The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine (4 page)

Mind you, that was no reason to be complacent about black mambas. Most people had seen one at one time or another, as black mambas were to be found now and then, along with cobras, puff adders, and other potentially lethal snakes.

As she looked around at her kitchen that morning, Mma Ramotswe wondered whether there were any places where a black mamba might lurk if it were to decide to come into the house. It was not at all fanciful to entertain such a possibility: snakes did come into houses, especially during the hot weather when even a cold-blooded creature like a snake might find the blast of the midday sun too hot to bear. She remembered a snake coming into the house in Mochudi when she was a girl and Obed Ramotswe spotting it. He had whispered to her to stand quite still while he reached for his
sjambok,
that hide whip used to drive mules and oxen. The snake, though, had seen his movement and had raised its head, ready to strike. Fortunately, it had thought better of it, and had turned tail and shot out of the house. She had not seen a snake in the house since then, but it was bound to happen sooner or later.

She noticed that there was a small hole between the floor and the base of one of the cupboards. She had not seen it before, and it occurred to her that the bottom of a cupboard, the dark place below, would be an ideal place for a snake to hide. Coiled up in such a refuge, cool and concealed, a snake would be well placed to take advantage of any scraps of food that might fall off the well-stocked shelves above…if snakes liked such things. Presumably they did. And of course there was nothing a snake liked more than a hen's egg, and there were always plenty of eggs in that particular cupboard. It would be simplicity itself for a reasonably lengthy snake—and black mambas were often as long as a person is tall—to slide the upper part of its body up to the bowl of eggs, open wide its hinged jaws, and swallow one. A black mamba might find such living quarters highly congenial and might live there for months, for years indeed, before the unfortunate householder detected his presence. And that would be the point at which the uninvited guest said to his unwilling host: “I'm sorry, but now it's time for you to go,” and those wicked little fangs would be exposed and…She shuddered.

She crossed the kitchen to stand immediately in front of the cupboard. Very gently, she eased open the cupboard door and gazed at the shelves on which the various foodstuffs were stacked. Right at the top were the sweet things—the jars of produce she bought from the sale of work out at Kgali Junction: melon jam, cumquat spread, marmalade made out of bitter oranges from the Cape. There was the tin of Lyle's Golden Syrup, with its picture of a contented lion on the label; there was the box of sugar lumps; there was the sticky cordial that she had made for the children.

On the shelf below, she kept tinned foods: sardines from the fisheries of Namibia, bully beef from the factory down at Lobatse, tins of baked beans in tomato sauce. And then, on the shelf below, were the perishables—the packets of flour, the container into which she decanted the maize meal, and the bowl of eggs. She bought these eggs from a man who called round on his bicycle every week, a man who wore a crumpled hat not unlike the hat that her late father had worn; she could never turn down a man in a hat like that. He told her that they came from his hens at Mochudi, and she had bought them on the grounds that Mochudi eggs would have been the eggs she ate as a child, but then one day she discovered a supermarket stamp on one of them and her faith in the egg-man had been dented. His prices were still competitive, though, and she liked him in spite of his unreliability on that point.

She looked at the eggs. Suddenly she noticed that one of them had two small holes—two puncture holes—on its top. It was, she thought, exactly the sort of mark a snake would make if it had tried, and failed, to swallow an egg. She looked more closely, nestling the egg in the palm of her hand while she peered at the tiny punctures. The shell was slightly speckled at that point, with fragments of white mixed with the brown, and she decided, with a surge of relief, that these were not holes at all but imperfections in the surface: the egg itself was quite intact.

She replaced the egg and gazed at the food cupboard, trying to remember when it was that she had last tidied it. Never, she thought; I have never tidied the food cupboard. The thought made her smile. How many women were there in Botswana walking about with the guilty knowledge that they
had never tidied the food cupboard
? Everybody had some secret or other—something they had never confessed to another, even to those who were closest to them. In her work, Mma Ramotswe had learned this and had discovered, too, that even the most inconsequential of secrets could weigh heavily on a person's soul. An act of selfishness, some small unkindness, could seem every bit as grave as a dreadful crime; an entirely human failing, a weakness in the face of temptation, could be as burdensome as a major character flaw: the size of the secret said nothing about its weight on the soul.

