Read The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party for Free Online Page B

good. I think she forgets that we are adults.”
    “I think that maybe the time has come for us to have dinner at my house again,” said Mma Makutsi. “Do you think that you can drive yet?”
    Phuti had shaken his head. He did not yet feel able to do that, he explained, although he hoped that it would not be long. The prosthetic foot he had been provided with by the hospital was taking a bit longer than he had imagined to get used to, and it would be a few weeks, he felt, before he could drive his car again. “But I have somebody from the furniture store who can drive me. He is one of our regular drivers, and we can transfer him from those duties. He is a very safe driver—you will not be worried.”
    Mma Makutsi had been not so much worried as impressed. Having a driver whom one could casually allocate to new duties was something that seemed to belong to an entirely different world, to a plane of existence of which she had only the slightest inkling. She knew that the Radiphuti family was well-to-do, and she knew that when she and Phuti were married her life would change in certain respects, but she was not yet used to the idea.
    “He will drive you all the time?” she asked.
    Phuti shrugged. “Yes, if I want that.”
    If I want that.
That, she had thought, was the difference. She had never really been in a position to have what she wanted, and now … She imagined what it would be like. If you saw a pair of shoes, you could simply take out your purse and buy them. If you wanted a fridge for your house, or a stove, you could simply go to ashop where they had these things and say, “I will have that one, please. And that one too.” She paused. Would she do this? She thought not. Now that she was in a position to indulge such whims, she found that she had no desire to do so, except, perhaps, for the shoes … Shoes, of course, were different, and yes, the future looked very positive on the shoe front.
    With the driver now available to take Phuti to dinner at his fiancée’s house, Phuti had informed Mma Potokwane that he would be eating dinner with Mma Makutsi at her place.
    “Is that wise?” Mma Potokwane had asked.
    He had looked puzzled, and she had gone on to explain. “You are still recovering from your accident, Rra,” she said. “You need very good food.”
    “But she can make that for me,” he protested. “Mma Makutsi is a very good cook.”
    Mma Potokwane had backed off. “Oh, I am not suggesting she is not a good cook, Rra. It is really just a question of experience. I have many years of experience of cooking for other people. It is not something that anybody can do. Mma Makutsi is a very good secretary, but I do not think that they taught cooking at the Botswana Secretarial College.”
    He had stood up for his fiancée. “She is an associate detective, Mma,” he said firmly. “And she learned to cook at home, not at secretarial college.”
    Mma Potokwane had recognised defeat. She would never have been bettered in such a discussion by another woman, but Phuti Radiphuti was a man, and Mma Potokwane came from a generation of women that was reticent about arguing with men. “But you will still have breakfast here, Rra?”
    “I shall, Mma Potokwane. And thank you for that. Thank you for looking after me so well.”
    She had smiled broadly. “I have been happy to do that, Rra. And I am so pleased that you are getting better at walking now. Soon you will be one hundred per cent again.”
    “I hope that I shall not need a stick for much longer.”
    She hoped that too, she said, although a stick lent a man a certain air of authority. “In my village,” she said, “we had a headman who always walked with a stick. He said that it was very useful for beating small boys with if they misbehaved. That is not how headmen conduct themselves these days. Things have changed.”
    “They have,” said Phuti. “It is not good to beat people, I think.”
    Mma Potokwane had looked thoughtful, wistful