In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “And so am I,” confessed Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Potokwane stood up and shouted to the girl outside. “Two more pieces of cake, please. Two big slices.”

  THE CAKE FINISHED and the tray tidied away, they settled down with their mugs of tea to continue the conversation. Mma Ramotswe thought that she would begin with the puzzle of the pumpkin, which had been rather forgotten about in all the recent excitement, but which was still something of a mystery. So she told Mma Potokwane about the disturbing experience of finding herself in the house with an intruder, and then the even more alarming discovery that the intruder was under her bed.

  Mma Potokwane shrieked with laughter when Mma Ramo-tswe described how the intruder’s trousers had been caught on a bedspring.

  “You might have crushed him, Mma,” she said. “You could have broken his ribs.”

  Mma Ramotswe thought that the same might be said of any intruder who was unwise enough to hide under Mma Potokwane’s bed, but she did not point this out.

  “But then the next morning,” she went on, “I found a beautiful pumpkin in front of the house. Somebody had taken the trousers and left a pumpkin in the place of the trousers. What do you make of that, Mma?”

  Mma Potokwane frowned. “You have decided that the pumpkin was put there by the person who took the trousers, but are they connected? Might the pumpkin and the trousers be two quite separate matters? You have a pumpkin person, who brings the pumpkin—while the trousers are still there—and then you have a trousers person who takes the trousers and does not touch the pumpkin. That might be what happened.”

  “But who would bring a pumpkin and leave it there without any explanation?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Would you do such a thing?”

  Mma Potokwane scratched her head. “I do not think that I would leave a pumpkin at somebody’s house unless I told them why. You would leave a message with the pumpkin, or you would tell the person later: that was me who left that pumpkin there.”

  “That is right,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is what most people would do.”

  “Mind you,” said Mma Potokwane, “we have had people leave gifts out here at the gate. Once I found a box of food just sitting there, with no note. Some kind person had left it for the children.”

  “That is good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But then it is a bit different, isn’t it? I am not a charity. Nobody would leave a pumpkin because they felt that I was in need of pumpkins.”

  Mma Potokwane saw the reason in this and was about to make an observation to this effect when she stopped herself short. Another possibility had occurred to her. Mma Ramotswe was assuming that the pumpkin had been intended for her, but what if somebody had placed it there by mistake? It was possible that somebody had intended the pumpkin for somebody else who lived on Zebra Drive but had delivered it to the wrong house. She was about to suggest this when she was stopped by Mma Ramotswe.

  “Does it matter?” mused Mma Ramotswe. “Here we are talking about a pumpkin. There are plenty of pumpkins in this country. Is it sensible to spend one’s time talking about pumpkins when there are more important things to talk about?”

  Mma Potokwane agreed with this. “You are quite right,” she said. “We have talked about this pumpkin for long enough. So let us talk about something more important.”

  Mma Ramotswe did not waste time. “Well,” she said. “We have a very big problem with Charlie. I think that this problem is even bigger than the thorn that he got in the back of his trousers when he did that parachute jump.”

  “It is to do with a woman?” prompted Mma Potokwane.

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Now listen to this.”

  Mma Potokwane settled back in her chair. She had had a soft spot for Charlie since he had done the parachute jump for the benefit of the orphan farm. She considered him something of a character, and the prospect of hearing some juicy bit of information about his amorous entanglements was an interesting one. But then she remembered that there was something that she had meant to mention to Mma Ramotswe. It would be important to bring this up before Mma Ramotswe got into full flow, otherwise she might forget. So she raised a hand to interrupt.

  “Before you begin, Mma,” she said, “there’s something I thought I should tell you about.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked at her friend expectantly. She wondered whether Mma Potokwane perhaps already knew about Charlie’s affair and might even be able to tell her about the woman involved. Mma Potokwane knew so much about what was going on that it would not be at all surprising if she knew exactly who it was who had been at the wheel of that sleek silver Mercedes-Benz.

