“Are you all right, Rra?”
He muttered something inaudible.
“Rra?”
“Come over here, Mma Ramotswe. Come over here.”
He was bending over, looking at something on the ground. As she approached, he pointed, the gold band of his wristwatch glinting in the sun as he did so.
“You see that?” he said. “I don’t want to touch it before you see it. Look.”
She peered down at the ground. There was a small, silver-coloured object, half covered by a dried leaf that had blown across it. She went down on her knees; the ground beneath the meagre covering of vegetation was hard and stony. She reached out and picked up the object. A real detective, she thought, would have used tweezers and immediately dropped the evidence into a convenient plastic bag. But where were the tweezers and plastic bags out here? Or even in the office? She would hardly find tweezers among the rough spanners and wrenches of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.
She looked at Mr. Moeti. “A key ring.”
He held out his hand. “Let me see it, Mma.”
She watched him. “Is it yours, Mr. Moeti?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen this before.”
“It is a little thing,” she said. “It must be easy to drop something like that.”
“Yes,” he said. He was staring at her intently. “Mma Ramotswe?”
She took the key ring back from him. “Yes, Rra.”
“Was this dropped by the person who did this thing?”
She gestured to the wide expanse of surrounding bush. “This is not a very busy place, Rra.”
He looked embarrassed. “Of course. I am not a detective—I am a farmer.”
“How did you take the bullock away?”
He pointed towards the farm. “I brought my tractor. I came with my stockman.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yes.”
She felt the key ring between her fingers. There was a rough edge to it; it was almost sharp; a small, metal map of Botswana.
“And could this be his?”
He answered quickly: “He has never seen it either.”
“Oh? How do you know that?”
He looked away. “I mean that I do not think he has ever seen it. That is what I mean.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
A TRUTH ABOUT LIES
MMA RAMOTSWE had told Mma Makutsi that they should close the office while they were out, but had said nothing about coming back. Mma Makutsi was conscientious—one did not achieve ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College without demonstrating responsibility and the capacity for hard work—but she felt, nonetheless, that Mma Ramotswe could hardly have meant for her to go back to the office after her shopping trip. Buying shoes was not a simple transaction; one had to take one’s time about it, and it was already noon. If the choosing of the shoes took two hours—perhaps three, with time for contemplation—then there would surely be no point in walking back to the office (another half an hour) only to have to close up for the day an hour or two later. No time and motion expert would think that a good idea; such a person, she felt, would be more likely to suggest going home after the purchase of the shoes in order to be fresher and more energetic for work the next day.
Mma Makutsi had attended a lecture by a time and motion expert in her final month at the Botswana Secretarial College. It had been a riveting talk, perhaps the most entertaining of all the lectures they had received at the college, and she remembered almost every detail of what was said. The expert was a rotund man who had immediately engaged the attention of the students—or almost all of them—by telling them how he performed the task of getting dressed each morning. “I am very efficient,” he said, smiling as he spoke. “When I get undressed, I hang my shirt on a hanger straightaway. Then, in the morning, if I am wearing the same shirt—and it is not efficient, I believe, to change your shirt every day, unless it is very hot—then in the morning I back up into the shirt like this, while at the same time picking up my trousers with my free hand, like this, and putting first one leg in and then the other. As I put in the first leg I make sure that a shoe is lined up to receive it when it comes out the bottom of the trousers. In this way, I put all my clothes on at the same time. It is a big saving of time. Three minutes and twenty seconds, to be precise. I have plotted it on a graph and taken the average.”
The students had all been impressed—or, again, almost all of the students had been impressed. Violet Sephotho, of course, had pretended to be bemused by it all.
“Big nonsense,” she said scornfully as they filed out of the lecture room. “No man gets undressed in the way he says they do. Men do not hang their shirts on hangers when they get undressed.”
“Yes, they do,” said Mma Makutsi. “I do not think that this college invites liars to become visiting lecturers. He said they do, and I believe him.”
