Alexander Smith - Tea Time for the Traditionally Built People

Mma Makutsi now raised an objection. “One thing about this plan, Mma: What if she recognises Charlie from that time in the supermarket?”

Mma Ramotswe had thought of that and discounted the possibility. The encounter in the supermarket had been fraught, but it had mainly involved her and Mma Makutsi. Charlie had been in the background and had said nothing, which meant that in the heat of the altercation Violet probably barely noticed him.

“She won't recognise him,” she said. “And, anyway, even if she does, it won't matter. Even young men who work in garages need beds, don't they?”

“We all need a bed,” mused Mma Makutsi. “Everybody needs a bed.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “That is certainly well known,” she said.

Mma Makutsi looked thoughtful. “One other thing, Mma. Why are you asking Charlie to do this? What do you hope to prove?”

“We'll see,” Mma Ramotswe replied. “Sometimes you don't know what you're looking for until you find it. Would you not agree, Mma?”

“I'm not sure, Mma. I would have to think about it.”

“Well, it's true,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It really is.”

THEY PARKED THE BLUE VAN outside the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, and while Charlie made his way inside, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi sat in the cab of the van, the windows down for the heat. Fortunately, they had found some shade under one of those handy acacia trees that in the hot weather were to cars like honeycombs to bees. This one already had several vehicles nudged under its shade, but there was just enough room for the blue van.

After ten minutes, Mma Makutsi began to get anxious. “What is he doing in there, Mma? Do you think that he'll be trying out all sorts of chairs and things? Phuti says that some people come in just to sit in his comfortable chairs. He says that they often have no intention of buying anything. Sometimes he finds people asleep in the big armchairs and he has to wake them up.”

In bringing up the subject of chairs, she reminded herself of Phuti's promise to give her a new one for the office. She had not raised the matter again, and now was unsure what to do about it. The problem was that she felt that she could not have a new chair while her boss, Mma Ramotswe, still had an old one. And yet if she declined Phuti's offer, then he would surely be offended… It was all very difficult.

Mma Ramotswe, meanwhile, had been envisaging Phuti's customers sitting in those comfortable armchairs. “We all need to sit down,” she said.

“Yes, but not in chairs that don't belong to us,” countered Mma Makutsi. “That's the trouble with this country, Mma-there are too many people sitting down in other people's chairs.”

It was another of Mma Makutsi's odd statements-utterly unfounded in fact, Mma Ramotswe suspected, but not a point that she wished to argue. As far as she was concerned, if a chair was empty, then anybody should be welcome to sit in it. We should share our chairs, she felt. Maybe that was the real problem with the modern world-not enough of us were prepared to share our chairs. Yes, that was probably true, and she wondered whether she might not have a word with Bishop Mwamba and suggest that he talk about that in a future sermon. He could start off, perhaps, by asking the members of the congregation whether they had noticed how many chairs there were and how many of them were empty. That would get them thinking. But where would it go from there? That would be up to Bishop Mwamba, she decided: he was good at sermons, and he would surely find some way of deriving an important lesson from chairs.

This line of thought led to Professor Tlou. Mma Ramotswe was a great admirer of Professor Tlou, and she had read somewhere a reference to the fact that he had a chair of history. She knew that this was just a way of talking-that it simply meant that he was a professor of the history of Botswana-but she thought that it would be rather nice if the university were to give him an actual chair to go with the title. The chair of history, she felt, would have to be a very old chair, one of those chairs made out of dark hardwood with carved legs and an elaborate criss-cross seat of tightened animal-hide strips. It would be a very venerable chair, that chair, and quite unlike a chair of music, which would issue little musical squeaks when you sat in it, or which would make a sweet singing sound if it were left outside and the wind blew through it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a nudge from Mma Makutsi.

“He's coming, Mma,” she hissed. “Look.”

Charlie walked jauntily out of the front door of the shop and made directly for the van. There was no room for him in the cab- he had travelled in the open section at the back-but they needed to talk to him now and so they both got out to greet him and led him to a shady place under the acacia.

“Well?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

Charlie rolled his eyes heavenwards. “She's quite a lady, that one! One, two, three!”

“Never mind all that, Charlie,” said Mma Makutsi impatiently. “What happened?”

“Give him time, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Tell us, Charlie, but take your time about it. Try to remember everything, please.”

Charlie enjoyed being the centre of attraction. “Well now,” he began. “I went into the store. That's quite a store, Mma Ramotswe! No wonder Mma Makutsi is happy to be engaged to that Phuti! Big store, Mma. Big store.”

Mma Ramotswe coaxed him on. “Yes, yes, Charlie. But what about the bed?”

Charlie smiled. “I found that lady you were talking about- that Violet lady. My, my! Pretty lady that one. Pretty lady! Anyway she comes up to me-like this, this is how she walks, see-and she says, You're looking for a bed, Rra? Yes? This is the right place. You've come to the best place in Botswana for beds. And so on.”

“And then?”

“And then she says, This bed here, Rra, is a very good bed for you, I think. Try it. She said that I should lie down on the bed and see whether it was comfortable. So I did that. And while I was lying down, she comes up beside me and says, You look very handsome there, Rra, lying on that bed-very handsome. So I sit up and she says, What do you think of that bed, Rra-isn't it the most comfortable bed you've ever tried? And then she says, I'm sure a handsome young man like you, Rra, has slept in many beds! And she laughed.”

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi exchanged disapproving glances.

“And then, Charlie?” pressed Mma Ramotswe. “And then what happened?”

“Then I got up and poked at the mattress with my finger and felt the wooden headboard. Very smooth. And I said, Well, I'm not too sure, really, about this bed. I will need to look at beds in other shops. It's a big purchase, you know. And then…” He paused, adding extra dramatic effect to what he was about to say. “And then, Violet came up and whispered to me, If you buy this bed, Rra, then one day soon Ill come along and help you try it out. That is what she said! Some lady, Mma Ramotswe! Ow! One, two, three!”

Mma Ramotswe's eyes opened wide. “I knew it!” she exclaimed. “I knew it, Mma Makutsi! That is how Violet Sephotho manages to sell so many beds.”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “It is so shameful,” she said. “It is so shameful that this has been happening under Phuti's nose and he did not know what she has been saying to the customers.”

Charlie raised a finger. “Maybe he does, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi frowned. “What do you mean, Charlie?”

Charlie looked awkward. “I might have told him myself, Mma. I didn't mean to, but… Well, you see, what happened was this. After I had told her that I was going to think about it, I started to leave. But I saw a man looking at one of the beds as if he was inspecting it. As I walked past him I whispered, You should buy one of these beds, Rra! You get a lot of extras! I was just trying to be friendly-one man talking to another, you know. Anyway, he stood up, this man and he turned round, and I saw it was your Phuti Radiphuti, Mma Makutsi. Yes! And he said, What are you talking about? So I told him and he started to shake-like this, Mma-and he said, She is a very wicked lady and he walked off towards her and I came out, Mma. That is all.”