Blue Shoes and Happiness (10 page)

“My husband?”

“Yes, Mma, your husband.” Mma Ramotswe nodded in the direction of the passenger door. “Why don't you get into the van, Mma? We can talk in here.”

For a moment it seemed as if Mma Tsau was going to turn around and go back to her office. There was a moment of hesitation; the eyes moved; she continued to stare at Mma Ramotswe. Then she started to walk round the front of the van, slowly, her eyes still on Mma Ramotswe.

“You can wind down that window, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe as the other woman lowered herself into the seat beside her. “It will be cooler that way. It is very hot today, isn't it?”

Mma Tsau had folded her hands on her lap and was staring down at them. She did not respond to Mma Ramotswe's remark. In the confines of the van, her breathing was audibly laboured. Mma Ramotswe said nothing for a moment, allowing her to get her breath back. But there was no change in Mma Tsau's breathing, which sounded as if the air was working its way through a small thicket of leaves, a rustling sound, the sound of a tree in the wind. She turned and looked at her visitor. She had been prepared to dislike this woman who had been stealing food from the college; this woman who had so unfairly threatened the inoffensive Poppy with dismissal. But now, in the flesh, with her laboured breathing and her odd walk, it was difficult not to feel sympathy. And of course it was always difficult for Mma Ramotswe not to feel sympathy for another, however objectionable his conduct might be, however flawed his character, simply because she understood, at the most intuitive, profound level what it was to be a human being, which is not easy. Everybody, she felt, could do evil, so easily; could be weak, so easily; could be selfish, so easily. This meant that she could understand—and did—which was not the same thing as condoning—which she did not—or taking the view—which she did not—that one should not judge others. Of course one could judge others, and Mma Ramotswe used the standards of the old Botswana morality to make these judgements. But there was nothing in the old Botswana morality which said that one could not forgive those who were weak; indeed, there was much in the old Botswana morality that was very specifically about forgiveness. One should not hold a grudge against another, it said, because to harbour grudges was to disturb the social peace, the bond between people.

She felt sorry, then, for Mma Tsau, and instinctively, without giving it any thought, she reached out and touched the other woman gently on the forearm, and left her hand there. Mma Tsau tensed, and the breath caught in her throat, but then she turned her head and looked at Mma Ramotswe, and her eyes were moist with tears.

“You are the mother of one of those girls,” Mma Tsau said quietly. It was not a question; it was a statement. Her earlier confidence was drained from her, and she seemed even smaller now, hunched in her seat.

Mma Ramotswe did not understand, and was about to say so. But then she thought, and it came to her what this other woman meant. It was a familiar story, after all, and nobody should be surprised. The husband, the father, the respectable citizen; such a man might still carry on with other women in spite of everything, in spite of his wife's pain, and many did. And some of these men went further, and picked up girls who were far younger than themselves, some still at high school. They felt proud of themselves, these men, with their youthful girlfriends, whose heads they turned because they had money to throw around, or a fast car, or power perhaps.

“I hear what you say, Mma,” Mma Ramotswe began. “Your husband. I did not mean …”

“It has been going on for many years,” Mma Tsau interrupted her. “Just after we were married—even then, he started this thing. I told him how stupid he looked, running after these young girls, but he ignored me. I told him that I would leave him, but he just laughed and said that I should do that. But I could not, Mma. I could not …”

This was a familiar story to Mma Ramotswe. She had come across so many women who could not leave unworthy men because they loved them. This was quite different from those cases where women could not leave because they were frightened of the man, or because they had no place to go; some women could not leave simply because, in spite of everything that had been done to them, in spite of all the heartbreak, they stubbornly loved the man. This, she suspected, was what was happening here. Mma Tsau loved Rra Tsau, and would do so to the end.

“You love him, Mma?” she probed gently. “Is that it?”

Mma Tsau looked down at her hands. Mma Ramotswe noticed that one of them had a light dusting of flour on it; the hand of a cook.

“Eee,” said Mma Tsau, under her breath, using the familiar, long-drawn-out Setswana word of assent. “Eee, Mma. I love that man. That is true. I am a weak woman, I know. But I love him.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. There was no cure for such love. That was the most basic thing one found out about human affairs, and one did not have to be a private detective to know that simple fact. Such love, the tenacious love of a parent or a devoted spouse, could fade—and did—but it took a long time to do so and often persisted in the face of all the evidence that it was squandered on an unworthy choice.

“I was going to say that I hadn't come about that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I do not know your husband.”

It took Mma Tsau a few moments to take in what Mma Ramotswe had told her. When she did, she turned to look at her. She was still defeated.

“What have you come about?” she asked. There was no real curiosity in her voice now. It was as if Mma Ramotswe had come about the supply of eggs, or potatoes perhaps.

