Even if a warm relationship existed between Mma Makutsi and Mr. Polopetsi, it would still be awkward if Mma Ramotswe aired what had to be aired in the presence of both of them. No, the conversation she was planning to have with Mma Makutsi needed to take place in private. It was not going to be easy, though, nor could it be put off. It would have to be that morning—before Mma Makutsi left for work. It would have to be in the Radiphuti house, on her own ground.
Now that her mind was made up, Mma Ramotswe was able to tackle her morning tasks with equanimity and efficiency. By the time the household awoke that morning, packed lunches had been prepared for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and the two children, the table had been laid, and on the stove there was simmering a pot of meal porridge, the breakfast that Mma Ramotswe had eaten as a girl and that was the morning meal of all traditional people. Not only that, but the kitchen, the living room, and the verandah—the stoep, as she called it—had been vigorously and comprehensively swept, while in the garden Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s rows of beans, his pride and joy, had been carefully provided with water saved from the kitchen sink.
Mma Ramotswe looked at her watch as the other three members of the family sat down. “I am going to have to go out early,” she said. “I have a meeting first thing.”
“But you are on holiday,” protested Puso. “You must not go to the office when you are on holiday.”
“I used to be on holiday,” she said. “But now I am working again—not in the office but—”
Puso did not let her finish. “You cannot work if you are not in the office,” he said. “How can you work…just in the air?”
“Many people do work in the air,” said Motholeli. “You do not need an office to work. People work here and there. In their cars. In their houses. There are many different ways of working these days, Puso.”
“I’m going to do some work at Mma Makutsi’s house,” explained Mma Ramotswe. “She and I have things to talk about.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni gave her a meaningful glance. “Be careful, Mma.”
She tried to reassure him. “I am always careful in the way I treat Mma Makutsi, Rra. I have known her for many, many years now. I know how to deal with her.”
“Good,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Because sometimes, Mma, I feel that I do not know that. I say something to her—something very simple—and she goes off like a…like a BMW.”
It was, thought Mma Ramotswe, a very good expression. We all say the things that make sense to us, and mechanics said things just like that. Goes off like a BMW. That was a very suitable thing for a mechanic to say.
“I shall be very careful not to make her go off like a BMW,” she said.
“Good,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni again, and returned to his bowl of porridge.
She sat in silence at the table. She was sure that she was doing the right thing in going to speak directly to Mma Makutsi, but there was something else that was worrying her. How was she going to explain to Mma Makutsi about being in the van with Mr. Polopetsi? It must have been apparent to Mma Makutsi that they were engaged in some sort of investigation together, and she felt a hot flush of shame at the thought of being found out in such an obvious and compromising way. Now, when she went to speak to her, Mma Makutsi would probably think that the only reason for her doing so was because she felt that she had been found out. She would be like a child caught doing something wrong who tries to fend off the consequences by getting in first with an apology or justification. That sort of thing could avert recrimination, but one hardly came out of it with any credit.
—
IT WAS PHUTI RADIPHUTI who greeted her at the front door.
“Mma Ramotswe,” he said, “I am very surprised that it is you.” Then he hastily added, “And pleased, of course. Sometimes it is just people wanting to sell things who come to the door this early. They are so impatient to get you to buy something that they will even wake you up.”
She looked at her watch. She was early—deliberately so—but had she come just a little bit too early? She was from a household that was accustomed to an early start, but there were houses where a very different philosophy held sway. In such places, she had heard, people could still be in bed at eight o’clock, difficult though it was to believe.
“I hope that I have not woken you up, Rra,” she said.
Phuti laughed. “Mma, when you have a small child in the house, then you are always up early. Five o’clock today—wanting something to eat. Wanting to talk to us.”
She tried to remember exactly how old Itumelang was. “But…”
“Oh, I don’t mean to talk with words—he is not speaking in that way just yet.” Phuti looked proud. “He can communicate very well, though. He uses strange sounds, but we know what they mean. There is one for ‘I want food.’ There is one for ‘I am tired of being in bed.’ There is one for ‘I am happy.’ ” Phuti paused. “Actually, that is a very strange sound, that one.”
