Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (20 page)

Mma Ramotswe sat back in her chair. “So, Mma, you are here now and we are here too. I think this would be a good time for us to talk. You must not be afraid of talking to us.”

“We tell nobody,” chipped in Mma Makutsi. “You need not worry about that.”

The woman nodded. “I know that,” she said. “Somebody told me that you people are like priests. They said that a person can tell you anything, and you will not talk about it.”

Mma Ramotswe was patient, but in the ensuing silence she glanced discreetly at her watch. She wondered whether a priest was what this woman needed; on occasion, people came into the office simply because they needed to unburden themselves of some secret. She listened, of course, to these people and she felt that it probably helped. But often she was unable to provide the thing that they needed: forgiveness. She could point them in the right direction for that, but she could not provide it. She had a feeling that this was one of those cases.

“There is something troubling you, Mma, isn't there? Something you have done?”

The woman stared at the floor. “Something I have done?” Her voice was flat—without salience. “No, Mma. It is something I am doing.”

Mma Ramotswe said nothing. At the other side of the room
she saw Mma Makutsi watching, her large glasses catching the morning light from the windows.

She probed gently. “Something you are still doing? A bad thing?”

The woman moved her head so slightly that it would have been easy to miss the acknowledgement. “I did not think about it,” she said quietly. “I did not think about it at all. It just happened.”

Mma Makutsi leaned forward at her desk. It was difficult for her, with the client's chair facing Mma Ramotswe, and she always found herself addressing the back of the client's head, as she did now. But it gave her a certain advantage, she found, to speak from behind somebody; it was like interrogating a person under a strong light. Clovis Andersen disapproved of that, of course.
Never use third-degree methods
, he wrote.
It does not get to the truth
. What was this third degree? Mma Makutsi wondered. And what were the first and second degrees? Were they worse, or in some way better?

“You did not know what you were doing, Mma?” she prompted. “Or you did not know that what you did was bad?”

Mma Ramotswe gave Mma Makutsi a discouraging look.

“Mma Makutsi is just trying to help,” she said.

The woman looked anxiously over her shoulder. “I do not know, Mma,” she said. “I am not an educated woman.”

Mma Ramotswe spoke soothingly. “That is not important, Mma. There are many people who have not had an education who are very clever people indeed. It is not their fault that they have not been to school.”

“People laugh at people like me,” said the woman. “These days, when everybody is so educated.”

“If they laugh at you, then they are fools themselves,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Big fools.” She paused. “But, Mma, you must tell me what is making you unhappy. What is this thing?”

The woman looked up and met Mma Ramotswe's gaze. “I am a lady with two husbands,” she said. “That is me.”

There was a sound from the back of the room—a form of hissing from Mma Makutsi—an exhalation, really, not a hiss of disapproval. “Two husbands,” she muttered.

The woman sighed. “I do not approve of women who have two husbands,” she said. “But now I am one myself.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. “It is against the law, you know, Mma, to get married twice. You do know that, don't you?”

The woman looked surprised. “Oh, I am not married,” she said. “These men are just boyfriends. But they are very good ones. They are like husbands. I call one my weekday husband and the other my weekend husband.”

Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. What could she do? People treated her like one of those agony aunts in the newspapers—they expected her to make their decisions for them. This woman was obviously troubled, but she did not see what she could do for her, other than advise her to give one boyfriend up. But presumably other people would have told her that, and she expected something more from her and Mma Makutsi.

“Choose,” said Mma Makutsi. “Choose one of them.”

“That is not easy,” said the woman.

Mma Makutsi laughed. “No, it never is. But you have to, Mma. You cannot have two husbands. You will be punished for that one day. One of them will find out about the other, and then you will be finished.”

This brought a sharp reprimand from Mma Ramotswe. “Mma Makutsi!” It did not help if the assistant detective said to the client that she would be finished. It was unprofessional.

“I am only telling her the truth, Mma,” Mma Makutsi protested.

