The Double Comfort Safari Club tn1lda-11

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Wildlife guides, of course, were in a different class from seventeen-year-old waitresses; they were experienced people who had undergone rigorous training and passed the Wildlife Department’s legendarily difficult examinations. They had to know the names of all the plants and which animals ate them and which ones could be used for medicines. They had to be able to read the ground and tell from among the myriad markings in the sand which creature had passed that way, and when. Here the S-shaped trail of a snake; here the tiny footprint of a dassie; here the place where the elephant had snapped the half-grown acacia as if it were matchwood. And they had to know the history of Botswana too, in case they were asked by their clients to explain something. Where was Bechuanaland? Who was Seretse Khama? When did they first discover diamonds in Botswana? And, tell me, who was Robert Moffat? There was so much to know, and anybody who knew all that surely would have more than his fair share of wisdom, and would hardly be one to be dismissive or insincere in his dealings with visitors.

  “I think that we shall find that he is a good man, this guide,” she said.

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked doubtful. He did not think that the mere fact that one was a qualified guide meant that one would be worthy of a gift of three thousand dollars. “Well,” he said, “you may be right or you may be wrong. But just think for a moment: What happens if you find that you are wrong, and that he is not a good man? What then?”

  “We give him the money,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Or, rather, we send his name and address to the lawyer and he sends him three thousand dollars. I am not a court of law, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and it is not for me to make a judgement on whether anybody deserves anything. In this matter I am really only a…” She searched for the right metaphor. “I am really only a postman. That is what I am.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “I see. And I suppose you’re right, Mma. I do not sit in judgement on my clients’ cars-every car receives the same consideration.”

  “Well, there you are,” she said. “I have finished my drink now, and the children will have done their homework. They will be getting hungry, I think.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni lifted his glass and drained the last of his beer. “Before you start cooking,” he said, “I have something to tell you. I did not get a letter today, but I did see something rather strange. Your friend, Mma Mateleke-well, her car broke down on the Lobatse Road and I went off to deal with it, and…”

  CHAPTER FOUR. A MAN’S FACE IS LIKE THE VERY LAND

  THAT SAME EVENING, while Mma Ramotswe was cooking dinner in her house on Zebra Drive, Mma Makutsi was preparing a special stew for her fiancé, Mr. Phuti Radiphuti, owner of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop. Phuti Radiphuti had shown himself to be a creature of habit, eating with senior relatives on certain fixed nights of the week, and then with Mma Makutsi on others. Mma Makutsi did not mind this too much-she would have preferred for him to have had dinner at her house every night, but she knew that it was only a matter of time before they were married and then this would happen anyway. Of course, there was always a chance that he would expect to continue with his peripatetic meal habits, but she would deal with that tactfully if the situation arose. She would be prepared to receive his senior aunt for the occasional meal, no more frequently than would be expected of a duteous wife, but she was not having that woman claiming more than her fair share of Phuti’s company. There was no doubt in Mma Makutsi’s mind that when a man married, his obligations to his female relatives, particularly those owed to distant female relatives, were eclipsed by the claims of his wife. But there would be opportunity enough to sort that out once the marriage had taken place. For the time being, the existing routine could be observed and, for her part, tolerated.

  Men were strange, thought Mma Makutsi. There were plenty of people who held that there was no material difference between men and women, but such people, she believed, were simply wrong. Of course men and women were different, and women were, on the whole, different in a better way. That was not to put men down-Mma Makutsi did not believe in doing that-it was simply a realistic recognition of the fact that women were capable of doing rather more than men. In fact, thought Mma Makutsi, there was a lot of truth in Mma Ramotswe’s insight that while men still claimed so many of the top jobs, it was actually women who were running everything in the background. Men needed those top jobs to make them feel good, so that they could imagine they were in control, while all the time it was women who were in the driving seat.

  She had considered this observation. “Perhaps,” she had said to Mma Ramotswe, “perhaps…”

  Of course, men were getting better-that was another fact Mma Ramotswe had pointed out to her, and with which she was strongly inclined to agree. Old-fashioned men-men who could do very little about the house and could talk about nothing but cattle and football-such men were increasingly being replaced by men who had many more interests and topics of conversation. These new men, as she had seen them referred to, were not only prepared to talk about many of the things that women liked, but they also took a strong interest in clothes. One or two of them, she had heard, even put cosmetics on their faces, which Mma Makutsi, open as she was to new developments, thought was going too far. “There’s nothing much men can do about their faces,” she once said to Mma Ramotswe. And Mma Ramotswe, immediately recognising the truth of this, had said, “No, Mma, that is quite true. Men’s faces are very unfortunate. They can do nothing.”

  This remark sounded somewhat uncharitable, and Mma Ramotswe had quickly added: “Of course, that is not men’s fault. And there is something reassuring about a man’s face. It’s… it’s like the land, I think. It’s always there.”

