The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

Mma Makutsi, who was very sensitive to slight.
    Another way of doing it would be to introduce the subject into the conversation by simply making a remark that suggested you knew. You could, for example, give somebody a cup of tea and then say something like,
Would you like a piece of cake as well – now that you’re pregnant?
That would allow the other person to answer,
Well, cake is always welcome when one is eating for two
. Or she might say,
What makes you think I’m pregnant?
That could be awkward, because you could hardly say,
I thought you were pregnant because you’re looking so large.
There were some people who became larger simply because of fattening foods, of cake or the like, or because they were traditionally built by nature rather than because of… because of anything else. They might resent an inference that they were
too
large, and indeed there were those who might be trying to become pregnant and not yet succeeding; they might be upset if you reminded them of something they wanted but were not achieving. Or there might be people who could conclude that you thought that they
should
be pregnant, and they, in turn, might think,
What business is it of yours whether or not I’m pregnant?
There was no getting away from it: it was very difficult all round and even a discussion of maternity leave would have to be handled very carefully. There were undoubtedly many employees who were easy, with whom you could raise any issue without having to take care to be tactful, but Mma Makutsi, for all her many merits, was certainly not one of those.
     
    She drove past the traffic circle at the university and then along the road towards the part of town known as the Village. Although she remembered it when it was a sleepy collection of meandering, tree-lined streets, it was less of a village now, since several large blocks of flats had been built on its periphery. Blocks of flats could change everything, thought Mma Ramotswe. They were designed for people, but people were not necessarily designed for them. These flats at the edges of the Village, though, were made more human by the washing that was hung out to dry from their balconies; by the children who congregated in their doorways, or played with skipping ropes and dogs on their pathways; by the music that the residents listened to, melodies that drifted out of the open windows and throbbed with life. All of this made it harder for large new buildings to deaden the human spirit. It was like the bush: you could clear it and build something where once there had been nothing but trees and grass and termite mounds, but if you turned your back for a moment, Africa would begin to reclaim what had always been hers. The grass would encroach, its seeds carried by the wind; birds would drop the seeds of saplings that would then send tiny shoots up out of the ground; the termites would marshal their exploratory troops to begin rebuilding their own intricate cities of mud in the very places they had claimed once before. And sooner or later the bush would have covered all your efforts and it would be as it was before, the wound on nature completely healed.
    By the time she reached the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni had already arrived for work at his garage, Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, with whom the agency shared premises. He was talking to a client who had brought in a car for repair – one of his regular clients, Mma Ramotswe noticed; one of that unfortunate category of people whose cars always seemed to be breaking down but who could not bring themselves to part with them and buy a new model. Mma Ramotswe understood that attitude only too well; she loved her van and had resisted every effort on the part of Mr J. L. B. Matekoni to trade it in for something newer. And when he had eventually succeeded, she had pined for her late van until it had been recovered, restored and given back into her ownership, where it was surely destined to be.
    She nodded a