Alexander Mccall Smith - Ladies' Detective Agency 05 (11 page)

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni got out of his truck
and stretched his limbs. He had a busy day ahead of him, with four cars booked
in for a routine service, and another which would require the replacement of
the servo system on its brakes. This was a tricky procedure, because it was
difficult to get at in the first place, and then, when one got there, it was
very easy to replace incorrectly. The problem, as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had
explained to the apprentices on numerous occasions, was that the ends of the
brake pipes were flared and one had to put a small nut into these flared ends.
This nut allowed you to connect the servo mechanism to the pipes, but, and this
was the real danger, if you cross-threaded the nuts you would get a leak. And
if you avoided this danger, but if you were too rough, then you could twist a
brake pipe. That was a terrible thing to do, as it meant that you had to
replace the entire brake pipe, and these pipes, as everybody knew, ran through
the body of the car like arteries. The apprentices had caused both of these
disasters in the past, and he had been obliged to spend almost a whole day
sorting things out. Now he no longer trusted them to do it. They could watch if
they wished, but they would not be allowed to touch. This was the main problem
with the apprentices; they had the necessary theoretical knowledge, or some of
it, but so often they were slipshod in the way they finished a job—as if
they had become bored with it—and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew that you could
never be slipshod when it came to brake pipes.

He went into the garage
and, hearing voices from the detective agency, he knocked on the door and
looked in to see Mma Makutsi handing Charlie a folded-up newspaper. They turned
and stared at him.

“Here’s the Boss,” said the
apprentice. “Here’s the brave man himself.”

“The hero,” echoed Mma Makutsi, smiling.

Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni frowned. “What is this?” he asked. “Why are you
calling me a brave man?”

“Not just us,” said the
apprentice, handing him the newspaper. “The whole town will be calling
you brave now.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took the newspaper. It can
only be one thing, he thought, and as his eye fell upon the article his fears
were confirmed. He stood there, his hands shaking slightly as he held the
offending newspaper, the dismay mounting within him. This was Mma
Potokwane’s doing. Nobody else could have told the newspaper about the
parachute jump, as he had spoken to nobody about it. She had no right to do
this, he thought. She had no right at all.

“Is it true?”
asked Mma Makutsi. “Did you really say that you would jump out of an
aeroplane?”

“Of course he did,” exclaimed the
apprentice. “The Boss is a brave man.”

“Well,”
began Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, “Mma Potokwane said to me that I should and
then …”

“Oh!” said Mma Makutsi, clapping her
hands with delight. “So it is true then! This is very exciting. I will
sponsor you, Rra. Yes, I will sponsor you up to thirty pula!”

“Why do you say ‘up to’?” asked the
apprentice.

“Because that’s what these sponsorship forms
normally say,” said Mma Makutsi. “You put down a maximum
amount.”

“But that’s only because when a person is
doing something like a sponsored walk they may not reach the end,” said
the apprentice. “In the case of a parachute jump, the person you have
sponsored usually reaches the end—one way or the other.” He laughed
at his observation, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni merely stared at him.

Mma
Makutsi was annoyed with the apprentice. It was not right to make remarks like
that in the presence of one who would be taking such a great personal risk for
a good cause. “You must not talk like that,” she said severely.
“This is not a joke for you to laugh at. This is a brave thing that Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni is doing.”

“Oh it’s brave all
right,” said the apprentice. “It is surely a brave thing, Mma. Look
what happened to that poor Botswana Defence Force man …”

“What happened to him?” asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

Mma
Makutsi glowered at the apprentice. “Oh that has nothing to do with you,
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said quickly. “That is another thing. We
do not need to talk about that thing.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked
doubtful. “But he said that something happened to a Botswana Defence
Force man. What is that thing?”

“It is not an important
thing,” said Mma Makutsi. “Sometimes the Botswana Defence Force
makes silly mistakes. It is only human after all.”

“How do
you know it was the Defence Force’s mistake?” interjected the
apprentice. “How do you know that it wasn’t that man’s
fault?”

“What man?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“I do not know his name,” said Mma Makutsi. “And anyway,
I am tired of talking about these things. I want to get some work done before
Mma Ramotswe comes in. There is a letter here which we shall have to reply to.
There is a lot to do.”

The apprentice smiled. “All
right,” he said. “I am also busy, Mma. You are not the only
one.” He gave a small jump, which could have been the beginnings of one
of his dances, but which also could have been just a small jump. Then he left
the office.

Mma Makutsi returned to her desk in a businesslike fashion.
“I have drawn up the accounts for last month,” she said. “It
was a much better month.”

“Good,” said Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni. “Now about this Defence Force man …”

He
did not finish, as Mma Makutsi interrupted him with a screech.
“Oh,” she cried, “I have forgotten something. Oh, I am very
stupid. Sorry, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, I have forgotten to enter those receipts
over there. I am going to have to check everything.”

Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni shrugged. There was something which she did not want him to be told,
but he thought that he knew exactly what it was. It was about a parachute that
had not opened.

