The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine (3 page)

She raised an eyebrow. “An offer?”

“An offer of help.” He paused before continuing, and threw a glance over his shoulder at Mma Makutsi, who nodded encouragingly. “You see, Mma Makutsi told me about this holiday you're taking…”

Mma Ramotswe threw a glance in the direction of Mma Makutsi, who smiled innocently.

Mr. Polopetsi noticed the glance, but continued nonetheless. “She explained that you would be taking this holiday, and I thought that I might come and work here while you are away and the agency is short-handed.”

Mma Ramotswe held up a hand. “No, hold on, Rra. There is no money for a new post—even a temporary one. If there were such money, Rra, you would certainly be the first person I would turn to, but there just isn't. It is a simple fact of business life.”

She put her mug firmly down on the table after she had finished this statement—a decisive gesture intended to make it clear there could be no further discussion of a possibility precluded by economic reality. Yet Mr. Polopetsi was not dismayed. “But, Mma,” he protested, “this is not about money. I do not want to be paid. I just want to help…and to have something interesting to do. I am feeling bored at home, Mma. That is the problem for me. I am like a woman who has a rich husband and just sits about at home all day. I am like such a person, Mma.”

After he had finished, for a few moments Mma Makutsi looked at him admiringly before she turned to Mma Ramotswe. “You see, Mma,” she said, “it is all pointing one way. You must take a holiday. You can be sure that I shall run things here. I shall have Mr. Polopetsi to help me. I shall have Charlie as well. It will be a first-class team.”

Mma Ramotswe stared through the window at the acacia tree that grew behind the building. It was home, on and off, to a pair of Cape doves, gentle, cooing creatures that led their innocent uxorious existence in its branches. But they were not there then, their place having been taken, briefly, by a small, unidentifiable bird that perched hesitantly on a swaying twig before launching itself into the air again.
They have their work to do,
she thought.
The birds have their work to do.

Behind and above the branches of the tree was the sky, the great, empty sky of Botswana, indifferent, as the sky always was, to the things that went on beneath it: to the sudden animal dramas of life and death that took place on the plains of the Kalahari, to the grubby conflicts of the human world, the cruelties, the plotting…

Plotting.
She looked at Mma Makutsi. She had done everything she could for her, right from that fateful day when she had appeared and more or less barged her way into the job of secretary to the fledgling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. She had advised her, supported her, paid her when there was very little in the coffers and it had meant the curtailing of her own drawings; she had done all that, and now here she was plotting with Mr. Polopetsi of all people—although Mma Ramotswe accepted that he might be an innocent pawn—to dispatch her on some open-ended and possibly even permanent holiday; and all of this so that she, Mma Makutsi, could run the business as managing director.

Mma Ramotswe was not a vindictive woman—anything but—yet now she felt that something had to be said, even if her words might be little more than a mild reproach. Mma Makutsi could not be allowed to get away with this; could not be permitted to imagine that her machinations had not been seen for what they so clearly were.

“You know, Mma Makutsi,” Mma Ramotswe began. “You know, anybody who listened to all this could well say: ‘Why do they want to get her out of there?' Such a person might listen to all this and ask herself: ‘Why are they so keen to send her off on a holiday that she does not want to take?' And then, if such a person got round to answering that question, the reply might be: ‘Because a certain person wants to run the place and there is another lady in the way.' But if you get that lady out of the office, then everything will be in place to go ahead with the plan to do whatever it is that you want to do. Perhaps to change everything. Perhaps to do things that the other lady would not permit. Things like that.” She paused briefly to take a breath. “What does the hyena do when the lion is away? He does all the things that hyenas would like to do but that lions will never allow. That is what he does. We all know that, Mma—we all know that.”

She finished. She had held Mma Makutsi's gaze throughout the speech, but now she lowered her eyes and looked instead at the floor. She still felt the other woman's eyes upon her, though, and saw, at the edge of her field of vision, the flash of light from the large round lenses.

Mr. Polopetsi shifted awkwardly in his chair. “Oh, I don't know, Mma. I don't know—”

He was cut short by Mma Makutsi. “Mma Ramotswe,” she blurted out. “I am very, very sad that you think that. I would never, never do anything like that, Mma. I would never do that. You, who have been my mother—yes, my mother, Mma—who took me on when I was just a nothing and gave me my chance. How could I forget that, Mma? How could I ever forget that?”

Mma Ramotswe swallowed. She looked up and saw that Mma Makutsi had removed her spectacles and was dabbing at her cheek with a handkerchief. It was not an empty gesture; it was not an affectation. Mma Makutsi was in tears. And she knew immediately, and with utter clarity, that she had been wrong.

