He persisted. “You’d say, ‘I’m from Gaborone,’ because that’s where you live. That’s what you’d say, wouldn’t you, Mma Makutsi?”
“It’s an interesting question,” she said. “There must come a time when you change these things. Perhaps it depends on how long you have lived in a new place. You forget old places when you move from them. They fade away.”
No, thought Mma Ramotswe, they do not fade away. Those images of those old places, the places you come from, never completely disappear. They remain with you, those scraps of memory; those pictures somewhere in your mind of how things were, of what the sun looked like when it shone through the window of your childhood room and caught floating specks of dust in its rays; of how you looked up at the ceiling above your sleeping mat; of the faces of an aunt or a grandparent or a friend; of all the things that once were, in that place that was home to you then, and perhaps are no longer.
But this was not the time for such thoughts, and she steered the conversation back to the issue of this Ramotswe person, or alleged Ramotswe person.
“Do you think it’s possible that she has just found the name?” Mma Ramotswe said. “People change their names, you know. They’re allowed to do it. You see those notices in the paper: ‘Mr. So-and-So wishes to inform the public that he will in future be known as Mr. Something Else.’ And you think, why is this man changing his name? What has he to hide? Perhaps this Mingie Ramotswe is like that.”
Mma Makutsi considered this for a few moments and then pronounced it perfectly possible. “There are many people who do not like their names. There was a girl at the Botswana Secretarial College whose real name was Virtue but who called herself Daisy.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “Maybe she didn’t want to be virtuous,” he said. “Maybe she thought that no man would ever ask her out if she was called Virtue.”
Mma Makutsi looked disapproving. “I don’t see what that has to do with it,” she said. “Why would a man not ask a girl out if she’s called Virtue?”
Mma Ramotswe glanced at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “If she preferred Daisy, then that is her business, I think. But going back to this Mingie Ramotswe, I must say I’m curious about her.”
“Then ask who she is,” said Mma Makutsi. “We can find her easily enough. I know the lady who is in charge of the Nursing Association. She has a register of everybody and will easily find her.” She paused. “Phuti sold her a new suite of furniture. Large leather chairs. That is how I know her.”
“She will be very comfortable,” mused Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Sitting in those large leather chairs—she will be very comfortable after a busy day at the Nursing Association.”
“That is very true,” said Mma Ramotswe. “People who work hard deserve comfortable chairs.” She drained her teacup. “So that is that,” she continued. “Now there is the question of Charity Mompoloki. I have met her mother now.”
“Poor woman,” said Mma Makutsi. “She must be very sad about her daughter’s problem.”
Mma Ramotswe wondered how to phrase her response. She did not want to do Charity’s mother an injustice and to accuse her of indifference, but the fact remained that she had failed to back up her daughter’s story, and this led to the conclusion that she simply did not believe her protestations of innocence. And if your own mother did not believe you, then did you deserve to be believed by anybody?
“She was very sorry about what had happened,” Mma Ramotswe began. “But I don’t think she was surprised.”
“Perhaps not,” said Mma Makutsi. “These days nobody should be surprised by people who do unkind things like making up reasons for firing employees they don’t like.”
Mma Ramotswe realised that she would need to be direct. “No, it wasn’t that, Mma. It was more a case of her not being surprised by her daughter. She said that she could have outbursts from time to time.”
“Well, who can’t?” Mma Makutsi asked.
“She believed that Charity probably was rude to the customer.”
This was greeted with silence.
Mma Ramotswe waited. “Did you hear what I said, Mma Makutsi?”
“I heard you, Mma,” Mma Makutsi replied. “You said that the mother did not believe the daughter. That is what you said.”
“That’s right.”
Mma Makutsi spoke quietly. “Well, I am glad that lady is not my mother. If that is her idea of loyalty, then what has Botswana come to?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni joined in. “I don’t see what this has to do with Botswana,” he said.
