Mma Lentswe invited her through the opening at the front of the lelapa. “You must come in, Mma, and I shall make some tea. On a hot afternoon like this, it is best to drink tea, I think.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “That is what I always say, Mma. Tea is very important in this weather.”
“I have electricity here,” said Mma Lentswe. “You wouldn’t think it, would you, as we are just outside the village boundary. But we have it now, Mma, and so I can see much better at night and I can boil a kettle.”
“That’s very good, Mma.”
“When I think of what this country has done,” continued Mma Lentswe, “I feel very proud. All these things we have made for ourselves. We’ve built a whole country from the ground up.”
“That is true, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe was shown to a wooden chair that had been placed under an acacia tree in the yard. Sitting here while Mma Lentswe made tea in the kitchen behind the house, Mma Ramotswe looked up into the boughs of the tree. There was an air of peace about the place that took her back to her childhood in Mochudi. That had been a period of quiet, of calm; there had been no traffic noise then, no hurry to do anything very much—just the sound of birdsong and cicadas and the lowing of cattle coming in from the lands. This was the heart of her country—the very heart.
Mma Lentswe returned with the teapot and two old-fashioned white enamel mugs. “I was a teacher, Mma,” she said. “Not here in Mochudi, but down in Lobatse, where my husband worked. He is late, like so many people these days. He worked for the Meat Commission. I taught in a school there.”
Mma Ramotswe mentioned the name of friends in Lobatse, and Mma Lentswe nodded; she knew them, although she had lost touch with them since she had moved back to Mochudi. For a few moments there was silence. It would have been impolite for Mma Lentswe to ask Mma Ramotswe the purpose of her visit; in the old Botswana one did not have to have a reason to visit others, even strangers.
“I have met Charity,” said Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Lentswe looked at her over the top of her spectacles. “You have heard what has happened?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “It is very sad. She told me she had worked there for—”
“For six years,” interjected Mma Lentswe. “And then this business with a customer.”
“It is very unfortunate,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And unfair too, since she did not say what they said she said.”
Mma Lentswe frowned. “Are you sure about that, Mma?”
“Charity told me she didn’t say that.”
Mma Lentswe looked into her teacup. “Children say these things. They never admit they did anything. I was a teacher, Mma—I know that.”
Mma Ramotswe was puzzled. What had this to do with children?
“Of course she isn’t a child,” continued the older woman. “But when you are the mother of somebody, then she will always be your child. That is just the way it is, Mma.”
“I see.”
“My daughter is a headstrong woman,” said Mma Lentswe. “For most of the time she is very easy—a very polite person—and then suddenly, just like that, she can say something very rude. It does not happen very often, but it happens.”
Mma Ramotswe sat quite still. This was not what she had expected to hear, and she felt dismayed. Now she knew that it had happened. Charity had done what she had been accused of doing—her own mother, who should know her better than anybody else, had just confirmed it.
“Oh well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is a great pity.”
“Yes, it’s a great pity, but I wasn’t really surprised, Mma. I think that they are being very harsh in dismissing her just for one bit of bad behaviour, but I suppose that is the way things are these days. The world is a very strict place now.” She looked out over the bush beyond the lelapa wall. “You know, Mma Ramotswe, in the school that I taught in down in Lobatse, there was a teacher who was actually spitting at the children. Can you believe that? If she got cross with a badly behaved child, she would spit at them. And do you know, when there was a complaint made about this, they gave her another chance. She did not lose her job, but was given a chance to mend her ways.”
“That was kind.”
“Yes, but do you know what happened? A few months later this teacher had a big row with the principal over something or other, and do you know what she did? She spat at the principal.” Mma Lentswe grinned. “And that was the end of her teaching career.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “That lady should never have been a teacher, Mma.”
“No. She found another job. She became a policewoman. She did very well in the police, I think. Last time I read about her in the papers, I saw that she was in charge of one of the bigger police stations. I hope that she was not spitting on the criminals.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed again. “I hear that you read the papers, Mma.”
