Blue Shoes and Happiness (3 page)

“A cobra,” she whispered to Mma Ramotswe. “Under my desk. A cobra.”

Mma Ramotswe moved slowly away from the window. As she did so, she picked up the telephone directory that had been lying on her desk. It was the closest thing to hand, and she could, if necessary, throw it at the snake to distract it from Mma Makutsi. This was not to prove necessary. Sensing the vibration made by the footfall, the snake suddenly lowered its hood and slid away from Mma Makutsi's desk, heading for a large waste-paper bin which stood at the far side of the room. This was the signal for Mma Makutsi to recover her power of movement, and she threw herself towards the door. Mma Ramotswe followed, and soon the two women were safely outside the office door, which they slammed behind them.

The two apprentices looked up from their work on Bishop Mwamba's car.

“There's a snake in there,” screamed Mma Makutsi. “A very big snake.”

The two young men ran across from the car to join the shaken women.

“What sort of snake?” asked Charlie, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. “A mamba?”

“No,” said Mma Makutsi. “A cobra. With a big hood—this big. Right at my feet. Ready to strike.”

“You are very lucky, Mma,” said the younger apprentice. “If that snake had struck, then you might be late by now. The late Mma Makutsi.”

Mma Makutsi looked at him scornfully. “I know that,” she said. “But I did not panic, you see. I stood quite still.”

“That was the right thing to do, Mma,” said Charlie. “But now we can go in there and kill this snake. In a couple of minutes your office will be safe again.”

He turned to the other apprentice, who had picked up a couple of large spanners and who was now reaching out to hand one to him. Armed with these tools, they slowly approached the door and edged it open.

“Be careful,” shouted Mma Makutsi. “It was a very big snake.”

“Look near the waste-paper basket,” added Mma Ramotswe. “It's over there somewhere.”

Charlie peered into the office. He was standing at the half-open door and could not see the whole room, but he could see the basket and the floor about it and, yes, he could make out something curved around its base, something that moved slightly even as his eye fell upon it.

“There,” he whispered to the other apprentice. “Over there.”

The young man craned his neck forward and saw the shape upon the floor. Letting out a curious half-yell, he hurled the spanner across the room, missing the target, but hitting the wall immediately behind the basket. As the spanner fell to the ground, the snake reared up, its hood again extended, facing the source of the danger. Charlie now threw his spanner, which also struck the wall but in this case fell in such a way that it hit the end of the snake's tail. The tail whipped round as the snake struggled to find its balance. Again the head swayed menacingly, the tongue darting in and out as the reptile sought to make sense of the noise and danger of its surroundings.

Mma Ramotswe clutched Mma Makutsi's arm. “I'm not sure if these boys …”

She did not finish the sentence. In their excitement they had not noticed a vehicle draw up and a sunburned young man with fair hair step out.

“Well, Mma Ramotswe,” said the man. “What's going on here?”

Mma Ramotswe turned to face their visitor. “Oh, Mr Whitson,” she said. “You have come just in time. There is a snake in there. The apprentices are trying to kill it.”

Neil Whitson shook his head. “There's no need to kill snakes,” he said. “Let me take a look.”

He walked up to the door of the office and nodded to the apprentices to stand aside.

“Don't frighten it,” he said. “It just makes it worse if you frighten it.”

“It is a very large snake,” said Charlie resentfully. “We have to kill it, Rra.”

Neil looked in through the door and saw the cobra curled at the foot of the waste-paper basket. He turned to Charlie.

“Do you have a stick here?” he said. “Any stick will do. Just a stick.”

The younger apprentice went off, while Charlie and Neil continued to watch the snake.

“We will have to kill it,” Charlie said. “We cannot have a snake here. What if it bites those ladies over there? What if it bites Mma Ramotswe?”

“It'll only bite Mma Ramotswe if it feels threatened,” said Neil. “And snakes only feel threatened if people tread on them or … ,” he paused, before adding, “or throw things at them.”

The younger apprentice now returned with a longish stick from the jacaranda tree which grew at the edge of the garage plot. Neil took this from him and edged his way slowly into the office. The snake watched him, part of its body raised, the hood half up. With a sudden movement, Neil flipped the stick over the snake's back and pressed the neck of the snake down against the floor. Then, leaning forward, he gripped the writhing cobra behind the head and picked it up. The lashing tail, searching for purchase, was soon firmly held in his other hand.

“There,” he said. “Now, Charlie, a sack is what we need. You must have a sack somewhere.”

