To the Land of Long Lost Friends: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (20) (16 page)

At the end, Mma Ramotswe thanked her for her frankness. Once again, her theory had been proved: if you wanted to get information about something, you had only to ask. Of course, you might get a lot of additional material, as she had just done: information about bad behaviour in supermarkets, for instance, and techniques for resisting temptation. She thought about that again. Something had been said about a reverend, she remembered, and that made her wonder.

BACK IN THE VAN,
squashed up against one another once more, each revealed their results.

“Now, Charlie,” Mma Ramotswe began. “You go first. You tell us what you found out.”

“Nothing,” said Charlie. “There was just an old man in the flat. He said that he never saw what was going on outside, as he had lost his glasses six months ago and had not bought a new pair yet. He said that he probably wouldn’t bother, because there was nothing worth looking at any more.”

Mma Makutsi laughed. “Some people lack curiosity, don’t they?”

“He told me that he used to be a train driver,” Charlie went on.

“As long as he had his glasses then,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You wouldn’t want to lose your glasses when you were driving a train. And you, Mma Makutsi—did you find out anything?”

Mma Makutsi had the air of one who harboured private information that she was only too eager to impart. “I found out something very interesting,” she said.

“That’s good,” said Mma Ramotswe, with the air of one who already knew a secret about to be revealed.

“The flat I went to is occupied by a divorced woman,” she said. “She is very lonely, I think, because she was keen to speak to me. I told her I was a detective and she said that she had thought of being a detective herself, but had never done anything about it.”

“Ha!” Charlie interjected. “There are many people who think they can be detectives. I find that when I tell them what I do.”

“Apprentice detective,” Mma Makutsi said.

Charlie ignored this. “I tell them that I am a detective and they say, ‘I could be that too. I’m very good at solving mysteries. I know what’s what.’ That sort of thing.”

“This woman,” said Mma Ramotswe. “What did she tell you, Mma?”

“She told me her life story,” answered Mma Makutsi. “She came from Palapye originally. She went to a commercial college up in Francistown—those are not very high-level places, you know; they do book-keeping and things like that. No shorthand.” She paused and gave a disapproving look, as might any graduate,
magna cum laude,
of the Botswana Secretarial College. “Anyway, she went to this college place and then came down to Gaborone. Then she met a pilot with an air charter company. You know those planes that go up to Maun and into the Kalahari?”

“A bush pilot,” said Charlie. “They like landing on those little airstrips out in the bush. You have to watch out for those guys.”

Mma Ramotswe looked puzzled. “Why is that, Charlie?”

“They think they’re the tops,” Charlie replied. “They think all the girls are there just for them.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. The uncharitable might say the same thing about young mechanics, but she would not.

“She met this pilot,” Mma Makutsi continued. “They got married and she was very happy. Then she found out that he had women in all sorts of places. One up in Maun, one in Francistown, even one over the border in Angola. Wherever he landed, there would be a woman waiting for him. Can you imagine that? Can you just imagine it?”

Charlie closed his eyes. Mma Ramotswe thought he looked a bit dreamy, but she said nothing.

“This poor lady has been single since then,” Mma Makutsi went on. “She has a job with one of the banks. She is a book-keeper, and she likes the job, but her boss is a woman who does not like other women to succeed. She will not recommend her for promotion.”

Mma Ramotswe disapproved of that. Removing the ladder by which you had climbed up was a common enough practice—and a particularly nasty one, she felt. “That is very bad,” she said. “Everybody is entitled to a chance. Everybody.”

Charlie was listening. Yes, he thought. Yes.

“She gave me the full story,” Mma Makutsi said. “It was only after she had finished this long tale that I was able to ask her about downstairs. And then, oh my goodness, did I get it all then! She does not like Nametso, Mma Ramotswe. She does not like her.”

“Why?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

“Maybe it’s the Mercedes-Benz,” ventured Charlie. “I have found that many people do not like people with Mercedes-Benzes because they would like one themselves and do not have one.”

Mma Makutsi nodded her agreement. “You’re right there, Charlie. She went on and on about that. She said it was wrong for a young woman like that to have a silver Mercedes-Benz when there are many people much older than she is who have no car at all. She was very cross about that. So I asked her whether she had a car, and she said that her car had broken down and it was going to cost a lot to get it repaired. She said it needed a new gearbox.”

Charlie winced. “That’s not good news. A new gearbox is always expensive. If the gearbox went in this van, Mma Ramotswe…”

Mma Ramotswe made such a gesture as might forfend disaster. “I hope that doesn’t happen, Charlie.”

