The Colors of All the Cattle Read online

  Mma Potokwane knew of Mma Ramotswe’s opinions, but had a more jaundiced view. “Some are honest,” she said quite forcefully. “You are a very kind person, Mma, but you must remember that there are many politicians who say, We’ll make everything much better. Vote for us and there’ll be hundreds of new jobs…”

  “There may be jobs, of course…”

  “One new job,” interjected Mma Potokwane. “One new job for a politician.”

  “Ah,” said Mma Ramotswe. She did not have strong views on politics. She did not like the confrontational nature of much political discussion; why could people not argue politely, she wondered, taking into account the views of others and accepting that people might differ with one another in perfectly good faith?

  Mma Potokwane, having pronounced on politicians, wanted now to move to more interesting subjects.

  “And how is Mma Makutsi doing?” she asked. “What is her news, Mma?”

  Mma Potokwane and Mma Makutsi enjoyed an uneasy relationship. There had been a time when the two had clashed, their incompatible temperaments making it impossible for them to agree about very much. That had all changed, though, with the passage of time, and they were now on good enough terms, even if they remained slightly wary of one another.

  “She is on good form,” said Mma Ramotswe. “She is always talking about something new.”

  Mma Potokwane smiled. “She reads those magazines, doesn’t she? She gets a lot of ideas from them.”

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Only the other day she was telling me about an article about having a point to your life. There is some lady who thinks that most of us don’t have much point to our lives.”

  Mma Potokwane looked thoughtful. “Maybe, Mma. Maybe that’s right. There are many people who don’t seem to know where they’re going.”

  Mma Ramotswe studied her teacup. “I sometimes wonder if I’m such a person,” she said.

  Mma Potokwane was quick to dismiss this. “You, Mma? No, you are certainly not one of those people. You know exactly where you’re going.”

  Mma Ramotswe demurred. “I’m not so sure, Mma.” And then she added, “Where am I going, Mma? Do you know?”

  It was a little while before Mma Potokwane answered, and then it was with a question of her own. “Do I know where you’re going, Mma?”

  “Yes. Where am I going, Mma?”

  “You are going in exactly the same direction you’ve always been going,” said Mma Potokwane. Her tone was firm—like that of one who knows not only where another is going, but also where she herself is going. But it seemed to her that Mma Ramotswe needed persuading, and so she continued, “What else do you need in life, Mma? You have a fine husband—which is one of the most important things that anybody can have.”

  She waited for Mma Ramotswe to acknowledge her good fortune in this respect. Mma Potokwane’s admiration for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni knew no bounds, stemming from the days when, unpaid and without complaint, he had kept the Orphan Farm’s ancient, wheezing water pump going. That pump had been replaced and the focus of his effort had shifted to the equally demanding minibus that Mma Potokwane used to transport children. Only a mechanic of his patience and ability could have kept that vehicle on the road, and Mma Potokwane had understood that. Such a man, she had always thought, would make an ideal husband for some fortunate woman, and her pleasure had been profound when she had discovered that he and Mma Ramotswe were to get married.

  “And then,” Mma Potokwane continued, “you have a successful business. You have the two children. You have your Zebra Drive home. You have so much, Mma.” She looked at her friend with a touch of reproach. “You have nothing further to achieve, Mma. Nothing.”

  Mma Ramotswe was very much aware of what she had, and of how grateful she should be. “I know that, Mma,” she reassured her friend. “I know that I have much to be grateful for—and I am. I was not denying any of that.”

  “Well, then?” challenged Mma Potokwane. “What is this nonsense that Mma Makutsi has been putting in your head?”

  “Nothing, Mma. Nothing. It’s just that…well, I wondered whether I needed a bit of an extra challenge, that’s all.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mma Potokwane with renewed firmness. “Nonsense.”

  And that was where the conversation might have ended, were it not for a parting shot from Mma Potokwane on the subject of magazines.

  “These magazines,” she said, “are full of nothing, Mma. I see them, you know. Some of the housemothers buy them and I see them. They are full of things that don’t matter, Mma. Full of such things. And they make the people who read them think, My life is not much because I don’t have the things in this magazine. I’m not as pretty as the ladies in this magazine. I don’t make food that tastes as good as the pictures of food in this magazine. All that is nonsense, Mma. Nonsense.” And then came the final advice. “You tell Mma Makutsi that, Mma Ramotswe. You tell her.”

  Mma Ramotswe smiled. “I shall think about it, Mma. If the subject comes up again, I shall think about it.”

  That satisfied Mma Potokwane, who cut them both a further slice of fruit cake and served a third and, she thought, final cup of tea. As they ate their cake and drank their tea, a possibility had occurred to Mma Potokwane that might be, she felt, just the thing for a friend who was looking for a project to give more point to her life—not that she needed that, of course.

  “There’s one other thing,” she said, putting down her teacup. “One other thing I must tell you about before you go, Mma.”

  “Oh, yes, Mma?”

  Mma Potokwane lowered her voice. This was not necessary, as they were alone in her office and there was nobody to hear, but it underlined the sensitivity of the news she was about to impart. “Have you heard about that new hotel?” she asked.

