The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (21 page)

“I have come to see Prudence, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I think this is her house.”

The woman gave a reply that sounded like a sigh. “Yes, Mma. This is her place.”

The maid gestured to Mma Ramotswe that she should follow
her. They went along a corridor and into a room at the side of the house. It was a sparsely furnished bedroom with a large cot. Two babies under a year old were sleeping in the cot, one at each end, their small rounded stomachs exposed. In a chair by the window, reading a magazine, was a young woman in jeans and T-shirt. This was Prudence.

Prudence looked up in surprise.

“I have come to see you,” said Mma Ramotswe. “My name is Precious Ramotswe. I know …” She glanced at the babies. Should she say,
I know their father?
She decided to say, “I know Charlie.”

Prudence looked away. She had not got up when Mma Ramotswe had entered, in spite of the difference in their ages. “Oh yes,” she said flatly. “Charlie. How is he?”

“He is very well,” said Mma Ramotswe.

There was a silence. Then Mma Ramotswe spoke again: “I think you must be cross with him.”

Prudence looked up sharply. “Cross with Charlie? Why should I be cross with Charlie?”

Mma Ramotswe glanced at the twins. “The babies …”

Prudence stared at her. “What have they got to do with it?”

Mma Ramotswe was perplexed. “I thought … I heard that Charlie was the father. That is what I heard.”

Prudence frowned. “Charlie? Oh no, Charlie is not the father. No, it is not him.”

“Some other man then?”

Prudence flicked a page of her magazine. “Yes, some other man. He is a pilot. He flies up in Maun—those small planes that go to the safari camps. He is Kenyan. We’re going to get married in a few months—at long last.”

“Does Charlie know this?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

“About me getting married?”

“Yes. About the twins … and this other man, this Kenyan.”

Prudence shrugged. “He doesn’t think he’s the father of the babies, does he?”

Mma Ramotswe explained that Charlie had drawn that conclusion, and that was why there had been a rather sudden termination of the relationship.

Prudence listened to her with interest, but without any great show of emotion. “Well, he’s wrong,” she said once Mma Ramotswe had finished. “I never told him he was the father. I told him I was pregnant—that’s all.” She looked at Mma Ramotswe to see if she had grasped the distinction. “Listen, Mma, the point is that I had more than one boyfriend then. I know you shouldn’t, but it’s difficult sometimes when there are all these men knocking on the door. What are you expected to do?”

Mma Ramotswe was about to say,
You choose one and you stick to him,
but she judged it best not to engage. There would be no point in getting into an argument about faithfulness with Prudence; it was too late for her to change, she thought. And there were other people who should tackle her about that.

But she could not let the matter pass altogether. “But you told your parents that Charlie was the father?”

Prudence looked away sulkily. “I didn’t say that, Mma. Not exactly. Maybe they thought it themselves—because I was seeing Charlie at the time.”

“And they didn’t know about the other man … or men?”

Prudence shrugged. “Maybe not.”

Mma Ramotswe stared at her. She found it hard to imagine such callousness. She sighed. “I don’t think you behaved very well, Mma,” she said gently.

Prudence looked at her blankly. Perhaps she simply does not understand, thought Mma Ramotswe. Something was missing.

“Oh well, Mma,” she said, “I think that I should be on my way. Charlie says hello, by the way.”

“Tell him hello,” said Prudence. “Tell him that I think of him a lot. Tell him to come and see me some time, but to phone first.”

“I shall,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“And if you’d like something to eat,” Prudence went on, “I can get you something.”

Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. “Thank you, Mma, but I am not hungry.” She paused. One of the babies had stirred, but only to move an arm. “They are very fine babies, Mma. You must be proud of them.”

“They eat a lot,” said Prudence. “And I’m having another one, you know.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at her watch. “I really must go, Mma. I have a lot of work to do.” She did not, but she wanted to leave the house; she wanted to be away from this silly young woman with her casual ways and her utter indifference. How could anybody be so
bored
with life, she wondered, when all about one there were all these
things
happening?