Mma Ramotswe knew what Phuti was speaking about, as she had heard Itumelang Clovis Radiphuti purring. There was no other word for it: he was a baby who purred—perhaps the only purring baby in all Botswana.
Phuti gestured for her to enter the house.
“Grace is busy with Itumelang at the moment,” he explained. “She is changing him and washing his face, I think. She won’t be long.”
“I will wait,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am not in any hurry.”
Phuti Radiphuti took her into the living room. As Mma Ramotswe expected of the living room of the proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Store, the chairs and the sofa were new and luxurious. What a change for Mma Makutsi, she thought. When she had first come to Gaborone from Bobonong, she had lived in one small room, with a window so small as to admit only the slightest chink of light, and furnished with a single chair, a mattress on the floor, and a small cupboard. Now she lived in a house with four bedrooms, a large verandah, and a shaded place at the side to park a car—not to mention a good husband, of course, and a purring baby. Mma Ramotswe was glad that Mma Makutsi had found all this, and often reflected on how it had all come from that singular chance of going to a dance lesson at the Botswana Academy of Dance and Movement and meeting a man unable to dance a step and who had, at the time, a bad speech impediment. That was Phuti Radiphuti, who, unknown to Mma Makutsi, also had a large family herd of cattle and a prosperous furniture store. It had all worked out so well, and yet had she had a headache that evening and not gone to the dance class, it would never have happened. On those little chance events, thought Mma Ramotswe, hung our entire lives.
Phuti left her in the living room for a few minutes while he went to fetch her a cup of tea. She sat there and closed her eyes. It was not going to be an easy conversation with Mma Makutsi, but it was a necessary one. Mma Ramotswe did not believe in allowing anything to fester: if there was an issue with somebody, then it was always better to bring it out into the open. Doing that was like looking at something outside, under the open sky, for things looked less frightening in the sunlight.
Phuti came back, carrying a tray with two cups of tea.
“I’m drinking red bush tea too,” he said. “I am getting used to it now, and it is making me feel very well.”
“There are many things it does,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is good for the skin too. I have heard of people who put it on their skin.”
Phuti smiled. “Although you would not expect—if you went to somebody’s house and they asked you if you wanted some tea—you would not expect that if you said yes, then they would go off and fetch a teapot and pour it all over you! You would not expect that, Mma Ramotswe, would you?”
He laughed loudly at his own joke. Mma Ramotswe laughed too, less uproariously, perhaps, but then she had not been the one to crack the joke in the first place. Phuti Radiphuti, she thought, had many fine points, but his sense of humour was at times rather juvenile…mind you, many men had a sense of humour like that, when one came to think of it. Look at Charlie: he had once found it amusing t
o put an empty oil can on the top of the door so that it fell on Fanwell’s head when he came in for his morning tea. Charlie had doubled up with mirth, so much so that his eyes had filled with tears, while Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi, who had witnessed the prank, simply stared at one another in mute disbelief that anybody could think such a thing so amusing.
And even Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who was such a cautious and deliberate man, had narrated the story of how, as a boy, he had gone on a scout camp and they had sewn up the leg of the scout leader’s pyjamas so that he found it difficult to get into them. That, he said, was the funniest thing he had ever seen, but again Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi had looked at one another with that look that women keep in reserve for the peculiarities of men. It was a very special look: a look that combined pity with resignation. It was a look that said: we know that this is what you men like to do, and we understand, but do not expect us to look at things in quite the same way.
When he stopped laughing, there was a marked change in Phuti Radiphuti’s expression. Now he became grave.
“I’m glad you dropped by, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “There is something I need to talk to you about.”
She took a sip of her tea. “I am listening, Rra.”
“It is about Grace.”
“I hope that she is well, Rra.”
