The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

earlier. She picked up a jar of apricot jam. The children did not like apricots, and she and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni were not great jam-eaters. She opened the jar: a crust of mould, cream and beige in colour, covered the jam, which could not even be seen beneath it. She shuddered: mould looked the way it did for a reason—it was a warning. She put the jar down on the floor, the beginning of what was to be a large stack of out-of-date or inedible foods.
    The task of tidying the food cupboard took close to two hours, at the end of which the shelves were transformed, the foodstuffs arrayed in neat rows. It was just the sort of cupboard that a house-proud woman would keep—akin, she thought, to the well-ordered files in which Mma Makutsi took such pride.
    It was half past ten on the first morning of her holiday. She had tidied the food cupboard, drunk two cups of red bush tea, and given her teeth a slightly longer-than-usual brushing. Now what? She walked into the living room and gazed out of the window, through the verandah, to the garden beyond. The day was well under way, the sun high in the sky, and there was not very much she could do in the garden in that heat. Even the verandah might be a bit uncomfortable, she felt, in spite of the shade it provided.
    She sat down in one of the living-room chairs and looked about her. The room was tidy and the floor, made of squares of smooth cement, had been polished only a couple of days ago by Rose, her part-time cleaner. She had applied red polish until the floor was like a smooth red mirror, as slippery and almost as reflective. She looked up at the ceiling for cobwebs or for fly-spots: the white ceiling-boards, although buckled here and there, were pristine. The maid had cleaned even there.
    Mma Ramotswe sighed. There was nothing to do in the house and nothing to do in the garden. She could read something, of course, but the magazines in her living room were well thumbed and familiar. There were several old copies of
Reader’s Digest
and a
Drum
magazine from over the border, but even had she been in the mood to read she would have found nothing new there. She had read the
Reader’s Digest
s from cover to cover, and
Drum
was more for the eyes than for the mind, in spite of the irresistible headline displayed so prominently on its cover: “Man Mysteriously Loses Nose.” Even yesterday’s
Botswana Daily News,
brought home in the evening by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, had been thoroughly perused. And there was never anything really surprising in the newspaper because people were always doing the same things. People show no inclination to change, thought Mma Ramotswe; they do the things they’ve always done time and time again. It would be more newsworthy if people did not do the things one expected of them. That would be news indeed: “Finance Minister Makes No New Promises,” or “No Sign of an Increase in Crime This Year,” or “Minister of Water Affairs Says Nothing About Possible New Pipeline.” People would be most interested to read
real
news like that.
    She glanced at her watch. The last ten minutes had been very slow, and now it was only twenty to eleven. At this rate a day would seem like a week; a week would seem an eternity. No, she would not spend any more time sitting about the house, even if she was on holiday. She would go to the President Hotel and have mid-morning tea, with perhaps one or two of their fish-paste sandwiches to keep hunger at bay before she returned to cook Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s lunch. There was always a group of ladies having tea at the President Hotel—she had seen them there—and she knew one or two of them slightly. She could join them and enjoy a bit of stimulating conversation. Time always passed much faster when there was talk to be listened to.

CHAPTER FOUR
YOU MUST NOT SPANK ME, MMA
    S HE PARKED under a convenient tree near the President Hotel. As she locked the van behind her, a young boy appeared out of nowhere and stood in an attitude