The maid showed her out. As they approached the front door, Mma Ramotswe leaned over and whispered, “Mma, that girl, Prudence, doesn’t seem to care very much about things, does she?”

There was a flicker across the maid’s otherwise impassive face. “She is seeing two men. Two men, Mma! One is the man who is going to marry her, the other is another man altogether. I know these things; I see them.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “It is very bad.”

“She is a bad girl,” said the maid. “It is very unfair, Mma. She has all this—she has her good parents and she has their money, their food. And all the time she is bad. It is unfair, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe reached out and took the maid’s hand. “Do
not feel too sad about it, my sister,” she said. “I know what you mean.”

The maid looked down at the floor. “Sometimes I think that God has forgotten about me,” she said.

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “He hasn’t, Mma,” she whispered. “You must never think that. His love is always there, Mma, always there. And it doesn’t matter who we are—if we are poor people or people who have been badly treated—we are every bit as important in God’s eyes as anybody else. Every bit.”

The maid listened, but said nothing.

“You heard me, did you, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

The other woman nodded. “I heard you, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe reached into the pocket of her skirt. Fifty pula—not a small sum. “This is a present, Mma,” she said, pressing the banknote into the woman’s hand. “No, you must take it. I want you to have it.”

The maid tucked the note away. “I have a little boy,” she said.

“Then tonight he will have a very good meal, I think,” said Mma Ramotswe.

For the first time, the maid smiled.

SHE RETURNED DIRECTLY
to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Parking her van under the tree, she went not into the office but into the garage, where Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s legs, together with two other sets of legs, all clad in blue overalls, protruded from under a large green truck. She called out to her husband, who answered from below the vehicle.

“This is a very tricky repair, Mma,” he shouted out, his voice sounding distant under the truck. “I am doing my best, but it is very, very tricky.”

“I do not want to disturb you, Rra,” she shouted back. “I need to talk to Charlie.”

“I am watching Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, Mma,” Charlie called out.

“You can go, Charlie,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Fanwell and I can manage all right.”

She watched as Charlie wiggled out from under the truck. He had, she noticed, a large fresh oil stain on the bib of his overalls. She tut-tutted. “You will have to put those in the wash, Charlie. Oil is a very difficult thing. Soak them first, then put them in the wash.”

He looked down unconcernedly at the stain. “Oil is nothing, Mma. I do not mind.” He looked at her inquisitively. “What do you want, Mma?”

She drew him aside. “I offered to help you, Charlie. Remember?”

He became nervous. His hands shook slightly; you would have to be looking for it, but she noticed it.

“Yes, Mma, you did.”

“And I have done that,” she went on. “I have been to see Prudence.”

She saw his lip was now quivering.

“Yes, Mma?”

“Let me tell you this straightaway, Charlie. You are not the father of those twins. It is another man.”

He stared at her wide-eyed. “I am not …”

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You see, that girl, Prudence, is very friendly with men. She should watch out.”

Charlie started to smile. “I am not the father? Is this true?”

“She thinks it is,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And what the mother thinks tends to be the most important thing, I think.”

The news seemed to be sinking in slowly. “I do not have twins?”

“You do not.”

Charlie shook his head in disbelief. “I am going to be different from now on, Mma Ramotswe. You’ll see. I’m going to be different.”

“In what way, Charlie?”

“In every way, Mma. I am going to be a different man. More careful. Just one girlfriend. That’s all. A better mechanic too.”

She looked at him. For all his faults—and she had to admit they were manifold—he was a well-meaning young man. And much as he could be frustrating, he could also be amusing and generous and attractive.

“Don’t change too much,” she said gently. “We like you the way you are, Charlie.”

He stared at her incredulously, and she realised that he might not have heard many people say that. So she repeated herself: “We like you, Charlie; you just remember that.”