Violet looked at her pityingly. “What do you know about it, Grace Makutsi? What do you know about the way men get undressed?”
And then she had smiled knowingly and flounced away, examining her painted fingernails with elaborate interest.
“She is always talking,” whispered one of Mma Makutsi’s friends. “Men run away from women like that. They put on their clothes when they see her coming. That is the real truth.”
Mma Makutsi would have liked to believe that, but felt that the evidence actually pointed the other way. Men had seemed to flock around Violet the moment she left the front gate of the secretarial college. That was a good place for idle men to congregate, for some reason. There was always a small knot of men at the front gate, pretending to have business there, but hoping only to get a glimpse of, and perhaps share a word or two with, girls like Violet. It was sad, thought Mma Makutsi; surely these men had something better to do, but the truth of the matter was that they did not. In the minds of the men who used to attend at the gate, this was by far the best way they could conjure up of spending their time.
As she approached the shop in the Riverwalk shopping centre, Mma Makutsi remembered that time and motion lecture. Efficiency was, in general, a good goal, but she felt, as she saw the mouth-watering selection of shoes displayed in the window, that this was not an occasion on which it should be practised. Just in from Pariss panted an enthusiastic sign. Pariss? There was an extra s there, she concluded; she would have to point it out to them—gently, of course, but one could not let these things go uncorrected. And she doubted, too, whether these shoes came from Paris; Johannesburg, perhaps, or maybe Nairobi. But if they really came from Paris they would surely be even more expensive than they already were.
She looked for the pair of shoes that Mma Ramotswe had identified. There was a pair placed on a pedestal, and she thought they were probably the ones. She peered at them. They were attractive, yes, and she could see how they might be tempting for somebody slightly older, but they were not quite right. Her eye moved to another pair, and then met the gaze of the assistant inside the shop, who was looking back out at her. The assistant waved; they knew each other and got on well.
Mma Makutsi pushed open the glass door of the shop. “Dumela, Patricia. You are well?”
The assistant smiled. “I saw you before you saw me, my sister. I could tell that you were coming in here. Shoes for your wedding?”
Mma Makutsi nodded. “Phuti has encouraged me. He says that I can buy whatever shoes I want. There is no budget on these.”
Patricia was impressed. She clapped her hands together like a schoolgirl anticipating a treat. “No budget! He is a very good fiancé if he says ‘no budget’! You must marry him quickly, Grace, so that he becomes a husband who says ‘no budget.’ Such husbands are very unusual. In fact, you usually only find them in museums, they are so rare. Husband museums.”
They both laughed. But then Patricia leaned forward to touch Mma Makutsi sympathetically on the forearm. “I heard, Mma. I heard that bad news about poor Phuti’s accident. So sad!”
&
nbsp; Mma Makutsi thanked her. “He has made a very good recovery. You know that he lost a foot?”
Patricia closed her eyes in sympathy. They had a small box of single shoes in the back of the shop—shoes that had been separated from their twin through theft or bad stock control; would one of these fit Phuti, and thus find a home that way? She wondered whether she should ask, but decided that it might not be tactful, particularly so soon after the accident; perhaps later she might say, “Mma, there are some men’s single shoes in the back, if they could be of any use …” Instead she said now, “Ow! I’d heard that, Mma. That was very bad news.”
But bad news should not be allowed to interfere with the business of buying shoes, and the subject was gently changed. Leading Mma Makutsi to the display stands, Patricia gestured to the tempting array of shoes. “Look at this, Mma: Is this not a sight that makes you happy that you’re a woman?”
They both laughed again.
“I am always happy I’m a woman,” said Mma Makutsi. “Not just when I see nice shoes like this; I think that all the time.”
She paused, her eye caught by a pair of black patent-leather shoes with red piping round the sides. They were not wedding shoes, but would be very suitable for wearing to dances—if she was going to go to dances, of course, which was now perhaps rather doubtful after Phuti’s injury.
