The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Her task completed, Patricia handed the box to Mma Makutsi. “I’ll give you the invoice some other time, Mma,” she said. “I haven’t got the book. I’ll make it out to Mr. Radiphuti, if you like.”

  Mma Makutsi indicated that this would be exactly the right thing to do. She felt slightly awkward about having the invoice made out to Phuti, but she reasoned that this would be happening a great deal in the future and she might as well get used to it. Then, sitting down on one of the fitting stools, she slipped into the new shoes.

  It was an incomparably pleasant experience. The leather of the linings was as soft and as smooth as silk; it caressed the feet. And yet at the same time there was that firmness, that confidence of construction that new shoes have. The leather would yield, of course, but for the moment it was a great pleasure for her feet to be supported in this way.

  She said goodbye to Patricia and left the shop. She could not help but look down at her feet as she walked, noticing the sharp contrast between the pristine white leather and the well-worn concrete of the walkway. It was the white leather roses that made the shoes so undeniably beautiful, she thought. Beside them, other shoes, the shoes of passersby, looked mundane and shabby in their lack of adornment.

  Yes, came a voice. We’re special. You look after us, you hear!

  It was the shoes talking—she was sure of it. She had, of course, heard enough from footwear as to be ready for this sort of thing, but what struck her about these shoes was their confident, almost cocky tone. It was not for shoes to tell their owners what to do, she felt, so she simply ignored them.

  You hear us, hey?

  She continued to ignore them, and the shoes fell silent.

  She was now in the car park, and was heading over towards the Tlokweng Road, where she could flag down one of the crowded minibuses that plied their trade between the outlying suburbs and the centre of town. The lot was busy, and Mma Makutsi had to dodge several vehicles making their way out of parking places: a wide, gold-coloured Mercedes-Benz purred past her, its pampered occupants looking out on the world with that odd mix of disdain and boredom that seems to afflict the wealthy; a pickup truck heavily laden with crates of beer, two smiling men in the cabin; an elderly woman in a small and ancient car, her face slightly familiar—a client of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, she thought. And then, suddenly, a tiny white van.

  Mma Makutsi stood quite still. The van, which had been manoeuvred out of a narrow corner, now turned and began to drive between two rows of parked cars. For a few moments Mma Makutsi stared in silence, paralysed in her astonishment. Then she snapped out of her inaction and waved wildly, trying to attract the driver’s attention. There was no doubt in her mind that it was Mma Ramotswe’s old van. That van had a dent at the back, just above the number plate, where Mma Ramotswe had once hit a post down at Mokolodi—the post, Mma Ramotswe arguing, being in the wrong place. This van had a dent in that precise position, and the odds against it being another van of similar appearance were therefore remote.

  “Come back!” she called. “I want to speak to you!”

  She was heard, but not by the driver of the van, who appeared to be unaware of the gesticulating figure behind him. A couple of shoppers, carrying their groceries out to their cars, looked at her and wondered what was going on, but there was no reaction from the driver.

  “Please stop!” shouted Mma Makutsi, beginning to run after the van. “Please stop!”

  The van was not travelling fast as the cars on either side of it were packed tight. This meant that it was easy enough for her to gain on it. Now she was only a couple of hundred yards behind, and was struggling to draw breath so she might shout out once more. But just as she opened her mouth, she felt something give beneath her, and she lurched forward, all but losing her balance, almost tumbling over. She saved herself, but not her shoes. The near-fall was caused by the breaking of the left heel of her new shoes, and her saving of herself was at the cost of its right counterpart, which snapped off under the sudden strain.

  Mma Makutsi looked down at her new shoes with dismay. One of them felt loose, and she realised that not only had the heel broken, but so too had one of the cross-straps. She looked back up, and saw that the white van was in the course of disappearing round a corner; a moment later it was gone. Her effort, and the loss of her new shoes, had led to precisely nothing.