“I have come because I have heard that you have threatened to dismiss one of your staff,” she said. She did not want to suggest that Poppy had complained, and so she said, quite truthfully—in the strictest sense—that nobody had asked her to come. That was not a lie. It was more what Clovis Andersen called
an indirect statement;
and there was a distinction.

Mma Tsau shrugged. “I am the head cook,” she said. “I am called the catering manager. That is who I am. I take on some staff—and push some staff out. Some people are not good workers.” She dusted her hands lightly, and for a moment Mma Ramotswe saw the tiny grains of flour, like specks of dust, caught in a slant of sunlight.

The sympathy that Mma Ramotswe had felt for her earlier was now being replaced by irritation. She did not really like this woman, she decided, although she admired her, perhaps, for her loyalty to her philandering husband. “People get dismissed for other reasons,” she said. “Somebody who was stealing food, for example—that person would be dismissed if it were found out that government food was being given to her husband.”

Mma Tsau was quite still. She reached her hand out and touched the hem of her skirt, tugging at it gently, as if testing the strength of the seam. She took a breath, and there was the rattling sound of phlegm.

“Maybe it was you who wrote that letter,” she said. “Maybe …”

“I did not,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And nor did that girl.”

Mma Tsau shook her head. “Then who did?”

“I have no idea,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But it had nothing to do with that girl. There is somebody else who is blackmailing you. That is what this is, you know. This is blackmail. It is normally a matter for the police.”

Mma Tsau laughed. “You think I should go to the police? You think that I should say to them:
I have been giving government food to my husband. Now somebody is threatening me
? I'm not stupid, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe's voice was even. “I know that you're not stupid, Mma Tsau. I know that.” She paused. She doubted that Mma Tsau intended now to do anything more about Poppy, and that meant that she could regard the matter as closed. But it left the issue of the blackmail unresolved. It was a despicable act, she thought, and she was offended that somebody might do such a thing and get away with it. She might look into it, perhaps, if she had the time, and there were always slack periods when she and Mma Makutsi had nothing to do. Perhaps she could even put Mma Makutsi on the case and see what she made of it. No blackmailer would be a match for Mma Makutsi, assistant detective at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and graduate of distinction of the Botswana Secretarial College—Mma Ninety-Seven Per Cent, as Mma Ramotswe sometimes irreverently thought of her. She could imagine a confrontation between the blackmailer and Mma Makutsi, with the latter's large round glasses flashing with the fire of indignation and the blackmailer, a wretched, furtive man cowering in the face of female wrath.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Mma Tsau. “I do not think this is funny.”

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe, bringing herself back to reality. “It is not funny. But tell me, Mma—do you still have that letter? Could you show it to me? Perhaps I can find out who this person is who is trying to blackmail you.”

Mma Tsau thought for a moment. “And you won't do anything about … about my husband?”

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am not interested in your husband.” And that was true, of course. She could just imagine Mma Tsau's husband, a lazy womaniser, being fed by his devoted wife and getting fatter and fatter until he could no longer see the lower part of his body, so large had his stomach become. That would serve him right, thought Mma Ramotswe. Being a traditionally built lady was one thing; being a traditionally built man was quite another. And it was certainly not so good.

The thought made her smile again, but Mma Tsau did not see the smile, as she was struggling with the door handle, preparing to go off and retrieve the letter which she had in her office, in one of the secret places she had there.

CHAPTER NINE

FILING CABINETS, LOCKS, CHAINS

M
MA RAMOTSWE looked into her tea cup. The red bush tea, freshly poured, was still very hot, too hot to drink, but good to look at in its amber darkness, and very good to smell. It was a pity, she thought, that she had become accustomed to the use of tea-bags, as this meant that there were no leaves to be seen swirling around the surface or clinging to the side of the cup. She had given in on the issue of tea-bags, out of weakness, she admitted; tea-bags were so overwhelmingly more convenient than leaf tea, with its tendency to clog drains and the spouts of tea-pots too if one was not careful. She had never worried about getting the occasional tea leaf in her mouth, indeed she had rather enjoyed this, but that never happened now, with these neatly packed tea-bags and their very precise, enmeshed doses of chopped leaves.

It was the first cup of the morning, as Mma Ramotswe did not count the two cups that she
took at home before she came to work. One of these was consumed as she took her early stroll around the yard, with the sun just up, pausing to stand under the large acacia tree and peer up into the thorny branches above her, drawing the morning air into her lungs and savouring its freshness. That morning she had seen a chameleon on a branch of the tree and had watched the strange creature fix its riveting eye upon her, its tiny prehensile feet poised in mid-movement. It was a great advantage, she thought, to have a chameleon's eyes, which could look backwards and forwards independently. That would be a fine gift for a detective.