 

WHEN MR J.L.B. MATEKONI returned an hour later, he was in a good mood. The inspection ramp which he had viewed was in excellent condition and the owner was not asking very much for it. It was, in fact, a bargain, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had already paid a deposit on the purchase. His pleasure in his transaction was evident from his smile, but this was hardly noticed by the apprentices as they greeted him in the workshop.

“We've had big excitement here, Boss,” said Charlie. “A snake got into Mma Ramotswe's office. A very large snake, with a head like this. Yes, this big.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni gave a start. “Mma Ramotswe's office,” he stuttered. “Is she all right?”

“Oh, she's all right,” said Charlie. “She was lucky that we were around. If we hadn't been here, then I don't know …”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at the younger apprentice, as if for confirmation.

“Yes, Rra,” said the young man. “It is a good thing that we were here. We were able to deal with the snake.”

“And where is it?” asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “Where have you thrown it? You must know that if you leave one of these snakes lying around, its mate will come to seek it out. Then we will have trouble.”

The younger apprentice glanced at Charlie. “We have had it taken away,” said Charlie. “That man from Mokolodi, the one you trade engine parts with. He has taken it away.”

“Mr Whitson?” asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “He has taken it?”

Charlie nodded. “You don't need to kill snakes,” he said. “It is best just to let them loose. You know that, don't you, Boss?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni did not reply. Striding across to the office door, he knocked and entered. Inside, seated at their desks, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi looked up at him expectantly.

“You have heard about it?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “You heard about the snake?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “I have heard all about it,” he said. “I am only happy that you have not been hurt, Mma Ramotswe. That is all that I am interested in.”

“And me?” asked Mma Makutsi from her desk. “What about me, Rra?”

“Oh, I am pleased that you were not bitten, Mma,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I am very pleased about that. I would not want either of you to be bitten by a snake.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “It was a very close thing for Mma Makutsi,” she said. “And we were very lucky that your friend happened to come by. He is a man who knows all about snakes. You should have seen him pick it up, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He picked it up just as if it were a tshongololo or something like that.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked confused. “But I thought that the boys dealt with it,” he said. “Charlie told me that …”

Mma Makutsi let out a peal of laughter. “Them? Oh, Rra, you should have seen them. They threw spanners at it and made it all angry. They were no use at all. No use.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled at her husband. “They did their best, of course, but …” She broke off. Nobody was perfect, she thought, and she herself had not handled the situation very well. None of us knows how we will cope with snakes until the moment arises, and then most of us find out that we do not do it very well. Snakes were one of the tests which life sent for us, and there was no telling how we might respond until the moment arrived. Snakes and men. These were the things sent to try women, and the outcome was not always what we might want it to be.

CHAPTER THREE

FREE FOOD MAKES YOU FAT

I
T TOOK EVERYBODY some time to settle down after the incident with the cobra. The apprentices, convinced that they had played a vital role in dealing with the snake, were full of themselves for the rest of the day, embroidering the truth at every opportunity as they told the story in detail to every caller at the garage. Mr Polopetsi, the new employee whom Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had taken on at the garage—on the understanding that he could also help out, when required, in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency—heard all about it when he arrived an hour or so later. He had been sent by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to collect tyres from a depot on the other side of town, a job which often required a long wait. Now, returning in the truck which was used for garage business, he was regaled with an account of the event by Charlie, who this time was careful to mention the presence of the manager of the Mokolodi Game Reserve, even if only in a supporting role.

“Mma Makutsi was very lucky,” he said once Charlie had finished the tale. “Those snakes strike like lightning. That quick. You cannot dodge them if they decide to strike.”

“Charlie was too quick for it,” said the younger apprentice. “He saved Mma Makutsi's life.” He paused, and then added, “Not that she thanked him for it.”

Mr Polopetsi smiled. “I am sure that she is very grateful,” he said. “But you boys should remember that nobody is too quick for a snake. Keep out of their way. I saw some very bad snake-bite cases when I was working at the hospital. Very bad.” And he remembered, as he spoke, the woman who had been brought in from Otse; the woman who had been bitten by a puff-adder when she had rolled over in the night and disturbed the fat, languid snake that had slid into her one-room hut for the warmth. He had been on duty in the pharmacy and had been standing outside the entrance to the emergency department when she had been carried out of the government ambulance, and he had seen her leg, which had swollen so much that the skin had split. And then he had heard the next day that she had not lived and that there were three children and no father or grandmother to look after them; he had thought then of all the children there were in Africa who now had no parents and of what it must be like for them, not to have somebody who loved you as your parents loved you. He looked at the apprentices. They did not think of things like that, and who could expect them to? They were young men, and as a young man one was immortal, no matter what the evidence to the contrary.

