Alexander McCall Smith - Tears of the Giraffe

THE SULLEN, BAD MAID ACTS

FLORENCE PEKO, the sour and complaining maid of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, had suffered from headaches ever since Mma Ramotswe had first been announced as her employer's future wife. She was prone to stress headaches, and anything untoward could bring them on. Her brother's trial, for instance, had been a season of headaches, and every month, when she went to visit him in the prison near the Indian supermarket she would feel a headache even before she took her place in the shuffling queue of relatives waiting to visit. Her brother had been involved in stolen cars, and although she had given evidence on his behalf, testifying to having witnessed a meeting at which he had agreed to look after a car for a friend-a skein of fabrication-she knew that he was every bit as guilty as the prosecution had made him out to be. Indeed, the crimes for which he received his five-year prison sentence were probably only a fraction of those he had committed. But that was not the point: she had been outraged at his conviction, and her outrage had taken the form of a prolonged shouting and gesturing at the police officers in the court. The magistrate, who was on the point of leaving, had resumed her seat and ordered Florence to appear before her.

"This is a court of law," she had said. 'You must understand that you cannot shout at police officers, or anybody else in it. And moreover, you are lucky that the prosecutor has not charged you with perjury for all the lies you told here today."

Florence had been silenced, and had been allowed free. Yet this only increased her sense of injustice. The Republic of Botswana had made a great mistake in sending her brother to jail. There were far worse people than he, and why were they left untouched? Where was the justice of it if people like... The list was a long one, and, by curious coincidence, three of the men on it were known by her, two of them intimately.

And it was to one of these, Mr Philemon Leannye, that she now proposed to turn. He owed her a favour. She had once told the police that he was with her, when he was not, and this was after she had received her judicial warning for perjury and was wary of the authorities. She had met Philemon Leannye at a take-out stall in the African Mall. He was tired of bar girls, he had said, and he wanted to get to know some honest girls who would not take his money from him and make him buy drinks for them.

"Somebody like you," he had said, charmingly.

She had been flattered, and their acquaintance had blossomed. Months might go by when she would not see him, but he would appear from time to time and bring her presents-a silver clock once, a bag (with the purse still in it), a bottle of Cape Brandy. He lived over at Old Naledi, with a woman by whom he had had three children.

"She is always shouting at me, that woman," he complained. "I can't do anything right as far as she is concerned. I give her money every month but she always says that the children are hungry and how is she to buy the food? She is never satisfied."

Florence was sympathetic.

"You should leave her and marry me," she said. "I am not one to shout at a man. I would make a good wife for a man like you."

Her suggestion had been serious, but he had treated it as a joke, and had cuffed her playfully.

"You would be just as bad," he said. "Once women are married to men, they start to complain. It is a well-known fact. Ask any married man."

So their relationship remained casual, but, after her risky and rather frightening interview with the police-an interview in which his alibi was probed for over three hours-she felt that there was an obligation which one day could be called in.

"Philemon," she said to him, lying beside him on Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's bed one hot afternoon. "I want you to get me a gun."

He laughed, but became serious when he turned over and saw her expression.

"What are you planning to do? Shoot Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? Next time he comes into the kitchen and complains about the food, you shoot him? Hah!"

"No. I am not planning to shoot anybody. I want the gun to put in somebody's house. Then I will tell the police that there is a gun there and they will come and find it."

"And so I don't get my gun back?"

"No. The police will take it. But they will also take the person whose house it was in. What happens if you are found with an illegal gun?"

Philemon lit a cigarette and puffed the air straight up towards Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's ceiling.

"They don't like illegal weapons here. You get caught with an illegal gun and you go to prison. That's it. No hanging about. They don't want this place to become like Johannesburg."

Florence smiled. "I am glad that they are so strict about guns. That is what I want."

Philemon extracted a fragment of tobacco from the space between his two front teeth. "So," he said. "How do I pay for this gun? Five hundred pula. Minimum. Somebody has to bring it over from Johannesburg. You can't pick them up here so easily."

"I have not got five hundred pula," she said. "Why not steal the gun? You've got contacts. Get one of your boys to do it." She paused before continuing. "Remember that I helped you. That was not easy for me."

He studied her carefully. "You really want this?" "Yes," she said. "It's really important to me." He stubbed his cigarette out and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

"All right," he said. "I'll get you a gun. But remember that if anything goes wrong, you didn't get the gun from me."

"I shall say I found it," said Florence. "I shall say that it was lying in the bush over near the prison. Maybe it was something to do with the prisoners."

"Sounds reasonable," said Philemon. "When do you want it?" "As soon as you can get it," she replied.

"I can get you one tonight," he said. "As it happens, I have a spare one. You can have that."

She sat up and touched the back of his neck gently. 'You are a very kind man. You can come and see me anytime, you know. Anytime. I am always happy to see you and make you happy."

"You are a very fine girl," he said, laughing. "Very bad. Very wicked. Very clever."

HE DELIVERED the gun, as he had promised, wrapped in a wax-proof parcel, which he put at the bottom of a voluminous OK Bazaars plastic bag, underneath a cluster of old copies of Ebony magazine. She unwrapped it in his presence and he started to explain how the safety catch operated, but she cut him short.

"I'm not interested in that," she said. "All I'm interested in is this gun, and these bullets."

He had handed her, separately, nine rounds of stubby, heavy ammunition. The bullets shone, as if each had been polished for its task, and she found herself attracted to their feel. They would make a fine necklace, she thought, if drilled through the base and threaded through with nylon string or perhaps a silver chain.

Philemon showed her how to load bullets into the magazine and how to wipe the gun afterwards, to remove fingerprints. Then he gave her a brief caress, planted a kiss on her cheek, and left. The smell of his hair oil, an exotic rum-like smell, lingered in the air, as it always did when he visited her, and she felt a stab of regret for their languid afternoon and its pleasures. If she went to his house and shot his wife, would he marry her? Would he see her as his liberator, or the slayer of the mother of his children? It was difficult to tell.

Besides, she could never shoot anybody. She was a Christian, and she did not believe in killing people. She thought of herself as a good person, who was simply forced, by circumstances, to do things that good people did not do-or which ihey claimed they did not do. She knew better, of course. Everybody cut some corners, and if she was proposing to deal with Mma Ramotswe in this unconventional way, it was only because it was necessary to use such measures against somebody who was so patently a threat to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. How could he defend himself against a woman as determined as that? It was clear that strong steps had to be taken, and a few years in prison would teach that woman to be more respectful of the rights of others. That interfering detective woman was the author of her own misfortune; she only had herself to blame.