Blue Shoes and Happiness

CHAPTER ELEVEN YOU WILL BE VERY HAPPY IN THAT CHAIR

MMA MAKUTSI LOOKED at her watch. Mma Ramotswe and Mr Polopetsi were away on their trip to Mokolodi—she had felt slightly irritated that Mma Ramotswe should have chosen him to accompany her rather than herself; but she should not begrudge him the experience, she reminded herself, particularly if he was in due course to become her own assistant, an assistant– assistant detective. With the two of them gone for the rest of the afternoon and everything in the office, filing and typing, up-to-date, there was no real reason for her to stay at her desk now that it was four o’clock. In the garage itself, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had finished the work he had been doing on a customer’s persnickety French car and had sent the apprentices home. He would probably stay for an hour or so and clear up; if the telephone went, then he could answer it and take a message. It was unlikely to ring, though, as clients very rarely got in touch in the late afternoon. The morning was the time of important telephone calls, as it was at the start of the day that people plucked up the courage to contact a private detective; for an act of courage was what it often was, an admission of a troubling possibility, something suppressed and not thought about, something fretted over and dreaded. The morning brought the strength to tackle such matters; the dying hours of the day were hours of defeat and resignation.

Yet here was Mma Makutsi, in the late afternoon, reaching a decision which required considerable courage. She had been putting off doing anything about Phuti Radiphuti, but now she felt that she should seek him out and see what he had to say about his failure to appear for dinner the previous night. It had suddenly occurred to her that there might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for his absence. People got days mixed up; she herself had spent an entire Tuesday last week under the impression that it was a Wednesday, and if she could do that—she who was so organised in her personal life, thanks to that early, invaluable training at the Botswana Secretarial College—then how easy it would be for a man who had a whole business to run to get the days mixed up. If that had happened, then Phuti might have gone to eat at his father’s house, and his father would not have found anything amiss, even if it was the wrong day for his meal with him, as most of the time these days the old man seemed to be unaware of what day of the week it was. His memory of the distant past, of old friends, of much-loved cattle; all those memories which such people carried of the early days, of the days of the Protectorate, of Seretse Khama’s father, of times even earlier than that; that was all still there. But now the recent past, the crowded, hurried present, seemed to pass him by. She had seen this before, in others; he would not have pointed out to Phuti that this was not his day for coming to eat.

The thought that Phuti might merely have mistaken the day cheered her, but only briefly. Phuti went to eat at his father’s house on a Sunday, and it was unlikely that he would have mistaken a Sunday for any other day, as he did not go to work on a Sunday. If, then, he had mixed the days up and gone to eat elsewhere, it could only have been because he had gone to either his sister’s or his aunt’s house, as those were the only other houses where he went to eat. Neither the aunt nor the sister would have failed to point out to him that he had come to them on the wrong day. Both were very well aware of what day of the week it was, especially the aunt. That aunt, who had played an important role in the building up of the family furniture business, was noted for the acuity of her mind. Phuti himself had told Mma Makutsi how his aunt had an uncanny ability for remembering the details of what everything cost, and this applied not only to present-day prices, but to prices going back to the days before independence. She knew, for example, what the traders in the local store used to ask for paraffin in those silver-coloured jerry cans, and how much a large tin of Lyons golden syrup or a can of Fray Bentos bully beef cost in the late nineteen-fifties; or Lion matches, for that matter, or a Supersonic Radio imported from the radio factory in Bulawayo. Such an aunt would have informed Phuti that he was in the wrong house on the wrong day, had he come to her door unexpectedly.

No, she realised that this was clutching at straws; Phuti Radiphuti had not come to dinner because he had gone cool on her after her feminist disclosure. He had been frightened off, he had been discouraged by the thought that he would have to live with a feminist who would nag and bully him. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it were, some men, and he must be one of them, wanted women who did not make them feel guilty for wanting the things that they wanted. And she should have sensed that, she told herself. Phuti Radiphuti so obviously had a confidence problem, with his speech impediment and his hesitant ways, and of course such a man would not want to marry a woman who would be too forceful. He would want a woman who looked up to him, just a little, and who made him feel manly. She should have understood that, she realised, and she should have built him up rather than made him feel threatened.

She looked at her watch again, and then she looked down at her shoes. Don’t look at us, they seemed to be saying. Don’t look at us, Miss Feminist!There was clearly no help from that quarter; there never was. She would have to sort her troubles out by herself, and that meant that she would have to go right now, without any further delay, to the Double Comfort Furniture Shop and speak to Phuti before he left work. She would ask Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to drive her there; he was a kind man, and never turned down a request for a favour. And then an idea occurred. Mma Ramotswe had spoken about the need to get Mr J.L.B. Matekoni a new chair. She could go with him to the store on the pretext of helping him to choose this chair. And in that way she could speak to Phuti without giving him the impression that she had come specially to see him.