“I’m not saying it will, Mma,” Charlie replied. “But in a vehicle as old as this, it’s always a possibility.”

Mma Ramotswe steered the conversation back to the woman in the flat. “She does not like Nametso. Maybe it was the Mercedes-Benz—”

“Not only that,” Mma Makutsi interjected. “And I really can’t blame her, Mma—and you won’t either, once you hear what I have to tell you.”

Mma Ramotswe waited.

“Nametso is seeing two men. The divorced lady says she hasn’t seen much of them, but she is certain that there are two different men.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. This complicated matters. “And that was all she said about her?”

Mma Makutsi shrugged. “Yes. She did not know who they were.” She turned to Mma Ramotswe. “What did you find out?” she asked.

Mma Ramotswe hesitated. Then she replied, “Same as you, Mma. I found out she has a male friend—a sugar daddy, it seems.”

Charlie let out a whistle. It was a whistle of admiration, Mma Ramotswe thought, under the disguise of a whistle of surprise. “She’s a naughty girl, this Nametso,” he said. “Wow! Bad, bad!”

Mma Makutsi looked at him indignantly. “And what about the men?” she asked. “What about the men, Charlie? Aren’t they naughty too?”

“It’s different for men,” muttered Charlie.

Mma Makutsi rounded on him. “Did you say ‘It’s different for men,’ Charlie? Did my ears deceive me?” She quivered with rage. “Is that how you think, after all this…” She floundered, but only briefly. “After all this
progress
we have made? After all the lessons that men have been telling us they have learned—nodding their heads and saying, ‘Yes, yes, we understand and we shall try to behave better in the future’—after all that, and secretly they are thinking, We can still have a good time, though, and women will always be there to cook for us and make us feel better.”

Charlie pursed his lips.

“Did you hear that, Mma Ramotswe?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Charlie said it’s different for men. It seems that men can run around with all sorts of ladies and nobody will criticise them for it. One girlfriend, two girlfriends, even three—it’s all the same. It’s the way men are.”

Mma Ramotswe looked reproachfully at Charlie. “I’m sure you didn’t mean that, Charlie,” she said gently.

Charlie looked abashed. “No, maybe not, Mma. It’s just sometimes words slip out. Many men have that problem, Mma—words slip out when men forget what they’re not meant to say.”

“Well, let’s not argue about it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The important thing is this: we have learned something about Nametso. The question now is, does this explain why she has suddenly dropped her mother? That’s the question, I think.”

“What do you think, Mma Ramotswe?” Charlie asked.

“I think it is guilt,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I think she is ashamed of herself and does not want to see her mother because of that. She doesn’t want her mother to find out where she is living—how the flat is being paid for by a married man. She does not want her mother to see her driving around in her silver Mercedes-Benz because the mother will then ask, ‘Where did you get that car from?’ That is what mothers think when they see their children in Mercedes-Benzes. It is only natural.”

“What do we do, then?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe did not answer immediately. A minute or two later, though, she said, “I have no idea, Mma. No idea at all. Do you?”

“No,” said Mma Makutsi.

“Charlie?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

“I think we tell the mother the truth,” he answered. “We tell her and then she will know why her daughter is behaving as she is.”

Mma Makutsi was worried. “I don’t feel that will help that poor lady,” she said. “Perhaps we should think about things before we do anything.”

“That won’t change anything, Mma,” said Charlie.

“Perhaps not,” Mma Ramotswe said. “But then there is never any harm in thinking, Charlie. You never know what will come from thinking.”

M
R. J.L.B. MATEKONI
was late home that evening. Mr. Lefa Matabane, a regular client, had kept him in the garage, complaining that the engine of his car, a dispirited blue saloon that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had nursed for more than five years, was making strange sounds when it went above a certain speed.

“This car has its sneaky side,” said Mr. Matabane. “You know that sort of car, Rra? A good car at heart, but with what these days they call issues.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. “Many cars have issues, Rra. That is why I am in business here. If cars didn’t have issues, then there would be no Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.”

“And you would be doing something else, J.L.B.?”

He did not like the abbreviation. There were one or two people who called him J.L.B.—uninvited—and it grated. He was tempted to say, “I have issues with being called J.L.B.,” but was too mild to do so. Instead he said, “I have never thought of doing anything else. I think I could only work with cars.”

Mr. Matabane nodded. “That is what a true artist says. My dentist says that too. He says he would be very unhappy if there were no teeth. Teeth are everything to him. It is always teeth, teeth, teeth.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked at his watch. “Your car, Rra? This noise?”

