Precious and Grace

  “I don’t want to press you, Rra,” she said. “I was just trying to help.”

  “You are very good, Mma.”

  Of course she knew it would take more than a vacuum cleaner to bring order to that house; what was required was a change of attitude by Daffodil. But she could not say anything about that, and had resigned herself to the fact that her neighbouring property would be ill-kempt indefinitely.

  Now, with the van parked outside the neighbour’s gate, she was making her way up the bare and dusty front path towards the Kwele verandah. Vain was waiting for them, and greeted Susan with elaborate courtesy. He explained that his wife was out, but that he would tell her about the visit when she returned. He asked her where she lived now, and expressed the wish one day to see Toronto, of which he had heard so much.

  “I have several maps of Canada,” he said, as Mma Ramotswe introduced her.

  “Then you will know where to go if you come and see us,” said Susan.

  “They are out of date, I think,” said Vain. “You must never rely on old maps to navigate. You might suddenly find there is a dam—or worse still, a hole—directly where you want to go. I would need to get a much better map.”

  They went inside, where Vain invited them to sit down. “Mma Ramotswe has told me all about your search,” he began. “And now you have found the house where you lived. After all these years, that’s something to think about, isn’t it, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe watched. Somebody had once told her—it may even have been Mma Makutsi, she thought—that you should watch where eyes went. If you could see what people were looking at, if you were ready to note where their gaze alighted, then you learned a lot about them. Now, as she sat in the Kwele living room, she saw Susan’s eyes drift round to the door that led to the back of the house. She did not seem to be interested in the living room, but surely she must remember that better than anywhere else in the house. People lived in their living rooms, after all.

  “I can show you round,” said Vain. “I imagine that it’s very different from those old days, but the walls are in the same place.”

  “That would be kind,” said Susan.

  Again the eyes, after politely going to Vain, returned to that door to the back.

  Vain rose to his feet. “We could start,” he said. “That is, we could start if you’re ready, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe and Susan stood up.

  “The kitchen is back here,” said Vain. “I think it would have been there in your day. Kitchens stay put, I think—don’t you, Mma?”

  “You would not want your kitchen to wander,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  Vain laughed. “You certainly would not. You would have to say: Where is my kitchen today? How am I to cook if it keeps going off somewhere?”

  Susan did not laugh; she barely smiled.

  “Here,” said Vain, “is the kitchen.”

  Mma Ramotswe could not help but note that the floor was dirty. That was Daffodil, of course; no self-respecting Motswana lady would let her kitchen floor get into such a state. She knew nothing of Daffodil’s background, other than that she came from somewhere down near Lobatse. Perhaps that was it; perhaps people in Lobatse were a little bit slacker about these things. Or perhaps it was just because she was the product of a slack home where the mother was not particularly good: good mothers taught their daughters to keep a kitchen clean, and really good mothers tried to teach their sons that too these days, because it was not fair that women should have to do all the domestic work and it was about time the men took on their share. Perhaps that would change; perhaps Africa would begin to see just how unfair it was that half humanity should do most of the work about a house. Perhaps men would stop their posturing and talking and expecting women to cook all their meals and…Or perhaps not. Look at Charlie. Only the other day he had said how much he was looking forward to getting married one day and having a woman to do all those things for him. And when Mma Makutsi had exploded and taken him to task for saying that, he had been genuinely surprised. So perhaps talk of change was premature.

  Susan stood in the middle of the kitchen. She was staring out of the window at the back of the room, out into the yard.

  “The kitchens in these houses are all very much the same,” Vain said. “The Commission used the same design up and down the country, but it was a good one, I think. A place for a fridge; a place for the stove; three store cupboards; a place for a table.” He paused, and glanced at Mma Ramotswe. He too had seen the direction of Susan’s gaze.

  “Do you remember the garden at the back, Mma?” he asked. “There was a washing line there, right outside the window, but my wife moved it to the side of the house because there was some grass there and if the washing fell onto the grass it got less dirty.”

  Susan, who had been largely silent, now spoke. “There was a servant’s block there, wasn’t there? One of those small houses?”

  Vain nodded. It was a standard arrangement, and still was: at the back of a house of that size there would be a small building—two rooms and a bathroom—that made up the servant’s quarters. That was where the maid or the man who worked in the garden might live, depending on the domestic arrangements of the particular household. And having a servant was not a sign of wealth or privilege—even a modest establishment would have a maid, as this was an important way of providing employment that would otherwise not exist.

  “We knocked that place down,” said Vain. “My wife does not like to have a maid in the house. She says that a maid can get in the way and might steal. She is very worried about people stealing from her.”

  “There are many maids who are one hundred per cent honest,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have one. Mma Makutsi has one. There are many such people.”

  Vain looked at her reproachfully. “I am not saying that all maids are dishonest, Mma. I did not say that. I am just saying that there are some who are. That is all.”

  “I’m sorry, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I did not mean to accuse you.”

  “Why did you knock it down?” asked Susan in a strained voice.

  “The roof needed replacing,” said Vain. “It would have cost more to replace the roof than to knock it down.”