At a garage there is no time for thinking such thoughts; there is work to do. Mr Polopetsi unloaded the new tyres, with their pristine treads and their chalk markings; Mr J.L.B. Matekoni attended to the delicate task of adjusting the timing on an old French station wagon—a car he did not like, which always went wrong and which in his view should have been given a decent burial a long time ago; and the two apprentices finished the servicing of Bishop Mwamba's well-behaved white car. Inside the adjoining office of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi shuffled papers about their desks. They had very little real work to do, as it was a slack period for the agency, and so they took the opportunity to do some filing, a task in which Mma Makutsi took the lead, on account of her training at the Botswana Secretarial College.

“They used to say that good filing was the key to a successful business,” she said to Mma Ramotswe as she looked through a pile of old receipts.

“Oh yes,” said Mma Ramotswe, not with great interest. She had heard Mma Makutsi on the subject of filing on a number of occasions before and she felt that there was very little more to be said on the subject. The important thing, in her mind, was not the theory behind filing but the simple question of whether it worked or not. A good filing system enabled one to retrieve a piece of paper; a bad filing system did not.

But it seemed that there was more to be said. “You can file things by date,” Mma Makutsi went on, as if lecturing to a class. “Or you can file them by the name of the person to whom the document relates. Those are the two main systems. Date or person.”

Mma Ramotswe shot a glance across the room. It seemed odd that one could not file according to what the paper was all about. She herself had no office training, let alone a diploma from the Botswana Secretarial College, but surely a subject-based system was possible too. “What about subject matter?” she asked.

“There is that too,” Mma Makutsi added quickly. “I had forgotten about that. Subject matter too.”

Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. In her office they filed papers under the name of the client, which she thought was a perfectly reasonable system, but it would be interesting, she thought, to set up a system of cross-referencing according to the subject matter of the case. There would be a large file for adultery, in which she could put all the cases which dealt with that troublesome issue, although it would probably be necessary to subdivide in that case. There could be a section for suspicious husbands and one for suspicious wives, perhaps, and even one for male menopause cases now that she came to think about it. Many of the women who came to see her were worried about their middle-aged husbands, and Mma Ramotswe had read somewhere about the male menopause and all the troubles to which it gave rise. She could certainly add her own views on that, if anybody should ask her.

 

MMA RAMOTSWE and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni went home for lunch at Zebra Drive, something they enjoyed doing when work at the garage permitted. Mma Ramotswe liked to lie down for twenty minutes or so after the midday meal. On occasion she would drop off to sleep for a short while, but usually she just read the newspaper or a magazine. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would not lie down, but liked to walk out in the garden under the shade netting, looking at his vegetables. Although he was a mechanic, like most people in Botswana he was, at heart, a farmer, and he took great pleasure in this small patch of vegetables that he coaxed out of the dry soil. One day, when he retired, they would move out to a village, perhaps to Mochudi, and find land to plough and cattle to tend. Then at last there would be time to sit outside on the stoep with Mma Ramotswe and watch the life of the village unfold before them. That would be a good way of spending such days as remained to one; in peace, happy, among the people and cattle of home. It would be good to die among one's cattle, he thought; with their sweet breath on one's face and their dark, gentle eyes watching right up to the end of one's journey, right up to the edge of the river.

 

MMA RAMOTSWE returned from the lunch break to find Mma Makutsi waiting for her at the office door. The younger woman seemed agitated.

“There's a woman waiting inside.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Has she said what she wants, Mma?” she asked.

Mma Makutsi looked rather annoyed. “She is insisting on talking to you, Mma. I offered to listen to her, but she said that she wanted the senior lady. That is what she said. The senior lady. That's you.”

Noticing Mma Makutsi's look of disapproval, Mma Ramotswe suppressed a smile. Her assistant was always irritated when this sort of thing happened. People would phone and ask to be put through to the boss, provoking from Mma Makutsi an indignant request for an explanation of what the query was about.

“I do not see why they cannot talk to me first,” she said peevishly. “Then I can put them through to you after I have told you who they are and what it's about.”

“But that means they might have to repeat themselves,” Mma Ramotswe pointed out. “They might think it better to wait until …” She broke off. Mma Makutsi was unlikely to be convinced by this argument.