“I was only thinking of you, Mma,” Mma Makutsi continued, the words coming out between the sobs that now began to erupt. “I have been worried, you see, that you work all the time and never have a rest. You are always thinking of other people, Mma, and you never think of yourself. Well, you have to do that, Mma. You have to have some time to rest. You have to, Mma, or one day you will die, Mma. You will fall over like a cow and die, Mma.”

She paused, which was the opportunity for Mr. Polopetsi to voice his view. “She is quite right, Mma Ramotswe. She did speak to me about it—yes, she did, but all she said was, ‘I am very worried about Mma Ramotswe. She is working too hard.' That is what she said, Mma. That was all there was to it. And she is right when she said you could fall over like a cow. You could, you know, Mma. Just like a cow.”

Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and, brushing past Mr. Polopetsi, she crossed the floor to where Mma Makutsi was seated, head lowered in private anguish, wiping her glasses furiously to demist them. She bent down and put her arm about her friend.

“Oh, Mma Makutsi, I am so sorry,” she said. “I should never have thought all that…all that nonsense. You are right, Mma—I need a holiday and you have been the one to tell me that. I can see that now. I am so sorry, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi sniffed. She reached up and put a hand on Mma Ramotswe's arm. “I am the one who should say sorry, Mma. I am the one who sometimes is not as tactful as I should be. They have always said that, you know. They said it up in Bobonong—they said you must not speak so directly. You must be more careful. And I think I know everything when I actually do not, Mma. I do not know everything.”

“You know a very great deal,” whispered Mma Ramotswe. “You got ninety-seven per cent, remember? You cannot get that mark if you do not know a lot.”

Mr. Polopetsi voiced his agreement. “That is true. That is absolutely true.”

“So,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I shall start my holiday soon. I shall hand everything over to you and Mr. Polopetsi and I shall go and sit under a tree.”

Mr. Polopetsi clapped his hands. “That is just the thing to do, Mma.” He paused, and then added, “Which tree, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe, surprised by the question, waved a hand airily. “Oh, there are many trees in this life,” she said. “It does not matter too much which tree you choose, as long as you choose the right one.”

Mma Makutsi and Mr. Polopetsi both nodded. They thought the answer very wise, although, on contemplating it a little later, Mr. Polopetsi felt that it required a bit of further consideration:
if it did not matter which tree you chose, then…
But that was not the time for such reflection; not then.

“S
O, MMA,”
announced Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni over the breakfast table. “So, there we are.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. She was not sure exactly what he meant, but she saw nothing to disagree with in what he had said. “Yes,” she replied, shelving the freshly washed cooking pot in which she had prepared his sorghum porridge. “Here we are.”

“The first day of your holiday,” he went on, licking a small amount of butter off a finger. “That is always a good feeling, isn't it? It's like a Saturday with a whole lot of other Saturdays stretching out beyond it. Just like that, don't you think, Mma?”

She was not quite sure she agreed. It was actually a Wednesday, as she had finally left the office late on a Tuesday afternoon, and as far as she could make out the day had nothing about it that distinguished it from any other Wednesday.

“One thing I do know, Rra,” she said. “I feel that I should be going off to work, although I realise that I don't have to.”

He chuckled. “A lady of leisure—that's what they call ladies who have nothing to do, isn't it? A lady of leisure.” He paused, looked at his watch, and then rose to his feet. “There are many ladies like that in Gaborone, I think. You see them in their cars, driving around, but I'm not sure that they have anywhere to drive to. Some of them, I think, just drive round the block several times and then go home. That makes them feel they've been out.”

There was a lot she could say about that observation. She might start by pointing out that the women in question had, in fact, plenty to do; that they were driving purposefully to do something useful at the other end of their journey; or that they were actually driving to their work as doctors or accountants or even the pilots of Air Botswana planes; or that they were in the middle of ferrying children about; or that they were going to shops to buy the supplies that they would subsequently cook for their men who
never
bothered to help in the kitchen. She could point all that out and then remind Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni that it might only be men who formed the view that these people were driving around aimlessly because they—the men in question—had no idea what women really did, but she said none of that because she knew that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not one of those men who belittled women and that his remark had not been intended unkindly, and that, when all was said and done, it was probably just a little bit true: there were at least
some
women in Gaborone who had nothing to do but to drive around in that way. So she left all of this unsaid and went on, instead, to say, “I will not drive around like that, Rra—you know that, surely.”