Unexpectedly, the woman sided with Mma Makutsi. “Yes,”
she said. “You are right, Mma. I will be finished big time—and very soon. I have a very big problem—one of the husbands has gone to work for the other in his business. It is a very small business—just three men. Now one husband—the weekend husband—says that he wants to invite the other husband to have dinner at our house. He asked me to cook for them.” She paused, watching Mma Ramotswe, who was staring at her in anticipation. “And the second husband—the one who has been invited—has now asked me to come with him to this dinner. I will be the lady cooking for that dinner, in the house of my other husband.”

“You see!” broke in Mma Makutsi. “You see where lies and cheating get you, Mma? You see!”

“Thank you, Mma Makutsi,” said Mma Ramotswe. She quickly went over possibilities in her mind. People got themselves into the most uncomfortable situations, and one could not always rescue them. She could not take on the emotional problems of all Gaborone, much as she would like to help. No, she would have to get this woman to shoulder responsibility for the fix she had created for herself. “Now, Mma, I'm very sad that you find yourself in this unhappy position. I would love to be able to solve it for you, but what can anybody do? Some problems we have to solve ourselves—and this is one of them.”

From the other side of the room came Mma Makutsi's verdict. “Yes.”

“You are going to have to speak to these men,” Mma Ramotswe continued. “That is all you can do. I cannot solve this problem for you, you know. I'm very sorry but I cannot.”

The woman looked crestfallen. “Oh, Mma Ramotswe, I'm so frightened …”

“Frightened?”

“Yes, I'm frightened of what these men will do. You know how angry men can become.”

Mma Ramotswe did. For a moment she saw her first, abusive husband, Note Mokoti. She saw his hand raised. She saw the anger in his eyes.

“I have an idea,” said Mma Makutsi.

They both turned to look at her. She was smiling—with the air of one to whom a sudden revelation has come.

“Speak to both of them,” said Mma Makutsi. “Separately, of course. Tell each husband that you have been weak and have been seeing another man. Then ask each man to forgive you.”

The woman started to protest. “But how … ?”

Mma Makutsi raised a finger. “Watch their reactions very closely, Mma. See how they behave. They will probably behave differently. Watch them and then choose the one who is prepared to forgive you the most. That one will be the kind one. Choose to stay with him and say to the other that you are sorry but you cannot stay with him.”

For a while nobody spoke. Outside in the garage, Fanwell and Mr. Polopetsi were hammering on metal. Fanwell said something and a peal of laughter drifted through the door.

The woman stared at Mma Ramotswe and then turned round and smiled at Mma Makutsi. “That is a very good idea, Mma. That is very wise.”

Mma Makutsi looked down modestly. “I am glad that you think so, Mma.”

“And so do I,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I think that even Sherlock Holmes would be proud of that suggestion.”

“Who is this Rra Holmes?” asked the woman.

“He was a very famous detective,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Over that way.” She waved a hand in the direction of north. “He lived in London. He is late now.”

“I will do what you have suggested,” said the woman. “My heart is lighter now.”

“Good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And come back and let us know what happens, Mma—” She broke off. She realised that she did not know the woman's name and now it had become obvious. That was the trouble when everybody could be addressed as Mma or Rra; sometimes one did not get the name at the beginning and then it became embarrassing to ask for it.

“My name is Mma Sephotho,” said the woman. “Lily Sephotho.”

WELL
!” expostulated Mma Makutsi after Mma Sephotho had left. “What can I say, Mma? I do not know. I do not know.”

It was rare for Mma Makutsi to profess speechlessness; indeed it had never happened. Her declaration of speechlessness, however, was accompanied by a flood of words, all of them expressing a mixture of astonishment and its opposite: she was astonished but not astonished—if Violet Sephotho was to have a mother, then her mother surely would be exactly the sort to have two husbands. Not that they were real husbands, of course: nothing quite so respectable as that in a household of loose women. Two men—that is what Mma Sephotho had—two men. And by her own admission—in her own so very apt words—these were a weekday man and a weekend man. Had Mma Ramotswe ever heard these matters put so crudely? And had the woman not talked about it as shamelessly as one might discuss having two pairs of shoes: one pair for weekdays and one for weekends?

