This surprised Mma Ramotswe and, in spite of her equable temperament, irritated her. Mma Makutsi had been meant to be in the office throughout the previous day, in case a client should call. Where had she been?
“So Mma Makutsi was out?” she said. “Did she say where?” It was possible that some urgent matter of business had arisen and this had required Mma Makutsi’s presence elsewhere, but she doubted that. A more likely explanation, thought Mma Ramotswe, was urgent shopping, probably for shoes.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni lowered his gaze from the ceiling and fixed it on Mma Ramotswe. He knew that his wife was a generous employer, but he did not want to get Mma Makutsi into trouble if she had deliberately disobeyed instructions. And she had been shopping; when she had returned, just before five in the afternoon—a strictly token return, he thought at the time—she had been laden with parcels and had unpacked one of these to show him the shoes it contained. They were very fashionable shoes, she had assured him, but in Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s view they had been barely recognisable as footwear, so slender and insubstantial had seemed the criss-crossings of red leather which made up the upper part of the shoes.
“So she went shopping,” said Mma Ramotswe, tight-lipped.
“Perhaps,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He tended to be defensive about Mma Makutsi, whom he admired greatly. He knew what it was like to come from nowhere, with nothing, or next to nothing, and make a success of one’s life. She had done that with her ninety-seven per cent and her part-time typing school, and now, of course, with her well-heeled fiancé. He would defend her. “But there was nothing going on. I’m sure she had done all her work.”
“But something did turn up,” pointed out Mma Ramotswe. “A client came to see me. You’ve just said that.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni fiddled with a button on the front of his shirt. He was clearly embarrassed about something. “Well, I suppose so. But I was there to deal with things. I spoke to this person.”
“And?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni hesitated. “I was able to deal with the situation,” he said. “And I have written it all down to show you.” He reached into a pocket and took out a folded sheet of paper, which he handed to Mma Ramotswe.
She unfolded the paper and read the pencil-written note. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s handwriting was angular, and careful—the script of one who had been taught penmanship, as he had been, at school all those years ago, a skill he had never forgotten. Mma Ramotswe’s own handwriting was less legible and was becoming worse. It was something to do with her wrists, she thought, which had become chubbier over the years and which affected the angle of the hand on the paper. Mma Makutsi had suggested that her employer’s handwriting was becoming increasingly like shorthand and that it might eventually become indistinguishable from the system of pencilled dashes and wiggles that covered the pages of her own notebook.
“It will be a first,” she remarked, as she squinted at a note which Mma Ramotswe had left her. “It will be the first time that anybody has started to write shorthand without learning it. It may even be in the papers.”
Mma Ramotswe had wondered whether she should feel offended by this, but had decided to laugh instead. “Would I get ninety-seven per cent for it?” she asked.
Mma Makutsi became serious. She did not like her result at the Botswana Secretarial College to be taken lightly. “No,” she said. “I was only joking about shorthand. You would have to work very hard at the Botswana Secretarial College to get a result like that. Very hard.” She gave Mma Ramotswe a look which implied that such a result would be well beyond her.
Now, on the paper before her, were Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s notes. “Time,” he had written, “3:20 p.m. Client: woman. Name: Faith Botumile. Complaint: husband having an affair. Request: find out who the husband’s girlfriend is. Action proposed: get rid of girlfriend. Get husband back.”
Mma Ramotswe read the note and looked at her husband. She was trying to imagine the encounter between Faith Botumile and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Had the interview taken place in the garage, while his head was buried in some car’s engine compartment? Or had he taken her into the office and interviewed her from the desk, wiping his hands free of grease as she told her story? And what was Mma Botumile like? What age? Dress? There were so many things that a woman would notice which would provide vital background to the handling of the case which a man simply would not see.
“This woman,” she asked, holding up the note. “Tell me about her?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni shrugged. “Just an ordinary woman,” he said. “Nothing special about her.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. It was as she had imagined, and Mma Botumile would have to be interviewed again from scratch.
“Just a woman?” she mused.
“That’s right,” he said.
“And you can’t tell me anything more about her?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Nothing about her age? Nothing about her appearance?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni seemed surprised. “Do you want me to?”
“It could be useful.”
“Thirty-eight,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. “She told you that?”
“Not directly. No. But I was able to work that out. She said that she was the sister of the man who runs that shoe shop near the supermarket. She said that she was the joint owner, with him. She said that he was her older brother—by two years. I know that man. I know that he had a fortieth birthday recently because one of the people who brings in his car for servicing said that he was going to his party. So I knew…”
Mma Ramotswe’s eyes widened. “And what else do you know about her?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked up at the ceiling again. “Nothing, really,” he said. “Except maybe that she is a diabetic.”
Mma Ramotswe was silent.
“I offered her a biscuit,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You know those iced ones you have on your desk. In that tin marked Pencils. I offered her one of those and she looked at her watch and then shook her head. I have seen diabetics do that. They sometimes look at their watch because they have to know how long it is before their next meal.” He paused. “I am not sure, of course. I just thought that.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded, and glanced at her own watch. It was almost time to go to the office. It was, she felt, going to be an unusual day. Any day on which one’s suppositions are so rudely shattered before eight o’clock is bound to be an unusual day, a day for discovering things about the world which are quite different from what you thought they were.
She drove into work slowly, not even trying to keep up with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s green truck ahead of her. At the top of Zebra Drive she nosed her van out across the road that led north, narrowly avoiding a large car which swerved and sounded its horn; such rudeness, she thought, and so unnecessary. She drove on, past the entrance to the Sun Hotel and beyond it, against the hotel fence, the place where the women sat with their crocheted bedspreads and table-cloths hung out for passers-by to see and, they hoped, to buy. The work was intricate and skilfully done; stitch after stitch, loop after loop, worked slowly and painstakingly out from the core in wide circles of white thread, like spider-webs; the work of women who sat there so patiently under the sun, women of the sort whose work was often forgotten or ignored in its anonymity, but artists really, and providers. Mma Ramotswe needed a new bedspread and would stop to buy one before too long; but not today, when she had things on her mind. Mma Botumile. Mma Botumile. The name had been tantalising her, because she thought that she had encountered it before and could not recall where. Now she remembered. Somebody had once said to her: Mma Botumile: rudest woman in the whole of Botswana. True!
CHAPTER TWO
THE RULE OF THREE
SO, MMA,” said Mma Makutsi from behind her desk. “Another day.”
It was not an observation that called for an immediate reply; certainly one could hardly contradict it. So Mma Ramotswe merely nodded, glancing at Mma Makutsi and taking in the bright red dress—a dress which she had not seen before. It was very fetching, she thought, even if a bit too formal for their modest office; after all, new clothes, grand clothes, can show just how shabby one’s filing cabinets are. When she had first come to work for Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi had possessed only a few dresses, two of which were blue and the others of a faded colour between green and yellow. With the success of her part-time typing school for men, she had been able to afford rather more, and now, following her engagement to Phuti Radiphuti, her wardrobe had expanded even further.