Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (7 page)

Precious said nothing, because she was uncertain, and her
silence was taken as assent.

“I will speak to your father about
this,” said Note. “I hope that he is not an old-fashioned man who
will want a lot of cattle for you.”

He was, but she did not say
so. She had not agreed yet, she thought, but perhaps it was now too late.

Then Note said: “Now that you are going to be my wife, I must teach
you what wives are for.”

She said nothing. This is what happened,
she supposed. This is how men were, just as her friends at school had told her,
those who were easy, of course.

He put his arm around her and moved her
back against the soft grass. They were in the shadows, and there was nobody
nearby, just the noise of the drinkers shouting and laughing. He took her hand
and placed it upon his stomach, where he left it, not knowing what to do. Then
he started to kiss her, on her neck, her cheek, her lips, and all she heard was
the thudding of her heart and her shortened breath.

He said:
“Girls must learn this thing. Has anybody taught you?”

She
shook her head. She had not learned and now, she felt, it was too late. She
would not know what to do.

“I am glad,” he said. “I
knew straightaway that you were a virgin, which is a very good thing for a man.
But now things will change. Right now. Tonight.”

He hurt her. She
asked him to stop, but he put her head back and hit her once across the cheek.
But he immediately kissed her where the blow had struck, and said that he had
not meant to do it. All the time he was pushing against her, and scratching at
her, sometimes across her back, with his fingernails. Then he moved her over,
and he hurt her again, and struck her across her back with his belt.

She sat up, and gathered her crumpled clothes together. She was concerned,
even if he was not, that somebody might come out into the night and see
them.

She dressed, and as she put on her blouse, she started to weep,
quietly, because she was thinking of her father, whom she would see tomorrow on
his verandah, who would tell her the cattle news, and who would never imagine
what had happened to her that night.

Note Mokoti visited her father
three weeks later, by himself, and asked him for Precious. Obed said he would
speak to his daughter, which he did when she came to see him next. He sat on
his stool and looked up at her and said to her that she would never have to
marry anybody she did not want to marry. Those days were over, long ago. Nor
should she feel that she had to marry at all; a woman could be by herself these
days—there were more and more women like that.

She could have
said no at this point, which is what her father wanted her to say. But she did
not want to say that. She lived for her meetings with Note Mokoti. She wanted
to marry him. He was not a good man, she could tell that, but she might change
him. And, when all was said and done, there remained those dark moments of
contact, those pleasures he snatched from her, which were addictive. She liked
that. She felt ashamed even to think of it, but she liked what he did to her,
the humiliation, the urgency. She wanted to be with him, wanted him to possess
her. It was like a bitter drink which bids you back. And of course she sensed
that she was pregnant. It was too early to tell, but she felt that Note
Mokoti’s child was within her, a tiny, fluttering bird, deep within
her.

THEY MARRIED on a Saturday afternoon,
at three o’clock, in the church at Mochudi, with the cattle outside under
the trees, for it was late October and the heat was at its worst. The
countryside was dry that year, as the previous season’s rains had not
been good. Everything was parched and wilting; there was little grass left, and
the cattle were skin and bones. It was a listless time.

The Reformed
Church Minister married them, gasping in his clerical black, mopping at his
brow with a large red handkerchief.

He said: “You are being
married here in God’s sight. God places upon you certain duties. God
looks after us and keeps us in this cruel world. God loves His children, but we
must remember those duties He asks of us. Do you young people understand what I
am saying?”

Note smiled. “I understand.”

And,
turning to Precious: “And do you understand?”

She looked up
into the Minister’s face—the face of her father’s friend. She
knew that her father had spoken to him about this marriage and about how
unhappy he was about it, but the Minister had said that he was unable to
intervene. Now his tone was gentle, and he pressed her hand lightly as he took
it to place in Note’s. As he did so, the child moved within her, and she
winced because the movement was so sudden and so firm.

AFTER TWO days in
Mochudi, where they stayed in the house of a cousin of Note’s, they
packed their possessions into the back of a truck and went down to Gaborone.
Note had found somewhere to stay—two rooms and a kitchen in
somebody’s house near Tlokweng. It was a luxury to have two rooms; one
was their bedroom, furnished with a double mattress and an old wardrobe; the
other was a living room and dining room, with a table, two chairs, and a
sideboard. The yellow curtains from her room at the cousin’s house were
hung up in this room, and they made it bright and cheerful.

Note kept
his trumpet there and his collection of tapes. He would practise for twenty
minutes at a time, and then, while his lip was resting, he would listen to a
tape and pick out the rhythms on a guitar. He knew everything about township
music—where it came from, who sang what, who played which part with whom.
He had heard the greats, too; Hugh Masekela on the trumpet, Dollar Brand on the
piano, Spokes Machobane singing; he had heard them in person in Johannesburg,
and knew every recording they had ever made.

She watched him take the
trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it to
his lips and then, so suddenly, from that tiny cup of metal against his flesh,
the sound would burst out like a glorious, brilliant knife dividing the air.
And the little room would reverberate and the flies, jolted out of their
torpor, would buzz round and round as if riding the swirling notes.

She
went with him to the bars, and he was kind to her there, but he seemed to get
caught up in his own circle and she felt that he did not really want her there.
There were people there who thought of nothing but music; they talked endlessly
about music, music, music; how much could one say about music? They
didn’t want her there either, she thought, and so she stopped going to
the bars and stayed at home.