Mma Ramotswe listened to all this without saying very much, other than punctuating Mma Makutsi's diatribe with a modest “Very strange” and a cautious “Rather unusual.”

“And she had the cheek to come in here and tell us,” Mma Makutsi fumed. “The mother of the woman who …”

She left the accusation unfinished but Mma Ramotswe knew exactly what charge was envisaged. That was a sensitive issue, of
course, but there was a matter of principle here. The doors of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency had always been open to whosoever was in need. As Mma Makutsi well knew, they had sat and listened to the proud, the boastful, the arrogant, and even the moderately wicked. They had not condoned any of the human vices revealed to them, but they had always remembered that whatever the failings of the client, he or she was first and foremost a person in need of help. And there was still an element of doubt here. Sephotho was not a common name, but it was possible that this woman was nothing to do with Violet. They had not asked her, and she had offered no information that would have decided the matter one way or the other. Mma Ramotswe now raised this doubt, only to hear it being summarily swept aside by Mma Makutsi.

“Of course she is the mother,” she said. “Look at her. And what was her name, Mma? Lily. Lily and Violet—two flowers. She must be the mother. If a flower has a child, what is that child? It is another flower, Mma, as in this case. Violet is the daughter of Lily.”

Mma Ramotswe had to acknowledge that if somebody was called Lily, then it was not unreasonable for her to call a daughter Violet, and so she did not argue. But she did point out—even if very mildly—that the sins of the father should not be visited upon the child, and by the same token the sins of the child should not be a pretext to berate the father.

“We are not talking about fathers and sons here, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “We are talking about mothers and daughters.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at her watch. “Well, Mma, time is passing. It is already time for tea, and we have so much work to do.”

“I will put the kettle on,” said Mma Makutsi briskly. “We have had a very big shock this morning, and tea will help us to get over it. That is what tea does. That is well known.”

Mma Ramotswe agreed that it was.

A
FTER THEY HAD DRUNK
their tea and the cups had been washed and stacked away, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi set about the tasks of the day. For both of them, the most pressing duty was to interview players from the Molofololo list. Mma Ramotswe was to see one of the new players, a young physical education teacher, while Mma Makutsi had an eleven o'clock appointment on the verandah of the President Hotel. Her player was a busy man, he warned her, a salesman, and he could spare only half an hour. He was prepared to speak to her, though, as long as she bought him coffee.

“That is very rude,” she complained to Mma Ramotswe. “It is very ill-mannered to say that you will meet somebody but only if they buy you something.”

“Perhaps he was joking,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There are people who talk like that, you know. They do not mean to be rude—they mean to be funny.”

“But I am not laughing,” said Mma Makutsi.

They left it at that, but when Mma Makutsi alighted from the minibus at the back of the President Hotel that morning, she already felt that her meeting with Oteng Bolelang, an experienced
attacking midfielder (whatever that was) in the Kalahari Swoopers, would be trying. The term
attacking midfielder
had been used by Mma Ramotswe when she had asked her assistant to speak to Bolelang, but Mma Makutsi was doubtful as to whether Mma Ramotswe knew what it meant. “What is it?” she asked, and Mma Ramotswe had waved a hand and said, “He attacks, Mma. He attacks from the middle of the field.” Mma Makutsi had considered this, but it was only later that she thought of the obvious retort. “But what if the play has moved down to the other end of the field, Mma? What then? How can an attacking midfielder launch an attack when he is in the middle of the field and all the other players are down near the goalposts?” Mma Ramotswe would not have been able to answer that, she imagined, but then both of them were on very weak ground in this case and she was not one to talk. At least Mma Ramotswe had been to a football match, which was more than Mma Makutsi could claim.