The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (13) (21 page)

Mma Makutsi considered this. “That means that some of your things are better than others?”

“You could say that,” said Phuti. “Although we do not say that ourselves, or people would then ask us which was the better furniture and they would buy that and leave the stuff that’s not so good. That is always a big problem for people who have shops. So you have to say that everything’s first class.”

“And this is true, isn’t it?” asked Mma Makutsi.

“Yes,” said Phuti. “Only some first-class items are
more
first class than others.”

“I see.”

That afternoon they were to look at sofas and beds. They had already identified a dining-room table and a set of eight matching chairs: these had been ordered from a trade catalogue and would arrive from over the border a few weeks later. The sofa and the bed would be chosen from the large stock that the Double Comfort Furniture Store, the largest furniture store in the country, already had in the showroom.

They left Phuti’s office and made their way into the cavernous warehouse that was the Double Comfort Furniture Store. As they entered the store itself, they passed one of the employees, a middle-aged woman wearing a smock and carrying a bag of what looked like polishing equipment. The woman stopped, smiled at Phuti, and then turned to Mma Makutsi.

“It is you, Mma,” she said. “I’m very happy to see you.”

Phuti introduced her. “This is Mma Rosemary. She has worked here for a long, long time.”

“Every day,” said Mma Rosemary. “Same job.”

Mma Makutsi greeted her in the traditional way. She had noticed the courteous way in which Phuti dealt with his employees and had once mentioned the fact to Mma Ramotswe, who had commented that if that was so, then she could be sure that he would make a good husband. “A man who is polite to the people he is in authority over will always be a good man,” she said. “Look at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni; he is always polite to the apprentices. And he is a very fine husband, Mma.” She paused. “He is even polite to Charlie, Mma—even when Charlie is being … well, you know how Charlie can be.”

Mma Makutsi swallowed. She knew that she had to be kinder to Charlie and she was trying, she really was. But how should a woman—any woman—react to a young man who said some of the things that Charlie said? Who had said, for example, that women could not fly aeroplanes because they would always be looking in the mirror to check that their lipstick was all right? Yes, Charlie had said that; those were his exact words, and she had exploded and said that he needed to wake up to the fact that women were flying aeroplanes right over his head at that very moment. Charlie had gone to the window and looked up at the sky and said that he could not see any aeroplanes being flown by women, and was this because they had perhaps already crashed? Mma Ramotswe had
intervened then and politely taken Charlie to task, while Mma Makutsi calmed down. Those occasions were difficult. She knew Charlie would grow up eventually, but what if he grew up from a young man who held opinions like that into an older man who thought exactly the same way? That was the trouble with growing up: people did not always grow up in the way in which you might like them to grow up. And that, as Mma Ramotswe would put it, was a well-known fact.

Now Mma Rosemary reached out and took Mma Makutsi’s hand in hers. It was an entirely natural gesture—one of acceptance, one of solidarity. “You are now with us,” she said.

Mma Makutsi saw Phuti break into a smile, and she smiled too. “It is very good,” she said.

“And you have chosen such a beautiful woman,” Mma Rosemary said to Phuti. “You are a lucky man to have a beautiful wife like this. We are all very proud of you, Rra.”

Mma Makutsi felt her hands being gently squeezed as this compliment was paid; it showed, she thought, that it was meant. You did not squeeze hands when you lied; it could not be done.

“You are very kind to me, Mma Rosemary,” she said.

The other woman beamed up at her; she was considerably shorter than Mma Makutsi. “That is because you have made our Phuti so happy, Mma Radiphuti,” she said. “And that has made us all happy.”

They moved off. Mma Makutsi thought:
Mma Radiphuti—that is me; I am Mma Radiphuti. I am the wife of this wonderful, kind man and I am not dreaming. This has happened. I am Mma Radiphuti
.

“She is the best polisher in all Botswana,” remarked Phuti as they continued on their way into the store. “She can make tables glow like the sun. People come in, you see, and they touch the tables after they have been eating fat cakes or doughnuts. And so
the tables have fingerprints all over them. Mma Rosemary sorts that out with her tins of polish and her rags.”

Mma Makutsi listened to this. “People can be very dirty,” she said. “They have dirty hands. Not all people, but quite a lot of people do.”

Phuti agreed with this. “It must be very difficult if you are a person who has to shake hands with people all day. A president, maybe, or a big film star. All those people come up to you and say,
Please shake my hand
, and you want to ask them if they’ve washed their hands. But you can’t do that, can you—not if you’re one of these politicians or film stars. You have to shake hands first and then you must think afterwards:
Have they washed their hands?
”

They passed one of the tables that had been freshly polished by Mma Rosemary. “See that?” said Phuti, pointing at the gleaming hardwood surface. “That is like a mirror. If you had a table like that, you could use it to shave with in the morning. You could look at your face in the surface and shave.”

The sofas were next, and there they stopped. Mma Makutsi gazed out over the large array of highly stuffed, opulent-looking couches. Many of them were made of leather, most of it black, but in some cases cream or highly coloured reds and greens. She wondered what it would be like to have a red leather sofa, and for a moment she saw herself seated on such a thing, fanned perhaps by one of those large electric fans, drinking tea and eating some rich morsel. If one had a sofa like that, one might sit on it all day, supported in the utmost comfort, reflecting on one’s good fortune though not, she hoped, without a thought for those whose own sofas were less comfortable, or indeed for those who had no sofa at all.

