also was empty, although here Mma Ramotswe thought it necessary to peer into the cupboard. Again there was nothing untoward.

Now she entered the bedroom she shared with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. This was the largest of the three bedrooms, and it contained

things that somebody might well wish to steal. There were her clothes, for instance, which were colourful and well-made.

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There would be a keen demand for these from larger ladies looking

for dresses, but there was no sign that the hanging rail on which these garments were suspended had been tampered with. And nor was there any sign of disturbance on the dressing table on which Mma Ramotswe kept the few brooches and bangles that she liked to wear. None of these seemed to have gone.

Mma Ramotswe felt the tension leave her body. The house was obviously empty and the notion that somebody might be hiding

in it was manifestly nonsense. There was probably some perfectly

rational explanation for the open drawer and the ball of string on the dresser, and this explanation would no doubt emerge when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and the children returned that evening. One possibility was that they had set off, forgotten something,

and then come back to the house after Mma Ramotswe had herself left it. Perhaps they had bought a present for Mr

J.L.B. Matekoni’s relative and had come back to wrap it up, a task for which they would have needed the string. That was a perfectly

rational explanation.

As Mma Ramotswe made her way back to the kitchen to make her tea, she thought of how things that appeared to be mysteries