The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine (14 page)

“So you don't think there can be any truth in what they're saying?”

This question was followed by a moment of hesitation—only a moment, admittedly, but a longish one. “I don't think we should even think about all that,” she said at last.

And with that she looked at her watch in such a way that Mma Ramotswe was in no doubt that their discussion was at an end. Watches may be looked at in a number of different ways. There is the look of regret—a glance that conveys the message that if there were more time, then the wearer of the watch would be only too happy to spend it on you; then there is the look of concern suggesting that time is really very short and that the conversation, appreciated though it may be, should be concluded as soon as possible; and then there is the look of determination, which is what Mma Ramotswe now witnessed. This indicates that the subject is closed and there is nothing more to be said. That look has nothing to do with time, but has everything to do with the marking of that which is out of bounds.

As she made her way back to her van, Mma Ramotswe asked Mma Potokwane about the small boy, Samuel.

Mma Potokwane sucked air through her teeth as she considered her reply. Mma Ramotswe knew this sign, and it was not a good one. Children took time to settle down, though; she should not be surprised to hear he was finding it hard.

It was worse than that. “He is very unhappy,” said Mma Potokwane. “We get children here who are very sad, but that boy is inconsolable, Mma.”

“His mother?” Mma Ramotswe had reported to Mma Potokwane her conversation with the woman from whom she had taken Samuel. She had mentioned the fact that Samuel's mother had died; she assumed he would have to be told sooner or later. “You broke the news, Mma?”

Mma Potokwane inclined her head. “It was not easy, Mma. It is not an easy thing to tell a child.” She paused. “It is not an easy thing to tell anybody, is it? Even when you have been on this earth for a long, long time, it is not something that you wish to hear. It is not easy to take the news that a parent is late.”

Mma Ramotswe looked up at the sky. What could one say about a child's grief? What could one say about that small boy to whom the world had been so unwelcoming? So she said nothing, knowing that Mma Potokwane would understand exactly how she felt.

M
MA RAMOTSWE'S MIND
was now made up. In conversation with Mma Potokwane she had sensed that there was something her friend did not wish to discuss. It could be that this had nothing to do with the unsubstantiated allegations against Mr. Government Keboneng, but she was still concerned. Wherever the truth lay, there was an unresolved issue here—a mystery, so to speak—that needed to be resolved. Mma Makutsi seemed uninterested in following it up, assigning it to Mr. Polopetsi, who would not get very far with it. Mma Potokwane—the client Mma Potokwane—had come to the agency for help, and it was a fundamental article of faith in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency that one did one's best for the client. If Mma Makutsi was not going to do that—for whatever reason—then it was incumbent upon Mma Ramotswe to take responsibility for the matter, holiday or no holiday.

“I am going to bring my holiday to an end,” she announced to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni that evening. “I have had enough.”

He raised a hand in protest. “But, Mma Ramotswe, you've only been on holiday for a few days. This is ridiculous—”

She cut him short. “A short holiday is as good as a long holiday, Rra. I was reading about that in a magazine only yesterday. They said that even if you only have a few days off, you will feel the benefit. I have had a few days and I am definitely feeling the benefit. I am very relaxed—I've probably even put on weight.”

He looked at her reproachfully. “Mma Makutsi will be in a very bad mood,” he said. “She is enjoying being in charge. If you come back now, she'll feel that she has not had enough time as managing director.” He paused, and then added those words so often uttered when Mma Makutsi was spoken about: “You know what she's like, Mma.”

“I do know what she's like. And for that reason, although I am ending my holiday, I am not going back to the office. Mma Makutsi need not know that my holiday has come to an end.”

He asked her how she could work on a case without all the papers she would need. In answer, she tapped her head. “There is a lot of paperwork up here, Rra. It is very efficiently stored—even Mma Makutsi could not file this information better. I am telling you, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, there will be no problem.”

He shrugged. “It is your business, Mma. And it's your life too.”

Her tone became conciliatory. “I know that you worry about me, Rra. I know that.”

He nodded—rather miserably, she thought. “I worry about you a great deal, Mma. I worry that you will take all the cares of the world on your shoulders and that you will collapse under the weight. I worry that you will open your heart to so many people that eventually it will be full—crowded—and it will stop because there is no room for the blood to go round. I am worried that you will look after so many people that you will forget that there is one person who also needs looking after, and that person is you, Mma. I am worried about all these things.”

