Certainly not. He would be terrified of her, with her ninety-seven per cent, or whatever it was, and her determined ways. Poor Phuti Radiphuti.
Mma Makutsi had not said anything since the arrival of Phuti Radiphuti, but now she spoke. “It is very important for a man to have a good chair,” she announced. “Men have so many important decisions to make, they need to have good chairs in which to sit and think about these things. I have always thought that.”
When she had finished making this observation, she stole a glance at Phuti Radiphuti and then looked down at her shoes. It was almost as if she expected the shoes to contradict her, to reproach her for this sudden departure from the view that she had always held that women made the really important decisions for men, subtly and without letting the men know that they were doing it, but doing it nonetheless. She had enjoyed countless conversations with Mma Ramotswe along those lines, and the two women had always agreed on that point. And now here she was cravenly suggesting that it was men, seated in their comfortable chairs, who did all the deciding. She stared at her shoes for a moment, but they were silent, stunned into speechlessness, perhaps, by the suddenness of the volte-face.
Phuti Radiphuti looked at Mma Makutsi. He was smiling, as a man might when he makes a new and pleasant discovery. “That is true,” he said. “But everyone deserves a good chair. Women too. They have important things to think about.”
Mma Makutsi was quick to nod her assent. “Yes, they do, but, and you can call me old-fashioned maybe, but I have always thought that men are particularly important. That is just the way I have been brought up, you see.”
This remark seemed to make Phuti Radiphuti smile even more. “I hope that you are not too traditional in your views,” he said. “Modern men do not like that. They like wives who have their own views.”
“Oh, I have those all right,” said Mma Makutsi quickly. “I do not let anybody else do my thinking for me.”
“That is g … g … good,” said Phuti Radiphuti. He had realised that he had been speaking smoothly and without a stutter, and the realisation made him stumble slightly, but he felt relieved that his omitting to tell Mma Makutsi why he had not arrived for dinner seemed not to have upset her. And now the words came tumbling out, as he explained about his aunt’s illness and about his trip to the hospital. She reassured him that although she had noticed his absence, she had realised that he must have a good reason and that she had not been worried.
You’re such a liar, Boss, her shoes suddenly said to her. But Mma Makutsi, listening to the man who, once again, was to be her husband, had no time for the grumbling of shoes and did not hear them.
“Now, then,” said Phuti Radiphuti. “Shall we look at other chairs, or is that the one you like?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni stroked the leather stretched across the arms of the chair. It had a soft feel, and he could imagine himself in the sitting room at Zebra Drive, ensconced in the chair, stroking the leather on the arms and staring up at the ceiling in contemplation. In the background, in the kitchen, Mma Ramotswe would be preparing the evening meal and the tantalising smell of one of her rich stews would come wafting down the corridor. It was a vision of perfection, a glimpse of what heaven might be like, if one ever got there. Was there anything wrong with men sitting in such chairs and thinking such thoughts? he asked himself. Not really, although there did seem to be rather a lot of people about these days who wanted to make men feel guilty about that. He had heard one on the radio recently, and she had said that men were fundamentally lazy and just wanted to be waited on hand and foot by women. What a thing to say! He, for one, was not in the slightest bit lazy. He worked hard all day at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, he never let his customers down, and he handed over all the money he earned to Mma Ramotswe for their joint expenses. And if he wanted to sit in a chair from time to time and rest his weary bones, then was there anything wrong with that? Mma Ramotswe liked cooking, and if he went into the kitchen to try to help her, she would chase him out with very little ceremony. No, such people were very unfair about men, and very wrong too. But then he thought of the apprentices, and suddenly he realised that perhaps there was some truth in what had been said. They were the ones who gave men a bad name, with their slipshod ways and their arrogant attitudes towards women. They were the ones.
“So that’s the chair you like?” Phuti Radiphuti’s question brought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni back to the Double Comfort Furniture Shop and to the realisation that he was sitting in a chair that he would be unlikely to be able to afford.
“I like it,” he said. “But I think that perhaps we should look at something that is not quite so costly. I do not think that Mma Ramotswe …”
Phuti Radiphuti raised his hands to stop him. “But that chair has just gone on sale,” he said. “It is fifty per cent off. Right now. Specially for you.”
“Fifty per cent!” exclaimed Mma Makutsi. “That is very good. You must buy that chair, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. It is a very big bargain.”
“But what will Mma Ramotswe …”
“She will thank you for it,” said Mma Makutsi firmly. “Mma Ramotswe likes a bargain as much as any other woman. She will be very pleased.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni hesitated. He longed for a comfortable chair. His life had been full of axles and engine parts and grease. It had been a battle, all of it; a battle to keep engines going in spite of the dust and the bumps in the road that were such enemies of machinery; a battle to keep the apprentices from ruining any engine they touched. It had all been a struggle. At the end of the day a chair like this could make up for a lot. It was irresistible.
He looked at Phuti Radiphuti. “Can you deliver it to Zebra Drive?”
“Of course,” said Phuti Radiphuti. He reached out and patted the back of the chair. “You will be very happy in that chair, Rra. Very happy.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
BLOOD PRESSURE
IF ONE PRESSED Mma Ramotswe on the point, really pressed, she would admit that very little happened in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Very little in general, that was; certainly there were spikes of activity, in which suddenly there would be several problems to be looked into at once. These, though, were the exception; normally the issues with which the agency was required to deal were very small ones, which were readily solved by Mma Ramotswe’s simple expedient of asking somebody a direct question and getting a direct answer. It was all very well for Clovis Andersen to go on about the complexity of many investigations, and indeed the danger in at least some of them, but that was not really what life in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was like.
But there were times, thought Mma Ramotswe, when even Clovis Andersen would be impressed by the number of major issues with which she and Mma Makutsi had to deal, and over the days that followed the trip out to Mokolodi, it seemed to her that this was rapidly becoming one such period.