The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

by Alexander McCall Smith

  This boy was certainly not like that; he had a mother, and might even be in school. It was certainly not uncommon for children to attend school in the mornings and then work in the afternoons, especially now that the Government had made primary education compulsory. She wondered whether she would be able to speak to the mother. Botsalo Moeti had implied their relationship was a close one, but that meant very little. He would be using her, as likely as not, and she would no doubt be in awe of him—there were many such arrangements between strong men and vulnerable, desperate women. So, she thought, this woman, from her position of weakness, would not be what Clovis Andersen would call an “independent witness.” If somebody works under somebody, the great authority wrote, then do not expect that person to tell the truth about the person above him. He may either lie to protect his superior, lie because he is afraid of him, or lie in order to get revenge for some insult or slight.

  Mma Ramotswe decided that even if there would be no point in talking to the woman in the kitchen, it was still worth trying to seek out the boy; he knew something—she was sure of it. If he was in school, then perhaps she could speak to him there. That would involve finding the most likely village school for him to attend and then speaking to the teacher there. She would require some sort of pretext for this. Could she offer to give a talk to the school? “The Life of a Private Detective” by Mma Precious Ramotswe. They would be surprised, she thought, and might insist on her obtaining permission from the Ministry of Education or the local council or something like that. No, that would not work; it would be far better to use the tactic that she had employed on so many previous occasions when she needed something, and that was to ask for it directly. It was a rather obvious thing to do, but in her experience it was usually very effective. If you want to know the answer to something, then go and ask somebody. It was a simple but effective adage—one that perhaps should be embroidered on a sampler and sold at fundraising sales. Well, she would try it in this case, and see what happened. And if she drew a blank, then there was still another lead to follow: the key ring that had been found near the scene of the crime.

  She had no idea what to make of that, but she was now getting closer to home, and she decided to concentrate on her driving and on the thought of the meal that she would shortly be preparing. There was a large chunk of fine Botswana beef waiting in the fridge, and as she turned into Zebra Drive she imagined that she could even smell it. It would gladden the heart of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who loved beef, and it would be good for the children too, who loved all sorts of food, without any exception that she had yet discovered. She was of that school of thought too. Beef, pumpkin, potatoes, stringy green beans, melon—all of these things were loved by Mma Ramotswe; as were cakes, biscuits, doughnuts, and red bush tea. Life was very full.

  MMA MAKUTSI also prepared a meal that evening, although she was cooking for two rather than four. Phuti had told her he would be late, as he had a meeting with a furniture supplier and would not be able to get away until almost seven o’clock. That meant that they would not sit down to eat for at least half an hour after their normal dinner-time. “Not that I mind waiting,” he said over the telephone. “I’d wait for ten hours or more for your cooking, Grace. I’d wait all day.”

  It was a typical gallant remark by a man whose good manners stood out, even in a country noted for its politeness.

  Mma Makutsi laughed. “I will not keep you waiting longer than is absolutely necessary,” she said. “We shall sit down at the table the moment you come in the door.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And then we can discuss the wedding. There are some details I must ask you about.”

  She hesitated. What details did he have in mind? She thought of her shoes—or, rather, the remnants of her shoes. If he asked her about those, then she would have to confess that they were already destroyed, and he might wonder why she had not spoken to him about that the previous day.

  “I’d like that,” she said blandly. “We have so much to plan.”

  Now, with the meal almost ready and the hands of the clock inching round to seven-fifteen, she took a deep breath and told herself not to worry. Phuti was a kind man, and he would understand if she told him about the shoe incident. She would tell him straightaway, she decided—the moment he came in through the door.

  Shortly before seven-thirty she saw the beam of his car’s headlights swing past her paw-paw tree and come to rest on her front window. The lights threw the pattern of the bars on the window against her kitchen wall, and then she heard a car door slam. The car moved off. That would be his driver going away.

  She was ready for him at the door. He smiled as she asked him in. “I am very hungry now,” he said.

  He sat down, his injured leg sticking out at an angle that she was only now getting used to. The prosthetic ankle and foot were concealed by a sock and a shoe, but every so often the unnatural angle they adopted reminded one that they were there. He was confident that they would work well, he had said; the prosthetic appliance people had done a remarkable job. “Of course I’m lucky,” he pointed out. “There are people who cannot afford a leg. They cannot work. They lose their jobs. All for a leg.” He paused, then added, “That is, in places like Malawi. Not here. We are lucky.”

  She had said, “Yes, we are lucky.” And she had meant it. Mma Makutsi’s memory of poverty was a recent one, and there were members of her family who, if they were to lose a leg, would never be able to afford an artificial one, were it not for the hospitals that the country’s diamonds paid for.

  She invited Phuti to the table and began to serve their dinner.

  “This wedding of ours,” he said. “It is getting closer and closer. We must make more plans.”

  Mma Makutsi nodded. “I have made a list. There is one column of things for you to do and one of things for me to do.”