She left her desk and made her way into the garage, where she found Mr J.L.B. Matekoni standing at the entrance, staring out on to the Tlokweng Road. He was wiping his hands on an old cloth, almost absent-mindedly, as if he was thinking about something much more important than the problem of oil on the skin.

“I am glad to see that you have nothing to do, Rra,” she said, as she came up behind him. “I have had an idea.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni turned round and looked at her vacantly. “I was very far away,” he said. “I was thinking.”

“I have been thinking too,” said Mma Makutsi. “I was thinking about that new chair which Mma Ramotswe said that she wanted to buy you.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni tucked the piece of cloth into his pocket. “It would be good to be able to sit comfortably again,” he said. “I cannot find a comfortable position in any of the chairs in Zebra Drive. I don’t know what has happened to them. They are full of lumps and springs.”

Mma Makutsi knew very well what had happened to the furniture in Zebra Drive, but did not want to say as much. She had always suspected that Mma Ramotswe was hard on anything with springs—look at the way in which the tiny white van listed to one side (the driver’s side)—and then there was her office chair, which, although it had no springs, also had a marked inclination to the right, where one of the legs had buckled slightly under Mma Ramotswe’s traditional form.

“You will be very comfortable in a new chair,” she said. “And I think we should go off to the store right now to take a look. Not to buy anything, of course—that can wait until Mma Ramotswe has the time to get out there. But at least we could go and take a look and put your name on something comfortable.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni glanced at his watch. “It would mean closing the garage early.”

“Why not?” said Mma Makutsi. “The apprentices have gone home. Mma Ramotswe and Mr Polopetsi are out at Mokolodi. There is nothing for us to do here.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni hesitated, but only briefly. “Very well,” he said. “We can go out there and then I can drop you at your place afterwards. That will save you a walk.”

Mma Makutsi thanked him and went to fetch her things from the office. It would be easy to find a suitable chair for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, she thought, but how easy would it be to talk to Phuti Radiphuti now that she had frightened him off? And what would he say to her? Would he simply say that he was sorry, but it was now time to end their engagement? Would he find the words to do that, or would he simply stare at her, as he used to do, while his tongue tried desperately to find the words that simply would not come?

AT THE DOUBLE COMFORT FURNITURE SHOP Phuti Radiphuti was standing at the window of his office, looking out over the barn-like showroom. The lay-out had been designed with just that in mind: from where he stood the manager could look down and signal to the staff below. If customers brought children who bounced on the chairs, or if people came to try out the beds and showed signs of lying too long on the comfortable mattresses—which they sometimes did, even those who had no intention at all of buying a bed but who merely wanted a few minutes of comfort before continuing with their shopping tasks elsewhere — he could draw the attention of his assistants to the problem and tell them what to do with a quick hand signal. A finger pointed in the direction of the door meant out; the clenching of a fist meant tell them to keep their children under control; and the shaking of a finger directed at a member of staff meant there are customers waiting to be served and you are sitting there talking to your friends.

He saw Mma Makutsi come in with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and for a moment he did nothing. He swallowed hard. He had meant to telephone Mma Makutsi and apologise for his failure to turn up last night, but it had been a frantic day, with the visit to the hospital to see his aunt and the list of things that she had given him to do. She had been admitted to the Princess Marina Hospital the previous morning, her face drawn with pain, and they had removed the bloated appendix barely an hour later. It had been close to bursting, they explained, and that would have been perilous. As it was, she had been sitting up in bed that morning, ready to give him instructions, and he had spent much of the rest of the day performing the chores that she had set him. There had been no time to telephone Mma Makutsi, and now here she was in search of an explanation, with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni in support, and he would have to explain everything to her. As he watched her enter the showroom, he felt that familiar knot of anxiety in his stomach—the knot that he had always felt in the past when he had been faced with the need to talk and which always seemed so effectively to paralyse his tongue and vocal cords.

He turned away from the window and went down into the showroom. Mma Makutsi had not spotted him yet, although he had seen her glancing around as if to look for him. Now she was standing before a large armchair covered in black leather and was pointing it out to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who was bending down to examine the label attached to the chair. Oddly, Phuti found himself trying to remember the price. It was not expensive, that chair, covered as it was in soft leather, but it was certainly not a bargain. He wondered whether Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was the sort of man to spend a lot of money on a chair. He remembered, of course, that Mma Makutsi had said that Mma Ramotswe had a comfortable house in Zebra Drive and so there was some money there. And perhaps that garage of his on the Tlokweng Road did well, although on the few occasions that he had been there he had not seen signs of great activity.