She tried to think of any other secrets she might have, but she could think of nothing. She had a weakness for fat cakes, but then that was hardly a secret to anybody who knew her, and indeed half the population of Botswana—no, more than that—almost the entire population had that weakness. Perhaps further secrets would surface. And as for her friends, what about them? What secrets did Mma Makutsi have? The answer to that came to her quickly: Mma Makutsi had more shoes than she would own up to having. She had claimed the other day she possessed only six pairs, but Mma Ramotswe was sure that this was not true. And Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni: What were his secrets? None, she thought—apart, perhaps, from the subject of at least some of his dreams. He was quite happy to tell her when he had had a dream about gearboxes and engines—which was almost every night, as far as she could work out—but there were some mornings when he said he did not remember what he had been dreaming. She was not convinced, but never pressed him on the matter.

And then there was Puso. He was such an odd little boy, with such an active imagination; one might suppose that his was a life filled with secrets, but she knew that this was far from true. Puso still had the honesty of childhood and tended to reveal without hesitation what was in his mind. But there was a secret—and now she remembered it.
Puso drank the bathwater when he was still in it.
She had seen him doing it, and had been about to admonish him when she stopped herself. Children needed at least some corners in their lives where there was no adult footfall. That might be one.

She reached out to the top shelf of the cupboard for a packet of spices. The date by which the contents were to be consumed was printed on the packaging. It was more or less exactly three years earlier. She picked up a jar of apricot jam. The children did not like apricots, and she and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni were not great jam-eaters. She opened the jar: a crust of mould, cream and beige in colour, covered the jam, which could not even be seen beneath it. She shuddered: mould looked the way it did for a reason—it was a warning. She put the jar down on the floor, the beginning of what was to be a large stack of out-of-date or inedible foods.

The task of tidying the food cupboard took close to two hours, at the end of which the shelves were transformed, the foodstuffs arrayed in neat rows. It was just the sort of cupboard that a house-proud woman would keep—akin, she thought, to the well-ordered files in which Mma Makutsi took such pride.

It was half past ten on the first morning of her holiday. She had tidied the food cupboard, drunk two cups of red bush tea, and given her teeth a slightly longer-than-usual brushing. Now what? She walked into the living room and gazed out of the window, through the verandah, to the garden beyond. The day was well under way, the sun high in the sky, and there was not very much she could do in the garden in that heat. Even the verandah might be a bit uncomfortable, she felt, in spite of the shade it provided.

She sat down in one of the living-room chairs and looked about her. The room was tidy and the floor, made of squares of smooth cement, had been polished only a couple of days ago by Rose, her part-time cleaner. She had applied red polish until the floor was like a smooth red mirror, as slippery and almost as reflective. She looked up at the ceiling for cobwebs or for fly-spots: the white ceiling-boards, although buckled here and there, were pristine. The maid had cleaned even there.

Mma Ramotswe sighed. There was nothing to do in the house and nothing to do in the garden. She could read something, of course, but the magazines in her living room were well thumbed and familiar. There were several old copies of
Reader's Digest
and a
Drum
magazine from over the border, but even had she been in the mood to read she would have found nothing new there. She had read the
Reader's Digest
s from cover to cover, and
Drum
was more for the eyes than for the mind, in spite of the irresistible headline displayed so prominently on its cover: “Man Mysteriously Loses Nose.” Even yesterday's
Botswana Daily News,
brought home in the evening by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, had been thoroughly perused. And there was never anything really surprising in the newspaper because people were always doing the same things. People show no inclination to change, thought Mma Ramotswe; they do the things they've always done time and time again. It would be more newsworthy if people did not do the things one expected of them. That would be news indeed: “Finance Minister Makes No New Promises,” or “No Sign of an Increase in Crime This Year,” or “Minister of Water Affairs Says Nothing About Possible New Pipeline.” People would be most interested to read
real
news like that.

