The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She stopped to look up at the sky, remembering something her father had told her: “If you look at the sky, the things you need to think about will come into your mind.” It was such a strange thing to say, and yet, on the odd occasion that she had done this, it had worked: she had thought about important things, and it had become clear to her what she had to do.

  The sky was empty—a high, singing vault of blue that made her dizzy just to look at it. She closed her eyes, and then reopened them. If you looked up into that blue for long enough it seemed that the air was dancing, as air can do when it is heated and there are currents within it. She thought: I have been unfair to Mma Makutsi. I have not trusted her to deal with things that she has shown herself to be perfectly capable of handling.

  She looked down at the ground, at Botswana beneath her feet. The next time she saw Mma Makutsi, she would repair the situation. She would tell her how highly she thought of her and say, too, that were it possible, she would promote her; but such promotion was not possible, as she was now a partner in the business. But then she thought better of that; she would say nothing about promotion, because even if it were not possible for Mma Makutsi to rise higher in the agency, if she mentioned the idea then Mma Makutsi would be sure to find some way of achieving it. So she would remain silent, for, after all, it is perfectly possible to be both silent and grateful at one and the same time.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HE WILL BE GIVEN A LOT OF LOVE

  THE NIGHT BEFORE she drove out to Mochudi, it rained. The storm hit shortly before midnight, announcing itself with a great explosion of thunder that cracked the sky, that shook the land. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni slept through it all, but Mma Ramotswe awoke and lay in bed listening to that most blessed of sounds—rainwater drumming on the tin roof of a house. It was what the country desperately needed if the crops were to be saved and the cattle to flourish. It would heal the earth and soothe the minds of the people and the animals waiting for just this relief. It would lower the temperature and bring cool and green to a land that for months had been hot and brown. The blessing of rain was the one thing in Botswana that would unite those who might disagree about much else: pula, the word for rain in the Setswana language, also meant good fortune—“Pula! Pula! Pula!” was the encouraging chant that children learned at school and carried in their hearts for the rest of their lives. “Pula! Pula! Pula!”

  At first light she went out into her garden. The rain clouds had passed on, although there were still purple banks in the distance—the good fortune of somewhere to the west that would now be getting its share of the bounty. There had been a large downpour, and the ground was sated; here and there puddles had formed where the earth could cope with no more; here and there, rising from holes in the ground, came clouds of flying ants, wings aflutter, an irresistible target for the birds swooping in and out of the airborne feast.

  She filled her lungs with the morning air, so clean now, so sharp and fresh, while at her feet the miracle of transformation was already occurring—tiny shoots of green, appearing between grains of sand, were making their presence known. Within hours there would be a green tinge to the brown; within days there would be fully formed blades of grass.

  A few hours later she was on the way to Mochudi, following the road that she knew so well. Not far from the village, this road took her past a small burial ground, a short walk from the road, and she stopped and made her way to one of its corners. There she found the two graves that she had come to visit: the grave of her mother, lost to her when she was not much more than a babe in arms, and that of her father, the late Obed Ramotswe. She had erected a new stone to him a few years earlier, as the old one had been knocked over by a donkey and had split across the top. Obed Ramotswe, A citizen of Botswana, A much-loved husband and father, now with the Lord Forever. That was all it said, but it was enough. It might have said Great Judge of Cattle; it might have said Miner; it might have said Witness to the Birth of a Country of which he was so Proud; but it did not, for the words spoken by stone may be brief and to the point, and yet carry so much weight.

  As was the custom, above the graves there was a small canopy, a tattered piece of canvas that she renewed every so often, stretched across a rectangle of metal bars that supported it. This provided shade for the sleepers below, and showed that they were still loved by those who kept their shelter there.

  She touched this, then took a step back, wiped away her tears, and went back to the van. It became no easier as the years went by. People said that it would; people said that you forgot late people after a few years, that you forgot what they looked like and what they said; but they were wrong—she was sure of that. She had never known her mother, but every detail of her father was etched in her memory—the old hat he wore, the way he looked at her when he spoke, the things he told her about his life. She would never forget all that because it was now part of her, as familiar to her as the weather.

  Continuing her journey, she arrived on the outskirts of the village and drove to the house of the cousin with whom she would spend the next few days. She always got a warm welcome there, as she and the cousin had grown up together and had many memories in common.

  The cousin embraced her and then asked her what brought her to Mochudi.

  “I am on holiday,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have been on a sort of holiday for a little while; now I am on a full-blown holiday.”

  “So you want to do nothing?” asked her cousin.

  “I want to do nothing,” confirmed Mma Ramotswe. “Nothing except talk to you and drink tea and help you with the children and maybe sweep the yard. And cook, of course. I will go and buy food at the store and I shall cook it for you. That is the sort of holiday I am on.”

  The cousin showed her pleasure at this response. “That sounds perfect to me. I was hoping that somebody would come along and say just what you’ve said.”

  “Then let’s start my holiday with a cup of tea and a chat about what’s been happening in Mochudi.”

