Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (12 page)

Mma Makutsi had stormed out of that interview and had tried to forget about Violet Sephotho. In this she had succeeded until Violet had cropped up again as the writer, both she and Mma Ramotswe had suspected, of a series of anonymous letters of an insulting nature, some of which made reference to large glasses. That had resulted in a spectacular chase through the aisles of the supermarket at the River Walk shopping centre, and since then Violet had not been heard of or seen. And now here she was, turning up in the very heart of Mma Makutsi's camp, as a new employee—in the beds section—of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop.

Phuti was unaware of the full perfidy of his new employee. He had detected a certain coldness on his fiancée's part when he had mentioned that he had given Violet a job, but he had put this down to some old rivalry at the Botswana Secretarial College— a minor clash of personalities, perhaps—that would soon be forgotten. He had no idea, of course, that Violet had come to work in his shop with a very clear aim. Mma Makutsi, being a woman, had worked out what this aim was, whereas a man, particularly a trusting and rather innocent man like Phuti, would never suspect.

“So, Mma,” he said when Violet reported to the office early on Monday morning. “You are here in good time. It is only …” He looked at his watch. The shop opened at eight o'clock and it was barely half past seven.

Violet smiled at him. “I always like to be at work on time,” she
said. “It is best to be completely ready when the first customers come. I have always thought that, Rra.”

Phuti nodded his approval. “That is the best attitude,” he said. “I have seen customers walk out of shops because the staff were not ready to assist them.”

“I cannot stand that sort of thing,” said Violet. “The customer is always right.”

Again Phuti indicated his approval. “That is rule number one in this establishment,” he said. “And I'm very glad that you know that, Mma.”

“Please call me Violet, Rra,” she said. “I would prefer that. It is more friendly, I think.”

“If you wish, Mma. I usually call members of my staff by their first names, if that is what they want.”

“I do want it, Rra. You can even call me Vi, if you wish. Some people who are very close to me call me that. It is short for Violet, you see.”

After Violet had signed the staff contract, Phuti accompanied her to the new beds section, where she was to preside as assistant manager. Then he began to show her the beds and to tell her about the relative merits of each of the ten or so models that they carried.

“Most of the beds we stock are double beds,” he said.

“That is nice,” said Violet. “That is less lonely. Who wants a single bed these days?”

Phuti frowned. “There is some demand,” he said. “Sometimes a person whose spouse is late, for example, might ask for a single bed. Or there are grandmothers. They like single beds if their husband is a bad snorer.”

Violet giggled. “I never snore,” she said.

Phuti said nothing. “And these beds over here,” he went on to explain. “They are the most expensive beds we have. They are
what we call deluxe, first-class beds. They have very comfortable mattresses. Very soft. Very springy.”

“Very nice beds for a newly married couple,” said Violet. She lowered her eyes slightly as she spoke, in a manner suggestive of modesty, indeed suggestive in every sense. But Phuti saw only the modesty, and was impressed. He had wondered whether Violet was a bit forward, but this demure remark pointed to a nature quite in keeping with the ethos of the bed department of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop.

He showed her the desk where she would sit, and the filing system for customer information.

“I am very familiar with filing systems,” Violet said. “I studied them a lot at the Botswana Secretarial College—all different types of filing systems: alphabetical, numerical … and other types. All of them.”

Phuti smiled. “Ah, the Botswana Secretarial College! Of course, you know my fiancée there—you told me that. Grace.”

“Makutsi,” said Violet quickly, breaking into a smile. “Grace Makutsi. Of course, I knew her. We all knew her. She was very popular with everybody.”

“That is good to hear,” said Phuti. “It would not do to marry an unpopular lady, would it?”

Phuti was not particularly good at witty remarks, and this was about as witty as he became. But Violet showed her appreciation by bursting out laughing, which pleased him, as she suspected it would.

“Yes,” she said. “She was very popular with all the girls … and the boys too. Very popular with the boys.”