He made his way past a display of dining-room tables, noting with irritation that somebody had placed a sticky hand print on one of them, the finest in the room, with its highly polished black surface. It would be somebody’s child, he thought; a child had reached out and touched the furniture with a hand that had been used to push sweets into his mouth. And the same hand would have been placed on the light red velvet of the sofas on the other side of the table, and they would have to get some of that cleaning fluid … He sighed. There was no point getting exercised over this; the country was full of dust and children with sticky hands, and termites that liked nothing better than to eat people’s furniture; that was just how it was, and if one worried about it, then it simply made one stammer all the more and feel hot at the back of the neck. Mma Makutsi had told him that he should stop worrying, and he had made a real effort to do so, with the result that he stammered less and felt less hot. He was a fortunate man, he thought, to be engaged to a woman like that. Many women made life worse for their husbands with their nagging and hectoring; one saw such men in the store, defeated men, men with all the cares of the world on their shoulders, looking at the furniture as if it was just one more thing to worry about in lives already full of anxieties.

“That is a very g … goo … ,” said Phuti Radiphuti as he approached Mma Makutsi and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

He closed his eyes. There was that sensation of heat at the back of his neck and the familiar, cramping feeling in the muscles of the tongue. He saw the wordgood written down on an imaginary piece of paper; he had only to read it out, as she had told him to do, but he could not. She had read a book about this problem and she had helped him, but now he could not say that this chair was good.

“A ve …” He tried again, but it would not come. He should have telephoned her, and told her, and now she would be angry with him and might be having second thoughts about their marriage.

“It looks very comfortable,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, reaching out to touch the leather on one of the armrests. “This leather …”

“So soft,” said Mma Makutsi quietly. “Some of these leather chairs you see are very hard. They are from old, old cows.”

“Chairs like that are called cowches,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and laughed.

Mma Makutsi looked at him. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was a good man, and much admired, but he was not noted for his witty remarks. Now it was possible that he had said something very amusing, and she found herself so taken by surprise that she did not laugh.

Phuti Radiphuti fiddled nervously with a shirt button. Making a conscious effort to relax, he opened his mouth again and made a statement. This time the words came more easily.

“A couch usually has two or three seats,” he said. “It is also called a sofa. That chair over there—the big one—is a couch. This one is just a chair.”

Mma Makutsi nodded. She had been taken aback by his sudden appearance and now she was uncertain what to do. She had imagined that she would start their conversation by asking after his health, as was polite, but now he had launched into a technical discussion of couches, and so she explained that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was looking for a new chair and they wondered whether something like this would be suitable.

Phuti Radiphuti listened attentively. Then he turned to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “Do you like this chair, Rra?” he asked. “Why don’t you sit down in it and see how you feel? It is always best to sit in a chair before you make up your mind.”

“I was just looking around,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni hurriedly. “I saw this chair, but there are many other chairs …” He had seen the price on the ticket and had realised that the chair was not cheap. One could get an engine re-bore for the price of that chair.

“Just sit in it, Rra,” said Phuti Radiphuti, smiling at Mma Makutsi. “Then you will know for sure if it is a good chair.”

He sat down, and Phuti Radiphuti looked at him enquiringly.

“Well, Rra?” said Phuti. “It is very comfortable, isn’t it? That chair is made in Johannesburg, in a big chair factory there. There are many chairs like that in Johannesburg.”

“It is very comfortable,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “Yes, it is very comfortable. But I must look at some other chairs. I think that there will be many other good chairs in your store.”

“Oh, there are,” said Phuti. “But when you find a chair that is right, then it is a good idea to choose that one.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni glanced at Mma Makutsi. He wanted her help now, but she seemed to be having thoughts of her own. She was watching Phuti Radiphuti, staring at him in a way which Mr J.L.B. Matekoni found rather disconcerting. It was as if she was expecting him to say something which he was not saying; some private business between them, he thought, which they should go away and discuss rather than exchanging glances like this. Women always had private business to raise with men, he reflected. There was always something going on in the background—some plotting or mulling over some slight or lack of attention, quite unintended, of course, but noted and filed away for subsequent scrutiny. And much of the time men would be unaware of it, until it all came out in a torrent of recrimination and tears. Fortunately, Mma Ramotswe was not like that, he thought. She was cheerful and direct; but this Mma Makutsi, with her big round glasses, might be different when it came to men, and this poor man, this Phuti Radiphuti, could be in for a difficult time. He would not like to be engaged to Mma Makutsi.

Certainly not. He would be terrified of her, with her ninety-seven per cent, or whatever it was, and her determined ways. Poor Phuti Radiphuti.

Mma Makutsi had not said anything since the arrival of Phuti Radiphuti, but now she spoke. “It is very important for a man to have a good chair,” she announced. “Men have so many important decisions to make, they need to have good chairs in which to sit and think about these things. I have always thought that.”