She was touched by what he had said. “And I worry about you, too, Rra. I worry that you will be taken advantage of by people who say, ‘Here is a kind man coming, we will take advantage of him.' I am worried that people will get you to fix their cars for them for too little money because you feel sorry for them, or for the car too. I am worried that you will not eat enough lunch and that you will become thin and people will say, ‘That Mma Ramotswe doesn't know how to look after a husband.' And I'm worried by all sorts of other things—ridiculous things, Rra. That you will be struck by lightning one day, or that you will drive off the road and hit a tree, or that a wheel will fall off your truck and it will crash into a ditch. All of these are ridiculous worries, Rra, but they still come to me, especially at night when you are asleep beside me and I am awake, looking up at the ceiling, which is like an empty sky with no stars.”

They looked at one another, surprised by what each had said, but reassured, too, by the love that lay behind their confessions of anxiety. Then, after a further few moments, Mma Ramotswe's face broke into a grin. “We are very silly, Rra. There is no point in worrying.”

“No,” he said. “There is no point. And you, Mma Ramotswe, must do whatever you think is the right thing. If you think it is the right thing to go and sort out all this Keboneng business, then that is what you must do.”

“It is,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“Then that is what you must do,” he reaffirmed.

SHE FELT UNABLE TO TELEPHONE
Mr. Polopetsi at the agency, as that would have made Mma Makutsi suspicious. So instead she passed a message to him through Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who relayed it the following morning. The message was that he was to meet Mma Ramotswe that lunch time at her favourite café at Riverwalk. It was important that he should say nothing about this meeting, for reasons she was sure he would understand. Furthermore, if at all possible, he should make sure he was free that afternoon—unless, of course, he had teaching duties at the school.

He was there before her, sitting at a table near the steps to the Portuguese restaurant on the floor above. When she approached the table, he sprang to his feet and extended a hand to shake hers. Mma Ramotswe approved of this—Mr. Polopetsi's manners were impeccable, and in an age of increasing casualness, old-fashioned politeness was always reassuring.

“So, Mma,” he said. “I am here—as you requested. And I am at your disposal until five o'clock, when I have to go home.”

She sat down and ordered tea; he already had a cup of coffee before him.

“Now, Rra,” she began. “This Keboneng business. I have been to see Mma Potokwane—not the one who is our client, but the one who is our friend. I gave her the broad details of the case and asked her about the family. She was able to give me information about the Potokwane side—I do not know anything about the Keboneng people.”

“So she told you about Saviour, and Saviour's wife?”

Mma Ramotswe was taken aback. How did Mr. Polopetsi know about them if, as he had said, he had been unable to make any progress with the enquiry? She asked him to explain.

“You see,” he said, “at the beginning of this case I went with Mma Makutsi to speak to that lady—the one who was married to Saviour Potokwane. Mma Makutsi hoped that she would be able to tell us about Mr. Government Keboneng. We saw her at that shop of theirs…”

“Big Suitcases?”

“Yes, it was that place.”

Mma Ramotswe was puzzled. Mma Makutsi had not disclosed that she had taken an active part in the investigation, but here was Mr. Polopetsi saying that she had got as far as questioning Saviour's widow. This was very strange.

“What did that lady say?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Was she prepared to talk to you and Mma Makutsi?”

“She was polite enough,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “She asked us why we wanted to talk to her, and Mma Makutsi explained that it was to do with Mr. Government Keboneng and some enquiries about him. She did not say exactly who was making these enquiries and why they were interested in a man who is now late.”

“And what was her reaction to that?”

“She changed, Mma. You know what is meant by saying that a cloud may pass over somebody's face? You know that expression? That is what I saw. There was a cloud.”

“And she stopped talking?”

“No, she still talked, but she was much more guarded. I wouldn't say that she was friendly after that. She was not rude, but she was not friendly.”

Mma Ramotswe asked whether Mma Makutsi had persisted.

Mr. Polopetsi looked thoughtful. “Yes, she did persist. As I recall it, Mma, she said something about being able to tell that there was some problem. She said it would probably be better to talk about whatever it was that was worrying her, because if she talked, the matter could be handled more sensitively.”

“And?”

“And then she asked me to leave.”

“Who asked you to leave, Rra? Mma Makutsi?”

Mr. Polopetsi shook his head. “No, Mma. It was that lady—that Naledi—who said that she wanted to talk privately to Mma Makutsi. Sometimes ladies do not like men to be present when they say private things—I've often noticed that, Mma. Have you?”

“I have seen that happen,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“So I went out of the shop—there was nobody in it at the time, apart from Naledi and Mma Makutsi—and I stood outside. But…” He trailed off, looking slightly embarrassed.

“But you were able to hear what was said?”