“I do,” snapped Mma Makutsi. “If that is the way that mothers behave, then this country is in serious trouble, believe me.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked towards the door. “I cannot leave Charlie under that car much longer,” he said. “If he gets bored, he starts fiddling around in the engine, and that is very dangerous.”
Mma Ramotswe understood. The Charity issue was not something that concerned him directly, although his judgement was usually sound and he could be very helpful. So she said to him that he should get on with his work and she and Mma Makutsi would decide what to do about Charity.
“She’s not lying,” said Mma Makutsi as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni left the room. “I hear what you say about her mother, Mma, but I’m not convinced. That woman”—she pointed vaguely out of the window in what Mma Ramotswe presumed to be the direction of Charity’s house—“that woman is a victim. It’s written all over her.”
Mma Ramotswe sighed. “Well, Mma Makutsi, what do you suggest we do?”
Mma Makutsi looked at her blankly. “But you’re running this enquiry, Mma. You and Mr. Polopetsi. You must decide that—I am only voicing an opinion here.”
Mma Ramotswe looked down at her desk. Life was becoming complicated. There was this curious information about Mingie Ramotswe—that was not really something she felt obliged to investigate, but she knew that if she did not satisfy her curiosity about this new Ramotswe she would forever wonder about who this woman was. So there was that to deal with, and then there was this unfortunate Charity affair, and she frankly had no idea as to how to take that further. She sighed again. A deep sigh can be cathartic, and when Mma Ramotswe sighed, she sighed from the very depths of her body. The effect of such a sigh was very much the same as the effect of a deep breath, although the air was going the other way. Such a sigh somehow concentrated the mind. And then it expressed something that was hard to put into words: an acceptance of the complexity and difficulty of the world.
“You’re sighing,” observed Mma Makutsi.
“Yes, Mma, I’m sighing.”
Now Mma Makutsi sighed too. This sigh caused Mma Ramotswe to look up, catch Mma Makutsi’s eye, and smile. The smile was returned. Then they both sighed once more.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO HAVE CLEAN FLOORS
MMA RAMOTSWE did not need an invitation to visit Mma Potokwane, old friend, dispenser of wisdom and encouragement, maker of profoundly tempting fruit cake, and matron of the Orphan Farm at the end of the Tlokweng Road. That last qualification was the most important—at least in Mma Ramotswe’s eyes. Our childhood always has its significant figures, adults whom we admire with all the enthusiasm of youth—a popular school teacher, a favourite aunt or uncle, a neighbourhood leader of some sort. When Mma Ramotswe was a girl, there had been a matron of the hospital in Mochudi whom she regarded in this way; to be a matron struck her as being something magnificent. Matrons were looked up to by everybody—by the ranks of nurses whom they commanded, by the hospital patients whose welfare she guarded, and by any young girl who appreciated the example of a woman exercising power and authority.
Matrons ran hospitals. There may have been doctors around, and some of these doctors may have been allowed to use titles that suggested that they were in charge, but everyone knew that the person doing the real work of running the hospital was Matron. It was Matron who saw to it that the wards were clean, that the patients received their pills and their food on t
ime, and that everybody behaved in a fitting and proper manner. Woe betide anybody who fell foul of Matron; matrons had ways of dealing with people like that, and they always won—always.
Mma Ramotswe had been dismayed when she read in the papers that all over the world matrons were being replaced by people described as administrators. She had discussed this with Mma Potokwane, who had heard similar reports, and even knew a matron over the border—a distant relation of hers—who had been replaced not by an individual bureaucrat, but by a committee. That had rubbed salt into the wound, and nothing good could come of it, said Mma Potokwane.
“It is almost beyond belief,” said Mma Potokwane. “Everybody knows that the best person to run a hospital, or any institution—a boarding school or a retirement home or whatever—is a matron. That is the way it’s meant to be.”
Mma Ramotswe could not agree more. So she said, “Exactly,” and encouraged Mma Potokwane to elaborate.