She glanced at her watch. The last ten minutes had been very slow, and now it was only twenty to eleven. At this rate a day would seem like a week; a week would seem an eternity. No, she would not spend any more time sitting about the house, even if she was on holiday. She would go to the President Hotel and have mid-morning tea, with perhaps one or two of their fish-paste sandwiches to keep hunger at bay before she returned to cook Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's lunch. There was always a group of ladies having tea at the President Hotel—she had seen them there—and she knew one or two of them slightly. She could join them and enjoy a bit of stimulating conversation. Time always passed much faster when there was talk to be listened to.

S
HE PARKED
under a convenient tree near the President Hotel. As she locked the van behind her, a young boy appeared out of nowhere and stood in an attitude of expectation. “Two pula, Mma,” he said.

“Two pula for what?” she asked. “Why are you offering me two pula?”

The boy grinned, showing a set of brilliant white teeth. “I am not giving you two pula, Mma—you are giving two pula to
me
!”

“Oh, really?” said Mma Ramotswe. “And why am I giving you two pula?”

“For deposit. Two pula now, and then two pula when you leave. To look after your van.”

Mma Ramotswe arched an eyebrow. “But my van is all right. My van does not need any looking after. It is not going to run away.”

The boy laughed. “Vans do not run away, Mma! No, vans get damaged. That is the problem for vans—they get damaged.”

“And who damages them?” asked Mma Ramotswe, pulling herself up to her full height.

The boy moved back slightly. His cocky air was now somewhat dented. “Bad people,” he said. “There are bad people who damage vans.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mma Ramotswe, advancing even further. “Then we shall have to get the police onto these bad people, I would say. Or maybe you can tell me who they are, since you seem to know so much about this.”

“You'll be sorry,” said the boy, his voice lowered. “If you do not give me four pula, then you will find that some bad person will have damaged it. Scratched it. Maybe put a nail in the tyres. There are many nails about here, Mma—many nails.”

Mma Ramotswe's eyes narrowed. “If this van is damaged, young man, there will be a lot of trouble for you. I will give you a big spanking. I am very good at spanking people like you and you will be very, very sorry.”

The boy took a step back.

“So now,” she continued, “you just give me two pula right now—come on, hand over two pula. And if the van is not damaged when I come back, you can have your two pula back. If not, then you will get a very big spanking. I will find you. I am a detective, you see, and a detective can find a boy like you and give him a big spanking. Understand?”

The cowering boy reached into his pocket and extracted a couple of coins.

“Thank you,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You will get this back later. It is a deposit for good behaviour. Understand?”

The boy nodded, and Mma Ramotswe, struggling to conceal a smile, began to make her way into the President Hotel. The trouble with the world today, she thought, was that people were not prepared to stand up to bad behaviour. They looked away, they pretended they had not seen anything, and hardly anybody bothered to deal with badly behaved children, with the result that they could run wild, could go on the rampage unchecked. It was not necessary to spank children—she did not approve of that and would never do that herself—but it was sometimes necessary to
threaten
to spank them. That, after all, was how young male lions were kept in order by the senior lions—and it worked. There were things, then, that lions knew, but that we did not; or that we did once know, but had now forgotten; not, she thought, that we should try to learn too many lessons from lions.

ON THE WELL-SHADED UPPER VERANDAH
of the President Hotel, looking out over the traders in the square below, Mma Ramotswe negotiated her way between tables. The hotel was busy, and would become even busier at lunch time, when a buffet would be laid out. The customers for that were yet to arrive, the tables currently being occupied mostly by women meeting their friends before returning to their houses for lunch.

Mma Ramotswe looked about her. Gaborone had grown in recent years, but it was still in some senses a village, as many cities are, with a great deal of village intimacy surviving. It was rare for somebody like Mma Ramotswe to go about the town without spotting familiar faces, and here in the President Hotel there were plenty of these. There, for instance, was Mma Phumele, wife of Mr. Spots Phumele, owner of Deep Clean Cleaners (“We Do the Dirty on Dirt”). Seated next to her, expostulating on some topic of the day to an attentive audience, was Mma Gabane Gabane, mother of a senior government minister and rumoured, probably correctly, to be the formulator of virtually every policy of her son's ministry. Then there was a lady unknown to Mma Ramotswe, but on the right of that lady was an old friend of Mma Potokwane's—a woman from Molepolole who had for many years been a matron at the Princess Marina Hospital and who was always selling raffle tickets for the nurses' benevolent fund.