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “The one in the papers?”

  “Yes, that one, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. “I’m surprised that they aren’t listening to all those people—the ones who do not want it. There are many people opposed, aren’t there, Mma?”

  Mma Potokwane’s voice rose with her indignation. “There certainly are, Mma. And I’m one of them.” She paused. A fourth cup of tea was unusual, but there were circumstances in which it was justified, and these were such. As she poured the tea, she explained her opposition. “The Big Fun Hotel indeed, Mma! Right next to the cemetery, where all the late people are—including, might I say, my own late mother. The Big Fun Hotel!”

  “It is very tactless,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We all know what sort of hotel that will be.”

  “We do, Mma,” agreed Mma Potokwane. “And yet they say that the council is going to give permission for it to go ahead. Can you believe it?”

  Mma Ramotswe wondered whether public opposition would change the council’s mind about planning permission, but this, Mma Potokwane told her, was unlikely. She had a friend on the council—one of those members who was vigorously opposed to the scheme—who had told her that the deal was as good as done. A public outcry was all very well, this friend said, but there was a much more powerful force working in favour of the application, and that was money.

  “It’s always like that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We were talking about politicians earlier, Mma—this is the sort of thing that some of them do—the bad politicians, that is. They let people build disrespectful hotels next to cemeteries—that sort of thing.”

  “Exactly, Mma,” said Mma Potokwane, leaning forward as she spoke. “But let me tell you something. There’s going to be a vacancy on the council. One of the members is not well and is going to resign his seat.” She looked intently at Mma Ramotswe. “And that means that there will be an election for that seat, and a new member.”

  “I suppose so,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Potokwane lowered her voice again—almost to a whisper. “And that also means, Mma,
that some good person—some person who might just be a woman this time—could stand for that seat.”

  It took a few moments for Mma Ramotswe to respond. Then, eyes wide with surprise, she said, “You, Mma?”

  Mma Potokwane smiled. “No, Mma. You.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I AM NOT THE RIGHT PERSON

  THAT EVENING, Mma Ramotswe did not reveal to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni what Mma Potokwane had suggested earlier that day. The main reason for her silence on the matter was the sheer unlikelihood of what Mma Potokwane had proposed. What she had said was simply impossible, and that meant that there was no real need for it to go any further. But there was more to her reluctance than that: in the back of her mind was her knowledge that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni always took a great interest in what Mma Potokwane said, and this led to a concern that he might actually agree with the matron on this particular matter, and she would therefore find herself under pressure on two fronts. That was a good reason, she thought, not to reveal the details of the extraordinary, and somewhat unsettling, conversation that had taken place in Mma Potokwane’s office.

  And so, over dinner that night, when Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni asked her how her afternoon had gone, she simply reported that she and her friend had enjoyed a natter over tea and cake and that nothing very significant had been said. She told him, though, of the little boy and the guinea fowl eggs, and he smiled and confessed that as a boy at his grandfather’s cattle post he had thought nothing of robbing birds’ nests and eating the eggs raw with the other herd boys.

  “It was different in those days,” he said. “There seemed to be more than enough for everybody—for the birds, for the animals, for people. We didn’t dream that the world would run out of such things.”

  Mma Ramotswe agreed. “Even land,” she said. “There was more than enough land for everybody back in those days.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni thought it right that children should be taught to look after birds and wildlife. “We can’t go back to those days,” he said. “It’s far too late.” He shook his head sadly. “That little boy—lightning, you say?”

  “That’s what he told Mma Potokwane, but she wasn’t at all sure. He hardly speaks.”

  “There was a man from Lobatse who was struck by lightning a few years ago,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “They found nothing apart from his shoes. That’s what they say, Mma—I’m just reporting it.” He paused. “He is late, of course.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  After dinner they retired early to bed, and Mma Ramotswe, who had not had a good night’s sleep the previous evening, soon drifted off. As sleep claimed her, she found herself thinking of what Mma Potokwane had said. She had protested, of course, when her friend had suggested that she should stand for the vacant council seat; she had pointed out that she had no experience of politics, even at a local level, and, quite apart from that, she had no affiliation with any political party. Mma Potokwane had summarily dismissed both of these objections.

  “Everybody has to start somewhere,” she pointed out. “If people said they could not do anything because they had no experience, then how would anybody get started?” and to that argument was added a telling point: “When you started the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mma, I don’t think you had had much experience as a private detective. In fact, you had had none, if my memory serves me correctly.”

  Mma Ramotswe could not deny that. She and Mma Makutsi had begun the business without the slightest idea as to what to do, and it was only after she had stumbled upon a copy of Clovis Andersen’s seminal tract, The Principles of Private Detection, that she had begun to understand the rudiments of her new profession.

  As for political affiliation, Mma Potokwane had similarly refuted Mma Ramotswe’s objection in the most insouciant manner. “Nobody bothers about political parties these days, Mma. You can be an independent candidate. That is a very well-known way of fighting an election these days. Being independent is very fashionable—everybody likes to vote for an independent candidate.”

