Blue Shoes and Happiness

by Alexander McCall Smith

  The thought made her smile again, but Mma Tsau did not see the smile, as she was struggling with the door handle, preparing to go off and retrieve the letter which she had in her office, in one of the secret places she had there.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FILING CABINETS, LOCKS, CHAINS

  MMA RAMOTSWE looked into her tea cup. The red bush tea, freshly poured, was still very hot, too hot to drink, but good to look at in its amber darkness, and very good to smell. It was a pity, she thought, that she had become accustomed to the use of tea-bags, as this meant that there were no leaves to be seen swirling around the surface or clinging to the side of the cup. She had given in on the issue of tea-bags, out of weakness, she admitted; tea-bags were so overwhelmingly more convenient than leaf tea, with its tendency to clog drains and the spouts of tea-pots too if one was not careful. She had never worried about getting the occasional tea leaf in her mouth, indeed she had rather enjoyed this, but that never happened now, with these neatly packed tea-bags and their very precise, enmeshed doses of chopped leaves.

  It was the first cup of the morning, as Mma Ramotswe did not count the two cups that she took at home before she came to work. One of these was consumed as she took her early stroll around the yard, with the sun just up, pausing to stand under the large acacia tree and peer up into the thorny branches above her, drawing the morning air into her lungs and savouring its freshness. That morning she had seen a chameleon on a branch of the tree and had watched the strange creature fix its riveting eye upon her, its tiny prehensile feet poised in mid-movement. It was a great advantage, she thought, to have a chameleon’s eyes, which could look backwards and forwards independently. That would be a fine gift for a detective.

  Now at her desk, she raised the cup to her lips and took a sip of the bush tea. She looked at her watch. Mma Makutsi was usually very punctual, but today she was late for some reason. This would be the fault of the minibuses, thought Mma Ramotswe. There would be enough of them coming into town from Tlokweng at that hour of the morning, but not enough going in the opposite direction. Mma Makutsi could walk, of course—her new house was not all that far away—but people did not like to walk in the heat, understandably enough.

  She had a report to write, and she busied herself with this. It was not an easy one, as she had to detail the weaknesses she had found in the hiring department of a company which provided security guards. They imagined that they screened out applicants with a criminal record when they sought jobs with the company; Mma Ramotswe had discovered that it was simplicity itself to lie about one’s past on the application form and that the forms were usually not even scrutinised by the official in charge of the personnel department. This man, who had got the job through lying about his qualifications and experience, rubber-stamped the applications of virtually anybody, but particularly of applications submitted by any of his relatives. Mma Ramotswe’s report would not make comfortable reading for the company, and she knew to expect some anger over the results. This was inevitable—people did not like to be told uncomfortable truths, even if they had asked for them. Uncomfortable truths meant that one had to go back and invent a whole new set of procedures, and that was not always welcome when there were so many other things to do.

  As she listed the defects in the firm’s arrangements, Mma Ramotswe thought of how difficult it was to have a completely secure system for anything. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was a case in point. They kept all their records in two old filing cabinets, and neither of these, she realised, had a lock, or at least a lock that worked. There was a lock on the office door, naturally enough, but during the day they rarely bothered to use that if both of them went out on some errand. There were always people around the garage, of course—either Mr J.L.B. Matekoni or the apprentices, and surely intruders would be deterred by their presence … No, she thought, perhaps not. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was often so absorbed in tinkering with an engine that he would not notice it if the President himself drew up in his large official car. And as for the apprentices, they were completely unobservant and missed the most glaring features of what went on round about them. Indeed, she had given up on asking them for descriptions of clients who might have called while she was out and spoken to one of them. “There was a man,” they would say. “He came to see you. Now he is gone.” And in response to questioning for some clue as to the caller’s identity, they would say, “He was not a very tall man, I think. Or maybe he was a bit tall. I could not tell.”