  They looked at one another doubtfully, and tacitly agreed to defer until later any further discussion of men’s faces, and indeed the broader topic of men and women; such issues were never easily resolved, and no matter how readily men’s characteristics suggested themselves for scrutiny, at the end of the day men simply were, and most, if not all, women seemed to be thankful for that.

  Mma Makutsi was certainly grateful for Phuti Radiphuti. He had come into her life at an unexpected moment, when she was almost at the point of reconciling herself to the possibility that she might never find anybody suitable. That would have been a bleak conclusion for anybody to reach, and particularly somebody as young as Mma Makutsi. But one had to be realistic, and there seemed to be few men apparently interested in a woman with problematic skin and large glasses. Most men, it appeared, were more interested in the likes of Violet Sephotho, the arch-Jezebel who had graduated with barely fifty per cent from the Botswana Secretarial College. She it was who had shamelessly attempted to win Phuti from Mma Makutsi by insinuating herself into a job at the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, in the bed department, of all departments-how appropriate and inappropriate at the same time-and had, thankfully, failed. Violet would have shown not the slightest scrap of interest in Phuti had she not realised that he was a wealthy man. That changed everything in her book: How could she be indifferent to a man who was due to inherit a large furniture shop and the large herd of cattle built up by his father, the very elderly but not quite yet late Mr. Radiphuti Senior?

  The material comfort that Phuti offered had not been a consideration for Mma Makutsi. Indeed, when she had met him at that fateful first session of the Botswana Academy of Dance and Movement, she had been unaware of who he was and what he possessed. All she knew was that here was a man with a very bad stutter and a marked lack of dancing ability. For a few brief moments she had felt a certain irritation at the fact that he had been designated as her partner, particularly with Violet Sephotho smirking at her with her elegant, deft-of-foot partner, but her impatience had quickly been replaced by sympathy. There was something gentle about this man with his awkward ways, and that could not but appeal to a woman. Affection and friendship had grown into something else, and she had come to appreciate and love Phuti more than she had ever loved any man. Such romantic feelings as she had experienced before were mere s
hallow infatuations when compared with the emotions that now overcame her. Mrs. Grace Radiphuti, she said to herself, savouring each word and its delicious associations; wife of Mr. Phuti Radiphuti, Assistant Detective. No, that was wrong; she, not Phuti, was the assistant detective. Mrs. Grace Radiphuti, Dip. Sec., Assistant Detective, wife of Mr. Phuti Radiphuti. Or even: Mrs. Grace Radiphuti, Dip. Sec. (97), Assistant Detective, wife of Mr. Phuti Radiphuti. The words were ripe with a sense of achievement; it was a long way from that to Bobonong, and to the days when she had had nothing, or next to nothing; when every pula, every thebe, had to be counted and made the most of. People talked of grinding poverty; well, that was exactly what poverty did-it ground.

  Yet she was determined that when she married she would not forget who she was and who her people were. She would not affect any airs. When she had gone to the Botswana Secretarial College she had been given a form to fill out, and there had been a question in it about parental occupation. She had written Peasant in response to that question, and she would write that again if she had occasion to answer such a question on any of the intrusive forms that various bureaucrats liked people to fill in. I am the daughter of a peasant, and that is what I shall always be.

  She stirred the stew, glancing at her watch. Phuti was usually punctual, but every so often there would be some crisis at the furniture shop that required him to stay late at work; this might be holding him back now-some argument over invoices or a discrepancy in the till receipts, or any one of the many minor things that could interrupt the smooth workings of a furniture shop. It did not matter too much: stew did not spoil-indeed, Mma Ramotswe had once suggested to her that the older a stew the better, although within reason, of course.

  But at seven o’clock she began to worry. Phuti had a mobile telephone, but Mma Makutsi did not. He had offered to buy her one, but she had declined the offer on the grounds that she did not want to impose too much, and if she had a mobile phone, she would get no peace from various relatives who had one and who would pester her with requests. So even if he had wanted to let her know that he was going to be late back, he would not have been able to do so.

  The minutes passed slowly. She moved the pot to the side of the stove, where it could simmer peacefully, and untied the strings of the apron she was wearing. Then she opened the kitchen door and stepped out into her small yard. Her pawpaw tree, which had never grown straight, was outlined at its drunken angle, a dark shadow against the glow of the night sky. The light from her neighbour’s uncurtained window spilled out onto the bare ground of the yard, a square of yellow; and through the window itself, a glimpse of a family seated around a table-the father, who was something in the Ministry of Telecommunications, an engineer, she thought; the mother, who worked in some lowly capacity at the diamond sorting office; and the three children, whose heads bobbed up and down above the level of the windowsill. They were never still, those children; they were always running about and throwing things and behaving as children should behave.

  The lights of a car came up the road. She felt a surge of relief: she knew it was Phuti’s car because one of the lights shone at a slightly different angle to the other, casting its beam more upwards than downwards. My car needs glasses, he had joked, and she had laughed, not because she felt that she had to, but because her fiancé said some very amusing things sometimes, and this was one of them.