“When I was a junior nurse,” continued Mma Potokwane, “we had a very fine matron in charge of us. Oh, that lady, Mma Ramotswe, she was what every matron should try to be. She was a traditionally built lady, of course…”
“Of course,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is very important for a matron to be traditionally built. It adds authority.”
Mma Potokwane looked thoughtful. “Yes, I see what you mean, Mma. It is definitely an advantage for matrons to be traditionally built, but I have known some matrons who are not blessed in that way. There was a matron at the hospital in Molepolole who was not at all traditionally built. She was as thin as a goat, Mma, and she was not very tall either. You’d describe her as wiry, I suppose. But my goodness, Mma, she was a very good matron. You wouldn’t see her coming—she would just suddenly be there.”
“That is a great talent,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is very useful if people cannot see you coming. That may be one disadvantage to being traditionally built: people will see you coming and will stop whatever it is they are doing that they should not be doing.”
Mma Potokwane agreed that this was so. “This matron out at Molepolole would sometimes pop up in a ward as if she had been hiding in a cupboard or something. And if she found any of the nurses slacking or any of the patients misbehaving, there would be terrible trouble. I heard of one occasion…” She laughed at the memory, and Mma Ramotswe had to prompt her to continue.
“I heard of this occasion when some people came to visit one of the patients. It was the rainy season and apparently they brought mud in on their shoes. Now matrons do not like mud…”
“They certainly don’t,” agreed Mma Ramotswe. “Your floors in your own place are always spotless, Mma Potokwane. I’ve noticed that.”
Mma Potokwane acknowledged the compliment. “Thank you, Mma. It is very important to have clean floors. If you have clean floors, then it is likely that everything else will be clean. It is a question of attitude.” She paused. “Anyway, there was this young man in hospital—he had had his appendix removed, and two of his friends came in with mud all over their shoes. Matron saw this mess and she told one of the nurses to fetch a broom. When this arrived, Matron went up to the two young men and made them sweep the whole ward—under the beds, around the cupboards, everywhere. These were two young men who had probably never been made to clean up, and they certainly learned a lesson.”
“She must have been a very good matron, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“One of the best ever,” said Mma Potokwane. “But now, Mma, what do we see? Matrons being abolished. Abolished, Mma!”
“It’s very foolish,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The whole world is getting very confused. All sorts of people are introducing change here, there, and everywhere. And is it change for the better, Mma?”
Mma Potokwane shook her head vigorously. “It is not, Mma. It is not change for the good. People who run hospitals and schools and whatnot do not need other people to tell them how to do it. They should be left to do it in the way they have always done it.”
Mma Ramotswe agreed. She felt there were far too many busybodies trying to destroy the authority of parents, of teachers, and, of course, of matrons.
“Some people would say that I’m old-fashioned,” said Mma Potokwane. “They say this is the future—a future where there will be no matrons.”
“Old-fashioned?” Mma Ramotswe exclaimed. “You’re not old-fashioned, Mma. Just because you do things the way you’ve always done them—and the correct way, if I may say so, Mma—does not mean that you’re old-fashioned.”
“Well, that’s what they say, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe was usually very even-tempered. She rarely allowed matters to rile her, and only very occasionally expressed a strong opinion. She could see the world as others saw it—she understood if people took a different view of things—but there were limits, and Mma Potokwane had just described one of them. “These people,” she said, with a note of irritation creeping into her voice, “what are they thinking of? They spend all their time criticising the good things we have—the old Botswana morality, for example, as well as matrons, of course—but what do they say should be put in their place? They have nothing to offer, Mma. They say that life will be better if we get rid of our traditions, but if we did that, all that would come would be selfishness, Mma. It would be every person for himself, or herself. People would forget about other people because there would be nothing to bind them together: none of the memories, songs, greetings, or customs that make people into a nation. We would have plenty of shiny cars, Mma—plenty of Mercedes-Benzes—but inside we would be as empty as an old ant-hill. You wouldn’t care if somebody was starving, because that person would mean nothing to you. That person would not be your brother or your sister, as they always are in the old Botswana morality; they would just be strangers. Think of that, Mma. Just think of that.”