Now at her desk, she raised the cup to her lips and took a sip of the bush tea. She looked at her watch. Mma Makutsi was usually very punctual, but today she was late for some reason. This would be the fault of the minibuses, thought Mma Ramotswe. There would be enough of them coming into town from Tlokweng at that hour of the morning, but not enough going in the opposite direction. Mma Makutsi could walk, of course—her new house was not all that far away—but people did not like to walk in the heat, understandably enough.

She had a report to write, and she busied herself with this. It was not an easy one, as she had to detail the weaknesses she had found in the hiring department of a company which provided security guards. They imagined that they screened out applicants with a criminal record when they sought jobs with the company; Mma Ramotswe had discovered that it was simplicity itself to lie about one's past on the application form and that the forms were usually not even scrutinised by the official in charge of the personnel department. This man, who had got the job through lying about his qualifications and experience, rubber-stamped the applications of virtually anybody, but particularly of applications submitted by any of his relatives. Mma Ramotswe's report would not make comfortable reading for the company, and she knew to expect some anger over the results. This was inevitable—people did not like to be told uncomfortable truths, even if they had asked for them. Uncomfortable truths meant that one had to go back and invent a whole new set of procedures, and that was not always welcome when there were so many other things to do.

As she listed the defects in the firm's arrangements, Mma Ramotswe thought of how difficult it was to have a completely secure system for anything. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was a case in point. They kept all their records in two old filing cabinets, and neither of these, she realised, had a lock, or at least a lock that worked. There was a lock on the office door, naturally enough, but during the day they rarely bothered to use that if both of them went out on some errand. There were always people around the garage, of course—either Mr J.L.B. Matekoni or the apprentices, and surely intruders would be deterred by their presence … No, she thought, perhaps not. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was often so absorbed in tinkering with an engine that he would not notice it if the President himself drew up in his large official car. And as for the apprentices, they were completely unobservant and missed the most glaring features of what went on round about them. Indeed, she had given up on asking them for descriptions of clients who might have called while she was out and spoken to one of them. “There was a man,” they would say. “He came to see you. Now he is gone.” And in response to questioning for some clue as to the caller's identity, they would say, “He was not a very tall man, I think. Or maybe he was a bit tall. I could not tell.”

Her pen stopped in mid-sentence. Who was she to criticise when it would be possible for virtually anybody to walk into the office of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency at an unguarded moment and rifle through the secrets of their clients? Are you interested in who is suspected by his wife of adultery? Please, help yourself: there are plenty of reports about that in an old filing cabinet on the Tlokweng Road—just help yourself! And why was that man dismissed from that hotel last month, with no reason given? Well, the report on that—freely available from the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and signed by Mma Grace Makutsi, Dip. Sec. (Botswana Secretarial College) (97%)—may be obtained by the simple expedient of looking in the top drawer of the second desk of an unlocked office beside Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and made her way over to the filing cabinet nearest her. Bending forward, she peered at the lock which was built into the top of the cabinet. It was a small, oval silver-coloured plate with an incised key-hole. At the top of the plate the maker's sign, a small rampant lion, was stamped into the metal. The lion looked back at Mma Ramotswe, and she shook her head. There was rust in the key-hole, and the edges of the hole were dented. Even if they could locate the key, it would be impossible to insert it. She looked at the lion, a symbol of the pride which somebody must once have felt, somewhere, in the construction of the cabinet. And perhaps this pride was not entirely misplaced—the cabinet must have been made decades ago, perhaps even forty or fifty years previously, and it still worked. How many modern cabinets, with their plastic trimmings and their bright colours, would still be holding files in fifty years' time? And it was the same with people, she thought. Bright, modern people were all very well, but did they last the course? Traditionally minded (and traditionally built) people might not seem so fashionable, but they would always be there, doing what they always did. A traditional mechanic, for example—somebody like Mr J.L.B. Matekoni—would be able to keep your car going when a modern mechanic—somebody like Charlie—would shrug his shoulders and say that everything needed to be renewed.

She reached out and gave the filing cabinet an affectionate pat. Then, on impulse, she bent down and kissed its scratched and dented metal surface. The metal felt cool to her lips and smelled acrid, as metal can—a smell of rust and sharpness.

“Dumela, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi from the doorway.

Mma Ramotswe straightened up.

“Don't worry about me,” said Mma Makutsi. “Just carry on doing whatever it was that you were doing …” She glanced at the filing cabinet and then at her employer.

Mma Ramotswe returned to her desk. “I was thinking about that filing cabinet,” she said. “And suddenly I felt very grateful to it. I know that it must have looked very strange to you, Mma.”