  It was difficult to argue with Mma Potokwane once she had espoused a cause, and Mma Ramotswe had barely tried. Eventually, as her old friend had seen her out to her van, she had conceded that she would think about the possibility of standing as a candidate. “I am not the right person for that sort of thing, Mma,” she said. “But at least I shall think about what you have said today.” Her words were carefully chosen. She would think about it, and thinking about doing something was very far from agreeing to do it. In fact, thinking about something was often a prelude to deciding that you could not possibly do it; and that, she felt, was the inevitable outcome here.

  “That’s very good,” Mma Potokwane had said. “It is very important that you think about strategy, Mma. You need to think about things like what you will say to the newspapers. You need to think about how you will raise money for your campaign.”

  Mma Ramotswe had stopped her there. “Money, Mma? Do you have to pay some sort of deposit to stand for the council?”

  Mma Ramotswe found this amusing. “Oh, no, Mma—nothing like that. But advertisements cost money, you know, and you will need advertisements. I’m sure, though, that there will be people who will want to help you with that. Your supporters will pay.”

  Mma Ramotswe was silent. “My supporters? Do I have any supporters?” She made a mental list of those who could possibly be called her supporters. There was Mma Makutsi, of course; she would be a supporter, and would almost certainly vote for her. Then there was Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, whose support would be rock-solid, and who of course would also vote for her, although she now remembered that he had forgotten to vote in the last parliamentary election because he had been busy fixing the suspension on a troublesome car and had only emerged from underneath it just after the polling booths had closed. But he would certainly be vocal in his support, and would probably try to get various people in the motor trade to vote for her as well. Why would they do so, though? Would it be just because she was married to a prominent and much-respected mechanic, or would she have to say something complimentary about cars—and mechanics—in order to get their votes? That was one of the things that worried her about politics: you had to cultivate people, and in Mma Ramotswe’s view, the cultivation of others could very quickly deteriorate into the worst sort of flattery.

  Her train of thought almost led to her missing Mma Potokwane’s reply. “You have many supporters, Mma Ramotswe. If they had a meeting, they would need a very big hall, you know. You have hundreds of supporters—you just don’t know it yet, but they are there, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe did not know what to say, other than to bid her friend goodbye and make her way back from Tlokweng with a series of confused thoughts in her mind—thoughts of unknown supporters, thoughts of expensive advertisements, thoughts of journalists with awkward questions. No, she would not do this. Mma Potokwane was one of her oldest friends, and her dearest friend too, but there were limits to what you had to do for your friends. If they came up with strange ideas about what you should do, then you should listen to them—and she had listened to Mma Potokwane—but they should not presume on your friendship as far as making you do things that you had no desire to do. Friends did not have that right, whatever other claims they could make on you.

  Those thoughts, present in her mind as she drifted off to sleep that night, were still there the next morning when she got the children ready for school and in due course drove into work at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Now, however, she was adamant that she would telephone Mma Potokwane that morning—if not first thing, then certainly before the mid-morning tea break—and tell her that she had deliberated long and hard over her suggestion but she would definitely not be standing for election to the council. She would say all that before Mma Potokwane had the chance to do much more than pick up the phone: it would be what Clovis Andersen in his Principles of Private Detection calle
d a pre-emptive call. Don’t let the other side start raising objections, he wrote. Say your piece immediately. In this way it is you, rather than the other person, who sets the agenda.

  She was the first at work, with Mma Makutsi arriving ten minutes later.

  “I have booked somebody in,” said Mma Makutsi as she came into the office. “Somebody phoned yesterday when you were at Mma Potokwane’s place. It was a man, Mma, and he wanted an appointment with somebody he called ‘that detective lady.’ I corrected him on that, Mma. I pointed out that there were two detective ladies.”

  It was the sort of small triumph that Mma Makutsi enjoyed. There were far too many people, she felt, who failed to understand just how things were in this world. There were people who were ignorant, it seemed, of the most elementary facts—people who barely knew that Gaborone was the capital of Botswana or who claimed never to have heard of the Botswana Secretarial College…

  “Who is this man?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “What is his name, Mma?”

  Mma Makutsi consulted the diary that lay open on her desk. “He is a Mr. Marang, Mma. That is the name he gave. Marang.” She looked again at the page. “He did not say what it was about.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. Marang? The name was a reasonably common one in Botswana, but there was something about it that was chiming with her somewhere deep inside. There had been a Marang somewhere in her life, but she could not work out where, or when. It was a vague memory—one of those memories that never quite come to the fore, but that are somewhere deep in our mind, like the memories of early childhood. Early childhood? Marang? Marang?

  She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to wander, hoping that it would come up with an image, a recollection, a face. And what she saw was Mochudi, the place where she had been born, with its dominating hill on which the old school building perched, looking down over the village itself and its surrounding countryside. From below, drifting up on the wind, came the sound of cattle bells, that sound of the landscape of her childhood, that landscape that was always lovelier than any other because it belonged to you, as of right, your real home in the world, your place. And in her mind’s eye she saw from that hill, far below, the roof of the hospital, which in those days was of red-painted and corrugated iron. And then she knew.