It was a long speech for Mma Ramotswe, but it was one delivered with feeling. And Mma Potokwane found nothing in it with which she disagreed. It expressed, she thought, everything that she felt about her own job in this life, which was to look after children and make what were often rather sad little lives into something better. And in doing this, she sought to bring the children up to believe that there was more to life than just having the material things you saw that others had, and that even if you had these things, it was better to share them with others. Was that old-fashioned? If it was, then she would be proud to call herself old-fashioned.
No, Mma Ramotswe needed no invitation to visit Mma Potokwane, possibly for the very reason that in an old-fashioned view of things, a friend would always be there to receive you, invited or not, announced or unannounced. And on the day following that rather disquieting visit to Mochudi, that day of unexpected disclosures about Mingie Ramotswe and about the character of Charity Mompoloki, Mma Ramotswe decided to pay a visit to Mma Potokwane at roughly eleven o’clock in the morning, a time when she knew her friend would be in her office, enjoying the mid-morning cup of tea and, with any luck, a slice of fruit cake.
Parking her van under the tree that she always favoured for these visits, she stretched her legs before making her way over to Mma Potokwane’s office. In the nursery playground, under the shade of a well-established acacia tree, the children who were too young to go off to the local school were playing some game that involved a mixture of shouted Setswana counting and whoops of glee. Mma Ramotswe stood still for a while as she listened to the children’s voices; there was something vaguely familiar about the words of this game, and after a few minutes she realised that she had herself as a child played this game, with its accompanying chants; and she saw the dusty playground in Mochudi, around the school on the hill, and the teacher watching from the verandah, ready to deal with any excessive roughness. And it gave her pleasure, real pleasure, to think that such things had been handed down from one generation to the next and were still performed under trees that were the sons and daughters, the grandchildren too, of the trees under which previous generations had played.
Mma Pot
okwane had seen her from her window and had switched on the kettle even before Mma Ramotswe crossed her office threshold.
“I see you, Mma Ramotswe,” she called out.
“And I see you, Mma Potokwane,” replied Mma Ramotswe.
They sat down, each in her accustomed chair.
“I don’t want to disturb you,” began Mma Ramotswe. “I know how busy you are.” It was the way she started every conversation with Mma Potokwane, and it brought the usual protestations from her host. “Everyone is busy these days,” said Mma Potokwane. “Do you know anybody who isn’t?”
Mma Ramotswe thought. She was busy; Mma Makutsi was busy; Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was certainly busy. Mr. Polopetsi was busy too, in a part-time sort of way. Were there any idle people left? In the past, there had seemed to be plenty of those, but they had either stopped being idle or had managed to conceal their idleness behind a façade of being busy.
“But even if I have plenty of things to do,” continued Mma Potokwane, “it is very important to be able to sit down and talk.”
There were a few minutes of general chat until tea was poured. Then, without saying a word, Mma Potokwane opened an old biscuit tin to reveal half a fruit cake. She did not need to ask Mma Ramotswe whether she would like a piece, but cut a large wedge and put it on a plate.
“There will be more if required,” she said, smiling, as she passed the plate to her guest.
Mma Ramotswe thanked her. She closed her eyes as she took her first bite of the cake; Mma Potokwane’s baking, she found, was strangely therapeutic. You might be very tense, you might have all sorts of worries, and then you popped a piece of cake into your mouth and all your issues seemed to disappear—as if they had never been there in the first place. Tea could achieve the same result, but much less reliably and on a smaller scale; fruit cake could be prescribed by doctors trying to relieve anxiety in their patients: a slice of fruit cake three times a day until further notice. The results would be impressive; depression would lift, and the body, always sensitive to mood, would respond accordingly. Of course, these remedies always came with warnings, and so there might be one on the cake tin, reading, “Do not eat this cake while driving or operating machinery…”