Mma Phumele caught Mma Ramotswe's eye. “Come over here, Mma,” she called. “There is a seat here for you.”

The other women looked up. “It's Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Gabane Gabane. “Are you here on detective business, Mma? Are you going to investigate us?”

This was greeted with good-natured laughter.

“I am on holiday,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am not working at the moment.”

“Then we shall be able to speak freely,” said Mma Gabane Gabane.

Mma Ramotswe sat down and gave her order to the waitress who had been hovering round the circle.

“Mma Gabane was just telling us about a very silly woman,” said Mma Phumele. “Tell Mma Ramotswe what you told us, Mma.”

Mma Gabane Gabane seemed to be very pleased to be invited to repeat her story. “Well, Mma,” she began, “this woman comes from up north, from Francistown. She came down here to work with the diamond people, and she met this very nice man who works as an accountant there. He has a very good job and is very solid. He is like a big tree, Mma.”

“As solid as a big tree,” said one of the other women. “You know the sort of man.”

“And then,” continued Mma Gabane Gabane, “they buy a really comfortable house out towards the airport—you know those new houses out there. It was very convenient for their work—both are in the Debswana building, you know. There is no problem parking there. So they get in the car in the morning and drive round to the diamond building and park very easily. Then they are inside, working away all day, until five o'clock, when they come out and drive their car back to the house just down the road. That is their life.”

“And a very good one too,” said Mma Phumele.

Mma Ramotswe nodded. She saw nothing wrong in such a life, but she had a feeling that something was shortly to go wrong. People who live near their work and have easy parking arrangements…well, even if they have husbands who are as solid as a tree, things can go badly wrong. Sex, she thought. That is what is going to go wrong here.

And she was right. “This woman,” Mma Gabane Gabane went on, “this foolish, foolish woman met a young man who worked in the same office. He wasn't an accountant—nothing like that—he was a trainee, Mma Ramotswe, just a trainee. He was eighteen.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Mma Phumele, who looked at Mma Ramotswe to gauge her reaction. She would be every bit as shocked as the rest of them, she imagined. And Mma Ramotswe was shocked. “He was eighteen, Mma? Just eighteen?” she said.

“Eighteen,” said Mma Gabane Gabane. “Eighteen years old, Mma. Can you believe it?”

“I can,” said Mma Ramotswe, with a sigh. “I have seen things like that in the course of my work.”

All eyes turned to her. “You have seen many such things?” asked Mma Potokwane's friend. “Eighteen-year-old boys with…with ladies over thirty?”

Mma Ramotswe lowered her eyes. She was not enjoying this conversation, but she had to say something. “There are many shocking things that happen,” she said. “I see them in my work.”

One of the ladies exhaled loudly. “You must tell us about these things some time, Mma,” she said. “You must tell us about some of these shocking things.”

“Yes,” said another. “We are very keen to disapprove.”

Mma Gabane Gabane asserted her control once more. “They were carrying on, Mma Ramotswe, in one of the cupboards.” She paused, letting the full effect of this detail sink in.

“The stationery cupboard,” said Mma Phumele.

Mma Ramotswe imagined what Mma Makutsi's reaction to that would be.
Stationery, Mma? They were carrying on in the stationery cupboard?
There was no doubt that Mma Makutsi's secretarial soul would be deeply offended by the very idea of conducting an affair in a stationery cupboard.

“But what if somebody came to get some paper?” asked one of the women. “Or a pencil? What then?”

“I think they probably locked it from inside,” said Mma Gabane Gabane. “These people are very cunning once they start to get up to their tricks. They think of all the angles. I have seen it so many times before.”

Now all eyes shifted to her; eyes widened at the thought of the subterfuges of those engaged in illicit affairs. What exactly had Mma Gabane Gabane seen? And would she share it with them?

But the conversation had to move on.

“What happened then?” asked a woman who up to that point had said nothing. “Were they found out?”