  “A very good idea,” said the cousin. “I have some very interesting stories to tell you. You remember that girl who was at school with us, whose father was a brother of the Chief? Do you remember her? Well, she found a husband at last. She has married a man who owns a delivery truck. They have two small children now, and those children have both got very large noses.”

  “Just like her,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  The cousin nodded. “I have always said that our faces tell everything that needs to be known about our history. I have always said that.”

  “I think I remember you saying it,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “And then there is a new teacher. This one has got two diplomas, they say—one from the University of Botswana and one from the University of Cape Town. We have not had a teacher with two diplomas ever before.”

  “Then the children will end up knowing twice as much,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  The conversation continued in this vein while they drank tea. Then it was time for lunch, cooked by the cousin: rice, peas, and chicken, which is what the cousin always made for Mma Ramotswe, because they had eaten that dish on Sundays when they were children and it brought back memories.

  “I am a bit tired,” said Mma Ramotswe after she had done the washing-up.

  “Then you must go and have a sleep,” said the cousin. “In this hot weather a sleep in the afternoon is always a good idea.”

  She led Mma Ramotswe to her room, at the back of the house, where it was cooler and shadier, and where Mma Ramotswe sunk onto the bed and closed her eyes. It seemed to her that the unwinding that should have happened at the beginning of her holiday, but that for various reasons had not taken place, was now beginning. Her limbs felt heavy; her mind gloriously empty; her skin cool thanks to the breeze that blew in through the house, entering by the front door, moving through her room, and passing out of the back.

  She dozed, entering into a world half of dream, half of wakefulness. She thought of her garden at home, and saw the fir
st green leaves; she thought of the children making their way to school; she thought of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni cooking for them in her absence—he had assured her that he would cope perfectly well. She thought of rice, peas, and chicken, and of how much she loved that combination. And then she thought of Clovis Andersen’s The Principles of Private Detection; she saw the book on her desk, and she thought of its author, far away in Muncie, Indiana, which he had told her had great cornfields about it, and she saw those too, the plants waving very gently in the wind. And then, quite unexpectedly, a phrase from the book came to her: Don’t believe everything anybody tells you, he said. There are people who will tell you lies because they take a secret pleasure in misleading you.

  She suddenly thought of a small boy called Samuel. She saw the woman who had been using him, and she heard her saying, That woman is late. She had said that; she had told her that Samuel’s mother had died a year before, but she had not told him of this. And then she heard Mma Potokwane saying, That boy is inconsolable.

  A shocking thought occurred. What if it were not true? What if that woman had not wanted her to find Samuel’s mother for whatever reason—either because she feared retribution or because she did not want her claim on the boy to be challenged by a real parent?

  The thought made her sit up. It was entirely possible. And now that poor little boy had been told that his mother was dead: yet nobody had checked up on that. She had simply accepted the facts as they were told to her, but Clovis Andersen would surely say that she should have verified them.

  It was a very uncomfortable realisation, and it made an afternoon sleep out of the question. It meant, too, that she had to say to the cousin, “I know I’m on holiday, but something has cropped up and I need to go back to Gaborone.”

  The cousin was disappointed, but did not demur when she heard the nature of the emergency.

  “You must go, Mma. There is no doubt about it—you must go.”

  —

  SHE DID NOT GO BACK to the house on Zebra Drive, but made her way directly to the office. There was nobody in the garage, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni having driven off in his tow-truck on an emergency call, and in the agency itself there were only Charlie and Mr. Polopetsi, seated at her desk and Mma Makutsi’s respectively.

  Charlie looked at her reproachfully. “Mma Makutsi said you were on a real holiday now, Mma,” he said.

  She reassured him that she had no objection to his using her desk while she was away. “Don’t worry, Charlie,” she said. “I have not come to check up on you. I have come because I need you and Mr. Polopetsi to help me do something.”

  “We’re ready to help,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “We’ll do anything required, Mma.”

  She explained that what she had in mind would take several hours and that they might not be home until nine or ten at night. “We have to go to Lobatse,” she said. “Once we are there we have some enquiries to make.” And then, in order to sweeten the pill, she told Charlie that he could drive if he wished. This cheered him up, and after a few minutes of tidying up in the office they left in the tiny white van, with Charlie at the wheel, shooting out into the Tlokweng Road at what Mma Ramotswe considered an excessive speed. She did not criticise him, though, her mind being on what lay ahead at the other end of the hour-long drive to Lobatse.

  “Tell me,” she said to Mr. Polopetsi. “You worked down there, didn’t you, Rra—when you were a government pharmacist? You know the bars in Lobatse, I take it?”

  Mr. Polopetsi looked concerned. “Not really, Mma. I am not a big man for bars. I never really went to those places.”

  “But you know where they are?”

  “Yes, I heard people talking. Some of the young men in the hospital would talk about them sometimes.”

  “And they mentioned the bad bars? Did they talk about the bars where bad women like to go?”

  Charlie laughed. “You shouldn’t be asking Mr. Polopetsi things like that, Mma! He is a very quiet man. He wouldn’t know any bad women.”