  It was a moment at which one might simply throw up one’s hands and weep, and for a minute or two Mma Makutsi was tempted to do just that. But then, taking a deep breath, she bent to remove her new shoes. She would not give up and cry; not Mma Makutsi, who had struggled so much to get where she had got in life, who carried on her shoulders all the hopes and prayers of that family back in Bobonong; not Mma Makutsi, graduate summa cum laude of the Botswana Secretarial College with ninety-seven per cent (a mark since equalled by nobody); not Mma Makutsi, the future Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti and associate detective of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

  Taking her old shoes out of the box into which Patricia had tucked them, she slipped them back on her feet and continued on her way to the Tlokweng Road. One or two people had witnessed the tragedy, or at least had seen part of it: a young man passing by, a boy on a bicycle, an old man standing in the shade of a tree. But they had only seen a woman racing after a white van and then stumbling; they had seen her bend down and change her footwear before walking off towards the main road. So might we fail to see the real sadness that lies behind the acts of others; so might we look at one of our fellow men going about his business and not know of the sorrow that he is feeling, the effort that he is making, the things that he has lost.

  PHUTI RADIPHUTI called round for dinner that night, as was his habit. Mma Makutsi greeted him at the door and hung his jacket on the peg she had put up in the kitchen for just this purpose. She was proud of that peg, of the shining brass of which it was made, of the fact that she had positioned it in exactly the right place. She had an eye for decor, she felt, and she was looking forward to decorating their new home, when Phuti got round to acquiring it. Not much progress had been made in house-hunting—indeed, the search had not even begun yet, in spite of the steadily broadening hints she dropped in that direction.

  That evening it was Phuti himself who brought up the subject of houses, although perhaps not with the intention of discussing their own situation.

  “We sold a very large sofa today,” he remarked, as Mma Makutsi dished out the mashed potato. “It was every bit as wide as this room. I went to the customer’s house with the delivery men.”

  “That must be a sofa for very wide people,” said Mma Makutsi.

  Phuti laughed. “Actually, they were very thin. He looked like a rake and his wife was not much more than a beanpole. I do not know why they need a sofa as big as that.”

  Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. “Perhaps they have very fat friends,” she suggested. “Or perhaps they want a big sofa because they themselves are very small. Mma Ramotswe has a theory like that about men and cars.”

  “She has many theories,” said Phuti. It was not a sarcastic or unkind remark, of the sort that one might make about an opinionated person; Mma Ramotswe did indeed have theories, and Phuti Radiphuti in general had a high regard for her views.

  “Yes,” continued Mma Makutsi. “She believes that men who buy big, powerful cars are making up for not feeling big and powerful inside.”

  Phuti Radiphuti considered this. He knew several people with such cars, and he thought that there was some truth in Mma Ramotswe’s observation.

  “I like going to see people’s houses,” Phuti said. “That is why I often go out with the delivery men. This house—the big sofa house—was very nice. Freshly painted. All yellow outside and green inside. It was a very pretty house.”

  Mma Makutsi seized her opportunity. “There are some very good houses,” she said, and added, almost wistfully: “Some of them are for sale, I think.”

  Phuti nodded. “There are always houses for sale. Many houses.”

/>   Mma Makutsi looked down at the mashed potato on her plate. It made a small range of mountains, intersected by rivulets of dark brown gravy. An ant, she thought inconsequentially, might look on this and think it was a whole country.

  She looked up. “Of course, when there are many houses for sale then that will be a good time to buy a house. That is what they call the law of supply and demand. We were taught about it at the Botswana Secretarial College. They mentioned it many times there.”

  Phuti nodded, but only vaguely. “And you?” he asked. “What did you do today?”

  “I went—” she began, and stopped. She had been about to tell him about her trip to the shop to buy shoes, but she could not bring herself to confess to the disaster that had occurred. If she could get the shoes repaired, she could tell him then. But for now it was just too embarrassing—and too painful.

  Phuti took a mouthful of potato, swallowed, and then wiped his mouth with the piece of paper towel Mma Makutsi had put by his plate. “Yes? You went …?”