Phuti clasped his hands together. He looked uncomfortable. “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with her health. Grace is a very fit person, you know. No, it is just that she’s very worried about something. She came home yesterday and hardly spoke. And I know what that means, Mma. When you live with somebody, you know when there is something worrying them. They don’t need to spell it out, do they?”
“They do not, Rra. I can always tell when Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is brooding about something. He sits there and looks worried. It is very easy to tell.”
Phuti understood. “There are many things that could be worrying him, I suppose. He’s a businessman, after all, and those people always have one hundred things to worry about. He may be a mechanic, but he’s running a business with people to pay and taxes and everything. That is not easy.”
“He copes with most of that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “What he worries about is gearboxes and such things. He worries about people’s brakes. He worries about how much it is going to cost them to fix their suspension after they have driven into one of those holes…” She thought suddenly of her van; she had done nothing about the suspension and would have to deal with that before too long.
“There is something happening at work, I think,” said Phuti. “I fear that there must be a big problem. I asked her, but she would not talk about it. She just said that she had been concerned about something and that she did not want to discuss it.”
Mma Ramotswe felt her heart sink. It was as she had feared: Mma Makutsi had seen her in the van with Mr. Polopetsi and had concluded, quite correctly, that things were being done behind her back. Of course she would be disappointed by that—who would not?
Phuti Radiphuti was looking at her anxiously.
“You see,” he said, “on the subject of your holiday, Mma: the fact that you are out of the office has perhaps placed a very big burden on her. She has Itumelang, she has the house, she has her position on the committee of that home for bad girls—she has all these things to worry her now, and maybe it’s too much.”
“I can imagine all that must be very hard,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“So I wondered, Mma, whether your holiday needs to be quite as long as you planned. I hesitate to say that, Mma. You should not tell somebody that they do not deserve a holiday—you obviously do. But I wondered whether you might be thinking now of coming back just for a few hours each day, Mma, to take the pressure off Grace. Do you think that might be possible, Mma Ramotswe?”
Mma Ramotswe winced. What he was asking her to do would, she feared, only make things worse.
“It’s very difficult, Rra,” she said. “I would like to come back and help her, but that might just make matters worse. She will think that I don’t believe she is capable of handling things herself.”
“But perhaps she isn’t,” said Phuti. “Grace is a very intelligent woman and she is good at many things. But perhaps the agency is too much work for one lady. After all, it is the No. 1 Ladies’—in the plural—Detective Agency, not the No. 1 Lady’s—just one lady’s—Detective Agency.”
“I know, Rra, but…”
A door opened behind her, and she turned round to see Mma Makutsi framed in the doorway, the light from the window reflecting off the large lenses of her spectacles. It was never a good sign when the light did that, and for a moment Mma Ramotswe regretted her visit.
“Ah,” said Grace, making her way towards a seat opposite Mma Ramotswe’s. “I thought I heard a familiar voice.”
She turned to Phuti. “Phuti, would you be so kind as to go and settle Itumelang? He is getting tired now after being up so early. He needs a sleep.”
That was another bad sign. When Mma Makutsi asked anybody if they would be “so kind” as to do anything, it meant that she was cross.
Mma Ramotswe reached for her cup, seeking the protection of tea, but it was empty. She replaced the cup on the table, hoping that this might prompt Mma Makutsi to offer to make more. That would defuse the situation, at least to some extent. But Mma Makutsi ignored the hint; yet another bad sign.
They sat in an awkward silence that was eventually broken by Mma Ramotswe. “I’ve come because of some complications,” she began.
Mma Makutsi had fixed her with a stare that showed no sign of wavering. “Some complications, Mma? What sort of complications? Some holiday complications, perhaps?”
Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath. “You saw me, I think, Mma.”
Mma Makutsi pursed her lips before speaking. “I believe I’ve seen you many times, Mma Ramotswe. I saw you when you came into the office to fetch something. I’ve seen you at the supermarket—although you did not see me—and I’ve seen you driving all over the place…” She left the sentence unfinished.
