Blue Shoes and Happiness (9 page)

“Set his mind at rest,” she said. “Tell him that you are not going to be one of those women who will give him no peace. Tell him that you are really quite traditional at heart.”

“I will do that,” agreed Mma Makutsi. “I will show him that he need not fear that I will always be criticising him.” She stopped and looked at Mma Ramotswe. There was misery in her expression, and Mma Ramotswe felt an immediate rush of sympathy for her. It was different for her. She was married to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and felt quite secure; if Mma Makutsi lost Phuti Radiphuti she would have nothing—just the prospect of hard work for the rest of her life, making do with the small salary she earned and the little extra she made from the Kalahari Typing School for Men. The typing school was a valuable source of extra funds, but she had to work so hard keeping that going that she had very little time to herself.

Back at her house, Mma Makutsi made the evening meal with care. She boiled a large pot of potatoes and simmered a thick beef stew into which she had put carrots and onions. The stew smelled rich and delicious, and she dipped a finger into the pot to taste it. It needed a little bit more salt, but after that it was perfect. She sat down to wait for Phuti Radiphuti, who normally arrived at seven o'clock. It was now six thirty, and she flicked through a magazine, only half-concentrating, for the remaining half hour.

At seven thirty she looked out of the window, and at eight o'clock she went out to stand at her gate and peer down the road to see if he was coming. It was a warm evening and the air was heavy with the smell of cooking and dust. From her neighbour's house she heard the sound of a radio, and laughter. Somebody coughed; she felt the brush of insect wings against her leg.

She walked back up the path to her front door and into her house. She sat down on her sofa and stared up at the ceiling. I am a girl from Bobonong, she said to herself. I am a girl from Bobonong, with glasses. There was a man who was going to marry me, a kind man, but I frightened him away through my foolish talk. Now I am alone again. That is the story of my life; that is the story of Grace Makutsi.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A MEETING IN THE TINY WHITE VAN

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY, Mma Ramotswe went to see Mma Tsau, the cook for whom Poppy worked, the wife of the man who had grown prosperous-looking on government food. It was an auspicious day—a Friday at the end of the month. For most people, that was pay day, and for many it was the end of the period of want that always seemed to occur over the last few days of the month, no matter how careful one was with money for the other twenty-five days or so. The apprentices were a good example of this. When they had first started to work at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had warned them that they should husband their resources carefully. It was tempting, he pointed out, to view money as something to be spent the moment it came into one's hands. “That is very dangerous,” he said. “There are many people whose bellies are full for the first fifteen days of the month who then have hungry stomachs for the last two weeks.”

Charlie, the older apprentice, exchanged a knowing glance with his younger colleague. “That makes twenty-nine days,” he said. “What about the other two days, Boss?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “That is not the point,” he said, his tone level. It would be easy to lose his temper with these boys, he realised, but that was not what he intended to do. He was their apprentice-master, and that meant that he should be patient. One got nowhere if one shouted at young people. Shouting at a young person was like shouting at a wild animal—both would run away in their confusion.

“What you should do,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, “is work out how much money you need for each week. Then put all your money in the post office or somewhere safe like that and draw it out weekly.”

Charlie smiled. “There is always credit,” he said. “You can buy things on credit. It is cheaper that way.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at the young man. Where does one start? he thought. How does one make up for all the things that young people do not know? There was so much ignorance in the world—great swathes of ignorance like areas of darkness on a map. That was the job of teachers, to put this ignorance to flight, and that was why teachers were respected in Botswana—or used to be. He had noticed how people these days, even young people, treated teachers as if they were the same as anybody else. But how would people learn if they did not respect a teacher? Respect meant that they would be prepared to listen, and to learn. Young men like Charlie, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, imagined that they knew everything already. Well, he would simply have to try to teach them in spite of their arrogance.