  “I went to work,” she said.

  “Ah. And what happened there?”

  “The usual thing.”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary, then?”

  “No. As I said: the usual.”

  He nodded. “So it was a so-so day? Just so-so?”

  “So-so,” said Mma Makutsi.

  There was a silence, and they both set to finishing their mashed potato and gravy. As she ate, Mma Makutsi could not help but remember what Mma Ramotswe had once said about telling the truth. “Not saying something can be exactly the same as telling a lie, Mma Makutsi,” she had said. “There are lies you tell with your lips and lies you don’t need your lips for. And once people start telling lies, then they become like spiders who weave their web about themselves. They become stuck—caught by the lies all about them. And then they can’t get out of the web, no matter how hard they try.” Mma Ramotswe had shaken her head in regret over these mendacious unfortunates, and then, as an afterthought, had added, “That is well known, Mma Makutsi. That is well known.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE EVENTS OF AN EVENTFUL MORNING

  HAVING BEEN the first to arrive in the office the next morning, Mma Ramotswe was one cup of tea ahead of Mma Makutsi. It was her second cup of red bush tea of the day, the first having been consumed in the garden of her house on Zebra Drive on her early morning walk-round. She did that walk every day, at exactly the same time, with the result that she was sure the birds she saw were those she had seen the day before, and the day before that. Some of them, she suspected, recognised her and understood that whatever dangers the day ahead held in store for them, this particular woman was not among them. And there were many dangers for birds—from snakes in the trees in which they made their nests to the hawks and eagles that could descend like arrows from the sky above. She remembered as a girl being called by her father to witness a noisy drama taking place in a tree on the edge of their fields near Mochudi. She had heard the birds before she had seen them, as they filled the midday air with strident, high-pitched squawking. And as she and Obed approached the tree, she saw a whole dancing flock of birds, dark little dots against the sky, dipping and darting above the canopy of a spreading acacia.

  “Why are they dancing?” she had asked.

  “Not dancing, Precious. They are defending their home.”

  Nearing the tree, they stopped, and he pointed to a dark shape that was the birds’ nest. “Can you see it?” he asked. “There—just over there.”

  She had stared into the tangle of twigs and leaves. There was movement, but she was not sure what it was, until suddenly one of the twigs seemed to unwind itself and move sinuously between two neighbouring branches.

  “Yes,” said Obed. “That is the snake. And these poor birds can only shout and fly about. They cannot stop their enemy.”

  She had asked him to throw a stone, to deter the snake from its attack on the nest, but Obed had simply shaken his head. “We cannot do that,” he said. “We cannot always stop the things we do not like.”

  She had been astonished. Everybody threw stones at snakes—it was what people did—and his refusal stuck in her mind. Later, much later, she remembered his words and pondered them. We cannot always stop the things we do not like. She knew now what he meant, of course—that nature had to be left to take its course—but she had realised that there was a far greater truth there too. There were some things that one could stop, or try to stop, but it was a mistake to go through life trying to interfere in things that were beyond your control, or which were going to happen anyway, no matter what you did. A certain amount of acceptance—which was not the same thing as cowardice, or indifference—was necessary or you would spend your life burning up with annoyance and rage.

  Mma Makutsi might be gently reminded of this, she thought. Her assistant allowed herself to be annoyed by the apprentices—particularly Charlie—and by their feckless ways; it might be better, Mma Ramotswe felt, if she accepted that young men behaved foolishly no matter what anybody said to them, and that the only real cure for that was time and maturity. You could speak to them, of course, you could try to show them where they were going wrong, but you should not work yourself up into an impotent rage when they went off and behaved in exactly the same way as young men always had.

  Charlie had come into her thoughts that morning as she walked about her garden. She wondered whether he would be at work that day. He had absented himself from the garage before on more than one occasion, but returned a day or two later, full of excuses, usually relating to family funerals or sick aunts or matters of that sort.