  The car drew to a halt outside her yard. Mma Makutsi went forward and began to open the gate, and to say, “I thought that you must be busy…” But then she stopped; it was not Phuti in his car but his assistant manager, Mr. Gaethele, a man with a damaged left ear.

  “Phuti?” Mma Makutsi’s voice was low.

  Mr. Gaethele looked down. He held his hands palm outwards; a curious gesture, apologetic more than anything else; the gesture of one who has broken something, or brings news of breakage. “There has been an accident, Mma.”

  She stood quite still.

  “He is all right, but he is in the Princess Marina. His leg is bad. You must not worry too much, Mma.”

  She waited for him to say something more. She could not speak. Where? How? When? There were so many questions to be asked, but she could give voice to none of them; not now, here under the pawpaw tree, to this man whom she did not know very well, who was trying to be sympathetic but was awkward in his attempt.

  “I want to go and see him,” she said at last, moving towards the car.

  He shook his head. “No. The doctor said that we can see him tomorrow, but not until four o’clock. There is going to be an operation on his leg. His aunt is waiting at the hospital. She says that nobody else must come yet.”

  She stared at him, struggling to take in what had happened. She dug her fingernails into her palms, a trick she had learned at school; one pain might cancel out another, might make the world different.

  “How did this thing…”

  Mr. Gaethele shook his head. “It was one of the delivery drivers. He reversed the truck into Mr. Radiphuti. He was standing in front of small wall, and it caught his leg against the wall. Like this.” He made a crushing movement with his hands.

  Mma Makutsi held her hands up to her face. There would be tears, but not until she was ready to cry.

  MMA RAMOTSWE did not hear about the incident at the Double Comfort Furniture Shop until the following morning. When she arrived at the office, Mma Makutsi was already there, sitting at her desk, sorting papers. As her employer entered, she did not look up, as she normally would. She was preoccupied with her work, Mma Ramotswe thought; there was nobody who could become quite as absorbed in filing papers as Mma Makutsi. Filing, she had once pronounced, is the greatest of the secretarial arts. And then she had said…

  But something seemed not quite right, and Mma Ramotswe, about to open the window, turned round. “There is something wrong, isn’t there?”

  Mma Makutsi shook her head-vigorously; so vigorously, in fact, that Mma Ramotswe’s suspicions were immediately confirmed.

  “There is nothing wrong. Nothing.”

  Mma Ramotswe left the window and crossed the room to Mma Makutsi’s desk. She laid her hand on the other woman’s shoulder, gently. “Mma, you can tell me.”

  It must be Phuti, she thought, something to do with him. There had been that problem over the negotiation of the bride price, and she did not think that it had been resolved yet. That greedy uncle from Bobonong, that man with the broken nose who had sniffed the presence of money in the Radiphuti family and had travelled all the way down from the north like a greedy vulture. It was something to do with that, obviously.

  But then Mma Makutsi looked up at her and said, “Phuti is in hospital. There has been an accident.” And she began to weep, dropping her head onto her forearms and rocking backwards and forwards in that curious motion that is perhaps a subconscious attempt to mimic the movement that brings comfort to a tiny baby. That we should in moments of sorrow seek to return to a time when the harshness of the world could be forfended by the simple reassurances of our parents; that we should do that…

  “Oh, Mma Makutsi…”

  “He is having an operation. Now, I think.”

  Mma Ramotswe bent forward and put both her arms around Mma Makutsi, and for a while they were silent. Then she asked what had happened, and was given the only account that the other woman had-the story as told by Mr. Gaethele.

  “If it is only his leg, then that is surely not too bad.”

  This brought little comfort to Mma Makutsi.

  “And they have the best surgeons at that hospital,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They are miracle-workers.”

  Mma Makutsi looked at Mma Ramotswe. “But if it is only his leg, then why will they need a miracle?” She started to sob again.

  Mma Ramotswe moved back to her desk. “I shall drive you to the hospital, Mma. We can go and wait there until the operation is over.”

  “They do not want us.”

  “Who says that?”

  Mma Makutsi explained about the aunt an
d her prohibition of visitors until later that day. Mma Ramotswe, though, was not prepared to accept this; an aunt may have a role in the life of an unmarried man, but in the case of a married man-and an engaged man was as good as married in her view-aunts took second place.

  “We shall go to the Princess Marina, right now. In my white van.” She checked herself. “In my van.” She had momentarily forgotten that the tiny white van was no more, and that its successor, mechanically superior though it might be, was no real substitute. But this was not the time for such melancholy thoughts; not when Mma Makutsi was in distress and Phuti Radiphuti, that quiet, inoffensive man who had so dramatically improved Mma Makutsi’s prospects, was, for all they knew, fighting for his life in the operating theatre, or, worse still, was being wheeled out, one of the unlucky ones in that-what was it she had read?-one per cent of those who enter the theatre who do not come out alive. One in one hundred. She would not mention that figure to Mma Makutsi, for whom it might not provide the comfort that, if looked at rationally, it might be expected to provide.