“Being a man is not easy,” Mma Makutsi continued. “They are always struggling to prove that they are better than the next man.”
“And they have those very rough skins,” offered Patricia.
Mma Makutsi had not really reflected on that, but Patricia was right, she thought. Phuti’s skin was not all that rough, but there was certainly a place on his neck where it looked as if he had reacted to the razor. Perhaps he should grow a beard. But that would merely exchange roughness for prickliness, and she was not sure which was worse.
“And yet,” Mma Makutsi said. “And yet there is much to be said for some men.”
“Oh, that is true,” said Patricia. “Just as there are some women who are …” She left the sentence unfinished.
“Very bad,” suggested Mma Makutsi.
There was a silence, finally broken by Patricia. “Such as …”
“Violet Sephotho.”
“Exactly.”
Again there was a silence. Then Patricia said, as if speaking to herself, “Violet Sephotho, the politician.”
Mma Makutsi frowned. “Did I hear you correctly, Mma? Did you say, ‘Violet Sephotho, the politician’?”
Patricia nodded. “I did. Have you not seen the posters?”
Mma Makutsi had not seen any posters, and now she listened with dismay as Patricia told her about the posters that had appeared in her part of town a day or two previously. These were emblazoned with a large photograph of Violet, under which there was an exhortation to vote for her in a forthcoming by-election. Mma Makutsi said nothing as she absorbed this news. She had heard of the by-election—caused by the death of a popular member of parliament—but she would never have imagined that Violet Sephotho, of all people, would turn out to be a candidate. Violet Sephotho the shameless husband- and fiancé-snatcher; she who at the Botswana Secretarial College had been lazy and uninterested, going so far as to laugh at several members of the teaching staff, and to mock their ways of speaking; she who had achieved barely fifty per cent in the college’s final examinations, and yet who had gone on to get glittering job after glittering job (such was the injustice of the world). What possible claim could such a woman have to represent the people of Gaborone?
“I am very shocked,” said Mma Makutsi. “It will be a very bad day for Botswana if that woman is elected to parliament. It will be the beginning of the end.”
“It will not happen,” said Patricia. “God will not allow it.”
“God cannot stop everything,” said Mma Makutsi. “He is very busy dealing with big things. He cannot watch the results of elections here in Gaborone.”
“Then the voters will,” said Patricia.
Mma Makutsi pointed out that the voters might not know the full extent of Violet’s unsuitability to be their representative. “Not everybody has seen what she is capable of,” she said.
“Then we must tell them,” said Patricia. “I shall put a notice in the window of the shop saying Do not vote for Violet Sephotho. Many people walk past the shop window every day, and they will see this message.”
“Every little bit will help,” said Mma Makutsi. “I might make a badge with the same message and wear it every day. And I could ask the Botswana Secretarial College to put it up on the notice board outside the college.”
This idea appealed to both of them, and indeed there were others, of varying degrees of practicality. The placing of a notice in the shop window seemed possible, but Mma Makutsi was less sure about the Stop Violet–sponsored half-marathon, or the Violet Sephotho Prevention charity concert in the football stadium. “These are all interesting ideas,” she said to Patricia. “But I do not think that we can do them all. For the time being we should just try the notice in your window.”
Mma Makutsi now pointed to a pair of shoes near the top of the display. They were white, with a distinct satiny sheen, and had straps crossing at the ankle. She knew immediately that these were the shoes in which she would be married. The knowledge was a relief in a way, as it put an end to doubt, and having the right shoes—as these undoubtedly were—would make everything else, including the dress and handbag, fall into line.
Patricia reached forward and plucked one of the shoes from the display. “I knew it, Mma!” she exclaimed. “I knew that these would be the ones you chose. I didn’t want to say anything, because I did not want to interfere, but I knew in my heart, Mma, that these would be the right shoes for you.”