  Her pen stopped in mid-sentence. Who was she to criticise when it would be possible for virtually anybody to walk into the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency at an unguarded moment and rifle through the secrets of their clients? Are you interested in who is suspected by his wife of adultery? Please, help yourself: there are plenty of reports about that in an old filing cabinet on the Tlokweng Road—just help yourself! And why was that man dismissed from that hotel last month, with no reason given? Well, the report on that—freely available from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and signed by Mma Grace Makutsi, Dip. Sec. (Botswana Secretarial College) (97%)—may be obtained by the simple expedient of looking in the top drawer of the second desk of an unlocked office beside Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

  Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and made her way over to the filing cabinet nearest her. Bending forward, she peered at the lock which was built into the top of the cabinet. It was a small, oval silver-coloured plate with an incised key-hole. At the top of the plate the maker’s sign, a small rampant lion, was stamped into the metal. The lion looked back at Mma Ramotswe, and she shook her head. There was rust in the key-hole, and the edges of the hole were dented. Even if they could locate the key, it would be impossible to insert it. She looked at the lion, a symbol of the pride which somebody must once have felt, somewhere, in the construction of the cabinet. And perhaps this pride was not entirely misplaced—the cabinet must have been made decades ago, perhaps even forty or fifty years previously, and it still worked. How many modern cabinets, with their plastic trimmings and their bright colours, would still be holding files in fifty years’ time? And it was the same with people, she thought. Bright, modern people were all very well, but did they last the course? Traditionally minded (and traditionally built) people might not seem so fashionable, but they would always be there, doing what they always did. A traditional mechanic, for example—somebody like Mr J.L.B. Matekoni—would be able to keep your car going when a modern mechanic—somebody like Charlie—would shrug his shoulders and say that everything needed to be renewed.

  She reached out and gave the filing cabinet an affectionate pat. Then, on impulse, she bent down and kissed its scratched and dented metal surface. The metal felt cool to her lips and smelled acrid, as metal can—a smell of rust and sharpness.

  “Dumela, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi from the doorway.

  Mma Ramotswe straightened up.

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Mma Makutsi. “Just carry on doing whatever it was that you were doing …” She glanced at the filing cabinet and then at her employer.

  Mma Ramotswe returned to her desk. “I was thinking about that filing cabinet,” she said. “And suddenly I felt very grateful to it. I know that it must have looked very strange to you, Mma.”

  “Not at all,” said Mma Makutsi. “I am grateful to it too. It keeps all our records safe.”

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Well, I’m not sure if they’re completely safe,” she said. “In fact, I was just wondering whether we should do something about locking them. Confidentiality is very important. You know that, Mma.”

  Mma Makutsi looked thoughtfully at the filing cabinets. “That is true,” she said. “But I do not think we would ever find a key for those old locks.” She paused. “Maybe we could put a chain around them, with a padlock?”

  Mma Ramotswe did not think that this would be a good idea. It would look absurd to have chained filing cabinets, and would give quite the wrong impression to clients. It was bad enough having an office ins
ide a garage, but it would be worse to have something quite so odd-looking as a chain around a cabinet. It would be better to buy a couple of new filing cabinets, even if they would not be as sturdy and substantial as these old ones. There was probably enough money in the office account to do this, and they had not spent very much on equipment recently. In fact, they had spent nothing, apart from three pula for a new teaspoon, which had been required after one of the apprentices had used their existing teaspoon to fix a gearbox and had broken it. The thought of furniture reminded her. Mma Makutsi was about to marry, was she not? And was she not about to marry into the furniture trade?

  “Phuti Radiphuti!” Mma Ramotswe exclaimed.

  Mma Makutsi looked up sharply. “Phuti?”

  “Your fiancé, Mma,” went on Mma Ramotswe. “Does he do office furniture as well as house furniture?”

  Mma Makutsi looked down at her shoes. Fiancé? she imagined hearing the shoes say. We used to be engaged to a pair of men’s shoes but we haven’t seen them for some time! Is it still on, Boss?

  Mma Ramotswe smiled across her desk. “I wouldn’t expect a new filing cabinet for nothing,” she said. “But he could give us a trade price, could he not? Or he would know where we could get it cheaply.” She noticed Mma Makutsi’s expression, and tailed off. “If he could …”

  Mma Makutsi seemed reluctant to speak. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and then out of the door. “He did not come to my place last night,” she said. “I had cooked for him. But he did not come.”

  Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. She had feared that something like this would happen. Ever since Mma Makutsi had become engaged, she had been concerned that something would go wrong. That had nothing to do with Phuti Radiphuti himself, who seemed a good candidate for marriage, but it had everything to do with the bad luck that seemed to dog Mma Makutsi. There were some people who were badly treated by life, no matter how hard they worked and no matter what efforts they made to better their circumstances. Mma Makutsi had done her very best, but perhaps she would never get any further than she had already got, and would remain an assistant detective, a woman from Bobonong, with large round glasses, and a house that, although comfortable, had no hot water supply. Phuti Radiphuti could have changed everything, but now would not. He would be just another missed opportunity, another reminder of what might have been had everything been different.

  “I think that he must have been working late,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You should call him on the telephone and find out. Yes, just use the office phone. That is fine. Call Phuti.”

  Mma Makutsi shook her head. “No, I cannot do that. I cannot chase him.”

  “You’re not chasing him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not chasing a man just to speak to him on the telephone and ask him why he did not come to your house. Men cannot let women cook for them and not eat the food. Everybody understands that.”

  This remark did not seem to help, and in the face of Mma Makutsi’s sudden and taciturn gloominess, Mma Ramotswe herself became silent.

  “That is why I’m late this morning,” Mma Makutsi said suddenly. “I could not sleep at all last night.”

  “There are many mosquitoes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They do not make it easy.”

  “It had nothing to do with mosquitoes,” Mma Makutsi mumbled. “They were sleeping last night. It was because I was thinking. I think it is all over, Mma.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not over. Men are very strange—that is all. Sometimes they forget to come to see ladies. Sometimes they forget to get married. Look at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Look at how long it took him to get round to marrying me.”

  “I cannot wait that long,” said Mma Makutsi. “I was thinking of being engaged for six months at the most.” She reached for a piece of paper on her desk and stared at it. “Now I shall be doing this filing for the rest of my life.”

  Mma Ramotswe realised that she could not allow this self-pity to continue. That would only make it worse, in her view. So she explained to Mma Makutsi that she would have to seek out Phuti Radiphuti and reassure him. If she did not wish to do that, then she herself, Mma Ramotswe, could do it for her. Her offer was not taken up, but she repeated it, and it was reflected upon. Then the working day began. It was the day on which bills were due to be sent out, and that was always an enjoyable experience. If only there were a day on which bills were all returned, fully paid, that would be even more enjoyable. But the working world was not like that, and there were always more that went out than came in, or so it seemed. And in this sense, Mma Ramotswe mused, the working world reflected life; which was an adage worthy of Aunty Emang herself, even if she was not quite sure whether it was true or not.

  THE BILLS ALL TYPED UP and sealed in their neat white envelopes, Mma Ramotswe remembered that she had something that she wanted to show to Mma Makutsi. Reaching into the old leather bag that she used for carrying papers and lists and the one hundred and one other accoutrements of her daily life, she extracted the letter which Mma Tsau had handed over to her the previous day. She crossed the room and handed it to Mma Makutsi.

  “What do you make of this?” she said.

  Mma Makutsi unfolded the letter and laid it on the desk before her. The paper, she noted, was crumpled, which meant that somebody could have crunched it up and tossed it away. This was not a cherished letter. This was a letter which had brought only anger and fear.

  “So, Mma Tsau,” Mma Makutsi read out. “So there you are in that good job of yours. It is a good job, isn’t it? You have lots of people working for you. You get your cheque at the end of the month. Everything is fine for you, isn’t it? And for that husband of yours too. He is very happy that you have this good job, as he can go and eat for nothing, can’t he? It must be very nice to eat for nothing in this life. There are very few people who can do that, but he is one.

