She was surprised by the strength of his reaction to the news. “But you can’t do that!” he exploded. “What about Mma Ramotswe! You can’t leave Mma Ramotswe!”
Taken aback, Mma Makutsi made an attempt to defend herself. “But there’s my career to think about,” she protested. “What about me?”
Phuti Radiphuti seemed unmoved. “What would Mma Ramotswe do without you?” he asked. “You are the one who knows where everything is. You have done all the filing. You know all the clients. You cannot leave Mma Ramotswe.”
Mma Makutsi listened to this with foreboding. It seemed to her that he cared more about Mma Ramotswe than he did about her. Surely as her fiancé he should side with her in all this, should have her interests at heart rather than those of Mma Ramotswe, worthy though she undoubtedly was?
“I came back very quickly,” she said lamely. “I was only away for the morning.”
Phuti Radiphuti looked at her with concern. “Mma Ramotswe relies on you, Mma,” he said. “You know that?”
Mma Makutsi replied that she did. But there were times when one had to move on, did he not think…
She did not finish. “And I can understand why she cannot do without you,” Phuti continued. “It is the same reason why I cannot do without you.”
Mma Makutsi was silent.
Phuti reached for the bottle of peri-peri sauce and fiddled with the cap as he spoke. “It is because you are such a fine person,” he said. “That is why.”
Mma Makutsi gave the chicken a final stir and then sat down. What had begun as a reproach had turned, it seemed, into a compliment. And she could not remember when she had last been complimented for anything; she had forgotten Mma Ramotswe’s complimentary remark about her red dress.
“That’s very kind, Phuti,” she said.
Phuti put down the bottle of sauce and began to fish for something in the pocket of his jacket. “I am not one to make a speech,” he said.
“But you are getting better at it,” said Mma Makutsi. Which was true, she thought; that dreadful stammer had been more or less banished since she had met him, even if it manifested itself now and then when he became flustered. But that was all part of his charm; the charm of this man, her fiancé, the man who would become her husband.
“I am not one to make a speech,” Phuti repeated. “But there is something that I have for you here which I want to give you. It is a ring, Mma. It is a diamond. I have bought it for you.”
He slipped a box across the table to Mma Makutsi. She took it with fumbling hands and prised it open there on the table. The diamond caught the light.
“It is one of our diamonds,” he said. “It is a Botswana diamond.”
Mma Makutsi was silent as she took the ring from the box and fitted it onto her finger. She looked at Phuti and began to say something, but stopped. It was hard to find the words; that she who had been given so little, should now get this; that this gift, beyond her wildest yearnings, should come from him; how could she express what she felt?
“One of our diamonds?”
“Yes. It is from our land.”
She pressed the ring, and the stone, to her cheek. It was cold to the touch; so precious; so pure.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE GOOD IMPRESSION PRINTING WORKS
EVERYBODY, apart from Mr Polopetsi, and the younger apprentice of course, now had something to investigate. They approached this task with differing degrees of enthusiasm—Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who believed that his investigation was almost over, felt buoyant. He now had photographic evidence—or at least one photograph of Mr Botumile’s love nest—and all he had to do now was to find the name of the person who lived there. That was a simple enquiry which would not take long, and armed with the answer he could go to Mma Botumile and give her the information she needed. That would undoubtedly please her, but, more than that, it would impress Mma Ramotswe, who would be surprised at the speed with which he had managed to bring the enquiry to a satisfactory conclusion. The exposed film had been deposited at the chemist for developing and would be ready later that morning; there was no reason, then, why he should not see Mma Botumile the following day. To this end he telephoned her and asked if she would care to come to the office at any time convenient to her. He might have expected a snippy response even to that simple invitation. And that is what he got: no time, she said, was convenient. “I am an extremely busy woman,” she snapped. “But you can call on me, maybe I will be in, maybe not.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sighed as he replaced the receiver. There were some people, it seemed, who were incapable of being pleasant about anything; that was what they were like when it came to the mending of their cars, and that was what they were like in relation to everything. Of course, the cars that such people drove tended to be difficult as well, now that he came to think about it. Nice cars have nice drivers; bad cars have bad drivers. A person’s gearbox revealed everything that you could want to know about that person, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
He wondered whether Mr Botumile had been aware of his wife’s irascible nature before he had asked her to marry him. If he had ever proposed marriage; it may well have been the other way round. Sometimes men cannot remember the circumstances in which they asked their wives to marry them, for the very good reason that no identifiable proposal was ever made. These are the men, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who are trapped into matrimony, who drift into it, who are eventually cornered by feminine wiles and find that a date has been set. In his own case he remembered very well the circumstances in which he had asked Mma Ramotswe to be his wife, but the memory of the way in which the day was actually selected was very much hazier. He had been at the orphan farm, he believed, and Mma Potokwane had said something about how important it was for a woman to know when a wedding would be—something like that—and then the next thing he knew was that he was standing under that big tree and Trevor Mwamba was conducting the wedding service.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, of course, was very content being the husband of Mma Ramotswe, and he would never conceive of a situation in which he would be unhappy with her. But how different it must be—and what a nightmare—to discover that the person whom one has married is somebody one just does not like. People did make such a discovery, sometimes only a week or two into the marriage, and it must be a bleak one. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew that you were supposed to make an effort with your marriage, that you should at least try to get on with your spouse, but what if you found that she was somebody like Mma Botumile? He shuddered at the thought. Poor Mr Botumile having to listen to that shrill, complaining voice every day, no doubt running him down, criticising his every move, his every remark, making a prison for him, a prison of put-downs and belittlements. There but for the grace of God, he thought, go I. This feeling for Mr Botumile, this sympathy, was the only drawback in the way he felt about the whole enquiry. And even then, in spite of his understanding of Mr Botumile’s plight, he was proud of the fact that he had been able to be so professional about the whole matter. He had sympathised with the husband in this case, but he had not let it obscure the fact that he was working for the wife.
For Mma Makutsi, the investigation of Teenie’s problem with her dishonest employee was less clear-cut. It might well be that one of the employees at the printing works looked shifty, but she very much doubted that his shifty looks alone meant that he was the thief. He might be, of course, and she would keep an open mind on that, but she could certainly not allow her investigation to be skewed by any presumption of guilt. Or that, at least, is what she told herself as she paid off the taxi that she had hired to take her from the agency office to the premises of Teenie’s printing company. Thirty pula! She tucked the receipt carefully into the pocket of her cardigan; it would have cost two pula, at the most, to make the journey by minibus, but the exorbitant cost of the taxi could properly be passed on to the client, and anyway, she told herself, it would be quite inappropriate for her to arrive at the printing works in a battered and over-loaded vehicle, complete with hands and feet sticking out of the windows. People noted how people travelled, and if she was going to pass herself off as a potential client of the company, then she should arrive in fitting style. Clovis Andersen probably said something about this in The Principles of Private Detection, but even if he did not, common sense dictated it.