He was quick to agree. “Of course not, Mma. You will have many things to do, I think. You'll…”

The unfinished sentence hung heavily in the air, and Mma Ramotswe thought:
I cannot let it be like that.
She would never be one of those ladies of leisure with their driving round aimlessly until it was time for lunch with other ladies of leisure. No, she would do something with this holiday; she would…She faltered. It was difficult to think what she could possibly do. It was too hot to do any work in the garden, other than in the first half hour or so of light before the sun floated up above the line of acacia trees that made the horizon. Once that happened it would be too late; the very earth that one worked would become too hot to touch, and the only place to be, if one were outside, would be in the pool of shade cast by a tree.

Of course she could always go for morning tea at the President Hotel. She could sit out on the verandah, which was blissfully shaded, and watch people in the square down below, but there was a limit to how much time you could sit there, eking the last drop out of the teapot, before the waiters began to fuss about you and encourage you to give up your table to somebody else.

Apart from that, what was there to do? Her friends would all be busy, as they had things to do during the day—jobs to go to or children to look after—and of course none of them would be on holiday. But an idea came to her nonetheless, and now it struck her as being exactly the sort of thing one should do if one found oneself on holiday.

“I shall go to see Mma Potokwane,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have not been out to see her for some time, and I think I should.”

A slightly doubtful expression crossed Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's face. “A visit to Mma Potokwane? Well, perhaps…but don't you think that might not be the most restful thing to do, Mma? Whenever I go out there I am given something to do—fix the pump, please; make the windscreen wipers on the minibus work again, if you don't mind; could you look at a light switch in one of the houses, now that you're here, as it's sending out sparks when you turn it on, and I am worried about sparks when there are children about, Rra, as I'm sure you'll understand…That sort of thing, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “That is because she knows you can do all those things, Rra. It is different when I go out there. Then she likes to eat fruit cake and talk. That is a good way of passing the time if you're on holiday—eating fruit cake and talking.”

“That is all right, then,” he conceded. “But remember, Mma, holidays are for doing even less than that. They are also a good time not to eat fruit cake and not to talk.”

“I shall try to remember that,” said Mma Ramotswe. And then a thought occurred to her. “Of course, they are also a good time not to have to do work in the kitchen.”

He began to show his agreement, but faltered. “Within reason, Mma,” he said. “But you are right about that. Women have so much work to do in a house and they deserve a holiday from that; of course they do. But…”

She waited. “But what, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?”

“But they cannot stop altogether, because if they did, then what would happen to the men, Mma? What would they do?”

“That is what women sometimes wonder, Rra,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “They would never…they would never leave us altogether, would they, Mma? These ladies who call themselves feminists, are they saying that all women should get up and walk away? Is that what they want, do you think?”

Mma Ramotswe tried not to laugh at his sudden anxiety. She understood why some women should want to walk away—she herself had walked away from the dreadful Note Mokoti—and there were many of her sisters who would do well to walk away from their drunken and abusive husbands. But there were also many men—and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was one of them—who had done nothing to deserve such a response. “Of course not, Rra. There may be some ladies who say that all women should walk away from men altogether, but they are very few in number, I think.”

He still looked worried. “Are there any such ladies in Botswana, Mma?”

She nodded. “Yes, there are, Rra. There are ladies like that.”

He shook his head in dismay. “Are they happy, do you think, Mma?”

“They say they are.”

“But do you think they really are? Happy inside?”

She hesitated. “I think some of them are, Rra. And some of them, anyway—not all of them, but some of them—may not like men very much, Rra. They may prefer to be with other women, you see.”

He stared at her. “Somebody told me that one day. I have heard such a thing.”

She shrugged. “Different people like different things, Rra.”

He lowered his voice, although there was nobody else present. “Do
you
know any ladies like that, Mma?”

She nodded. “Yes, I do, Rra. They are just like anybody else, you see—they are ordinary people.”

He looked at her doubtfully. “Except for…well, they are unlike other ladies who are fond of the company of men.”

“You could say that. But these days, Rra, things like that are not very important. There are parts of Africa, I'm afraid, that are being a bit unkind about these things and do not want people to be happy…in the way they want to be happy.”

“That is very unkind.”

They had negotiated the trickiest part of the conversation and come out on the other side more easily than she had imagined. She loved her husband, not least for his kindness, which had been evident in what he had just said. Unfortunately, there were many men who were not so kind, and they were often the ones who were in a position to make others unhappy; and would continue to do so, she imagined, until women asserted themselves more and then gently, very gently, took the reins of government into their own hands, or at least took their fair share of power—which was exactly half. Would that ever happen, she wondered? She thought it might be beginning—there were places where it was and they were working well. As long as the right sort of women became involved, of course, and not people like…She shuddered. She did not like to think of Violet Sephotho, but every so often she did.