  “You’ll never guess who I saw in town the other day,” said Mma Potokwane. “I could hardly believe it.”

  “I cannot guess,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Was it somebody well-known?”

  “A bit,” said Mma Potokwane enigmatically. “Well-known in the jazz world, perhaps.”

  Mma Ramotswe said nothing, waiting for Mma Potokwane to continue.

  “Note,” she said simply. “Note Mokoti, your first husband. Remember him?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MMA MAKUTSI FINDS OUT MORE ABOUT MR PHUTI RADIPHUTI

  W HILE MMA RAMOTSWE was embarking on her second slice of cake with Mma Potokwane, Mma Makutsi was still at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, tidying up. Mma Ramotswe had given her permission to close early that day since she herself was effectively taking the entire afternoon off. They were still busy with the affairs of a number of clients, but there was nothing that could not wait, and Mma Ramotswe knew that Mma Makutsi would like to have adequate time to get ready for her dancing class, the second one, which would be held that evening.

  Mma Makutsi had finished the day’s filing—a task which, as had been drummed into her at the Botswana Secretarial College, should never be left to lie over for the following day. This message had come from no less a person than the Principal herself, a tall, imposing woman who had brought the highest standards to the secretarial profession in Botswana.

  “Don’t let paper lie about, girls,” she had admonished them. “Let each paper cross your desk once, and once only. That is a very good rule. Put everything away. Imagine that at night there are big paper rats that will come out and eat all the paper on your desk!”

  That had been a very clever way of putting it, thought Mma Makutsi. The idea of the paper rat coming out at night to eat unfiled letters was a vivid one, and she had thought that it was not helpful of those silly, glamorous girls in the back row to laugh like that at what the Principal had said. The trouble with those girls had been that they were not committed secretaries. Everybody knew that most of them came to the Botswana Secretarial College simply because they had worked out that the best way of marrying a man with a good job and a lot of money was to become a secretary to such a man. So they went through the College course looking bored and making very little effort. It would have been different, it occurred to Mma Makutsi, had there been a part of the curriculum entitled: How to Marry Your Boss. That would have been very popular with those girls, and they would have paid very close attention to such a course.

  In an idle moment, Mma Makutsi had speculated as to the possible contents of a course of this name. Some of the time would be devoted to psychology and this part would include lessons on how men think. That was very important if one was the sort of girl who planned to trap a man. You had to know what attracted men and what frightened them. Mma Makutsi thought about this. What attracted men? Good looks? Certainly if a girl was pretty then she tended to get the attention of men; that was beyond any doubt at all. But it was not just prettiness that mattered, because there were many girls who did not look anything special but who seemed to find no difficulty in making men notice them. These girls dressed in a very careful way; they knew which colours appealed to men (red, and other bright colours; men were like cattle in that respect), and they knew how to walk and sit down in a way which would make men sit up and take notice. The walk was important: it should not be a
simple walk, with one leg going forward, to be followed by the other; no, the legs had to bend and twist a bit, almost as if one was thinking of walking in a circle. And then there was the delicate issue of what to do with one’s bottom while one was walking. Some people thought that one could just leave one’s bottom to follow one when one was walking. Not so. A mere glance at any glamorous girl would show that the bottom had to be more involved.

  Mma Makutsi thought about all this as she tidied the office that afternoon. It was all very dispiriting. She had been dismayed to see that woman at the dance class—the woman whose name she had forgotten but who had been one of the worst, the very worst, of the glamorous girls at the Botswana Secretarial College. The sight of that woman dancing with such a handsome man, while she, Mma Makutsi, stumbled about the floor with poor Phuti Radiphuti, struggling to make out what he was trying to say; that sight had been immensely depressing. And then there was the question of her glasses, so large that people saw themselves reflected and did not even bother to see the person behind the lenses. What could she do about those? Glasses were very expensive, and although she was better off now, she had so many other costs to meet—higher rent for her new house, new clothes to be bought, and more money needed by those at home in Bobonong.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival at the door of Mr Polopetsi. He had been working at the garage for several days now and had made a very good impression on all of them. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been particularly pleased with the way in which he had tidied the store cupboards. Cans of oil had been placed on shelves according to size, and parts had been organised according to make.