“It is a sort of groan, I think. Everything is going normally, and then there is this groan when we get up to eighty kilometres. Groan. All the time, as if it has a sore stomach. Just like that. And it stays until the speed drops right back.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni stared at the car. There came a time with vehicles, and a mechanic usually knew when that time was. The problem, though, was that the owner of the vehicle often did not. There had been that old people carrier that Mma Potokwane had used to transport children—that had reached its time well before it was eventually scrapped; closer to home, indeed
at
home
,
there was Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van; and now there was Mr. Lefa Matabane’s blue saloon with its bald tyres, its cracked upholstery, and its flaking paint that he had jokingly referred to as car dandruff—a comment that had not gone down well with Mr. Lefa Matabane, who had sighed and looked at him reproachfully.

All of these cars, he thought, had simply reached their time and should be allowed to go. We did that with people. A person who was very old and very tired, who did not want to linger too long, would be allowed to sit outside the house in the morning sun and dream about the past and would not be made to run about and do things that nobody of that age would want to do. Why would people not do the same with cars?

“I think your car may be tired,” he said to Mr. Matabane. “Cars reach a point, Rra—”

He was not allowed to finish. “But it still goes, J.L.B.,” came the retort. “If a car goes, why get rid of it? This car has been going for a long time, right from the beginning. It was over in Swaziland, you know. Before it came to Botswana. It gave good service there to a man in Manzini. It was a well-known car there, I believe.”

And so there had been no alternative but to set out with Mr. Lefa Matabane for a test drive, which was inconclusive, because the evening traffic, with everybody wanting to get home, had prevented them from reaching the speed at which the groan would appear. The car had been left at the garage, with a promise that it would be looked at again the following day. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had been required to drive Mr. Lefa Matabane back home, and had been cajoled there to come inside and meet his brother-in-law, who was on a visit from Mahalapye, and who had gone on at some length about a car he had almost bought that had turned out to be stolen. It was a long story, and in spite of frequent glances at his watch, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had been unable to extricate himself for over half an hour.

Mma Ramotswe understood, of course. And it was not inconvenient for her, because there was rather more to do in the evenings now that there was a young child in the house. The helper, whose name was Pretty, had settled into the room in the back yard and had proved to be easy company and helpful in the kitchen. She was liked, too, by Puso and Motholeli, and they had all cooked their own dinner that evening, leaving Mma Ramotswe free to repair some of the clothing Daisy had brought with her.

By the time that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni returned, the children were already in bed. Pretty had settled Daisy, who was tired and dropped off to sleep almost immediately, before she herself had taken a plate of food back to her own room. She had been shy about eating in the kitchen—“It is your place, Mma”—but Mma Ramotswe hoped that this would pass. “If you are with us, Pretty, then this is your place too.” But Pretty had demurred—“You have a husband, Mma. You will want to be with your husband.”

“She’s very easy, that Pretty,” Mma Ramotswe said to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni as they sat down together on the verandah before dinner. This was their time together, and Mma Ramotswe had always cherished it—a time when the day’s events could be talked about and put in perspective. It was a time, too, for silences—not long ones, or heavy ones, but silences during which they could think about what had just been said, or sometimes about what might have been said, but, for some reason, had not been.

“Daisy,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. And then he sighed.

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“I’m not sure…”

Mma Ramotswe said nothing, and after a short silence, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni continued, “You see…”

“Yes, Rra?”

“It’s just that…”

And then silence, and he asked himself, How could I? How could I close my heart to that child? The answer was unspoken, but was as clear and unambiguous as if it had been announced at the top of his voice, or written in clouds across the sky: You cannot. You simply cannot, because life was full of tears and suffering, and if it was given to you to do something—anything, really—a big thing or a small thing, to make that suffering easier, then how could you refuse to do it? How could you dodge that moment? So he said, “I hope she is happy.”

Mma Ramotswe’s heart went out to him. This was the man she loved above all other men—apart from her father, of course, the late Obed Ramotswe. Not that there was any rivalry between them, nor conflict in their claims. Her father had never got to know Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, but she knew that he would have approved of him because they both stood for all that was best in Botswana. If only he could come back—even for the shortest time, even a day—so that she could show him the man she had married and tell him how good he had been to her. Perhaps he knew, of course; perhaps he could see what was happening from that other Botswana where the late people were—that place of light and happiness and unfailing, gentle rain.

Rain…There were people, she knew, who did not like rain, who called rain bad or a nuisance; people for whom rainy weather was a curse to be endured. It was hard to believe that anybody could think that way, but she had been led to believe that in those far-off places, this is how people thought.

“I have been thinking of rain,” she said now, because there was nothing more to be said about Daisy.

