Alexander Smith - Tea Time for the Traditionally Built People

“Makutsi,” said Violet quickly, breaking into a smile. “Grace Makutsi. Of course, I knew her. We all knew her. She was very popular with everybody.”

“That is good to hear,” said Phuti. “It would not do to marry an unpopular lady, would it?”

Phuti was not particularly good at witty remarks, and this was about as witty as he became. But Violet showed her appreciation by bursting out laughing, which pleased him, as she suspected it would.

“Yes,” she said. “She was very popular with all the girls… and the boys too. Very popular with the boys.”

Phuti gave a start. He smiled, but the smile was a nervous one. “The boys too? But there were no boys, surely, at the Botswana Secretarial College, were there?”

Violet sat down at her desk and toyed with a ball-point pen. She did not look at Phuti as she spoke, but stared somewhere behind and beyond him, as if casting her mind back to the events of a distant, barely remembered past. “No, there were no boys at the college itself. But there were always boys at the gate, if you know what I mean.”

She glanced at Phuti before her gaze slid away again, off to that distant point. “There was a café near the gate, you see, and this was very popular. All the boys knew that at the end of classes the girls from the college would go to this café and sit around. So the boys always went there so that they could sit around with the girls and chat to them. We used to call it the dating shop. Hah! The dating shop. Those were the days, Rra.”

For a few moments Phuti said nothing. Then he cleared his throat and began to speak. His stutter, which now only came at moments of stress, emerged, but only slightly, like the top of a treacherous rock lurking under the surface of a river. “Di… di… did Grace go to this ca… café?”

“Oh yes,” said Violet. “Grace was the life and soul of the café. A big magnet for the boys. Wow! You should have seen her.”

Phuti tried to laugh, but even the laugh had a strangled sound to it. Violet watched him, and her pleasure showed. “Yes, those were certainly the days. But you know something? Even today, a few years on, I look back on those times and think: the years may come and go, but none of us really changes, do we? I'm still the same person I was in those days…” And here she paused, before continuing, “And you must be the same person you were then. And Grace, too. She won't have changed, I think.”

Phuti said nothing. There was something desperate about his manner, and he began to tug at the right cuff of his shirt with his left hand. Violet's arrows had gone home, and she knew it. It was time, though, to change the direction of her campaign. It was always possible to get a man away from a woman, and one had to be careful not to overplay one's hand at the beginning. But she was confident that she could do it. She had done it twice before, although on those occasions the men in question had been mere temporary entertainment and had been abandoned once the novelty wore off. This was different. Phuti would not be temporary entertainment-in fact, he could not be considered entertainment in any sense of the word. But a woman reached a stage in life where her goals changed, and the most important of these was undoubtedly the security of landing a comfortably-off husband.

Phuti was ideal: a mild, unobtrusive man who could be twisted round one's little finger. Perfect. And the fact that he was engaged to be married to Grace Makutsi, assistant detective at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and distinguished graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College (ninety-seven per cent)? Pah! Not an obstacle at all; a tiny anthill at the most, to be kicked aside by the effortless stride of a fashionable pair of shoes as they went by.

MMA MAKUTSI, of course, knew nothing of this conversation between Phuti Radiphuti and Violet Sephotho. At the time that it took place, though, she was nonetheless thinking of Violet and of the threat that this dangerous, ruthless woman presented. Phuti had told her that Monday morning was to be his new employee's first day in the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, and ever since she had woken up that morning she had been unable to get the thought of Violet out of her mind.

As she travelled in to work on the crowded minibus, she noticed a heavily made-up woman in the seat in front of her. The woman had applied such a thick layer of cream to her skin that when the morning sun slanted in through the minibus window, it flashed off her face, as if off a signalling mirror. Miles away, thought Mma Makutsi, miles away up in the hills overlooking the dam, they might spot this flash of light and wonder what message was being sent to whom. No, that was a ridiculous thought, but look at her, Mma Makutsi said to herself, she's every bit as bad as… Violet Sephotho came to mind again, no matter how hard she tried to think about other things. And when the woman in the front turned and smiled at somebody at her side, Mma Makutsi found herself thinking: flirt , just like Violet Sephotho; unable to keep her eyes, and her hands, no doubt, off men. Such women were a danger to the public, and the Government should put up large warning signs like those health notices you saw. These would say: Watch Out for Women Like This! And underneath would be a picture of Violet Sephotho, or somebody looking quite like her.

In normal circumstances, thoughts like these might have helped; an amusing fantasy about a troublesome opponent may defuse the threat that the opponent presents; in normal circumstances… but these were not normal times at all; far from it. These were times of war, even if hostilities had not yet been formally declared. And this realisation induced a sinking feeling in Mma Makutsi, because she realised that Violet Sephotho had a weapon in her armoury that she simply did not have. Glamour.

That was the worst of it-that dreadful conclusion. I am a lady with glasses, thought Mma Makutsi. I need the glasses to see. I am also a lady with a certain skin problem. That is not my fault, and there is not all that much you can do about your skin. We are given a skin at the beginning, and that is our skin. If the skin you have has some blotches, then you have to find a man who does not mind about these things-a man who looks at you, sees your skin, and then goes under the skin to see what lies beneath; to see whether the person inside the skin can cook, or likes to listen to him, or can keep a house and a yard neat and clean, and will be kind to his aged father-even if the aged father makes strange noises when he is eating, and often even when he is not eating. That is what you hope a man will look for under a blotchy skin.

But unfortunately men are weak. They may know that they should look for these finer qualities in a woman, but they do not always do it. They see, instead, the clothes that a woman wears, and they look at her figure and the way she walks, and at the bright things she puts in her hair-beads, silver combs, and the like-and they cannot help it, poor men, they are dazzled, just as a mouse is hypnotised by the swaying of a cobra. And then the cobra strikes and it is all over for the mouse, just as it is for the man. For the mouse, it ends in a quick scuffle of dust and a few convulsive movements; for the man, it ends in the noise and fuss of a wedding, when all the uncles and aunts, especially the aunts, come up to him and surround him and touch and prod him and then he is finished and that is the end of the man.

Mma Makutsi looked out of the minibus window. Violet Sephotho. Violet Sephotho. Very well, Violet Sephotho: I am a peaceful woman, and I do not like to be at daggers drawn with anybody. But there comes a time when you have to defend what you have. Phuti Radiphuti is mine and I will fight to the end to keep him. To the very end.