  Phuti expressed satisfaction over this approach. “But before we go into that,” he said, “you must tell me what you are wearing. What about those shoes? Have you bought them yet?”

  Mma Makutsi looked down at her plate. It was a direct and unambiguous question—exactly what she had most feared. Had he simply made a general enquiry about her outfit, she could have talked at length and in great detail about her dress, or about the outfit she had planned for her bridesmaid. But this was a question that would be rather difficult to avoid.

  “Those shoes?” she said faintly. “It’s very important to get the right shoes. You know, I was looking at a picture of a bride the other day in Drum. And do you know, she was wearing a pink dress and bright yellow shoes. Bright yellow shoes, Phuti! She looked ridiculous. I laughed and laughed, and so did Mma Ramotswe.”

  Phuti Radiphuti smiled. “Yes, very silly. She should have worn pink shoes to go with her pink dress, or maybe a yellow dress to go with her yellow shoes.” He took a forkful of food and then continued, his mouth half full, “But did you buy those shoes?”

  Mma Makutsi looked vaguely into the middle distance. “Shoes? Oh, those shoes. They are very nice … You know, I’ve been wondering about your suit. Should we have it dry-cleaned now and put away in one of those plastic bags, or should we—”

  “It has been dry-cleaned already,” said Phuti. “It is in a bag and the bag is in a cupboard. It is very safe. But what about the shoes? Did you buy them?”

  Mma Makutsi put down her fork and wiped her mouth carefully on a corner of her paper table napkin. “You are a very handsome man,” she said.

  Phuti looked surprised. “I am just an ordinary man …”

  “No,” said Mma Makutsi. “You are one of the most handsome men in Botswana. That is what people say, you know.”

  Phuti smiled nervously. “I think that there are many more handsome men than me. There definitely are.”

  Mma Makutsi edged her chair towards his, a curious manoeuvre that involved her folding the seat of the chair as she pushed it closer to Phuti. “I’d like to kiss you, Phuti,” she said.

  He dropped his knife onto his plate
; there was a loud clatter.

  “Do not be shy,” said Mma Makutsi.

  “I … I …” He had not stammered for a long time, but now it came back.

  Mma Makutsi inclined herself forward and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  “There,” she said. “I am happy now that I have kissed you.”

  Phuti’s lower jaw seemed to quiver. “Oh,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I am very happy.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “With reference to that previous kiss …”

  “Yes?”

  “Would it be possible to have another one?”

  Mma Makutsi reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Of course,” she said. “There are lots and lots of kisses.”

  There was no further discussion of shoes.

  AFTER THEY HAD FINISHED DINNER and Puso and Motholeli had been put to bed, Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sat together out on the verandah of their house on Zebra Drive. They often did this after a meal, savouring the slightly cooler breeze that sometimes moved between the trees, listening to the sounds of the night, so different from those of the day. Insects who were silent from dawn to dusk had their say once the sun went down, knowing, perhaps, that the birds were elsewhere. Those who lived in the Kalahari, or on its fringes, were told as children that these chirruping noises at night, these sounds that were like high-pitched clicks, were the stars in the sky calling their hunting dogs. And it sounded just like that, thought Mma Ramotswe, although all those things that sound so right were often just poetry, really—the gravy we put on reality to make it taste a bit better.

  It was a good time for sitting together, Mma Ramotswe felt, and it was not necessary to say anything. That evening, the sky was all but white with stars, filled with acres and acres of constellations , right down to the horizon. She had learned the names of some of these clusters when she was younger, but had forgotten most of them now, apart from the Southern Cross, which could be seen hanging over the sky towards Lobatse, a pointer to the distant Cape and its cold waters. And the Milky Way was there too—she had always been able to identify that, like a swirl of milk in an ocean of dark tea. As a girl she had imagined the Milky Way was the curtain of heaven, a notion she had been sorry to abandon as she had grown up. But she would not abandon a belief in heaven itself, wherever that might be, because she felt that if she gave that up then there would be very little left. Heaven may not turn out to be the place of her imagining, she conceded—the place envisaged in the old Botswana stories, a place inhabited by gentle white cattle, with sweet breath—but it would surely be something not too unlike that, at least in the way it felt; a place where late people would be given all that they had lacked on this earth—a place of love for those who had not been loved, a place where those who had had nothing would find they had everything the human heart could desire.

  She looked at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, sitting beside her, a mug of tea in his hands.

  “Thinking of?” she asked. “What do they say? I’ll give you a thebe if you tell me your thoughts.”

  He laughed. “Some of my thoughts are not worth a thebe.”

  “I can be the judge of that.”

  “Charlie,” he said. “I was thinking of Charlie. And you?”

  He turned to her, and for a moment there was light in his eyes, a reflection of the half-lit doorway behind them.

  “Me? I was thinking of the next thing I should be thinking of. I have a case that I need to deal with.”

  He nodded. “That Moeti business?”

  “Yes.”

  “I do not know that man. I could ask around, though, if you want me to. There is a man at the automotive trades school whose brother lives down there, I think. Or cousin. Or somebody.”