“With Mr. Polopetsi,” added Mma Ramotswe. “At that intersection. I looked and suddenly I saw you, Mma. Mr. Polopetsi saw you too. He said, ‘Oh, look, there’s Mma Makutsi,’ or something like that—I cannot remember his exact words.”
There was ice in Mma Makutsi’s voice. “I hope you had a good drive together. In this hot weather I think it can be very pleasant to go for a drive and get some cool air coming in through the window. One does not need air-conditioning in a car if you have a window open, I find.”
Mma Ramotswe looked down at her shoes, her flat work shoes that were so broad and unglamorous and comfortable. She imagined Mma Makutsi’s shoes engaged in a slanging match with her own shoes, pouring scorn on their breadth and outdatedness. It would be a war of the shoes—a war she would most certainly lose.
She drew in her breath again. “I was working with Mr. Polopetsi, Mma,” she said quietly. “He and I were working on the Government Keboneng case.”
Mma Makutsi said nothing.
“We went down to see a man called Saint Potokwane,” Mma Ramotswe continued. “I had a very interesting conversation with him, and I think now that I have an idea of what lies behind all that business.”
She heard Mma Makutsi’s breathing, like the sound of an angry horse. It was a strange sound, and Mma Ramotswe thought at that moment that she knew where Itumelang got his ability to purr. But then, quite without warning, Mma Makutsi seemed to deflate. The angry breathing stopped, to be replaced by tears—a wail of heartfelt, harrowing tears.
“Oh, Mma,” she stuttered. “How can you do this to me? How can you go on holiday and tell me that I will be the boss and then you turn round and take it away from me—just like that, Mma, as if I am some person who can do nothing? How can you do that, Mma?”
Mma Ramotswe rose to comfort her, but she could tell from Mma Makutsi’s sudden stiffening that she should keep away. She returned to her seat.
“I am very sorry,
Mma,” she said. “Mr. Polopetsi came to see me. He did not know what to do.”
“But I told you to leave him,” said Mma Makutsi, her voice rising. “I told you, Mma—leave it up to him.”
“But I couldn’t do that, Mma Makutsi. We have our duty to the client.”
This brought a strange sound from Mma Makutsi—a mixture of a snort and a sigh. “The client, Mma? The client?”
“Yes. We owe a duty to our clients. We have to do our best by them.”
Mma Makutsi’s glasses flashed another signal—this time of outrage. “But the client, Mma…” She faltered, and then, making a visible effort to calm down, she said, “Just tell me what you have found out, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe was relieved that the outburst was over. Speaking carefully, so as not to reignite Mma Makutsi, she gave an account of their visit to Saint Potokwane. She repeated their conversation and then added an account of her subsequent listing of possibilities. Mma Makutsi listened intently, but Mma Ramotswe noticed that with each major point in her account, the other woman shook her head. This she did with sadness, almost as if she were commenting on the fact that somebody could get something so wrong. At the end, Mma Ramotswe asked her if she thought her conclusions were reasonable.
“No,” said Mma Makutsi. “You are one hundred per cent wrong, Mma. One hundred per cent wrong.”
Not even ninety-seven per cent, thought Mma Ramotswe.
“I’m sorry, Mma Makutsi, I just do not see how you can say I am wrong.” She paused. “Do you have another explanation?”
“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “I do. You see, Mma, you are assuming that our client is telling the truth. What if the client is lying? Don’t you remember that Mr. Andersen himself said something about that—in chapter six, I think it was. He says that you should not always believe your client, because he or she may be concealing something or even telling complete untruths. Those were his words, Mma Ramotswe—complete untruths.”
Mma Ramotswe did not know what to say. She stared at Mma Makutsi in disbelief. Why would Mr. Government Keboneng’s sister lie about anything to do with this case? Her objective was simple enough, surely; it was to protect the reputation of a late brother who could not defend himself. She brought this up now, challenging Mma Makutsi to refute it.