“I think that we should get married in January,” said Phuti. “January is a month when people are looking for things to do. A wedding will keep them busy. You know, all the aunties and people like that.”
Mma Makutsi laughed. There was so much to think of—so many exciting things—but this reference to aunts gave her a reason to chuckle. And beyond the amusement there was the heady, intoxicating fact: he had said it! He may not have named a day, but at least he had named a month! Her marriage was now not just some sort of vague possibility in the future; it was a singled-out time, as definite, as cast in stone, as the dates on her calendar in the office from the Good Impression Printing Company: 30 September —Botswana Independence Day; 1 July—Birthday of Sir Seretse Khama. Those dates she remembered, as everyone did, because they were holidays, and Mma Ramotswe remembered a few more: 21 April—Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday; 4 July—Independence Day of the United States of America. There were others in the calendar that the Good Impression Printing Company thought important enough to note, but which escaped the attention of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Some of these were other national days; 1 October, for example, was Nigeria’s national day, and was marked in the calendar, but not observed in any way by Mma Ramotswe. When Mma Makutsi had drawn Mma Ramotswe’s attention to the significance of that day, there had been a brief silence and then, “That may be so, Mma, and I am happy for them. But we cannot observe everybody’s national day, can we, or life would be one constant celebration.” The apprentices had been hovering nearby when this remark was passed and Charlie, the older one, had opened his mouth to say, “And what would be wrong with that?” but had stopped himself and instead nodded his head in exaggerated agreement.
She sat quite still at the table, her eyes lowered to the plate before her. “Yes. January would be a good time. That gives people six months to get ready. That should be enough.”
Phuti agreed. It had always struck him as strange that people took such trouble over weddings, with two parties—one for each family—and a great deal of coming and going by anybody who was related, even distantly, to the couple. Six months would be reasonable, and would not encourage unnecessary activity; if one allowed a year, then people would think of a year’s worth of things to do.
“You have an uncle…,” he began. This, he knew, was the delicate part of the matter. Mma Makutsi would have to be paid for, and an uncle would probably wish to negotiate the bride price. Her uncle would speak to his father and his uncles, and together they would agree the figure, notionally in head of cattle.
He stole a glance at his fiancée. A woman of her education and talents could expect a fairly good dowry—perhaps nine cattle—even if her background would not normally justify more than seven or eight. But would this uncle, if he existed, try to raise the price once he found out about the Double Comfort Furniture Store and all those Radiphuti cattle out at the cattle post? In Phuti Radiphuti’s experience, uncles did their homework in these situations.
“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “I have an uncle. He is my senior uncle, and I think that he will want to talk about these things.”
It was delicately put, and it made it possible for Phuti Radiphuti to move on from this potentially awkward topic to the safer ground of food. “I know somebody who is a very good caterer,” he said. “She has a truck with a fridge in it. She is very good at this sort of thing.”
“She sounds just right,” said Mma Makutsi.
“And I can get hold of chairs for the guests to sit on,” went on Phuti Radiphuti.
Of course, thought Mma Makutsi; the Double Comfort Furniture Store would come in useful for that. There was nothing worse than a wedding where there were not enough chairs for people to sit on and they ended up eating with their plates balanced on all sorts of things, ant heaps even, and getting food on their smart clothes. She vowed to herself, That will not happen at my wedding, and the thought filled her with pride. My wedding. My wedding guests. Chairs. It was a long way from those days of penury as a student at the Botswana Secretarial College, of rationing herself in what she ate; of making do with just one of anything, if that. Well, those days were over now.
And Phuti Radiphuti, for his part, thought, My days of loneliness are finished. My days of being laughed at because of the way I speak and because no woman would look at me—those are over now. Those are over.
He reached out and took Mma Makutsi’s hand. She smiled at him. “I am very lucky to have found you,” he said.
“No, I am the lucky one. I am the one.”
He thought that unlikely, but he was moved very deeply that somebody should consider herself lucky to have him, of all people. The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.
WHILE MMA MAKUTSI and Phuti Radiphuti were reflecting on their good fortune, Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who themselves had on many occasions pondered their own good luck, were engaged in a conversation of an entirely different nature. They had finished their dinner and the children had been dispatched to bed. Both were tired—he because he had removed an entire engine that afternoon, a task which involved considerable physical exertion, and she because she had awoken the night before and lost an hour or two of sleep. The kitchen clock, which always ran ten minutes fast, revealed that it was eight thirty, eight twenty after adjustment. One could not decently go to bed before eight thirty, Mma Ramotswe felt; and so she sat back and chatted with her husband about the day’s events. She was not particularly interested in the removal of the engine, and listened to his comments on that with only half an ear. But then he said something which engaged her full attention.
“That woman I spoke to,” he said. “Mma What’s-her-name. The one with the husband.”
“Mma Botumile.” Mma Ramotswe’s tone was cautious.
“Yes, her,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I thought that maybe…that maybe because I spoke to her first…” He trailed off. Mma Ramotswe was staring at him, and he felt disconcerted.
Mma Ramotswe thought for a while before she said anything. It was important that she should handle this carefully. “Do you want to be involved?” she asked.
“I already am,” he said.
She hesitated. “In a way.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni now became more confident. “Being a mechanic is fine,” he said. “But it is always the same thing. A car comes in, I listen to what the engine has to say, I make my diagnosis, and then I fix it. That is what I do.”
There was nothing wrong with that, thought Mma Ramotswe. Being a mechanic was a great calling, in her view, and was certainly more useful than many of the white-collar jobs that seemed to carry all the prestige. A country could never have too many mechanics, but it could have too many of the civil servants who wrote complicated and obscure letters to Mma Ramotswe about her tax payments and about various forms and returns that they thought she should fill in.
It worried her that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni should find his work repetitive. Everybody’s work was repetitive, if one thought about it; even in a business such as the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency there was a certain sameness to the enquiries that she and Mma Makutsi undertook. Was so-and-so being unfaithful? Was some dispatch clerk making up bogus orders and then claiming that the invoices were lost? Were somebody’s impressive work record and testimonials entirely false? The same things arose time and time again, even if there were features of some cases that made them particularly amusing. That testimonial, for example, that she had been asked to check a few months ago where the writing was almost illegible and where the final sentence said, I have never heard this person use strong language, even to himself. Did anybody seriously imagine that real testimonials said things like that? Obviously somebody did think that. What might she write—in that style—of Mma Makutsi, if she had to write her a testimonial? She divides the office doughnuts with complete impartiality. That would be a good recommendation, she thought; how a person divided a shared doughnut was a real test of integrity. A good person would cut the doughnut into two equal pieces. A shifty, selfish person would divide it into two pieces, but one would be bigger than the other and he would take that one himself. She had seen that happen.