  Susan moved towards the door. “Will you show me where it was?”

  Vain seemed taken aback by the request, but agreed to do as asked. “The yard at the back is a bit overgrown,” he said. “That is deliberate. We do not like people to think that we have a lot of money because our yard is all set out nicely. People come and ask you for money if they think you can spend a lot on your yard.”

  “But there may be snakes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “If you let things grow too much, then snakes move in. They like gardens that are not looked after very well…Not that I’m saying that yours is like that, Rra. I am not saying that.”

  Vain frowned. “There are no snakes in my yard, Mma Ramotswe. That one you trod on the other day did not live here. He was passing through. There are some snakes that pass through.”

  Now outside, they followed a small path, barely discernible after years of disuse, to an area of flat ground. On this there were signs that once there had been a building—remnants of the concrete foundations, covered here and there by soil, but poking up out of the ground in an unmistakable rectangular pattern. There were a few half-shattered breeze-blocks of the sort used for constructing cheap buildings, now crumbling with the passage of years; there were some fragments of corrugated tin, left over from a roof that must have been taken away to make a coop for hens or something of that sort. There were the remnants of a termite mound, built to take advantage of the bits of wood that the demolition had left lying around, but long ago abandoned by ants that had gone elsewhere to raise a new tiny city.

  Mma Ramotswe realised immediately that this was a place of special interest for Susan. She watched her client’s expression. She watched her as she looked, and then looked away. That came with pain.

  “Are you all right, Mma?” she asked.

  Susan seem
ed to shake herself out of her mood. Turning to Mma Ramotswe, she smiled as she said, “Of course I am, Mma Ramotswe. I’m just thinking.” She looked about her, and pointed to a corner of the yard abutting on Mma Ramotswe’s yard. “We kept hens, you know. We kept them down there. They were moved there because there was a cockerel who used to wake my mother with his—”

  “Boasting,” interjected Vain. “Those guys make such a noise, don’t they? Yok, yok, yok…”

  Mma Ramotswe looked at him with amusement. That was not the sound a cockerel made—not in her view. “A cockerel that made a sound like that would not be feeling well,” she said, with a grin.

  Vain took the jibe in good spirit. “Perhaps you’re right, Mma. I’m not good with sounds.”

  “Cockerels go croo, croo, croo,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And their wives go pock, pock, pock.”

  Mma Ramotswe saw that Susan had turned away. She spotted the furtive movement, the reaching for a handkerchief, or a tissue, and the wiping of the eyes. She regretted the levity of her exchange with Vain; this was not the moment to discuss the language of chickens.

  She laid a hand gently on Mma Susan’s shoulder. She reminded herself of what had been said about her parents: the mother dead and the father in a home, his memory gone, his past deleted. “I understand, Mma,” she whispered.

  Mma Susan half turned, but did not look at Mma Ramotswe. She reached up and touched the hand upon her shoulder, acknowledging the sympathy. “It was so long ago,” she said. “Things look different, I think.”

  “They will do,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We want them to look the same, but…well, they change. People move things about.”

  She thought of Mochudi, and of how she often made that short journey back into her own past. As she saw the village regularly, changes did not surprise her; a new road, a recently constructed building, a wall painted a different colour—these were things that you took in your stride as part of the organic aging of the world about you, but then you looked at an old photograph and saw the place as you had known it in your youth and you were reminded then that the world was slipping away, slowly slipping away.

  They walked back towards the house. Vain was talking about somebody who had lived on the other side of the road for a long time, but Mma Ramotswe did not listen. She was thinking of the futility of Susan’s quest. Why would somebody spend such a great amount of money—it must have been expensive for her to travel all the way from Canada—just to stand here in this desolate, ill-kept yard and remember a chicken coop and a servant’s room? It was an absurd thing to do—a self-indulgence in a world in which so much better use could be made of that money.

  But then she reminded herself that it was not for her to enquire as to why people asked her to uncover information. Once she started to do that, she would rapidly talk herself out of a job and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency might as well close its doors. If she had to assume responsibility for the use every suspicious wife might make of information about the secret life of her husband, she would end up having to decline too many cases. She knew very well that she could not heal such marriages; that she and Mma Makutsi ended up giving clients ammunition to use in rows and showdowns, but she had to live with that. People were entitled to know about the bad behaviour of others; people were entitled to know if they were being betrayed or cheated, or somehow let down. Some wanted vengeance—which Mma Ramotswe would never recommend—while others sought freedom or, at least, to know where they stood, and such people were entitled to this knowledge, just as Mma Susan was entitled to this curious, nostalgic trip to discover something that she had once had, but had no longer. How others spent their money, thought Mma Ramotswe, was not her business. We might want others to spend wisely, but if they did not, then it did not fall to us to stop them.

  Vain gave them tea on the verandah.

  “It is a very good idea to go back,” he said as he passed Susan her cup. “I went back to see the school I attended, you know. And you know what it’s like, don’t you?”

  He looked at Mma Ramotswe, as if expecting confirmation.

  She said, “It’s very small. Everything is so small.”