CHAPTER EIGHT

TEA IS ALWAYS THE SOLUTION

M
MA
RAMOTSWE swept up to the premises of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, bringing her
tiny white van to a halt under the acacia tree. She had been thinking as she
drove in, not of work, but of the children, who were proving such surprising
people to live with. Children were never simple—she knew that—but
she had always assumed that brothers and sisters had at least something in
common in their tastes and behaviour. Yet here were these two orphans, who were
children of the same mother and same father (or so Mma Potokwane had told her)
and yet who were so thoroughly different. Motholeli was interested in cars and
trucks, and liked nothing better than to watch Mr J.L.B. Matekoni with his
spanners and wrenches and all the other mysterious tools of his calling. She
was adamant that she would be a mechanic, in spite of her wheelchair and in
spite of the fact that her arms were not as strong as the arms of other girls
of her age. The illness which had deprived her of the use of her legs had
touched at other parts of her body too, weakening the muscles and sometimes
constricting her chest and lungs. She never complained, of course, as it was
not in her nature to do so, but Mma Ramotswe could tell when a momentary shadow
of discomfort passed over her face, and her heart went out to the brave,
uncomplaining girl whom Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, almost by accident, had brought
into her life. Puso, the boy, whom Motholeli had rescued from burial with their
mother, scraping the hot sand from his face and breathing air into his
struggling lungs, shared none of his sister’s interest in machinery. He
was indifferent to cars, except as a means of getting around, and he was
happiest in his own company, playing in the patch of scrub bush behind Mma
Ramotswe’s house in Zebra Drive, throwing stones at lizards or tricking
those minute creatures known as ant lions into showing themselves. These
insects, small as ticks but quicker and more energetic, created little conical
wells in the sand, snares for any ants that might wander that way. Once on the
edge of the trap, the ant would inevitably trigger a miniature landslide,
tumbling down the sides of it. The ant lion, hidden under grains of sand at the
bottom, would burrow out and seize its prey, dragging it back underground to
provide a tasty meal. If you were a boy, and so minded, you could tickle the
edge of the trap with a blade of grass and create a false alarm to bring the
ant lion out of its lair. Then you could flip it out with a twig and witness
its confusion. That was an entertaining pastime for a boy, and Puso liked to do
this for hours on end.

Mma Ramotswe had imagined that he would play
with other boys, but he seemed to be quite happy on his own. She had invited a
friend to send her sons over, and these boys had arrived, but Puso had simply
stared at them and said nothing.

“You should talk to these
boys,” Mma Ramotswe admonished him. “They are your guests, and you
should talk to them.”

He had mumbled something, and they had gone
off into the garden together, but when she had looked out of the window a few
minutes later, Mma Ramotswe had seen the two visiting boys entertaining
themselves by climbing a tree while Puso busied himself with a nest of white
ants which he had found underneath a mopipi tree.

“Leave him to
do what he wants to do,” Mr J.LB. Matekoni had advised her.
“Remember where he comes from. Remember his people.”

Mma
Ramotswe knew exactly what he meant. These children, although not pure-bred
Masarwa, had at least some of that blood in their veins. It was easy to forget
that, because they did not look like bushmen, and yet here was the boy taking
this strange, almost brooding interest in the bush and in creatures that most
other people would not ever notice. That, she imagined, was because he had been
given the eyes to see these things; as we are given the eyes of those who have
gone before us, and can see the world in the way in which they saw it. In her
case, she knew that she had her father’s eye for cattle, and could tell
their quality in an instant, at first glance. That was something she just
knew—she just knew it. Perhaps Mr J.L.B. Matekoni could do the same with
cars; one glance, and he would know.

She got out of the tiny white van
and walked round the side of the building to the door that led directly into
the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. She could tell that they were busy in
the garage, and she did not want to disturb them. In an hour or so it would be
time for tea-break, and she could chat to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni then. In the
meantime there was a letter to sign—Mma Makutsi had started to type it
yesterday—and there might be new mail to go through. And sooner or later
she would have to begin the investigation of Mma Holonga’s list of
suitors. She had no idea how she was going to tackle that, but Mma Makutsi
might be able to come up with a suggestion. Mma Makutsi had a good
mind—as her ninety-seven per cent at the Botswana Secretarial College had
demonstrated to the world—but she was inclined to unrealistic schemes.
Sometimes these worked, but on other occasions Mma Ramotswe had been obliged to
pour cold water on over-ambitious ideas.

She entered the office to find
Mma Makutsi polishing her large spectacles, staring up at the ceiling as she
did so. This was always a sign that she was thinking, and Mma Ramotswe wondered
what she was thinking about. Perhaps the morning post, which Mma Makutsi now
picked up from the post office on her way into work, had contained an
interesting letter, possibly from a new client. Or perhaps it had brought one
of those anonymous letters which people inexplicably sent them; letters of
denunciation which the senders thought that they would be interested to
receive, but which were no business of theirs. Such letters were usually
mundane, revealing nothing but human pettiness and jealousy. But sometimes they
contained a snippet of information which was genuinely interesting, or gave an
insight into the strange corners of people’s lives. Mma Makutsi could be
thinking about one of these, thought Mma Ramotswe, or she could just be staring
at the ceiling because there was nothing else to do. Sometimes, when people
stared, there was nothing else in their minds, and all they were doing was
thinking of the ceiling, or of the trees, or of the sky, or of any of the
things that it was so satisfying just to stare at.

“You’re
thinking of something, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Whenever I see you
polishing your glasses like that, I know that you are thinking of
something.”

Mma Makutsi looked round sharply, disturbed by the
sudden sound of her employer’s voice. “You surprised me,
Mma,” she said. “I was sitting here and I suddenly heard your
voice. It made me jump.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni says that I creep up on him too. But I do not mean to do that.”
She paused. “So what were you thinking about, Mma?”

Mma
Makutsi replaced her glasses and adjusted their position on the bridge of her
nose. She had been thinking about Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and his parachute drop and
about how Mma Ramotswe would react to the news, that is assuming that she had
not heard it already.