The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

He says that women are always bumping into other cars. He will say that this is just more proof.”
    Mma Ramotswe could not let that pass. “There are many men who say things like that. They are wrong. Women drive much more slowly than men. It is men who drive around at high speed and cause all those bad accidents. I have seen it many times, Mma. It is men themselves. We women just drive around and bump into things very slowly. We do not cause all that much damage.”
    “But he will not see it that way, Mma. He will not look at it like that.”
    Mma Ramotswe made a gesture that was unambiguously dismissive of those who thought as Rra Motang did. “There are some men who have not become as modern as they should.”
    “He is one of them,” agreed Mma Motang. “That is definitely him.”
    “None of our husbands is completely modern,” said Mma Ramotswe, with a smile. “They try—some of them—but they do not always succeed. The old Adam in them comes out, I’m afraid.” She liked the expression “the old Adam,” which she had heard somebody use on a Radio Botswana discussion programme. Others had heard it too, and it had been dropped, by Mma Gabane Gabane, no less, into that conversation in the President Hotel, that conversation about that feckless woman from Francistown. “Let a man into a stationery cupboard and the old Adam comes out,” she had said—or something like that.
    Mma Motang was still considering the consequences of her accident. “He’ll hear about it when the insurance claim comes in,” she said. “He will be very upset by that.”
    “Insurance claim?” said Mma Ramotswe. “There will be no insurance claim, Mma.”
    “But I have scraped your paintwork, Mma.”
    Mma Ramotswe laughed. “That is always happening to me. It happened only this morning—a bad scrape—much worse than the one you made.”
    “But—”
    “There are no buts, Mma. The insurance people are very busy with all sorts of serious claims. I do not want to make their life more difficult by going to them with a tiny scrape that will need a magnifying glass to see. I do not want to trouble those poor insurance people.”
    Mma Motang’s relief showed immediately. “Then my husband need not hear about this?”
    Mma Ramotswe had an idea. “No, he need not, Mma. And if he asks you what happened today, you can simply reply: ‘I bumped into Mma Ramotswe in the supermarket parking lot.’ And he will think nothing of it, and you will have told him the whole truth.”
    It took Mma Motang a moment or two to appreciate the joke, but when she did her anxious expression became one of delighted amusement. “I bumped into Mma Ramotswe…Yes, I did, Mma, I did!”
    They walked into the supermarket together. Mma Motang had a long shopping list, and bade farewell to Mma Ramotswe as they went their separate ways. “You are a very kind person, Mma Ramotswe,” she said as they parted. “God bless and keep you, Mma.”
    Mma Ramotswe acknowledged the blessing with a smile, but said nothing. She had been reminded—there in the middle of the supermarket—of her last moments with her father, her dear daddy, the late Obed Ramotswe, who was now in that other Botswana, the one beyond this Botswana, where there were herds of slow-moving white cattle and where all the late people from Botswana were together once more; and she remembered how the minister had come to see him to say goodbye, and how he had used those precise words as he laid his hands upon her late father’s brow: “God bless and keep you, Obed Ramotswe.”
    She stood quite still. Late people do not altogether leave us, she thought; they are still with us in memories such as that, wherever we are, no matter what time of day it was or how we were feeling, they were there, still shining the light of their love upon us.
    She was not sure how long she stood like that, lost in thought and memory. Nobody paid her any attention, assuming that she was trying to remember whatever it