  Vain nodded vigorously. “Exactly! It’s much smaller.” He took a sip of his tea. “Why do you think that is, Mma Ramotswe?”

  “Because we were small ourselves, Rra?” She thought about it further. Yes, we were small and so things around us were bigger. Now that we were bigger, things were smaller. Was that the way it worked?

  Vain looked thoughtful. “Probably. Or should I say, possibly.” He paused. “Do you think that the world looks bigger to a very small person? I’m not talking about children here; I’m talking about those people who never grow because they are just meant to be small. There is one such person who goes to the dance competitions. He dances with a very tall lady, although she has to bend down to hold him. People love it.”

  “People can be cruel,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “Oh, they are not being cruel,” said Vain. “They are just laughing.”

  “He may not see it that way, Rra.”

  Vain shrugged. “He may not see it at all, Mma. Down there, he doesn’t see very much, I think.”

  “I don’t think he sees the world any differently from any of us,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We all see it the same way, I think—after we have stopped being children.”

  She wondered whether she, a traditionally built person, saw the world differently from the way in which a thin person might see it. She thought not.

  She glanced at Susan. “Are you pleased you’ve been able to see this house?” she asked.

  It was a rather direct question, and one she realised that perhaps she should not ask in the presence of a third person, but she wanted to move the conversation on from Vain’s wandering reflections.

  Susan insisted she was pleased. “It has been very interesting,” she said. “It is helping me remember.”

  Then Vain suddenly said, “But remember to forget. Don’t forget to forget.”

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Mma Susan has come to Botswana to remember—not to forget.”

  “I was just saying,” muttered Vain. “Sometimes we need to forget as well as remember.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked into her teacup. The tea he had served was lukewarm; was Vain one of these men who could not even boil a kettle? They existed; they were fewer and further between, she thought, but they still existed. And then it came to her, as the solution of cases often did, in a moment of sudden insight. Susan had come to Botswana to get over that failed love affair back in Canada. It seemed so clear now: she had come to Botswana because she was unhappy, and unhappy people often go away because it is painful to be where they are. This was not about childhood; this was not about Botswana. This was about love and the unrepaired, sometimes irreparable, wounds that love could inflict. So when Vain—of all people—had said something about the need to forget, he had inadvertently given exactly the advice that was needed. She would have to say this to her—gently, of course, and at the right moment, which was not now.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THESE PEOPLE ARE VERY CUNNING

  MMA RAMOTSWE liked to make lists, and, like all people who make lists, she was inclined to take an optimistic view of their contents. So lists of things achieved—cases closed, and so on—tended to include matters that were almost, but not quite finished, and lists of things to be done by noon embraced tasks that might well not be performed until four o’clock in the afternoon or possibly even noon the following day. This did not involve self-deception…well, perhaps it did, but how can anyone manage to negotiate their way through life’s complexities without at least a smidgen of self-deception here and there?

  Some of these lists were written down on scraps of paper and on a whiteboard on the kitchen wall in Zebra Drive. That whiteboard, on which Puso used to draw pictures of cars and aeroplanes, now hosted lists for other members of the family, the idea being that everybody should look at it in the morning to see what they had t
o do later that day. So there might be a note reminding Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to telephone the Botswana Eagle Insurance Company to renew the household insurance; or a reminder to Motholeli to take ten pula to school for her new mathematics textbook; or one to Puso to put his football socks in the wash. Sometimes there were whiteboard lists for herself—of household supplies running low (washing-up liquid, butter, the hot Mozambique peri-peri sauce that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni liked to put on his roast chicken); or lists of people she had to telephone (her aunt in Mahalapye, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s cousin in Maun—the one who needed the cataract operation—Mma Potokwane about meeting for tea when she next came into town). Lists, she thought, are the stories of our lives; they give a picture of who we are and what we do every day.

  The list that she made for herself that morning, noted on a piece of paper as she sat on the verandah drinking her morning tea, was of things remaining to be done. This started with the name Polopetsi: a single word, but one with a whole hinterland of anxiety behind it. This was followed by Speak to Mma Rosie about meeting with Mma Susan. That would be relatively straightforward, even if not plain sailing. And then there was Mma Potokwane/Zebra. That was problematic.

  She looked at the list and tried shifting the items about. It sometimes helped, she thought, to put the most difficult matters first in order to get them out of the way. In which case her list for the day would be: (1) Polopetsi, (2) Mma Potokwane/Zebra, and (3) Mma Rosie. That third item—the contacting of Mma Rosie—would not be without difficulty. Mma Rosie had been offended by Mma Makutsi’s attitude, although Mma Ramotswe felt that her own dealings with her had been civil enough. But none of these matters, she felt, was entirely easy.

  She had arranged for Mr. Polopetsi to come round to the office first thing that morning, and he was already waiting for her by the time she arrived. He was wearing the same jacket as when she’d seen him in the President Hotel, and he was sporting the eagle-motif tie she had given him. There was that crumpled look about him, though, that revealed his concern. She had told him that what she proposed to do was not going to be easy, and that message had sunk in.