“Not at all,” said Mma Makutsi. “I am grateful to it too. It keeps all our records safe.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Well, I'm not sure if they're completely safe,” she said. “In fact, I was just wondering whether we should do something about locking them. Confidentiality is very important. You know that, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi looked thoughtfully at the filing cabinets. “That is true,” she said. “But I do not think we would ever find a key for those old locks.” She paused. “Maybe we could put a chain around them, with a padlock?”

Mma Ramotswe did not think that this would be a good idea. It would look absurd to have chained filing cabinets, and would give quite the wrong impression to clients. It was bad enough having an office inside a garage, but it would be worse to have something quite so odd-looking as a chain around a cabinet. It would be better to buy a couple of new filing cabinets, even if they would not be as sturdy and substantial as these old ones. There was probably enough money in the office account to do this, and they had not spent very much on equipment recently. In fact, they had spent nothing, apart from three pula for a new teaspoon, which had been required after one of the apprentices had used their existing teaspoon to fix a gearbox and had broken it. The thought of furniture reminded her. Mma Makutsi was about to marry, was she not? And was she not about to marry into the furniture trade?

“Phuti Radiphuti!” Mma Ramotswe exclaimed.

Mma Makutsi looked up sharply. “Phuti?”

“Your fiancé, Mma,” went on Mma Ramotswe. “Does he do office furniture as well as house furniture?”

Mma Makutsi looked down at her shoes.
Fiancé?
she imagined hearing the shoes say.
We used to be engaged to a pair of men's shoes but we haven't seen them for some time! Is it still on, Boss?

Mma Ramotswe smiled across her desk. “I wouldn't expect a new filing cabinet for nothing,” she said. “But he could give us a trade price, could he not? Or he would know where we could get it cheaply.” She noticed Mma Makutsi's expression, and tailed off. “If he could …”

Mma Makutsi seemed reluctant to speak. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and then out of the door. “He did not come to my place last night,” she said. “I had cooked for him. But he did not come.”

Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. She had feared that something like this would happen. Ever since Mma Makutsi had become engaged, she had been concerned that something would go wrong. That had nothing to do with Phuti Radiphuti himself, who seemed a good candidate for marriage, but it had everything to do with the bad luck that seemed to dog Mma Makutsi. There were some people who were badly treated by life, no matter how hard they worked and no matter what efforts they made to better their circumstances. Mma Makutsi had done her very best, but perhaps she would never get any further than she had already got, and would remain an assistant detective, a woman from Bobonong, with large round glasses, and a house that, although comfortable, had no hot water supply. Phuti Radiphuti could have changed everything, but now would not. He would be just another missed opportunity, another reminder of what might have been had everything been different.

“I think that he must have been working late,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You should call him on the telephone and find out. Yes, just use the office phone. That is fine. Call Phuti.”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “No, I cannot do that. I cannot chase him.”

“You're not chasing him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not chasing a man just to speak to him on the telephone and ask him why he did not come to your house. Men cannot let women cook for them and not eat the food. Everybody understands that.”

This remark did not seem to help, and in the face of Mma Makutsi's sudden and taciturn gloominess, Mma Ramotswe herself became silent.

“That is why I'm late this morning,” Mma Makutsi said suddenly. “I could not sleep at all last night.”

“There are many mosquitoes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They do not make it easy.”

“It had nothing to do with mosquitoes,” Mma Makutsi mumbled. “They were sleeping last night. It was because I was thinking. I think it is all over, Mma.”

“Nonsense,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not over. Men are very strange—that is all. Sometimes they forget to come to see ladies. Sometimes they forget to get married. Look at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Look at how long it took him to get round to marrying me.”

“I cannot wait that long,” said Mma Makutsi. “I was thinking of being engaged for six months at the most.” She reached for a piece of paper on her desk and stared at it. “Now I shall be doing this filing for the rest of my life.”

Mma Ramotswe realised that she could not allow this self-pity to continue. That would only make it worse, in her view. So she explained to Mma Makutsi that she would have to seek out Phuti Radiphuti and reassure him. If she did not wish to do that, then she herself, Mma Ramotswe, could do it for her. Her offer was not taken up, but she repeated it, and it was reflected upon. Then the working day began. It was the day on which bills were due to be sent out, and that was always an enjoyable experience. If only there were a day on which bills were all returned, fully paid, that would be even more enjoyable. But the working world was not like that, and there were always more that went out than came in, or so it seemed. And in this sense, Mma Ramotswe mused, the working world reflected life; which was an adage worthy of Aunty Emang herself, even if she was not quite sure whether it was true or not.

 

THE BILLS ALL TYPED UP and sealed in their neat white envelopes, Mma Ramotswe remembered that she had something that she wanted to show to Mma Makutsi. Reaching into the old leather bag that she used for carrying papers and lists and the one hundred and one other accoutrements of her daily life, she extracted the letter which Mma Tsau had handed over to her the previous day. She crossed the room and handed it to Mma Makutsi.