“No, I did not hear, but I was able to look through the window, past the display of suitcases, and I saw Naledi talking to Mma Makutsi in a very…well, in a very concerned way, I should say. She was wagging her finger at her, a bit like this, Mma. See? Like this.”

He demonstrated, using a forefinger.

“As if she was telling her off?” suggested Mma Ramotswe.

“Precisely,” said Mr. Polopetsi.

“And then what happened, Rra?”

He explained that the two women talked for about ten minutes. Then Mma Makutsi came out of the shop and told him that they were going back to the office. She also told him that Naledi had had nothing to say. “She said to me that that lady knew nothing about the Keboneng family. She told me that she had nothing to say about anything.”

“But she was shaking a finger at her,” pointed out Mma Ramotswe. “Do we shake our finger at people when we have nothing to tell them? Are we saying
nothing, nothing, nothing
and then underlining it with a finger?”

Mr. Polopetsi raised an eyebrow. “I do not think so,” he said.

“And neither do I,” said Mma Ramotswe.

They were both silent for a while. Then Mr. Polopetsi asked, “Do you think we should go and speak to her again?”

Mma Ramotswe hesitated. Then she said, “I do not think there would be any point. I think that something has passed between Mma Makutsi and Naledi that has brought that line of enquiry to a conclusion.

“Do you think Naledi threatened her?” asked Mr. Polopetsi.

“I'm not sure,” replied Mma Ramotswe. “Sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between a request, a threat, and a warning. This could be any of those, but I think that lady would not welcome a visit from us.”

“So what are we to do, Mma?”

“We shall go and see somebody else, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We shall go to see somebody whom nobody would think it worth speaking to. Such people often have the most to say, you know.”

“When?” asked Mr. Polopetsi.

“Now,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“Who?”

“A man who may see more than people think he sees,” said Mma Ramotswe, and then, sensing Mr. Polopetsi's frustration at her opaque answer, she added mischievously, “A saint.”

He laughed. “This is why I like working with you, Mma Ramotswe. This is much more fun than teaching chemistry.”

“Although we have no explosions, Rra?”

He looked serious once more. “Explosions are not the real point of chemistry, Mma Ramotswe. The real point of chemistry is reactions.”

“We have reactions too in this business, Rra.”

He smiled again. “You're right, Mma Ramotswe, but then you're right about everything, I think.”

Such a remark might be seen as flattery were it to come from any different quarter, but not from Mr. Polopetsi, whose admiration for Mma Ramotswe was genuine and unforced. He looked at her as they rose from their table and he found himself thinking how wonderful it would be to be married to Mma Ramotswe—to be in the shoes of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. But he hastily suppressed the thought: he was very happily married to a woman, and it was wrong to think thoughts like that about other men's wives. But he could at least allow himself to think this: What if Mma Ramotswe were his mother? Now, that was a thought one could think without guilt, although, on balance, it might be best not to speak too openly about such a longing.

DRIVING DOWN THE LOBATSE ROAD
with Mma Ramotswe, Mr. Polopetsi looked out of the window in the direction of Kgali Hill, a great towering mound of rock, split across its vastness with zig-zag cracks in which trees grew—those trees that grew as well from rock, it seemed, as from soil; a home for baboons and vultures and, from time to time, a prowling, secretive leopard. Mr. Polopetsi was not gazing at the hill, though, but at the sky behind it, which was darkening with rain.

“Good,” he said. “There will be some more rain, I think. We need it badly.”

Mma Ramotswe took her eyes off the road briefly and glanced at the rain clouds. “That is a good place for it to fall,” she said. “Over there—in that direction. It can get very dry there and any rain they get will help to fill the dam.”

She thought of her friend Gwythie, who lived with her husband at Mokolodi, off to the right of the road on which they were now travelling, and of the difficulties they had encountered when they had first tried to get water for the house they had built. They had drilled a borehole, but it had been dry, and so they tried another borehole, deeper this time and in a different place, and that one had been dry too. They had then engaged a water diviner, and he had come onto their land and walked about, silent in his solemn purpose, with his twist of copper wire held out before him—an antenna to pick up the radio signals from the water deep down below; but there had been nothing, as if the radio stations were all abandoned, their signals ceased; and only later, much later, had they found an elusive underground stream in a place where nobody thought it would be.

“Have you ever watched a water diviner working, Rra?” she asked Mr. Polopetsi.

He looked at her with amusement. “That is all nonsense, Mma. It is like witchcraft. It is not something that scientific people like me can be bothered with.”

“And yet they find water,” Mma Ramotswe pointed out.