He came home late and he smelled of beer
when he returned. It was a sour smell, like rancid milk, and she turned her
head away as he pushed her down on the bed and pulled at her clothing.

“You have had a lot of beer. You have had a good evening.”

He looked at her, his eyes slightly out of focus.

“I can
drink if I want to. You’re one of these women who stays at home and
complains? Is that what you are?”

“I am not. I only meant
to say that you had a good evening.”

But his indignation would
not be assuaged, and he said: “You are making me punish you, woman. You
are making me do this thing to you.”

She cried out, and tried to
struggle, to push him away, but he was too strong for her.

“Don’t hurt the baby.”

“Baby! Why do you
talk about this baby? It is not mine. I am not the father of any
baby.”

MALE HANDS again, but this time
in thin rubber gloves, which made the hands pale and unfinished, like a white
man’s hands.

“Do you feel any pain here? No? And
here?”

She shook her head.

“I think that the baby
is all right. And up here, where these marks are. Is there pain just on the
outside, or is it deeper in?”

“It is just the
outside.”

“I see. I am going to have to put in stitches
here. All the way across here, because the skin has parted so badly. I’ll
spray something on to take the pain away but maybe it’s better for you
not to watch me while I’m sewing! Some people say men can’t sew,
but we doctors aren’t too bad at it!”

She closed her eyes
and heard a hissing sound. There was cold spray against her skin and then a
numbness as the doctor worked on the wound.

“This was your
husband’s doing? Am I right?”

She opened her eyes. The
doctor had finished the suture and had handed something to the nurse. He was
looking at her now as he peeled off the gloves.

“How many times
has this happened before? Is there anybody to look after you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“I
suppose you’re going to go back to him?”

She opened her
mouth to speak, but he interrupted her.

“Of course you are.
It’s always the same. The woman goes back for more.”

He
sighed. “I’ll probably see you again, you know. But I hope I
don’t. Just be careful.”

SHE
WENT back the next day, a scarf tied around her face to hide the bruises and
the cuts. She ached in her arms and in her stomach, and the sutured wound stung
sharply. They had given her pills at the hospital, and she had taken one just
before she left on the bus. This seemed to help the pain, and she took another
on the journey.

The door was open. She went in, her heart thumping
within her chest, and saw what had happened. The room was empty, apart from the
furniture. He had taken his tapes, and their new metal trunk, and the yellow
curtains too. And in the bedroom, he had slashed the mattress with a knife, and
there was kapok lying about, making it look like a shearing room.

She
sat down on the bed and was still sitting there, staring at the floor, when the
neighbour came in and said that she would get somebody to take her in a truck
back to Mochudi, to Obed, to her father.

There she stayed, looking
after her father, for the next fourteen years. He died shortly after her
thirty-fourth birthday, and that was the point at which Precious Ramotswe, now
parentless, veteran of a nightmare marriage, and mother, for a brief and lovely
five days, became the first lady private detective in Botswana.

CHAPTER FIVE

WHAT
YOU NEED TO OPEN
A DETECTIVE AGENCY

M
MA RAMOTSWE had thought
that it would not be easy to open a detective agency. People always made the
mistake of thinking that starting a business was simple and then found that
there were all sorts of hidden problems and unforeseen demands. She had heard
of people opening businesses that lasted four or five weeks before they ran out
of money or stock, or both. It was always more difficult than you thought it
would be.

She went to the lawyer at Pilane, who had arranged for her
to get her father’s money. He had organised the sale of the cattle, and
had got a good price for them.

“I have got a lot of money for
you,” he said. “Your father’s herd had grown and
grown.”

She took the cheque and the sheet of paper that he handed
her. It was more than she had imagined possible. But there it was—all
that money, made payable to Precious Ramotswe, on presentation to Barclays Bank
of Botswana.

“You can buy a house with that,” said the
lawyer. “And a business.”

“I am going to buy both of
those.”

The lawyer looked interested. “What sort of
business? A store? I can give you advice, you know.”

“A
detective agency.”

The lawyer looked blank.

“There
are none for sale. There are none of those.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded.
“I know that. I am going to have to start from scratch.”

The lawyer winced as she spoke. “It’s easy to lose money in
business,” he said. “Especially when you don’t know anything
about what you’re doing.” He stared at her hard. “Especially
then. And anyway, can women be detectives? Do you think they can?”

“Why not?” said Mma Ramotswe. She had heard that people did not
like lawyers, and now she thought she could see why. This man was so certain of
himself, so utterly convinced. What had it to do with him what she did? It was
her money, her future. And how dare he say that about women, when he
didn’t even know that his zip was half undone! Should she tell him?

“Women are the ones who know what’s going on,” she said
quietly. “They are the ones with eyes. Have you not heard of Agatha
Christie?”

The lawyer looked taken aback. “Agatha Christie?
Of course I know her. Yes, that is true. A woman sees more than a man sees.
That is well-known.”

“So,” said Mma Ramotswe,
“when people see a sign saying
NO
. 1
LADIES
’
DETECTIVE AGENCY
, what will they
think? They’ll think those ladies will know what’s going on.
They’re the ones.”

The lawyer stroked his chin.
“Maybe.”