“We built a house out over near the Western by-pass, near where the Grand Palm Hotel is. It is a very fine house—you may have seen it from the road, Rra. It has gates which go like this—large gates. You know the place?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did, and he had often wondered who would build gates like those; now he knew.

He nodded and waited for her to continue, but she was silent, watching him over the rim of her coffee cup.

“And was this marriage a happy one?” he asked finally. He found that the question came out in those words without his really having to think very much about it. Where had it come from? He suddenly remembered: years before, he had been in the High Court in Lobatse, waiting to give evidence in a case involving a road accident, and he had slipped into one of the courts to watch a case. He remembered the lawyer standing at his table, facing a woman who was sitting in the witness box, crying. And the lawyer suddenly spoke and said to her: “And was this marriage a happy one?” and the woman had started to cry all the more. What a ridiculous question, he had thought; what a ridiculous question to ask of a woman who was in floods of tears. Of course the marriage was not a happy one. But the question itself had sounded so impressive, that he had remembered it, little thinking that years later he would be able to use those precise words.

Unlike the witness, Mma Botumile did not burst into tears. “Of course it was happy,” she said. “And still is. Or rather, could be, if he stopped seeing that other woman.”

“Have you spoken to him about her?” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni asked.

Mma Botumile was dismissive. “Of course not! And, anyway, what could I say? I know nothing about this woman, whoever she is. That is for you to find out.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni pondered this for a moment. “But you do know that he’s seeing a woman, do you?” he asked.

“Oh, I know that all right,” said Mma Botumile. “Women know these things.”

Intuition, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. That’s what women claimed they had and men did not, or did not have enough of: intuition. He had often wondered, though, how one could know something without actually hearing it, or seeing it, or even smelling it. If one did not acquire knowledge from one’s senses, then where would one acquire it? That’s what he would have liked to ask Mma Botumile, but felt that he could not. She was not a woman, he felt, who would take well to being challenged.

“I see,” he said mildly. “But, do you mind telling me how women know these things? I’m sure they do know them, but how come?”