Monday, December 18, 2017
Chapter One - The Clothes of Others
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| The House of Unexpected Sisters By Alexander McCall Smith |
The House of Unexpected Sisters By Alexander McCall Smith
Chapter One - The Clothes of Others
MMA RAMOTSWE, owner of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (as featured
in a two-page article in the Botswana Daily News, under the headline “A
Lady Who Definitely Knows How to Find Things Out”), had strong views
on the things that she owned. Personal possessions, she thought, should
be simple, well made, and not too expensive. Mma Ramotswe was
generous in all those circumstances where generosity was required—but
she was never keen to pay one hundred pula for something that could be
obtained elsewhere for eighty pula, or to get rid of any item that, although
getting on a bit, still served its purpose well enough. And that, she
thought, was the most important consideration of all—whether
something worked. A possession did not have to be fashionable; it did not
have to be the very latest thing; what mattered was that it did what it was
supposed to do, and did this in the way expected of it. In that respect,
there was not much difference between things and people: what she
looked for in people was the quality of doing what they were meant to do,
and doing it without too much fuss, noise, or complaint. She also felt that
if something was doing its job then you should hold on to it and cherish
it, rather than discarding it in favour of something new. Her white van,
for instance, was now rather old and inclined to rattle, but it never failed
to start—except after a rain storm, which was rare enough in a dry
country like Botswana—and it got her from place to place—except when
she ran out of fuel, or when it broke down, which it did from time to time,
but not too often.
She applied the same philosophy to her shoes and clothing. It was
true that she was always trying to persuade her husband, Mr. J.L.B.
Matekoni, to get rid of his old shirts and jackets, but that was because he,
like all men, or certainly the majority of men, tended to hold on to his
clothes for far too long. His shoes were an example of that failing: he
usually extracted at least four years’ service out of his oil-stained working
boots, his veldschoen. He recognised her distaste for these shoes by
removing them when he came back from the garage each evening, but he
was adamant that any other footwear, including the new waterproof, oilresistant
work boots he had seen featured in a mail order catalogue,
would be a pointless extravagance.
“There is no point in having fancy boots if you’re a mechanic,” he
said. “What you need is boots that you know will always be there.”
“But new boots would also always be there,” she pointed out. “It’s not
as if they would march off by themselves.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “Oh, I don’t think shoes would be that
disobedient,” he said. “What I mean is that you want shoes that you know
—that you trust. I have always liked those boots. They are the ones I’ve
always worn. I know my way around them.”
Mma Ramotswe looked puzzled. “But surely there’s not much to
know about shoes,” she argued. “All you have to know is which way round
they go. You wouldn’t want to put them on back to front, nor put the left
shoe on the right foot. But is there much to know beyond that?”
The conversation went nowhere, as it always did when this subject
was raised, and Mma Ramotswe had come to accept that men’s clothing
was a lost cause. There might be a small number of men who were
conscious of their apparel and did not hold on to old shoes and clothes for
too long, but if there were, then she certainly was not married to one of
them. Her own clothes were a quite different matter, of course. She did
not spend an excessive amount on dresses, or on shoes for that matter,
but she believed in quality and would never buy cheap clothes for the
sake of saving a few pula. What she wanted from her clothes was the
ability to stand up to the normal demands of the working day, easy
laundering, and, if at all possible, light ironing qualities. If clothes had
that, then it did not matter if they were not of the latest style or were of a
colour that had ceased to be fashionable. If Mma Ramotswe was
comfortable in them, and if they responded to the structural challenges
posed by the traditionally built figure, then she embraced them
enthusiastically, and they, in their way, reciprocated—particularly with
those parts of her figure that needed support.
Given this attitude to the functionality of clothes, it was no surprise
that she and her erstwhile assistant, now her co-director, Mma Grace
Makutsi, wife of Mr. Phuti Radiphuti of the Double Comfort Furniture
Store, should not see eye to eye on fashion matters. When she had first
started at the agency, Mma Makutsi had not been in a position to spend
much money on clothing. In fact, she could spend no money on clothes,
for the simple reason that she had none. What savings Mma Makutsi and
her family had were committed almost entirely to the fees she had to pay
the Botswana Secretarial College, leaving very little for anything else.
Then, when she was given the job at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,
Mma Ramotswe had been unable to pay her much of a salary, as the truth
of the matter was that the agency’s minuscule profits did not really justify
the employment of any staff.
But Mma Makutsi had talked herself into the job and had been
prepared to accept the tiny salary on the grounds that in the fullness of
time things would surely look up. They did, and when she found she had
a bit of money in her pocket—although not all that much—she spent at
least some of it on replacements for her two increasingly worn dresses.
She also splashed out on some new shoes—a handsome pair of court
shoes with green leather on the outside and blue lining within. She had
never seen anything more beautiful than that pair of shoes, and they had
imparted a spring to her step that Mma Ramotswe, and all others dealing
with Mma Makutsi, had noticed, even if they did not know to attribute it
to new footwear.
Following her marriage to Phuti Radiphuti, Mma Makutsi’s
wardrobe expanded. Phuti was well off, and although he did not believe
in flaunting wealth, he was strongly of the view that the wife of a man of
his standing, with his herd of over six hundred cattle, should be dressed
in a way that was commensurate with her station in life.
Mma Ramotswe had helped Mma Makutsi on that first big spending
spree, when they had gone to the Riverwalk shops and purchased a dozen
dresses, several petticoats, a rail of blouses, and, of course, several pairs
of new shoes.
“It’s not that I’d buy all these things,” Mma Makutsi had observed
apologetically. “You know that I am not one of these people who like to
wear a different outfit every day—you know that, don’t you, Mma
Ramotswe?”
It had seemed to Mma Ramotswe that Mma Makutsi needed
reassurance, as we all do from time to time, and she gave it. “Nobody
would accuse you of being that sort of lady, Mma,” she said as they
staggered under the weight of numerous boxes and bags to Mma
Ramotswe’s tiny white van. “I certainly wouldn’t.”
“It’s Phuti, you see,” explained Mma Makutsi. “He wants me to look
smart.”
“That’s very good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is better to have a
husband who knows what you are wearing than to have one who doesn’t
even notice. Some men never notice, you know. They have no idea what
women are wearing.”
“That is a great pity for their wives and girlfriends,” said Mma
Makutsi. “It must be very discouraging to dress up all the time only to
find that your husband doesn’t even see what you have on.”
The taste of the two women was similar in some respects—but
different in others. Their views diverged on shoes, but they both agreed
that women should dress modestly and should not wear skirts that were
too short. This view was probably shared by the vast majority of women
in Botswana, even if not by absolutely all of them. Some young women,
they had noticed, seemed to have picked up the idea that the more leg a
skirt displayed, the more fashionable it was.
“I do not understand that,” said Mma Makutsi. “Men know that
women have legs—that is one of the things that they learn at an early age.
So why do you have to show them that you have legs when they are
already well aware of that?”
Mma Ramotswe agreed. She might not have put it exactly that way
herself, but she shared the general sentiment.
Mma Makutsi was warming to her theme. “Of course, I remember
the first time I saw really short skirts,” she went on. “It was when I came
down from Bobonong and I went to enroll at the Botswana Secretarial
College. I remember that day very well, Mma.”
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