Over the next two days, though she cooked good meals for the household, Mma Ramotswe ate very little. At work when Mma Makutsi took two large doughnuts out of a greasy paper bag and offered one to her, Mma Ramotswe merely shook her head curtly.
‘Then I shall have to eat it myself,’ said Mm Makutsi, laying it carefully on a piece of scrap paper at the side of her desk. ‘I don’t mind eating two doughnuts.’
Mma Ramotswe gazed across the room at the doughnut. It was a very fine-looking doughnut, and she would dearly have loved to savour it with the cup of bush tea that was before her on the desk, but she had made the decision to go on a diet and she was determined to keep going with it. After all, this was not just a question of weight; it was a question of willpower.
After a few minutes, Mma Makutsi reached out for the second doughnut and sank her teeth into a corner of it, closing her eyes with delight as she did so. Mma Ramotswe watched, and for a moment her upper lip trembled – not enough to be seen by Mma Makutsi, had her eyes been open at the time, but enough to be felt by Mma Ramotswe herself, who struggled to control it.
‘I wish you wouldn’t sit there and eat doughnuts all day,’ she said testily. ‘It doesn’t give a very good impression to the clients. They don’t expect the people who are meant to be working on their cases to be sitting around eating doughnuts.’
Mma Makutsi opened her eyes. ‘But we have no clients at the moment,’ she said, through a mouthful of doughnut. ‘No clients at all.’ As she spoke, a few crumbs of doughnut escaped from her lips and shot forwards onto the desk. She reached for them and stuffed them back into her mouth.
It was very clear to Mma Makutsi what the problem was. The new diet of Mma Ramotswe’s was making her feel so hungry and uncomfortable that she was snapping at people for the slightest thing. And the thought occurred to her: if this was the way that Mma Ramotswe behaved when she was on the way to being thin, then one could only imagine how difficult she would be once she reached her goal. She would be impossible to work with, sitting there being short with anybody who said or did anything.
During the lunch break, when Mma Ramotswe went off shopping by herself, Mma Makutsi wandered out of the office and into the workshop of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, the business with which they shared premises. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, spanner in hand, was standing over an exposed car engine, talking to one of the apprentices. Mma Makutsi drew him aside.
‘Have you noticed how touchy Mma Ramotswe has been over the last few days?’ she asked.
Mr J. L. B. Matekoni put down the spanner on an upturned oil drum. ‘Oh yes, Mma,’ he sighed. ‘She has been very cross with the world. It is most unlike her. And she seems to have lost her appetite too.’
Mma Makutsi laughed. ‘I don’t think that she has lost her appetite,’ she said. ‘I think that her appetite is still there.’
‘Then why is she not eating?’ asked Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘Is she ill, do you think?’
‘She is dieting,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘She wants to become thin.’
Mr J. L. B. Matekoni stared at Mma Makutsi. ‘But she cannot!’ he exclaimed. ‘I did not want to marry a thin lady. I wanted a nice, plump lady. She cannot do this.’
Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. An idea was coming to her as to how she might deal with the situation, and she grasped Mr J. L. B.Matekoni’s arm as she explained to him what might be done to bring Mma Ramotswe to her senses. He listened and nodded. It seemed to him to a good plan, a clever plan – just what one might expect from an intelligent woman like Mma Makutsi, with her large round spectacles.
Once Mma Ramotswe had returned from her shopping and settled back at her desk, Mma Makutsi caught her eye across the room and addressed her.
‘I was talking to Mr J. L. B. Matekoni at lunchtime,’ she said. ‘And he told me that he is very unhappy.’
Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. ‘Why should he be unhappy?’ she asked. ‘The garage is doing well.’
‘It’s nothing to do with that,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘He’s worried that you will become thin. He knows that you are a strong-willed person and it will be easy for you to lose weight, but he does not want that to happen. He thinks that traditionally built ladies are far more beautiful.’
Mma Ramotswe looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. ‘Is that really what he thinks?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘That is what he thinks.’
Mma Ramotswe unfolded her hands. ‘Perhaps …’ she began.
She did not finish the sentence. Mma Makutsi now took out the fresh bag of doughnuts which she had sent the apprentice off to buy after her lunchtime conversation with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. She rose to her feet and brought the bag over to the other woman.
Mma Ramotswe stared into the bag.
‘Oh, well,’ she said.
The Slice of No.1 Celebration Storybook: Fifteen years with Mma Ramotswe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) Page 3
