The Double Comfort Safari Club - By Alexander McCall Smith Page 0,55

memory is going. I do not think that this family has agreed to pay any lobola to …”—she paused, looking squarely at Mma Makutsi—“to any other family.”

Mma Makutsi recoiled at the way she said family, dwelling on the word, filling it with contempt. Mma Makutsi was not the only one being insulted here; this was an insult to her people in Bobonong, to her uncles; to the uncle with the broken nose, to the uncle who experienced difficulty in finding the right word.

The aunt now continued. “You are a secretary, I hear, Mma.”

“Assistant detective.”

The aunt laughed. “So that is the new word for secretary. They are always inventing new words for old things. So that is what they call a secretary today—an assistant detective.” She was enjoying herself, and stopped to relish her own words. “And what do they call a cook these days, I wonder? Is he also a detective, do you think? Or do they call him a pilot, or a general? What do you think, Mma?”

Mma Makutsi felt flustered. “I am not talking about any of that,” she said. And then the response came to her. “Actually, I do not know what they call a cook, Mma. But I do know what they call an aunt who has only bitterness in her heart. They call her a cow. That is what they call her.”

She turned on her heel and left the veranda. As she passed the unfriendly brown car, with its small, mean-spirited windows, she heard the aunt shouting behind her. But she was not going to stop; she had seen enough village shouting-matches up in Bobonong to know that the thing to do was to walk away. Phuti would not get her message, she suspected, but the aunt could not detain him forever. He would run away if she tried. Or hop, she thought, bitterly; the aunt might take his new leg and hide it and he would have to hop. She did not like to think about it.

SHE WENT STRAIGHT from the aunt’s house to Mma Ramotswe’s house on Zebra Drive. She did not like to trouble Mma Ramotswe at home, and rarely did so, but there were times when only the company of her employer, that wise, good woman, would do. This, she felt, was such an occasion, and she knew that Mma Ramotswe would understand.

She found her on the veranda, as she had hoped she would, drinking a cup of red bush tea.

“I have just come back,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I had a long talk with Herbert Mateleke. Now I need some tea to recover.” She indicated for Mma Makutsi to sit down.

“So this chair is not a private chair,” said Mma Makutsi, as she lowered herself into it.

“What?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “What is this about private chairs?”

Mma Makutsi explained that she had been to see Phuti, and had been denied the opportunity to sit on the veranda and wait. “There was a chair there,” she said. “But the aunt said that it was a private chair.”

Mma Ramotswe let out a hoot of laughter. “A private chair? What a silly thing to say! Can I give you some tea, Mma, in one of my private cups? Or perhaps they are not private. Perhaps they are public.”

Mma Makutsi grinned. The encounter with the aunt had been traumatic, but now Mma Ramotswe was reminding her that it was really rather ridiculous. “And then I called her a cow. And I walked away.”

Again Mma Ramotswe laughed. “If she is a cow, then she is a very thin cow,” she said. “Perhaps she will get fatter now that the rains have arrived and there is more grass. I hope that Phuti finds good grazing for her.” She was smiling, but then she stopped. “It is funny, but maybe we shouldn’t laugh too much, Mma. She is a poor, unhappy woman.”

“She is stopping me from seeing Phuti.”

“Then phone him. He has a mobile phone, doesn’t he?”

Mma Makutsi explained that she had tried to do so, but that she had not got through. “I think that the battery is flat,” she said. “He was always forgetting to charge it, and I do not think he has been able to do that since he was in hospital.” She thought of other possibilities. “Maybe he has lost the phone, or it was stolen in hospital. There are always thieves in those places.”

Mma Ramotswe looked thoughtful. What Mma Makutsi said about thieves in hospitals was quite true. Recently she had heard of