Mma Lentswe nodded. “I keep scrapbooks. There is nothing else to do here. I keep scrapbooks of any news about people from Mochudi and Lobatse too. The two places I have lived in for a long time.” She paused, as if she had remembered something. “There was a picture of your father in one of the papers a long time ago. I think it was something to do with an agricultural show. He won something for one of his bulls.”
Mma Ramotswe remembered the news item. It had been cut from the paper and framed. Somehow it had been lost in the intervening years.
“And there was another mention of a Ramotswe,” continued Mma Lentswe. “A couple of years ago, I think.”
“A picture of my father?”
“No. Not your father. Some lady.”
“Of me?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “When I started the agency they had an article about it.”
“No, not you, Mma; of some other lady. It will be in my scrapbook.”
Mma Ramotswe was puzzled. Her name was an unusual one, and she thought that she knew of everybody called Ramotswe. They were cousins, some close, some distant, but they did not number more than seven. And of those seven, five were men and two were women. So this other Ramotswe would have to be either Bontle Ramotswe or Gladys Ramotswe, both of whom now lived up in Francistown where they were married to two brothers. That was the sort of thing that could end up as a news item, so perhaps that was it. “Sisters marry brothers” was exactly the sort of thing that the press liked to report on a day when there was little or no other news.
“Could you show me this thing, Mma?” she asked.
“Of course,” said Mma Lentswe. “I shall fetch it, Mma, while you pour yourself more tea.”
CHAPTER SIX
MY GOODNESS, MMA, LOOK AT THE NAMES
MMA RAMOTSWE observed speed limits for two reasons. One of these was that she believed that laws were there to be obeyed, and that if everybody drove as fast as they liked there would be mayhem on the roads. That was a good, sound reason, and one that was fully endorsed by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni if not by Charlie, for whom a speed limit tended to be an irritant. “They don’t really mean it,” he said. “They know you can’t drive that slowly all the time. The Government knows that.”
Her second reason for sticking to the speed limit was more prosaic. Even had Mma Ramotswe wanted to drive faster, her tiny white van, with its underpowered engine, was incapable of going any faster than a sedate twenty-eight miles an hour, which fell comfortably below the limit prescribed for most roads in Botswana. And that was on a flat road and with a reasonable tail-wind. Hills and head-winds were another matter altogether, and brought the van’s speed down even further; so much so, in fact, that bicycles, and on one occasion even a donkey, could overtake Mma Ramotswe. She did not mind this, of course. “I have no desire to drive past anybody,” she once said to Mma Potokwane. “What does it matter if you take two hours to do a journey that everybody else takes one hour to do? What does it matter, Mma?”
And Mma Potokwane had agreed. “You’re quite right, Mma Ramotswe. Where’s the rush? The places we’re going to will still be there when we arrive. I don’t see any reason to hurry.”
Th
is sort of backing up from Mma Potokwane pleased Mma Ramotswe greatly. The two women had always seen the world in much the same way, and it was encouraging to hear that one’s views were supported, more or less unconditionally, by at least one other person. There were minor differences of approach, of course: Mma Potokwane had a tendency to take advantage of some people—notably Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, whom she regularly inveigled into doing any repairs that the Orphan Farm needed—but if this was a fault, it was a very minor one, and she always acted with the welfare of the children in mind. When it came to the real issues, to questions of value, to questions of right and wrong, then she and Mma Ramotswe were always in complete agreement. That we should share with other people—yes, of course we should; that we should think about how other people are feeling—again yes, of course we should do that; that men should let ladies sit down if there are not enough chairs to go round and that they, the men, should stand—well, who would disagree with that? To the surprise of both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane, it appeared that there were people who felt that this was an old-fashioned way of behaving and that if a man reached the chair first he should sit down, even if a woman ended up standing. These people argued that offering a lady a chair implied that she was weak and that men and women should be treated differently. Well, said both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane, of course women should be treated differently. Of course they should be treated with respect and consideration and given the credit for all the hard work they did in the home, looking after children (and men), and in the workplace too. Offering a lady a chair was one way of showing that this work was appreciated, and that strength and brute force—at which men generally tended to excel—was not the only thing that counted. Respect for ladies tamed men, and there were many men who were sorely in need of taming; that was well known, said Mma Ramotswe.