And this woman waiting for her in the office was another of these people who had been unwilling to tell Mma Makutsi what her business was. Well, one had to be understanding; it was often a big step to go and see a private detective about some private trouble, and one had to be gentle with people. She was not sure whether she herself would have the courage to consult a perfect stranger about something intimate. If Mr J.L.B. Matekoni were to begin misbehaving, for example—and it was inconceivable that he should—would she be able to go and talk to somebody about it, or would she suffer in silence? She rather thought that she might suffer in silence; that was her reaction, but others were different, of course. Some people were only too happy to pour out their most private problems into the ear of anybody who would listen. Mma Ramotswe had once sat next to such a woman on a bus; and this woman had told her, in the time that it takes to travel down the road from Gaborone to Lobatse, all about her feelings towards her mother-in-law, her concerns for her son, who was doing very well at school but who had met a girl who had turned his head and taken his mind quite off his schoolwork, and about her prying neighbour whom she had seen on several occasions looking into her bedroom through a pair of binoculars. Perhaps such people felt better if they talked, but it could be trying for those chosen to be their audience.

The woman sitting in the office looked up as Mma Ramotswe came into the room. They exchanged polite greetings—in the prescribed form—while Mma Ramotswe settled herself behind her desk.

“You are Mma Ramotswe?” asked the woman.

Mma Ramotswe inclined her head, taking in the little details that would allow her to place this woman. She was thirty-five, perhaps; of traditional build, like Mma Ramotswe herself (perhaps even more traditional); and, judging from the ring on her finger, married to a man who was able to afford a generously sized gold band.
Clothing
, said Clovis Andersen in
The Principles of Private Detection
,
provides more clues than virtually anything else (other than a pocket book or wallet!). Look at the clothing. It talks.

Mma Ramotswe looked at the woman's clothing. Her skirt, which was tightly stretched across her traditional thighs, was made of a reasonably good material and was of a neutral grey colour. It said nothing, thought Mma Ramotswe, other than that the woman cared about her clothes and had a bit of money to spend on them. Above the skirt, the blouse was white and … She paused. There on one sleeve, just below the elbow, was a red-brown stain. Something had been dribbled down the sleeve, a sauce perhaps.

“Are you a cook, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

The woman nodded. “Yes,” she said, and was about to say something else when she stopped herself and frowned in puzzlement. “How did you know that, Mma? Have we met one another before?”

Mma Ramotswe waved a hand in the air. “No,” she said. “We have not met, but I have this feeling that you are a cook.”

“Well, I am,” said the woman. “You must be a very clever woman to work that out. I suppose that is why you do the job you do.”

“People's jobs tell us a lot about them,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are a cook, perhaps, because … Now let me think. Is it because you like eating? No, that cannot be. That would be too simple. You are a cook, then, because … You are married to a cook. Am I right?”

The woman let out a whistle of surprise. “I cannot believe that you know all this,” she exclaimed. “This is very strange.”

For a moment Mma Ramotswe said nothing. It was tempting to take undeserved credit, but she decided that she could not.

“The reason why I know all this, Mma,” she said, “is because I read the papers. Three weeks ago—or was it four?—your photograph was in the paper. You were winner of the Pick-and-Pay cooking competition. And the paper said that you were a cook at a college here in Gaborone and that your husband was a cook at the President Hotel.” She smiled. “And so that, Mma, is how I know these things.”

The disclosure was greeted by a burst of laughter from Mma Makutsi. “So you see, Mma,” she said, “we knew these things the moment you walked in here. I did not need to talk to you at all!”

Mma Ramotswe cast a warning glance in Mma Makutsi's direction. She had to watch her with the clients; she could sometimes be rude to them if she thought that they were treating her with inadequate respect. It was a strange tendency, stemming, thought Mma Ramotswe, from this ninety-seven per cent business. She would have to talk to her about it some day and refer her, perhaps, to the relevant section of Clovis Andersen's book in which he described proper relations with clients. One should never seek to score a point at the expense of a client, warned Clovis Andersen. The detective who tries to look smart at the expense of the client is really not smart at all—anything but.

Mma Ramotswe signalled to Mma Makutsi for a cup of tea. Tea helped clients to talk, and this woman looked ill at ease and needed to relax.

“May I ask you your name, Mma?” Mma Ramotswe began.

“It is Poppy,” the woman said. “Poppy Maope. I am normally just called Poppy.”

“It is a very pretty name, Mma. I should like to be called Poppy.”

The compliment drew a smile. “I used to be embarrassed about it,” said Poppy. “I used to try to hide my name from people. I thought it was a very silly name.”