  “Just how many grandfathers do you have, Charlie?” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had asked once. “If I remember correctly—and you must tell me if I am wrong—you went to the funeral of your grandfather ten months ago, and then again three months back. And now he has died again. This is very sad that he should be dying so much.”

  Mma Makutsi, who had overheard this reproach, joined in gleefully. “That is very unfortunate, Charlie,” she said. “Most of us have to die only once. Once. You are making your poor grandfather die over and over. That is not very kind, Charlie.”

  On those occasions he had come back, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who was not only a fine mechanic but a good and generous employer too, had done nothing more than dock a small amount from the young man’s pay—not even the proper amount that should have been forfeited, as Mma Makutsi had pointed out.

  “Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, you are too kind to that young man,” she said. “He has to learn that no work means no pay. That is lesson number one, as they taught us at the Botswana Secretarial College. Stay away, no pay; full day, can play. That is what we were taught.”

  But Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had just smiled. “When men are young, like Charlie, the brain is not quite right. It is like an engine that goes smoothly most of the time, but then backfires. That is what is happening. And it doesn’t help to lose patience, you know.”

  Mma Ramotswe thought that Charlie’s latest disappearance might be more serious. Although they had talked about the need for him to assume his responsibilities for his twins, she had her doubts as to the likelihood of this. It might have been unwise to put too much pressure on him, as he might just decide—as he probably already had done—simply to move away. There were jobs elsewhere to be had by young men with some mechanical skills, even if they were not fully qualified mechanics. Somebody had recently approached Fanwell with the offer of a well-paid post at a safari camp in the north, and had the young man not been reluctant to leave his family, he might well have seized the opportunity. If Fanwell, who was much quieter and less assertive than Charlie, could attract such offers, then Charlie could certainly do the same. The Okavango Delta, remote as it was, would be a good place for a young man seeking to avoid the demands of a girlfriend with twins.

  She had finished her tea and walked back to the house. It was now that the day’s work began: the rousing of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who was quite capab
le of sleeping through his alarm clock; the waking up of the children and helping Motholeli to dress and get into her wheelchair; the preparation of breakfast—these were just the first of the many tasks that the day entailed. And then, of course, there was the office, and the …

  … and the first cup of office tea, which she had almost finished by the time Mma Makutsi came in, put her bag down beside her desk, and started the day with a wail. “Oh, Mma Ramotswe, I am very, very upset. This is terrible. Oh, I do not know what to do—I do not.”

  Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet, crossed the room and put an arm round her assistant’s shoulder. “Oh, Mma, what has happened?”

  Mma Makutsi, feeling that perhaps she was being a trifle overdramatic, tried to smile. “I’m sorry, Mma, I didn’t mean to make you think the world is coming to an end. No, it is not that bad.” She paused as Mma Ramotswe, looking relieved, returned to her desk. “But it is still bad. Very bad.”

  Mma Ramotswe did not have to prompt her assistant any further.

  “I bought those shoes,” Mma Makutsi began. “They were not quite the shoes that you saw, but they were like them. They were very beautiful, with white flowers on the front, made of leather, of course.”

  “Very suitable,” muttered Mma Ramotswe.

  “I have never seen such pretty shoes before,” continued Mma Makutsi. “And they were comfortable too. They were very comfortable.”

  Mma Ramotswe noticed the ominous use of the past tense. The shoes had been stolen, perhaps, or left behind in a minibus. Anything left behind in a minibus would never be seen again, as Mma Potokwane had once discovered. She had taken a minibus back to Tlokweng one day after shopping in town for a new dress. The parcel containing the dress had been left under a back seat; a few days later she had seen her new dress being worn by a woman standing by the side of the road. She had tackled her about it, of course, but the woman had claimed to have been given the dress by a friend, and would certainly not be handing it over. And if Mma Potokwane wished to take the matter any further, she was perfectly welcome to raise the matter with the woman’s brother, who was a policeman and did not take kindly to false accusations of crime being levelled against perfectly innocent persons …