  “You need a system,” Mr Polopetsi had announced. “Then you will know when it is time to order more spark plugs and the like. This is called stock control.”

  He had also scrubbed the garage floor, removing several large patches of oil which the apprentices had never bothered to do anything about.

  “Somebody might slip,” said Mr Polopetsi. “You have to be very careful.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was delighted with this pronouncement, and drew it to the attention of the remaining apprentice.

  “Did you hear that, young man?” he said. “Did you hear what Polopetsi said? Carefulness. Have you heard that word before? Do you know what it means?”

  The younger apprentice said nothing, but stared at Mr Polopetsi in a surly way. He had been suspicious of this new employee ever since he had arrived, although Mr Polopetsi had been polite to him and had made every effort to win him over. Observing this, it had been clear to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni that their assumption that Charlie would soon hear that his place had been usurped was perfectly correct. But he was not sure that Charlie would respond in quite the way Mma Ramotswe had anticipated. However, they would see in due course, and for the time being the important thing was that the work in the garage was getting done.

  Mr Polopetsi, in fact, had shown considerable talent for the simpler mechanical tasks which Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had given him. Watching the way he changed an air filter, or examined the oil on an engine’s dip stick, made Mr J.L.B. Matekoni realise that this man had a feeling for cars, something which some mechanics never developed but which was a necessity if one was to become really good at the job.

  “You like engines, don’t you?” he said to Mr Polopetsi at the end of his first day. “I can tell that you understand them. Have you worked with them before?”

  “Never,” admitted Mr Polopetsi. “I do not know the names of all the parts or what they do. This bit here, for example, what does it do?”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni peered at the engine. “That,” he said, “is a very interesting bit. That is the distributor. It is the bit which sends the electric current in the right direction.”

  “So you would not want any dirt or water to get in there,” said Mr Polopetsi.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded appreciatively. This showed that Mr Polopetsi intuitively understood how engines felt. Charlie would never have said anything so perceptive.

  Now Mma Makutsi asked Mr Polopetsi whether everything was all right.

  “Oh yes,” he replied enthusiastically. “Everything is all right. I just thought that I would tell you that I have finished all my work in the garage this afternoon and I wondered if you had anything for me to do.”

  Mma Makutsi was most impressed. Most people would not ask for more work, but if they had nothing to do would merely pretend to work until five o’clock came and they could go home. In asking for something to do, Mr Polopetsi was proving that Mma Ramotswe had been right in her positive judgement of him.

  She looked about the office. It was difficult to see what there was for him to do. She could hardly ask him to do any filing, which had been done anyway, and it would be too much to expect him to be able to type, even if he had been a pharmacy assistant and was therefore an indoor sort of man. So she could not ask him to do any letters; or could she?

  Mma Makutsi looked sideways at Mr Polopetsi. “You can’t type, can you, Rra?” she asked hesitantly.

  Mr Polopetsi was matter-of-fact in his reply; there was no hint of boasting. “I can type very quickly, Mma. My sister went to the Botswana Secretarial College and she taught me.”

  Mma Makutsi stared at him. Not only was he a hard and resourceful worker, but he had a sister who was a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College! She thought of the name—Polopetsi. Had she known anybody of that name at the College?

  “She has a different name,” Mr Polopetsi explained. “She is my sister by a different father. Her name is Difele. Agnes Difele.”

  Mma Makutsi clapped her hands together. “She was my friend,” she exclaimed. “She was just before me at the College. She did very well … too.”