She bent down to examine a large four-seater covered in a gold-coloured material to which a fringe had been attached. She hardly dared look at the price tag, but did so and recoiled in shock. Surely
no single sofa could cost anything like that? How many cattle did that represent? She did a quick calculation. Were there people who would actually pay such a price, and if they did, would they not feel permanently uncomfortable knowing that they were sitting on so expensive a piece of furniture? Would one simply admire such an item and not sit on it? Could one perhaps leave the price tag on it after purchase, so that visitors to the house could see what you had paid for it and marvel? An ostentatious person would probably do that, but she, Mma Makutsi, would never want to flaunt her wealth. Or Phuti’s wealth, she reminded herself; for I am still Mma Makutsi from Bobonong, and I shall never—
never
—indulge myself in a sofa like that when there are people in villages in the country for whom even a chair, a modest wooden chair, is a luxury, well nigh unaffordable.

Phuti noticed her examining the gold-coloured sofa. “Do you like that one, Grace?” he said. “Why don’t you try sitting on it? See if it’s comfortable.”

Mma Makutsi hesitated. “Oh, I was just looking, Phuti. We do not need a gold-coloured sofa …”

“Try it out,” he said. “Sit on it.”

She moved round to the front of the sofa and very slowly lowered herself onto it. She felt the cushion beneath her, at once firm and soft, supportive but yielding. She leaned back, and it was like giving oneself into the arms of a gentle, comforting lover. “Oh,” she muttered, and then, “oh,” again.

“You look very good on that,” said Phuti. “That sofa is the right colour for you. Gold. That is your colour, Grace.”

She felt the fabric with her fingers. It was as smooth as satin. Gold? Was that really her colour? She had always thought that red suited her very well, but perhaps gold was also suitable for people who looked good in red. If they bought this sofa, which of course they would not—not at that price—then she might perhaps buy a
pair of gold-coloured shoes that she could wear when she was sitting on her sofa. She had seen a pair in the shoe shop at Riverwalk, and she could go back and see whether they were still available. “Would you like that one?” Phuti asked. “We can get it if you like.”

She sat up and propelled herself off the sofa. “No,” she said. “It is very nice, Phuti, but it is not right for us.”

He frowned. “Are you sure? You looked so comfortable.”

“I am sure. And I can already see one over there—that brown one—that I think might be right for us.”

They made their way over to the brown sofa—a much more low-key affair—and she sat down on it. It was considerably less physically comfortable than the gold-coloured sofa, but correspondingly more mentally comfortable. This was a sofa on which one might sit in casual clothes, on which one might eat a doughnut or drink a cup of tea without worrying about crumbs or splashes. This was a sofa
entirely free of guilt
.

“I think that this will be a very good sofa,” she said to Phuti. “You try it.”

Phuti sat down. “It is well made,” he said. “I know the people who make these sofas. They are honest people.”

“Then I would like this one,” said Mma Makutsi.

Phuti leaned across and whispered in her ear. “I am very happy, Grace. I am very happy that you have chosen this one rather than the gold one. That shows me that you are not one who is impressed with flashy things. You are gold inside, Grace, not just outside.”

She turned and kissed him lightly. “That is the kindest thing anybody has ever said to me.”
Gold inside, not just outside
.

Phuti called over the floor manager, who had been hovering in the background, and arrangements were made to transfer the sofa to the storage warehouse. Then they returned to the office before Phuti drove Mma Makutsi back to the agency. On the way, they
stopped at a petrol station, and Phuti set about filling the car. As he instructed the attendant, a van drew up alongside the neighbouring pump and a man in blue overalls stepped out.

Mma Makutsi watched. Phuti looked up and saw the man, whom he obviously recognised. For a moment or two they looked at one another before Phuti gave a nod of greeting. The other man turned away. Now he hesitated, looked over his shoulder, and then busied himself with the cap of the van’s fuel tank. It struck her as strange that the man should have so pointedly failed to respond to Phuti’s friendly overture; even a smile would have been polite—a smile or a nod of acknowledgement.

“Who is that rude man?” she asked Phuti as they drove off a few minutes later.

“He is one of the builder’s men,” he said. “I met him when I went to look at the house. Now he doesn’t seem to want to know me.”

Mma Makutsi frowned. “Why?”

“I have no idea,” replied Phuti. “There are some people who are very shy. Maybe he is one of those.”

Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. “Shy, or rude, maybe. Rude like his boss,” she said. “He is rude too. Rude boss; rude men. Sometimes that is the way it happens.”

That was possible, he said. His own father had drummed into him the lesson that the way you treat your staff is the way they will treat you. “That is something that some employers just do not understand,” Mr. Radiphuti Senior had said. “But in the Double Comfort Furniture Store we will never forget that, will we, Phuti?”

He had not. He had remembered it.

Mma Makutsi was silent for the rest of the brief journey back to the office. Silent; thinking.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, Mma Ramotswe received a telephone call from the secretary at the orphan farm. This was a woman she knew only slightly—a woman who had been brought up in Lobatse and whose son was a promising athlete, a barefoot runner, whose prowess on the track was occasionally featured in the
Botswana Daily News
. They exchanged the customary greetings, and then Mma Ramotswe, vaguely remembering that there had been something in the papers about the son—what was his nickname?—had asked after the young man.

“I’m sorry, Mma,” she said, “I cannot remember your son’s name, but I saw something in the papers and I wondered how he’s doing. You must be very proud of him.”

The woman laughed. “Nobody remembers his real name. That is because they all call him by his nickname. They call him Lightning now, and we even use that at home. Yes, I am proud of him, Mma; I am very proud.”

“Lightning is a good name, Mma. Very good.”

“As long as it doesn’t go to his head,” said the secretary. “I heard him call one of the other runners Tortoise the other day. I told him
that was very unkind and that one day his own legs would get slow—like mine.”