Grace Makutsi and Mma Ramotswe knew all about the end of the month. Mma Ramotswe's financial position had always been considerably easier than most people's, thanks to the late Obed Ramotswe's talent for the spotting of good cattle, but she was well aware of the enforced penny-pinching that was the daily lot of those about her. Rose, the woman who cleaned her house in Zebra Drive, was an example. She had a number of children—Mma Ramotswe had never been sure just how many—and these children had all known what it was to go to bed hungry, in spite of their mother's best efforts. And one of the children, a small boy, had difficulties with his breathing and needed inhalers, which were expensive to buy, even with the help of the government clinic. And then there was Mma Makutsi herself, who had supported herself at the Botswana Secretarial College by doing cleaning work in a hotel in the early mornings before she went to her classes at the college. That could not have been easy, getting up at four in the morning, even in the winter, when the skies were sharp-empty (as Mma Makutsi put it) with cold and the ground hard below the feet. But she had been careful, husbanding every spare thebe, and now, at long last, had achieved some measure of comfort with her new house (or half house, to be precise), her new green shoes with sky-blue linings, and, of course, her new fiancé …

The end of the month, pay day; and now Mma Ramotswe parked her tiny white van near the kitchen building of the college and waited. She looked at her watch. It was three o'clock, and she imagined that Mma Tsau would have finished supervising the clean-up after lunch. She was not sure where the cook had her office, but it was likely to be in the same building as the kitchens, and there was no doubt which building that was; one only had to wind down the window and sniff the air to know where the kitchens were. What a lovely smell it was, the smell of food. That was one of the great pleasures of life, in Mma Ramotswe's view—the smell of cooking drifting on the wind; the smell of maize cobs roasting on the open fire, of beef sizzling in its fat, of large chunks of pumpkin boiling in the pot. All these smells were good smells, part of the smells of Botswana, of home, that warmed the heart and made the mouth water in anticipation.

She looked towards the kitchen building. There was an open door at one end and a large window, through which she could just make out the shape of a cupboard and an overhead fan turning slowly. There were people in it too; a head moved, a hand appeared at the window, briefly, and was withdrawn. That was the office, she thought, and she could always just go up to it, knock on the door, and ask for Mma Tsau. Mma Ramotswe had always believed in the direct approach, no matter what advice Clovis Andersen gave in
The Principles of Private Detection
. Clovis Andersen seemed to endorse circumspection and the finding out of information by indirect means. But in Mma Ramotswe's view, the best way of getting an answer to any question was to ask somebody face-to-face. Experience had shown her that if one suspected that there was a secret, the best thing to do was to find out who knew the secret and then ask that person to tell it to you. It nearly always worked. The whole point about secrets was that they demanded to be told, they were insistent, they burned a hole in your tongue if you kept them for too long. That was the way it worked for most people.

For her part, Mma Ramotswe knew how to keep a secret, if the secret was one which needed to be kept. She did not divulge her clients' affairs, even if she felt that she was bursting to tell somebody, and even Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would not be told of something if it really had to be kept confidential. Only very occasionally, when she felt that the burden of some bit of knowledge was too great for one person to shoulder, would she share with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni some hidden fact which she had uncovered or which had been imparted to her. This had happened when she had heard from one client that he was planning to defraud the Botswana Eagle Insurance Company by making a false claim. He had told her this in a matter-of-fact way, as if she should not be surprised; after all, was this not the way in which practically everybody treated insurance companies? She had gone to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to discuss this with him, and he had advised her to bring her professional relationship with that client to an end, which she did, and was crudely threatened for her pains. That had resulted in a trip to the Botswana Eagle Insurance Company, which had been most grateful for the information Mma Ramotswe had provided, and had taken steps to protect its interests.

But the direct approach would not work now. If she went to the office, there was every chance that she would see Poppy, and that would lead to difficulties. She had not warned Poppy that she was coming to speak to Mma Tsau, and she would not want the cook to suspect that Poppy had consulted her. No, she would have to make sure that she spoke to Mma Tsau by herself.

A small group of students emerged from a building beside the kitchen. It was the end of a class, and they stood in groups of two or three outside the classroom, talking among themselves, laughing at shared jokes. It was the end of the month for them too, Mma Ramotswe assumed, and they would have their allowances in their pockets and thoughts of the weekend's socialising ahead of them. What was it like, she wondered, to be one of them? Mma Ramotswe herself had gone from girlhood to the world of work without anything in between and had never known the student life. Did they know, she wondered, just how fortunate they were?