But now, heading back into Gaborone after her visit to Charity’s mother, Mma Ramotswe was eager to get back to the office as soon as she possibly could. She wanted more than anything else to have a word with Mma Makutsi and, if she could prise him away from his car repairs, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. There were two things she was eager to talk to them about: she wanted to tell Mma Makutsi about what Charity’s mother had said about her daughter suffering from outbursts, and she wanted to talk to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni about what she had seen in the somewhat tattered scrapbook produced by the elderly woman. The cutting she had been given from that was safely tucked in the pocket of her blouse, ready to be shown and discussed.
So it was with her foot pressed firmly down on the accelerator that she made the return journey into Gaborone. The traffic was light, and although she never exceeded twenty-five miles an hour, she found herself driving up to the shared premises of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors well before it was time for either of the businesses to close for the day.
She found Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni under a car parked over the inspection pit. The light from his lamp, like the torch of a speluncean explorer, moved about in the darkness, at one point illuminating the grinning face of Charlie, who was in the pit with him.
“No, Charlie,” she heard him say, “that is nothing to do with the brakes. It’s…” She did not hear the rest because Charlie had started to sing a few bars of a popular song of the time.
“I am up here, Rra,” she called out. “I don’t want to disturb you in the middle of something important, but I need to talk to you.”
The torch beam flashed about and shortly thereafter Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni emerged from the inspection pit. He wiped his hands on the flanks of his overalls, and looked apologetically at Mma Ramotswe. “I don’t have a cloth, Mma. I try to use a cloth.”
“Don’t worry about that, Rra,” she reassured him. “There is so much grease on your working clothes that it makes no real difference.”
He took this as an invitation to wipe his hands again. As he did so, he looked at her quizzically. “Has something happened?” he asked.
She nodded. “Can we go into my office, Rra. I want to show you something.”
Mma Makutsi was busy shuffling papers when they entered the office. She had not expected Mma Ramotswe back, and letters and other documents were strewn about both desks—hers and Mma Ramotswe’s.
“I am catching up on my filing,” said Mma Makutsi. “I’m making very good progress.”
“Is there any chance of tea?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I’ve been on the go since eight this morning and I’ve had no lunch.”
Mma Makutsi immediately switched on the electric kettle and began to prepare the two teapots—one for ordinary tea and one for Mma Ramotswe’s special red bush tea. As she did this, Mma Ramotswe discreetly pushed some of the papers to the side of her desk. Then she took the newspaper cutting from her pocket, unfolded it, and laid it down on the desk.
“Read that, Rra,” she said. “And look at the photograph.”
Mr. J.L.B Matekoni extracted his reading glasses from his chest pocket and began to examine the newspaper cutting. He still moved his lips slightly when he read—an ancient habit that gave an impression of close, considered attention.
“Three local women win an award for their performance in their nursing exams,” he read aloud. “Lobatse can be proud of these three ladies whose nursing prowess has been widely recognised.”
He looked up at Mma Ramotswe. “They are all operating theatre nurses, Mma. They’re the ones who help with the operations, aren’t they? Sewing things up, removing some of the blood, and so on? That’s what a nurse like that does, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, Rra,” she replied.
From the other side of the office, Mma Makutsi had a contribution to make. “I read in a magazine somewhere that these nurses sometimes know more about operations than many junior doctors. There was a case where somebody was having an operation and the doctor had to go out to the bathroom. He couldn’t wait, and so he had to go out.”
“That can happen sometimes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.
