Read Online Precious and Grace by Alexander McCall Smith - Free Book Online

you is often like your child—you feel you have a duty to say nice things.”
    She paused, and then raised an admonitory finger. “Or, if the person has been a very hopeless employee and the employer then wants to get rid of him, then they write a glowing reference. This is to make sure that they get the job and go. What do they say, Mma? Don’t they say: ‘Make sure that the road is always clear for your enemy to leave’? There is a lot of truth in these sayings, Mma—a lot of truth.”
    Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “It must be very difficult for you, Mma. Because you don’t want to choose somebody just because she is a distant relative or something like that…”
    Had Mma Ramotswe been looking at Mma Potokwane at the time, she would have noticed her friend squirming slightly at this; it was only a brief reaction, though, and there might have been nothing to it. A squirm may really be a shifting of weight, a momentary compromise with the gravity that eventually defeats us all.
    “No,” said Mma Potokwane, perhaps more firmly than might have been necessary, “one would not want to make an appointment on that basis. You should not give people a job just because you know their parents or because they are from the same village as you. No, you must not do that.”
    “No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You must not.”
    They were silent for a moment. Then Mma Ramotswe said, “So how did you choose that lady, Mma? How did you choose Mma Kentse?”
    Mma Potokwane drained her cup and reached out for the teapot. “It was very difficult, Mma,” she said. “I had a shortlist of five ladies—all of them with the right experience. Three had worked in the hospital, and two had worked in a school. They all had their school-leaving certificate and they all had brought up their own children. They were all members—or had been members—of a choir too; it is a good thing, I find, if the housemother can sing to the children.”
    Mma Ramotswe agreed. Singing to children was one of the traditions that she most wanted preserved. It was what the grandmothers had always done, and it lay, she felt, at the heart of what it was to be brought up in Botswana. It was the blanket, in a sense, in which a child was wrapped—that blanket of love that a nation should provide. It might seem to be a small matter, but it was in reality a very big thing indeed.
    “So how did you choose?”
    Mma Potokwane hesitated before replying. “You are a traditionally built lady, Mma,” she said. “As am I. We are both traditionally built. So…”
    Mma Ramotswe leaned forward in anticipation. “So you…”
    “So I chose the most traditionally built lady of the five,” said Mma Potokwane.
    Mma Ramotswe let out a whoop of delight. “You didn’t, Mma!”
    Mma Potokwane nodded. She was smiling now. “I did, Mma. And I did so because I felt that the most traditionally built lady would be the happiest. And the happiest lady would make the children happy, which is what the job of housemother is all about. The children love a traditionally built housemother—such a lady has more acreage, so to speak, Mma, for the children to climb on. Her lap will be big enough for many children to sit on at the same time, and…” She searched for additional reasons.
    “And her heart will be traditionally built,” said Mma Ramotswe. “She will have a large heart.”
    “There you are,” concluded Mma Potokwane. She looked at Mma Ramotswe enquiringly. “Do you think I did the right thing, Mma?”
    “Of course you did,” said Mma Ramotswe, who was sure of her response. It was not just that she was a traditionally built person speaking on behalf of the ranks of traditionally built people; it seemed to her that any reasonable person would agree with Mma Potokwane’s reasoning. So she repeated her reassurance to her friend that she had done the right thing, and they moved on to the next subject, which was a conversation that Mma Potokwane had had with Mr. Polopetsi.