One of the students detached herself from a group and started to walk across the patch of ground that separated the van from the kitchen building. When she drew level with the van, she glanced in Mma Ramotswe's direction.

“Excuse me, Mma,” shouted Mma Ramotswe through the open window of her van. “Excuse me, Mma!”

The young woman stopped and looked across at Mma Ramotswe, who was now getting out of the van.

“Yes, Mma,” said the student. “Are you calling me?”

Mma Ramotswe made her way over to stand before the young woman. “Yes, Mma,” she said. “Do you know the lady who works in the kitchen? Mma Tsau? Do you know that lady?”

The student smiled. “She is the cook,” she said. “Yes, I know her.”

“I need to speak to her,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I need to speak to her out here, in my van. I do not want to speak to her when there are other people about.”

The student looked blank. “So?” she said.

“So I wonder if you would go and tell her, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Could you go and tell her that there is somebody out here who needs to speak to her?”

The young woman frowned. “Could you not go yourself, Mma? Why do you need me to do this for you?”

Mma Ramotswe looked searchingly into the face of the young woman before her. What bond was there between them? Were they strangers, people who would have no reason to do anything for one another? Or was this still a place where one might go and speak to another, even a complete stranger, and make a request for help, as had been possible in the past?

“I am asking you,” said Mma Ramotswe quietly. “I am asking you …” And then she hesitated, but only for a moment, before she continued, “I am asking you, my sister.”

For a moment the young woman said nothing, but then she moved her head slightly; she nodded. “I will do that,” she said. “I will go.”

 

MMA TSAU, a squat, rather round woman, appeared from the door of the kitchen office, paused, and looked out over the grounds of the college. Her gaze fell upon the tiny white van and she hesitated for a moment. Within the van, Mma Ramotswe raised a hand, which Mma Tsau did not see, but she saw the van, and the young woman had said, “There is a woman who needs to see you urgently, Mma. She is outside in a small white van. She is too big for that van, if you ask me, but she wants to see you there.”

The cook made her way across the ground to the van. She had a curious gait, Mma Ramotswe observed; a slight limp perhaps, or feet that pointed out to the side rather than forwards. Mma Makutsi was slightly inclined to do that, Mma Ramotswe had noticed, and although she had never said anything about it, one day she would pluck up the courage to suggest that she should think about the way she walked. One had to be careful, though: Mma Makutsi was sensitive about her appearance and might be demoralised by such a remark, even if it was meant helpfully.

Mma Tsau peered into the van. “You are looking for me, Mma?” The voice was a loud one, surprisingly loud for one of such small stature; it was the voice of one who was used to shouting at people. Professional cooks had a reputation for shouting, Mma Ramotswe recalled. They shouted at the people who worked for them in their kitchen, and some of them—the really famous ones—threw things too. There was no excuse for that, of course. Mma Ramotswe had been shocked when she had read in a magazine about a famous chef somewhere overseas who threw cold soup over the heads of his junior staff if they did not measure up to his expectations. He swore at them too, which was almost as bad. To use strong language, she thought, was a sign of bad temper and lack of concern for others. Such people were not clever or bold simply because they used such language; each time they opened their mouths they proclaimed
I am a person who is poor in words
. Was Mma Tsau one of those chefs, she wondered; this round little person with the blue spotted scarf tied round her head like a doek? It seemed unlikely that she would throw cold soup over somebody's head.

“Yes, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe, trying to put to the back of her mind the sudden mental picture which had come to her of Mma Tsau tipping a pot of soup over … Charlie. What a picture! And it was replaced immediately by an image of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, frustrated by some piece of sloppy work, doing a similar thing to the apprentice; and Mma Makutsi pouring soup over … She stopped herself. “I would like to talk to you, please.”

Mma Tsau wiped her brow. “I am listening,” she said. “I can hear you.”

“This is private,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We could talk in my van, if you don't mind.”

Mma Tsau frowned. “What is this private business?” she asked. “Are you trying to sell something, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe looked about her, as one might do if about to impart a confidence. “It is about your husband,” she said.

The words had their desired effect. When her husband was mentioned, Mma Tsau gave a start, as if somebody had poured … She moved her head back and squinted at Mma Ramotswe through narrowed eyes.