“Yes,” continued Mma Makutsi. “So this doctor went out, but when he came back he discovered that the nurse had completed the operation in his absence—and had done it very well.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni whistled. “That is very worrying.” He frowned. “But I don’t suppose the patient knew anything about it. And as long as it was a success…”
“Which it was,” said Mma Makutsi, as she brought them their cups of tea. “Often the people who are number two in any set-up are the ones who know the most.”
There was a sudden silence. This remark, intended to refer to theatre nurses and perhaps co-pilots and the like, had a strong resonance closer to home. It could equally refer, everyone realised, to assistant detectives or indeed to those who, although no longer assistant detectives, now being associate directors, or even co-directors, were, nonetheless, still number two in an organisation such as the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency—just for the purpose of example, of course.
For a few moments, the silence weighed heavily. But Mma Ramotswe did not mind; someone more inclined to take offence would have undoubtedly done so, but she understood how Mma Makutsi felt, and so she said, “You are absolutely right, Mma. The number two person is often better at things. That is well known, I think.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had picked up the veiled reference and was keen to move the conversation away from potentially difficult waters. Pointing to the photograph in the cutting, he asked, “These ladies, Mma—these special nurses—do you know them?”
Mma Makutsi now picked up the cutting and glanced at the photograph. “The one on the left looks exactly like somebody who was in my group at the Botswana Secretarial College. It could be her sister, in fact…” She trailed off. She had read the inscription below the photograph. “My goodness, Mma, look at the names.”
Mma Makutsi read them out. “Pearl Badi (28), from Lobatse. Nayna Baipidi (31), also from Lobatse. And…” She looked up in surprise. “Mingie Ramotswe (43), from Lobatse, formerly from Mochudi.”
/> Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. “Mingie what?”
“Mingie Ramotswe,” said Mma Makutsi. “Look, here it is. Mingie Ramotswe. That is her—this one on the side.” She paused. “And look at the face, Rra. Who does that remind you of?”
The resemblance, once pointed out, was undeniable. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni put the cutting down on the desk and looked at Mma Ramotswe in confusion. “But I thought you only had those two female cousins, Mma—those two who went up to Francistown. I forget their names.”
“Bontle and Gladys,” supplied Mma Ramotswe. “Yes, those are the only two—that I know of.”
“So who is this woman?” asked Mma Makutsi, almost disapprovingly. “Who is she to call herself Mingie Ramotswe?”
“That must be her name,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Why else would she call herself that?”
Mma Makutsi shook her head. “But you have always said that there were very few people with the name Ramotswe, Mma. It’s the same with Phuti’s name. There are no other Radiphutis—just him and a couple of cousins. That’s all.”
“And your little Itumelang, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe with a smile. “Do not forget your little boy.”
Mma Makutsi put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I forgot about Itumelang. Yes, there is him. Him, Phuti, and those three cousins. That is all the Radiphutis there are in the world.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni repeated Mma Makutsi’s question. “So who is this lady, Mma?” He tapped the newspaper cutting. “If she comes from Mochudi, why have we not heard of her?”
Mma Ramotswe hesitated before replying. “Comes from,” she said. “But that may only mean she was born there. You come from the place you were born, don’t you?”
Mma Makutsi pointed out that this was true. “I say that I come from Bobonong,” she said. “But it’s a long time since I was there.”
“But if I met you in the street,” argued Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, “and I said to you: ‘Mma, where are you from?’ you wouldn’t say Bobonongong…”
Mma Makutsi corrected him. “Bobonong,” she said. “People often add a few extra ongs. It is very careless of them.” She looked reprovingly at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who made an apologetic gesture. You had to be careful about Bobonong when Mma Makutsi was present; he had learned that over the years. You also had to be careful about what you said about the Botswana Secretarial College; that was another area of sensitivity—along with Mma Makutsi’s job title, whatever that was; it was so difficult to remember whether she was a co-director or an associate director, or simply a director.
The House of Unexpected Sisters Page 7