Phuti gave a start. He smiled, but the smile was a nervous one. “The boys too? But there were no boys, surely, at the Botswana Secretarial College, were there?”

Violet sat down at her desk and toyed with a ball-point pen.
She did not look at Phuti as she spoke, but stared somewhere behind and beyond him, as if casting her mind back to the events of a distant, barely remembered past. “No, there were no boys at the college itself. But there were always boys at the gate, if you know what I mean.”

She glanced at Phuti before her gaze slid away again, off to that distant point. “There was a café near the gate, you see, and this was very popular. All the boys knew that at the end of classes the girls from the college would go to this café and sit around. So the boys always went there so that they could sit around with the girls and chat to them. We used to call it the dating shop. Hah! The dating shop. Those were the days, Rra.”

For a few moments Phuti said nothing. Then he cleared his throat and began to speak. His stutter, which now only came at moments of stress, emerged, but only slightly, like the top of a treacherous rock lurking under the surface of a river. “Di … di … did Grace go to this ca … café?”

“Oh yes,” said Violet. “Grace was the life and soul of the café. A big magnet for the boys. Wow! You should have seen her.”

Phuti tried to laugh, but even the laugh had a strangled sound to it. Violet watched him, and her pleasure showed. “Yes, those were certainly the days. But you know something? Even today, a few years on, I look back on those times and think: the years may come and go, but none of us really changes, do we? I'm still the same person I was in those days …” And here she paused, before continuing, “And you must be the same person you were then. And Grace, too. She won't have changed, I think.”

Phuti said nothing. There was something desperate about his manner, and he began to tug at the right cuff of his shirt with his left hand. Violet's arrows had gone home, and she knew it. It was time, though, to change the direction of her campaign. It was always possible to get a man away from a woman, and one had to
be careful not to overplay one's hand at the beginning. But she was confident that she could do it. She had done it twice before, although on those occasions the men in question had been mere temporary entertainment and had been abandoned once the novelty wore off. This was different. Phuti would not be temporary entertainment—in fact, he could not be considered entertainment in any sense of the word. But a woman reached a stage in life where her goals changed, and the most important of these was undoubtedly the security of landing a comfortably-off husband.

Phuti was ideal: a mild, unobtrusive man who could be twisted round one's little finger. Perfect. And the fact that he was engaged to be married to Grace Makutsi, assistant detective at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and distinguished graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College (ninety-seven per cent)? Pah! Not an obstacle at all; a tiny anthill at the most, to be kicked aside by the effortless stride of a fashionable pair of shoes as they went by.

MMA MAKUTSI
, of course, knew nothing of this conversation between Phuti Radiphuti and Violet Sephotho. At the time that it took place, though, she was nonetheless thinking of Violet and of the threat that this dangerous, ruthless woman presented. Phuti had told her that Monday morning was to be his new employee's first day in the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, and ever since she had woken up that morning she had been unable to get the thought of Violet out of her mind.

As she travelled in to work on the crowded minibus, she noticed a heavily made-up woman in the seat in front of her. The woman had applied such a thick layer of cream to her skin that when the morning sun slanted in through the minibus window, it flashed off her face, as if off a signalling mirror. Miles away, thought Mma Makutsi, miles away up in the hills overlooking the dam, they might spot this flash of light and wonder what message
was being sent to whom. No, that was a ridiculous thought, but look at her, Mma Makutsi said to herself, she's every bit as bad as … Violet Sephotho came to mind again, no matter how hard she tried to think about other things. And when the woman in the front turned and smiled at somebody at her side, Mma Makutsi found herself thinking:
flirt
, just like Violet Sephotho; unable to keep her eyes, and her hands, no doubt, off men. Such women were a danger to the public, and the Government should put up large warning signs like those health notices you saw. These would say:
Watch Out for Women Like This!
And underneath would be a picture of Violet Sephotho, or somebody looking quite like her.