When she had finished making this observation, she stole a glance at Phuti Radiphuti and then looked down at her shoes. It was almost as if she expected the shoes to contradict her, to reproach her for this sudden departure from the view that she had always held that women made the really important decisions for men, subtly and without letting the men know that they were doing it, but doing it nonetheless. She had enjoyed countless conversations with Mma Ramotswe along those lines, and the two women had always agreed on that point. And now here she was cravenly suggesting that it was men, seated in their comfortable chairs, who did all the deciding. She stared at her shoes for a moment, but they were silent, stunned into speechlessness, perhaps, by the suddenness of the volte-face.

Phuti Radiphuti looked at Mma Makutsi. He was smiling, as a man might when he makes a new and pleasant discovery. “That is true,” he said. “But everyone deserves a good chair. Women too. They have important things to think about.”

Mma Makutsi was quick to nod her assent. “Yes, they do, but, and you can call me old-fashioned maybe, but I have always thought that men are particularly important. That is just the way I have been brought up, you see.”

This remark seemed to make Phuti Radiphuti smile even more. “I hope that you are not too traditional in your views,” he said. “Modern men do not like that. They like wives who have their own views.”

“Oh, I have those all right,” said Mma Makutsi quickly. “I do not let anybody else do my thinking for me.”

“That is g … g … good,” said Phuti Radiphuti. He had realised that he had been speaking smoothly and without a stutter, and the realisation made him stumble slightly, but he felt relieved that his omitting to tell Mma Makutsi why he had not arrived for dinner seemed not to have upset her. And now the words came tumbling out, as he explained about his aunt’s illness and about his trip to the hospital. She reassured him that although she had noticed his absence, she had realised that he must have a good reason and that she had not been worried.

You’re such a liar, Boss, her shoes suddenly said to her. But Mma Makutsi, listening to the man who, once again, was to be her husband, had no time for the grumbling of shoes and did not hear them.

“Now, then,” said Phuti Radiphuti. “Shall we look at other chairs, or is that the one you like?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni stroked the leather stretched across the arms of the chair. It had a soft feel, and he could imagine himself in the sitting room at Zebra Drive, ensconced in the chair, stroking the leather on the arms and staring up at the ceiling in contemplation. In the background, in the kitchen, Mma Ramotswe would be preparing the evening meal and the tantalising smell of one of her rich stews would come wafting down the corridor. It was a vision of perfection, a glimpse of what heaven might be like, if one ever got there. Was there anything wrong with men sitting in such chairs and thinking such thoughts? he asked himself. Not really, although there did seem to be rather a lot of people about these days who wanted to make men feel guilty about that. He had heard one on the radio recently, and she had said that men were fundamentally lazy and just wanted to be waited on hand and foot by women. What a thing to say! He, for one, was not in the slightest bit lazy. He worked hard all day at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, he never let his customers down, and he handed over all the money he earned to Mma Ramotswe for their joint expenses. And if he wanted to sit in a chair from time to time and rest his weary bones, then was there anything wrong with that? Mma Ramotswe liked cooking, and if he went into the kitchen to try to help her, she would chase him out with very little ceremony. No, such people were very unfair about men, and very wrong too. But then he thought of the apprentices, and suddenly he realised that perhaps there was some truth in what had been said. They were the ones who gave men a bad name, with their slipshod ways and their arrogant attitudes towards women. They were the ones.

“So that’s the chair you like?” Phuti Radiphuti’s question brought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni back to the Double Comfort Furniture Shop and to the realisation that he was sitting in a chair that he would be unlikely to be able to afford.

“I like it,” he said. “But I think that perhaps we should look at something that is not quite so costly. I do not think that Mma Ramotswe …”

Phuti Radiphuti raised his hands to stop him. “But that chair has just gone on sale,” he said. “It is fifty per cent off. Right now. Specially for you.”

“Fifty per cent!” exclaimed Mma Makutsi. “That is very good. You must buy that chair, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. It is a very big bargain.”

“But what will Mma Ramotswe …”

“She will thank you for it,” said Mma Makutsi firmly. “Mma Ramotswe likes a bargain as much as any other woman. She will be very pleased.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni hesitated. He longed for a comfortable chair. His life had been full of axles and engine parts and grease. It had been a battle, all of it; a battle to keep engines going in spite of the dust and the bumps in the road that were such enemies of machinery; a battle to keep the apprentices from ruining any engine they touched. It had all been a struggle. At the end of the day a chair like this could make up for a lot. It was irresistible.

He looked at Phuti Radiphuti. “Can you deliver it to Zebra Drive?”

“Of course,” said Phuti Radiphuti. He reached out and patted the back of the chair. “You will be very happy in that chair, Rra. Very happy.”