  “Yes,” said Mr Polopetsi. “She got eighty per cent in the final examinations.”

  Mma Makutsi nodded gravely. That was a good mark, well above the average. Of course it was not ninety-seven per cent, but it was perfectly creditable.

  “Where is she now?” asked Mma Makutsi.

  “She is a secretary in the Standard Bank,” said Mr Polopetsi. “But I do not see her much these days. She was very ashamed when I was sent to prison and she has not spoken to me since then. She said that I disgraced her.”

  Mma Makutsi was silent. It was difficult to imagine somebody disowning her own brother like that. She herself would never have done that; one’s family was one’s family whatever happened; surely that was the point of having a family in the first place. One’s family gave one unconditional support, whatever happened.

  “I am sorry to hear that, Rra,” she said.

  Mr Polopetsi looked away for a moment. “I am not cross with her. I hope that she will change her mind some day. Then we will talk again.”

  Mma Makutsi looked at her desk. There were several letters which had to be typed, and she had intended to type them the following day. But here was Mr Polopetsi, with his ability to type, and it occurred to her that she had never once been in a position to dictate a letter and have somebody else type it. Now here she was with letters to be typed and a good typist at her disposal.

  “I have some letters to dictate,” she said. “You could type them as I dictate. That will save time.”

  Mr Polopetsi lost no time in setting himself up behind the typewriter at Mma Makutsi’s desk, while she installed herself in Mma Ramotswe’s chair, several sheets of paper in her hand. This is delicious, she thought. After all these years, I am now sitting in an office chair and dictating to a man. This was a very long way from those early days in Bobonong.

  MMA MAKUTSI was late in arriving at the dancing class that evening, and as she walked along the corridor at the President Hotel she could hear the band in full flow and the sound of numerous feet on the wooden floor. She appeared at the entrance and made her way to a seat at the side, only to be intercepted by Phuti Radiphuti, who had been waiting for her. Her heart sank. She did not wish to be unkind, but she had hoped that perhaps he would not be there and that she might have th
e chance to dance with somebody else. Now she was trapped, and there would be more stumbling and tripping while everybody else made progress and moved with greater and greater ease.

  Phuti Radiphuti beamed with pleasure as he led her onto the floor. The band, which had been augmented by another guitarist, was playing more loudly than the last time, with the result that it was difficult for her to hear what anybody was saying, let alone to understand those with a speech impediment. So Mma Makutsi had to strain to make out her partner’s words, and even when she thought she could do so, she was puzzled by their apparent lack of sense.

  “This is a waltz,” he tried to say, as they started to dance. But Mma Makutsi heard: This is all false. She wondered why he would say such a thing. Did he sense that she was only dancing with him out of pity, or a sense of duty? Or did he mean something quite different?

  So she decided to seek clarification. “Why?” she asked.

  Phuti Radiphuti looked puzzled. Waltzes were waltzes, of course; that was just what they were. He could not answer her question, and instead concentrated on doing the steps correctly, which was difficult for him. One, two, together is what Mr Fanope had said; or had he said that they should count three before they did the side-step?

  Sensing her partner’s confusion, Mma Makutsi took control. Drawing him to the side of the floor, she showed him how the steps were to be executed and made him repeat them himself while she watched. From the corner of her eye she noticed that the woman she had seen at the first lesson, the one whose name she had forgotten, was watching her in a bemused fashion from the other side of the room. That woman was dancing with the same elegant man who had partnered her before, and she waved at Mma Makutsi over her shoulder as she spun round in his expert arms.

  Mma Makutsi pursed her lips. She was determined not to feel put down by this woman with her showy dress and her condescending manner. She knew what she would think of her, that she would be thinking: there’s poor Grace Makutsi, who never managed to get any man to pay attention to her, and look what she’s landed herself with now! Life has passed her by, of course, in spite of the fact that she graduated top of our class. It’s no good getting ninety-whatever per cent if you end up like that.