“Violet Sephotho,” she muttered.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked up sharply. “Is she one of those ladies, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “I do not think so, Rra. She is one who is always chasing men.”

“I hope that the men she chases are fast runners,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“Some of them cannot run fast enough, Rra. Then they are caught. It is the same way in which a lioness catches one of those tiny antelopes they like to eat…”

“Duiker,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Their meat is very sweet.”

Mma Ramotswe remembered something. “I have heard certain ladies being referred to as man-eaters, Rra. Have you heard that expression?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “I have heard it.”

“I think that people might call her that,” she said. “They might call her ‘The Great Man-Eater of the Kalahari.' ”

He glanced at his wife. She was a kind woman—none kinder in Botswana—and it was unusual for her to make an uncharitable remark. And even as he thought this, Mma Ramotswe felt a sudden pang of guilt. Nicknames were popular, but they were often cruel. Did Violet Sephotho deserve such a cutting nickname? The answer, she realised, was probably
yes.
But no, that was no excuse. “Perhaps we should not call her that,” she said, sounding a bit disappointed.

“Perhaps not,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, adding, “Even if it does suit her rather well, Mma.”

He looked at his watch. “It is time for me to go to work,” he said. “I am not on holiday.”

“I will make you some lunch,” offered Mma Ramotswe. “That will give me something to do.”

“I shall be back at lunch time, then.” He paused. “Don't look for things to do, Mma Ramotswe. Remember that this is a holiday and you must not look for things to do on a holiday.”

She promised him she would not. “I am already beginning to unwind,” she said. “I am like a big spring that is unwinding slowly.”

“That is good,” he said. “That is exactly how it should be.”

BUT THAT WAS NOT HOW IT WAS
—at least not on that first day of the holiday, and indeed not on the second or third day either. Shortly after Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had driven off to work in his battered green truck, Mma Ramotswe found her way into the kitchen. She looked about her, at the cutting boards and the cupboards, at the stove with the discoloured heating plates, at the stacks of crockery on the shelves. Kitchens were quick to look shabby, and although Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had painted theirs barely eighteen months ago, it was already looking slightly down at heel. Part of the problem, of course, was the absence of proper ventilation. Modern kitchens—and hers could not really be described as such—had extractor fans that took all the smoke and smells out. Mma Makutsi's kitchen in her new house was like that: she had two large metal hoods coming down from the ceiling in just the right place to catch the steam laden with fats that would otherwise be deposited on the walls and ceiling, the fingerprint of countless meals. That steam was ushered out of Mma Makutsi's kitchen, but in Mma Ramotswe's it swirled about until it settled in a thin layer over everything. If you fried a lot of foods—as Mma Ramotswe had to admit to doing—then you soon noticed the effect.

“Open a window,” suggested Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “That's what I do in the garage when I run an engine. I open a window to let out all the carbon monoxide.”

She admitted that this would help, but it was not a complete solution. The trouble with opening a window in Botswana was that even if you let certain things out, you also let other things in—and sometimes those things you let in were things it would be decidedly better to keep out. There were mosquitoes, for example, that loved open windows, even if the window was fitted with a metal mesh screen precisely to keep them out. Such screens were an inconvenience to mosquitoes, but nothing more than that; inevitably there were holes at the corners or there were places where the tiny wires that made up the screen had buckled or moved, creating a good place for mosquitoes to fly through.

Then there were those large black insects with wings. You never learned what these insects were; they made a lot of noise with the beating of their wings, and they had sharp points protruding from their heads, but they did not appear to belong to any known category of insect. Some people said that they were harmless and that it was bad luck to step on them and crush them; others said that if you let them crawl around your house they would just find a place to set up their own homes and breed their own families. “People have been pushed out by those insects,” somebody once told Mma Ramotswe. “I know a woman who let one or two of them come into the house and then did not deal with them. Then two days later there were five hundred, and a few days after that all her walls were covered with them and she had to move out.”

Mma Ramotswe did not believe that story; people exaggerated for effect, especially when it came to the creatures they encountered. If people said that they almost stepped on a snake in the bush, then that snake would always be a black mamba—it would never be one of those more numerous, but less dramatic, grass snakes. Those ordinary snakes were scared of people and would do anything to avoid an encounter, but they, for dramatic reasons, seemed never to feature in people's stories.