She handed the shoe to Mma Makutsi, who took it gingerly, as one might take possession of a great treasure, an item worthy of religious awe.
“Oh, my …,” Mma Makutsi muttered, as she examined the shoe. “This is a beautiful shoe.”
“A very beautiful shoe,” said Patricia. “And do you see that rose, Mma? We have no other shoes, not one pair, that has a rose on the front. It is very rare.”
Mma Makutsi touched the small leather rose; it was supple, soft, and dyed perfectly white, even on the underside of its petals. “So pretty,” she whispered.
Patricia lowered her voice. “They will suit you, Mma. You are a very beautiful lady and you deserve these shoes.”
Mma Makutsi looked away. She did not think that she was beautiful. She would like to be beautiful—when she was a young girl she had wished for beauty with all her heart, but had become reconciled to the fact that beauty was a gift conferred in the crucible of one’s mother’s womb and was not on offer at any later stage. But to hear Patricia say it made her wonder, for a moment or two at least, whether it was indeed true; whether beauty had somehow crept up and settled upon her, as age, or the signs of worry, might do.
Patricia consulted a screen to see if the shoe was in stock in the right size. It was, and she retreated into the back of the shop to retrieve the box. Returning a few minutes later, she took the shoes out with a flourish and indicated to Mma Makutsi that she should sit down to try them on.
The ankle straps were fastened with a small silver buckle, which Patricia did up with the facility of one with long experience in such things. “There!” she said, stepping back to survey the effect. “Now stand up, Mma, and see how the shoes feel. They mustn’t pinch anywhere, or you will limp down that aisle, and that would never do.” For a moment a picture flashed into her mind of Mma Makutsi, her large glasses flashing in the light from the church windows, limping down the aisle with Phuti, still feeling the effects of his injury.
Mma Makutsi stood up. The shoes had reasonably high heels, but they were not meant to be walking boots, after all, and she was accustomed to heels even higher than these. Not, of course, that she wore heels as high as those favoured by Violet Sephotho, who could be toppled, she always
felt, brought down with just one judiciously timed push. Violet Sephotho! She did not want to think about that woman at a time like this, but the thought of her as a member of parliament made the back of her neck feel warm with resentment. Members of parliament could become government ministers, and that would be even worse: Violet Sephotho, Minister for Cosmetics and Husband-stealing, perhaps.
“Well, Mma? How do they feel?”
She told Patricia that the shoes were comfortable enough and that she would take them. If they could be put aside, then Phuti Radiphuti would call in later to pay for them, as he had promised.
Patricia looked over her shoulder. She was the assistant manager, not the manager, nor the owner, and her discretion was limited. But everybody knew who Phuti Radiphuti was, and was well aware that he owned the Double Comfort Furniture Store. If credit could not be provided to the fiancée of such a man, then it could be provided to nobody. “I know I’m not meant to do this,” she said, “but I think it will be perfectly in order for you to take these shoes now, Mma. Phuti can come in tomorrow, or even the day after that. We trust you.”
Mma Makutsi was on the point of saying that it did not matter to her if the shoes remained in the store, but then it occurred to her that it would be useful to break them in before wearing them in earnest. There was walking to be done at a wedding, and standing too, as you talked to relative after relative, friend after friend.
“Thank you, Mma,” she said. “I think I’ll wear them in.”
Patricia looked surprised. “Are you sure, Mma? There is some rough ground round here, even in the parking lot. I’ve seen people break heels out there. Snap. No heel any more.”
Mma Makutsi thanked her for the warning. “I shall be very careful,” she said. “I shall watch where I’m putting my feet.”
Patricia took Mma Makutsi’s old shoes and wrapped them respectfully in tissue paper before putting them in a box. Mma Makutsi watched her friend at work; it was a vocation, this, almost akin to being called to higher secretarial office, or being, as she herself was, an associate detective. Patricia clearly treated shoes with respect, and this extended to tying the box up with string so that it could be more easily carried.
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party Page 8