In normal circumstances, thoughts like these might have helped; an amusing fantasy about a troublesome opponent may defuse the threat that the opponent presents; in normal circumstances … but these were not normal times at all; far from it. These were times of war, even if hostilities had not yet been formally declared. And this realisation induced a sinking feeling in Mma Makutsi, because she realised that Violet Sephotho had a weapon in her armoury that she simply did not have. Glamour.

That was the worst of it—that dreadful conclusion. I am a lady with glasses, thought Mma Makutsi. I need the glasses to see. I am also a lady with a certain skin problem. That is not my fault, and there is not all that much you can do about your skin. We are given a skin at the beginning, and that is our skin. If the skin you have has some blotches, then you have to find a man who does not mind about these things—a man who looks at you, sees your skin, and then goes under the skin to see what lies beneath; to see whether the person inside the skin can cook, or likes to listen to him, or can keep a house and a yard neat and clean, and will be kind to his aged father—even if the aged father makes strange noises when he is eating, and often even when he is not eating. That is what you hope a man will look for under a blotchy skin.

But unfortunately men are weak. They may know that they should look for these finer qualities in a woman, but they do not always do it. They see, instead, the clothes that a woman wears, and they look at her figure and the way she walks, and at the bright things she puts in her hair—beads, silver combs, and the like—and they cannot help it, poor men, they are dazzled, just as a mouse is hypnotised by the swaying of a cobra. And then the cobra strikes and it is all over for the mouse, just as it is for the man. For the mouse, it ends in a quick scuffle of dust and a few convulsive movements; for the man, it ends in the noise and fuss of a wedding, when all the uncles and aunts, especially the aunts, come up to him and surround him and touch and prod him and then he is finished and that is the end of the man.

Mma Makutsi looked out of the minibus window. Violet Sephotho. Violet Sephotho. Very well, Violet Sephotho: I am a peaceful woman, and I do not like to be at daggers drawn with anybody. But there comes a time when you have to defend what you have. Phuti Radiphuti is mine and I will fight to the end to keep him. To the very end.

The minibus was now on the Tlokweng Road, approaching the stop at which Mma Makutsi would alight. She felt much better after that stirring piece of self-addressed rhetoric, and as she stepped down from the minibus she caught sight of the small doughnut tuck-stand that she frequented on a Friday, as a treat. Today was only a Monday, but she would indulge herself, she thought. She would buy a doughnut for herself—a rich, greasy, sugar-dusted doughnut—and one for Mma Ramotswe too. They would eat them together over their morning tea, in companionable enjoyment—two ladies sharing a common office, but two friends as well, united as friends so often are, in the love of the things they loved.

T
HAT WAS VERY GOOD
, Mma Makutsi,” said Mma Ramotswe, licking the sugar off the tips of her fingers. “There is a lot to be said for starting the week with a doughnut.” She picked the last few crumbs off her plate and popped them into her mouth. “Up to now, we have been finishing the week with a doughnut. Maybe we should change and start the week with one.”

“Or we could start
and
finish the week with one,” said Mma Makutsi. “That would always be possible.”

Mma Ramotswe struggled with temptation for a moment, but only for a moment. “That would be a very good policy, Mma.” And not only did it strike her as being very attractive from the point of view of personal satisfaction, but it also made sense in terms of staff morale. She had read a magazine article recently in which the author, described as a
famous expert
, had written that any employer wishing to get the best out of staff should introduce a system of staff perks.
Small privileges are always welcome
, he wrote.
A staff outing not only provides pleasure, it bonds staff together and motivates them
. Mma Ramotswe thought that staff outings were undoubtedly a good idea, but she did not feel that
they were necessarily a good thing for a business as small as hers. She and Mma Makutsi had plenty of opportunities to bond when they sat in their little office together; indeed, they had been bonding from the day that Mma Makutsi had first arrived and talked herself into a job. And if they were to go on an outing together, where would they go? It was all very well for people who worked in places like Johannesburg to talk about going on staff outings; there were plenty of places to go to in a city of that size. Gaborone was so much smaller, and there were few places that she and Mma Makutsi could go to that they would not have already been to many times before.