She looked down. He had clasped his hands together, his fingers interlaced. It was a gesture, she thought, of unequivocal pleasure—pleasure at hearing what all of us wanted to hear at least occasionally: that there was somebody who liked us, whatever our faults, and liked us sufficiently to say so.

 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 
 A GOOD MAN, A KIND MAN

W
HAT,
Mma Ramotswe asked herself, did she know about Mr. Fortitude Seleo?

The answer to this question was brief. She knew that he had a factory that made cattle-lick; she knew that this factory was in Lobatse; and she knew that he was the neighbour of her client, Mr. Botsalo Moeti. That was all that she actually
knew.
The rest was all gossip and allegations from a single source—Mr. Moeti himself, who did not like Mr. Seleo, and, more significantly, did not like his cattle. That thought itself led to further surmise: if Moeti did not like Seleo’s cattle, then it was odd, was it not, that Moeti’s cattle had been attacked, rather than the other way round. There would have been a clear motive had that happened: Seleo’s cattle had a habit of trespassing on Moeti’s land; if Seleo’s cattle were attacked, then the finger of suspicion would surely point at Moeti.

But what if the truth were rather different from the story as told by Moeti? What if Moeti’s cattle had been every bit as lawless as Seleo’s cattle and had themselves crossed over onto Seleo’s land? Then Seleo would have had a clear motive to wreak his revenge on
the poor beasts. That made sense of what had happened. Seleo had been angry over the incursions and had taken action. Moeti knew why his neighbour had done this, but had kept this knowledge from Mma Ramotswe—presumably to appear more of the innocent victim.

Then a disturbing possibility suggested itself: she had been treating Mr. Moeti as the victim, but it was possible that he was, in fact, the perpetrator. That would mean, of course, that he had attacked his own cattle, something that no farmer would dream of doing—unless he did not know that they
were
his cattle.

She pictured it. Night-time, and the herd boy, young Mpho, knocks urgently on the door of the farmhouse. “Who is it?” calls Moeti. “His cattle have broken through the fence, Rra. You must come.” Moeti comes to the door, belting his trousers, cursing under his breath. He runs to his truck; Mpho, shivering, sits in the back. They drive along the bumpy track; the stars are bright overhead, the moon nowhere to be seen; the headlamps cut into the darkness, and then there is just the dark hump of the hills in the distance. The cattle eyes are yellow points caught in the lights; they lift their heads and move off into the darkness. Two stragglers. Moeti shouts and there is bellowing. The blood cannot be seen because of the dark. He shouts at the boy again and returns to the truck and they are gone and do not hear the crying of the injured beasts.

And in the morning he discovers that his own cattle were mixed up with the neighbour’s herd, and he has maimed his own beast, and he vents his fury on the boy, and beats him. “You are not to say anything about this, understand? Nothing!” The idea occurs to him that he should blame somebody else—his neighbour, whose fault this really was. Let old scores be settled; put somebody on to him—not the police, because he would talk his way out of that and was friendly with the local policeman, but get somebody from outside
, somebody accepting Moeti’s money and answerable to him alone.

Of course, all of this implied that Mpho’s confession was false, and of that she was simply unsure. One moment she thought that the boy was probably telling the truth, the next she found herself inclined to think that he had made it up too quickly, or was lying to protect somebody else. And would a small boy, she wondered, have thought up something so devilish as to attack cattle in this way? Surely not.

She was driving to see Fortitude Seleo when she thought this, and the train of thought was so compelling that she almost stopped her van in order to sit still and think the matter through. But then, as is often the case with good ideas, the obvious flaw appeared, and so she continued with her drive. The flaw arose from what Mr. Moeti had said to her of the events. There had been two attacks, he said—the second one just a week before their first meeting. This ruled out the possibility that he had mistakenly attacked one of his own animals: he would never have made the same mistake twice. That was unlikely, she had to admit—unless, of course, the second attack had never occurred and had simply been invented to make the situation seem more serious.