  She smiled at the thought. It was like that in Botswana—people knew one another, or if they did not, they thought they did. And that was how she wanted it. There were places, she realised, where everybody was a stranger and where, when you saw somebody, you knew that you might never see them again in this life. She could not imagine Botswana being like that. Here there were no real strangers—even if you did not know a person, he was still the brother or cousin of somebody whom you might know, or whom somebody else would know. And people did not come from nowhere, as seemed to be the case in those distant big cities; everyone had a place to which they were anchored by ties of blood, by ties of land.

  “Thank you,” she said. “But don’t bother to speak to your friend. I have had an idea.” She told him about the boy, Mpho, who surely went to the local school. Teachers, she said, were helpful as long as you treated them with sufficient respect; she would have a word with the village teacher and see what came of that.

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni thought for a moment. “I have a cousin who is a teacher in those parts,” he said. “He is not the one you want to speak to, I’m afraid, but he will know that one. His school is on the other side of the Lobatse road, but roads are—”

  “Nothing,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Roads go through the land, not through people.”

  “Exactly,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. I am a mechanic, he thought, and I cannot put it as well as Mma Ramotswe can. But what she said about roads was quite true, he decided, even if he felt that the matter would require further reflection. “Shall I ask him, then?”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Just an introduction, Rra. Just ask him to tell the teacher that there will be a lady coming down from Gaborone who wants to talk to him. Or her, if the teacher is a lady. Say that this lady will not want to talk for long and will be no bother at all.”

  He could not imagine Mma Ramotswe ever being a bother to anybody at all, and he told her so. She thanked him, and then they went on to finish their tea.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE TEACHER WAS A SMALL MAN

  MR. J.L.B. MATEKONI was proved right. His cousin knew the teacher at the village school close to the Moeti farm. He would send a boy, he said, to let the other teacher know that Mma Ramotswe was coming; it was only ten miles there and back—nothing for a young boy who probably walked five miles to school every day anyway. He would do so immediately, first thing that morning.

  “In that case,” said Mma Ramotswe to Mma Makutsi, “I shall go down there straightaway, Mma. You will be in charge here. The office is in your hands.”

  “I am ready for that,” said Mma Makutsi, adding, “I have often thought of what would happen if you had an accident, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe, who was retrieving the key for her van from its drawer, looked up in surprise. “An accident?”

  Mma Makutsi was momentarily flustered. “Heaven forbid that it should happen, Mma. I was just thinking of what would happen to the business if you were to have an accident and …”

  “Die?”

  “No, no, Mma Ramotswe. Not die. Just be in hospital for a while. I wondered what would happen here in the agency. Would I need to get an assistant? Would I be able to handle all the important cases? Those are the things that I was thinking about.” She paused. “But it is like thinking of what would happen if Botswana suddenly became a very wet country, or if cattle learned Setswana, or something equally unlikely. Just dreaming, really.”

  Mma Ramotswe straightened up. “Well, I’m sure that you would handle everything very well,” she said. “Just as I hope I would, if you were ever to have an accident, which I very much hope never happens, Mma.”

  Mma Makutsi changed the subject, and talked about some correspondence that had been dictated by Mma Ramotswe but still had to be sent off. She would do that, she said, and do some filing, too, if she had the time. Mma Ramotswe thanked her, and left.

  SHELL: the shell of an ostrich egg. Somebody had broken it and left the fragments by the side of the path that led to the school. It was a neatly kept path, one of those Mma Ramotswe would describe as a government path, marked on each side by a line of whitewashed stones. In the old days of the Protectorate, when the British still had their district commissioners, there were many such pat
hs throughout Africa, and whitewashed tree trunks too. This habit of whitewashing had lingered in some places, where people thought of it as a way of holding disorder at bay: lines of white stones represented structure, a bulwark against the encroachment of the bush.

  The ostrich shell was out of place; perhaps one of the children had brought it in to show the others and had dropped it, or there had been some childish fight that had led to its destruction. Mma Ramotswe reached down and pocketed a piece, feeling the thickness of the shell as she did so. Then, she continued on her way to the small cluster of buildings—no more than two or three—that made up the local primary school.

  “Yes, Mma?”

  A woman had emerged from the smaller of the two buildings and was staring at Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Ramotswe began the traditional greeting. Was this woman well? Had she slept well? And the woman asked the same questions of her, and then again said, “Yes, Mma?”

  “I have come to speak to the teacher,” said Mma Ramotswe. “My husband knows the teacher at the other school—the one over on that side. He is his cousin, and he said—”

  The woman raised a hand to stop her. “Yes, you are that lady, Mma. We have heard that you would be coming. There was a message. You are welcome.”

  “Thank you. I will not take much of the teacher’s time.”

  The woman indicated that this did not matter. “I am the school secretary. There is just me and the teacher. We are the staff, and we get very few visitors, Mma. We are very happy that you’ve come to see us.”