  Mr. Polopetsi looked at him askance. “I am a man of the world, Charlie. You think that just because you’re young and the girls all like you that people like me are no good.”

  Charlie apologised. “I was not saying that, Rra. It’s just that if you want to know where the lions go to feed, you shouldn’t ask a hedgehog.”

  Mma Ramotswe intervened. “I don’t think any of this helps,” she said. “Now, do you know the names of the bars where a certain sort of woman is most likely to be found?”

  “There are two, I think,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “I have been to neither, but I have heard that one of them, in particular, is full of bad women all the time and the other is less full of them, although they do go there too.”

  “What is the name of the one that is full of these ladies?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “It’s called the Good Times First Class Bar,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “I can show you where it is—although, as I said, Mma, I have never been inside.”

  Charlie sniggered. “I hope not, Rra—otherwise I would have to tell your wife next time I saw her.”

  “Well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are both going to be going there tonight. Anonymously, of course. Now, if you listen to me I shall tell you what I want you to do.”

  —

  BY THE TIME they reached the Good Times First Class Bar in Lobatse it was already dark. It stood at the end of a street in the middle of the town, beside a large jacaranda tree. Behind this tree was a car park for the patrons, and this was almost full when they arrived, making it necessary for the white van to be parked very close to the entrance—not the most discreet of positions, and one that any arriving or departing guests of the bar would have to walk past. If you need to be discreet, don’t park in obvious places, advised Clovis Andersen in The Principles of Private Detection. But there were times, such as this, when one had no alternative, thought Mma Ramotswe. Perhaps it was easier to be discreet in Muncie, Indiana.

  Mma Ramotswe repeated their instructions before they got out of the car. “I shall stay here,” she said. “I would look out of place in there. You two go in and buy a drink—here’s the money.” She handed them two hundred pula. “Find a lady who looks as if she wants to be bought a drink. Not a very young one—an experienced lady.”

  “They’re all experienced in there, Mma,” said Charlie, with a snigger.

  “You know what I mean,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Find a lady who looks as if she knows everybody. She’ll look at home in the bar. She’ll have been around. She’ll know just about everybody in Lobatse—that sort of lady.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “Worldly wise.”

  “Exactly. Find that lady and then ask her if she knows anybody—any lady who goes to bars and likes men—who had a son called Samuel about nine or ten years ago. Understand?”

  “A son called Samuel,” said Charlie. “And if she does?”

  “Then ask her how we can get in touch with that lady. Give her money for the information. Say, fifty or sixty pula.” She nodded towards the bar. “All right, you should go in there now. It’s beginning to look crowded.”

  “This is a very good way of earning your living,” said Charlie. “Going to bars. Ordering drinks. Talking to ladies. This is much better than being a mechanic.”

  —

  SHE LOOKED at her watch. Half an hour had elapsed from when they had gone inside. From the bar there drifted music, a regular thumping sound, the sort that gave Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni a headache if he had to listen to it for more than a few minutes. It was too loud, but then music in bars was always too loud, particularly in bars like this, with their special clientele. She closed her eyes and tried to think of Mochudi. It would be quiet in the cousin’s house now, and had she still been there they would have been talking about the old days while the cousin knitted. She was a famous knitter, and her bonnets for babies, made in the national colours of Botswana, were justly famous throughout Mochudi.

  She was disturbed by a tapping on th
e windscreen. Opening her eyes, she saw Mr. Polopetsi standing outside the van, his face close to the glass. She lowered her window.

  Mr. Polopetsi spoke with the breathlessness of the excited messenger. “She is inside,” he said.

  She caught a faint whiff of beer on his breath.

  “You’ve found a lady who knows her?”

  He shook his head vigorously. “No, Mma Ramotswe—we have found her. We have found the lady herself.”

  Mma Ramotswe felt a jolt of excitement. She had hoped that they might elicit some information that would give them something to go on; she had not imagined immediate success.

  “Can you bring her out here?” she asked.

  “I will go and ask Charlie. He is talking to her a lot. They are getting on very well.”

  “I can imagine that,” muttered Mma Ramotswe. “Break up the party, Mr. Polopetsi, and bring her out here. Tell her that there is something to her advantage. Those ladies understand that sort of talk.”

  While he was inside, she composed herself. She wondered whether she should talk to the woman inside the van, but decided that it would be easier outside. And so she got out of the van and stood by the engine, waiting for them to arrive.

  A man walked past. He glanced at her, took a further few steps, and then turned round and came back towards her.

  “Hello, honey,” he said. “You are a very nice fat lady. I like a soft mattress.”

  She drew in her breath. “Then go home and lie down on your bed,” she said. “Go back to your wife. I know her, by the way.”

  The man gave a start, extreme alarm registering on his face. “You know my wife, Mma? You know her? I am just trying to be funny. That was a joke, you know.”

  “I am not laughing,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Go back to your wife.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the man. “That is where I am heading. I was not going into that bar, Mma. I can tell you that. These places are a shame on Botswana.”