  “But, you see, I know that you are stealing food for him. I saw him getting fatter and fatter, and I thought: that’s a man who is eating for nothing! I could tell that. Of course you wouldn’t want other people to know that, and so, you listen to me, listen carefully please: I will be getting in touch with you about how you can keep me from telling anybody about this. Don’t worry—you’ll hear from me.”

  When she had finished reading out the letter, Mma Makutsi looked up. Her earlier expression of defeat, brought on by Phuti Radiphuti’s non-appearance and by her contemplation of her future, had been replaced by one of anger. “That’s blackmail,” she said. “That’s … that’s …” Her outrage had got the better of her; there were no words strong enough to describe what she felt.

  “That’s simple wickedness,” supplied Mma Ramotswe. “Even if Mma Tsau is a thief, the writer of that letter is much worse.”

  Mma Makutsi was in strong agreement with this. “Yes. Wickedness. But how are we going to find out who wrote it? It’s anonymous.”

  “Such letters always are,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “Have you got any ideas?”

  Mma Ramotswe had to confess that she had none. “But that doesn’t mean that we shall not find out,” she said. “I have a feeling that we are very close to that person. I don’t know why I feel that, but I am sure that we know that lady.”

  “A lady?” asked Mma Makutsi. “How do we know it’s a lady?”

  “I just feel it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That’s a woman’s voice.”

  “Are you sure that that’s not just because I was reading it?” said Mma Makutsi.

  Mma Ramotswe replied with care. No, it was not just that. The voice—the voice inside the letter—was the voice of a woman. And, as she explained to Mma Makutsi, she had the feeling, vague and elusive though it might be, that she knew this woman.

  CHAPTER TEN

  YOU ARE FRIGHTENED OF SOMETHING

  THAT AFTERNOON Mma Ramotswe made one of her lists. She liked to do this when life seemed to be becoming complicated, which it was now, as the mere fact of listing helped to get everything into perspective. And there wa
s more to it than that; often the listing of a problem produced a solution, as if the act of writing down the issues gave the unconscious mind a nudge. She had heard that sleep could have the same effect. “Go to sleep on a problem,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had once advised her, “and in the morning you will have your answer. It always works.” He had then proceeded to describe how he had gone to sleep wondering why a rather complicated diesel engine would not fire and had dreamed that night of loose connections in the solenoid. “And when I got to the garage that morning,” he said, “there it was—a very bad connection, which I replaced. The engine fired straightaway.”

  So that was what he dreamed about, thought Mma Ramotswe. Diesel engines. Solenoids. Fuel pipes. Her dreams were quite different. She often dreamed of her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, who had been such a kind man, and a loving one; a man whom everybody respected because he was such a fine judge of cattle, but also because he showed in all his actions the dignity which had been the hallmark of the Motswana of the old school. Such men knew their worth, but did not flaunt it. Such men could look anybody in the eye without flinching; even a poor man, a man with nothing, could stand upright in the presence of those who had wealth or power. People did not know, Mma Ramotswe felt, just how much we had in those days—those days when we seemed to have so little, we had so much.

  She thought of her father, the Daddy as she called him, every day. And when she had those dreams at night, he was there, as if he had never died, although she knew, even in the dream, that he had. One day she would join him, she knew, whatever people said about how we came to an end when we took our last breath. Some people mocked you if you said that you joined others when your time came. Well, they could laugh, those clever people, but we surely had to hope, and a life without hope of any sort was no life: it was a sky without stars, a landscape of sorrow and emptiness. If she thought that she would never again see Obed Ramotswe, then it would make her shiver with loneliness. As it was, the thought that he was watching gave a texture and continuity to her life. And there was somebody else she would see one day, she hoped—her baby who had died, that small child with its fingers that had grasped so tightly around hers, whose breathing was so quiet, like the sound of the breeze in the acacia trees on an almost-still day, a tiny sound. She knew that her baby was with the late children in whatever place it was that the late children went, somewhere over there, beyond the Kalahari, where the gentle white cattle allowed the children to ride upon their backs. And when the late mothers came, the children would flock to them and they would call to them and take them in their arms. That was what she hoped, and it was a hope worth having, she felt.