“Ah, rain,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Well, we need rain, Mma. We would be blessed if there were rain soon.” He shook his head. He had been out at the dam from which the town drew its water and had seen that it was reduced to a few disheartened puddles, and all about there was dry, caked mud, cracked by the sun.

“We are very fortunate that they decided to build that pipeline,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni continued.

“Even if it turned out to be a bit leaky.”

“Even so, Mma. It has saved us.”

It had, she thought. The pipeline that brought water down from the far north of the country had allowed so much of their precious water to leak out, but it had still saved them from disaster.

“But still we need rain,” she said. And then she changed the subject again and began to tell him about the day’s uncomfortable discovery.

“You remember Calviniah’s daughter, Rra? We talked about her.”

“The one who works in the diamond office? The one who is ignoring her mother?”

She nodded. “She is treating her very cruelly. But now I think I have found the reason.”

He looked interested. “It is unusual for a daughter to be like that. Sometimes a son won’t care about family, but daughters usually do. So what lies behind it, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe told him of their discoveries. He shook his head disapprovingly as she related her conversation with the neighbour, but when the second man was mentioned, his disapproval prompted him to groan. “That’s very shocking, Mma. Two boyfriends. I have never heard of such a thing. Never!”

Mma Ramotswe expressed her surprise. “But, Rra, that is what they call two-timing. It is very common—surely you have heard of it.”

“No, Mma, I have not come across it personally. I have heard of married men who have had a girlfriend—and I believe there is a lot of that going on—but this—”

Mma Ramotswe interrupted him. “Hold on, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said. “This is exactly the same thing.”

“No, it’s different, Mma. This is a woman with two boyfriends.”

Mma Ramotswe was patient. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was an old-fashioned man, and she should not be surprised if he were to express old-fashioned views, but she could not let such double standards go unrebuked—at least gently. Mma Ramotswe did not approve of the strident hectoring of others that some people now engaged in, but she did believe that you could tactfully let people know that the world had moved on.

“No, Rra,” she began. “We must expect the same standards from both men and women. Men cannot say there is one rule for them and another rule for women. We are all bound by the same rules these days.”

“But you do not expect a woman to have two boyfriends,” protested Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“Then you must not expect a man to have two girlfriends,” Mma Ramotswe countered. “We must treat men and women equally.”

“Are you saying there is no difference between men and women?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“I am not saying that, Rra.”

He was smiling. It was a serious discussion, but he was nonetheless amused by it. Women were always insisting that no distinction should be made, but who did they turn to if there was some hard piece of physical work to be done? To men, he told himself. And if there was noise outside at night that needed investigating, then who was sent out to look into it? Who had to take the risk of coming face-to-face with a leopard, or even a lion? Men. That is what he thought. Men were still expected to do things that women were reluctant to do.

“I know that women do not think very highly of men these days,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni continued. “I know that they think men are useless, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe denied this vigorously. “I do
not
think that,” she said. “I am not one of those women who run down men.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni knew that this was true. Mma Ramotswe liked men, and was kind to them, just as she was kind to everyone. But there were women, he was sure of it, who seemed to enjoy belittling men. And it seemed to him that these women were allowed to say disparaging things about men, whereas men were definitely not permitted to say such things about women. Only the other day a member of the legislative assembly—a man—had found himself in terrible trouble for having said a political rival—a junior government minister—should go back to cooking in her kitchen. He had been heavily criticised for this—and rightly so, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni—but there had been no criticism of a female politician who had recently expressed the view that girls were doing better at high school than boys because they were more intelligent. “Boys can be very stupid,” she had said. “They are good at making noise and disturbing the class—they are not so good at learning things and writing examinations.” That was a double standard, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and he was fed up with people saying unpleasant things about men and not being pulled up on it.

It was a complex issue—and a fraught one. But on one thing, at least, Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni agreed: they did not want the country torn apart by a war of accusation and counter-accusation between men and women—an argument that seemed to have made so many other countries unhappy with themselves. How can you have a peaceful country where one half of the population thinks that the other is wrong, or hostile, or determined to do them down? What better recipe for unhappiness was there than that?

They skirted round the question of double standards. “The important question,” Mma Ramotswe said, “is this: Is this the reason why Nametso is avoiding her mother?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not long in answering. “I think so,” he said. “If you do something that you know your mother will not like, what do you do? You keep her away from the thing that will disturb her. And you say to yourself: I am going to lead my life without her poking her nose into my affairs. That is what you do, Mma.”

“And that is what has happened here, Rra? Is that what you think?”

“It is exactly what has happened,” he said, adding, “I think.”