Mma Gabane Gabane drew in her breath in preparation for the denouement. “I will tell you what happened,” she said. “The husband had no idea that his wife was having an affair with this…this boy. He had no idea at all. But—and here she's going to learn her lesson, ladies—but what she didn't know, that shameless woman, was that because of all the security they have to have in the diamond building, there were closed-circuit television cameras all over the place, including in the stationery cupboard. They have them there in case anybody might be tempted to take some diamonds in there to conceal them about their person.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mma Phumele. “They take that very seriously at the diamond place. If you go out to the mines, you know, you have to be X-rayed in case you swallow any of the diamonds.”

“It is very important,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We do not want people to steal our diamonds. We do not want any of this smuggling that goes on elsewhere.”

“You are right, Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Gabane Gabane. “My son is always telling me about that. He says that we must keep our diamonds clean. He says that our Botswana diamonds are the cleanest in the world.” She paused. “So there was a camera in there, and it was recording all the goings-on between this woman and this boy. And the man in the security department who looks at all these recordings is the cousin of that good man who is like a strong tree. He went to him and said, ‘Your wife, Rra, is becoming a film star.' That is what he said, Bomma. Those were his actual words.”

“Ow!” said Mma Phumele. “Was that the end for that woman?”

Mma Gabane Gabane nodded. “It is a big offence to carry on in a stationery cupboard. Not a criminal offence, of course, but an offence in terms of company regulations. That woman was fired from her job and her husband sent her home to Francistown. He was very, very sad. What is the use of having a good job and a nice house and then finding that your wife is meeting a young lover in a stationery cupboard?”

“That man must have been very let down,” said Mma Potokwane's friend. “I feel very sorry for him.”

“You are right,” said Mma Gabane Gabane. “He was very sad and he lost a lot of weight. I saw him a few days ago. He is thin, thin now. He is a very unhappy man.”

“Well,” said Mma Phumele. “People who do that sort of thing may reap what they sow, but they also destroy the harvest of those who are around them.”

“That is very true,” said Mma Gabane Gabane. “But I need more tea now, I think. Who is ready for more tea? Once we have more tea we can come back to this lady in the stationery cupboard.”

Tea was poured, and the conversation drifted along. Then Mma Gabane Gabane said to Mma Phumele, “I see there is a new place.”

Mma Phumele asked her what the new place was. “Everything is new these days,” she said. “You close your eyes and there is some new place. What new place are you talking about?”

“It's a school of something or other,” said Mma Gabane Gabane.

“I've heard there's going to be a school of fashion,” said Mma Potokwane's friend. “That will be very popular, I think. Why study mathematics or engineering or whatever when you can go and study what people are wearing?”

Mma Gabane Gabane found this amusing. “You could sit here in the President Hotel and write down notes on the clothes you see. That would be your homework.”

“I think it would be more difficult than that,” said Mma Phumele. “Fashion is a very complicated subject. You have to know about design and materials and all that sort of thing.”

Mma Gabane Gabane nodded. “This new college is nothing to do with fashion. It's business, I think. Business or accountancy. They say that there will be many students coming to it.”

SHE DID NOT STAY LONG.
Making an excuse that was at least partly true—“I have to go home now to make my husband's lunch,” the
now
being the untrue part—she walked back down the outside staircase that led onto the square below. She had not enjoyed her time with these ladies, whose conversation had been limited to the scandals of the day. It was not edifying to dwell on the failings of others; they might be lightly touched upon but should not be recited with such delight as these ladies had shown. At the end of the debate on the woman from Francistown and her trysts in the stationery cupboard, Mma Ramotswe felt sorry for her rather than disapproving or censorious; we might all have our heads turned by a young man, we might all yield to the temptations that the stationery cupboard offered; none of us was
above
all that. If this was what the world of idle women had to offer, then Mma Ramotswe was glad that she was fully employed, even if on holiday.

She walked round the side of the hotel to the place where she had left the van. It was still there, partly shaded by the tree under which she had parked it. That was good, as a vehicle left fully exposed to the sun in this hot weather would be a furnace inside once one opened the door. Sometimes it was impossible to get in until the interior had cooled down; sometimes it was necessary to spread a cloth or blanket over the seat or one might scald oneself on sitting down at the wheel. Sometimes the wheel itself was like a hoop of foundry-heated iron, far too hot for the human hand to touch.