In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (19 page)

a concert here—a big event at the One Hundred Bar. But I need a bit of help with the cost of that, you know? Ten thousand pula. I’ll come and collect it in two or three days, from your place. That’ll give you time to get the money together. Understand?”

She remained quite immobile, and he moved away suddenly.

“Goodbye,” he said. “I’ll come for that loan. And if you don’t pay, then maybe I can tell somebody—maybe the police, I don’t know—that you’ve married a man before you got rid of the first husband. That’s a careless thing to do, Mma. Very careless!”

SHE WENT BACK into the office, where Mma Makutsi was sitting

at her desk, immersed in the task of addressing an envelope. The search for the delinquent Zambian financier had brought forth nothing so far. Most of the letters they had written had been ignored by their recipients, although one, which had been sent to a Zambian doctor who was thought to know just about everybody in the local Zambian community, had drawn a hostile reply. “You people are always saying that Zambians are dishonest and that if there is any money missing then you should look in Zambian pockets. This is defamation and we are fed up with such stereotypes.

Everybody knows that you should be looking in Nigerian pockets…”

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Mma Ramotswe made her way to her desk and sat down. She reached for a sheet of paper, folded it, and picked up her pen. Then she put down the pen and opened a drawer, not knowing

why she was doing this, but filled with dread and fear. The picking up of a pen, the opening of a drawer, the lifting of the telephone handset—all of these were actions that might be performed

in distress by one who did not know what to do, but who hoped that by such movements the fear might be defeated, which of course it never would.

Mma Makutsi watched, and knew that whoever it was who had arrived that morning had upset and frightened her employer.

“You saw that person?” she asked gently. “Was it somebody you knew?”

Mma Ramotswe looked up at her and Mma Makutsi saw the pain in her eyes.

“It was somebody I knew,” she said quietly. “It was somebody I knew very well.”

Mma Makutsi opened her mouth to ask a question, but stopped herself as Mma Ramotswe raised a hand.

“I do not want to talk about that, Mma,” she said. “Please do not ask me about this thing. Please do not ask.”

“I will not,” said Mma Makutsi. “I will not ask.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at her watch and muttered something

about being late for a meeting. Again Mma Makutsi was about to ask what meeting this was, as nothing had been said about a meeting, but then she thought better of it and simply watched as Mma Ramotswe gathered her things together and left the office. Mma Makutsi waited for a few minutes, until she heard the engine of the tiny white van start, and then she stood up and looked out of the window to see Mma Ramotswe drive out onto the Tlokweng Road and disappear in the direction of town.

Leaving the office, Mma Makutsi found Mr Polopetsi with the apprentice.

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“I need to ask you something, Rra,” she said. “That man who came to see Mma Ramotswe—who was he?”

Mr Polopetsi stood up and stretched. It was difficult working on cars in confined spaces, although he was beginning to get used to it. It amused him to think that throughout his education he had worked and worked to get himself a job which would involve no manual labour, and here he was enjoying the rediscovery of his hands. Of course they had said that this job was only temporary, but he had begun to settle in to being a mechanic and perhaps he would ask about becoming a real apprentice. And why not? Botswana needed mechanics—everyone knew that—and there was no reason why older people should be prevented from acquiring such skills.

Mr Polopetsi scratched his head. “I have not seen him before,” he said. “He was a Motswana, judging from the way he spoke. But there was something about him that seemed foreign. You know how it is when people are away for a long time. They carry themselves in a different way.”

“Johannesburg?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Mr Polopetsi nodded. It was sometimes difficult to put it into words, but there was an unmistakable air about people who came from Johannesburg or who had lived a long time there. There was a way of walking in Johannesburg, a way of holding oneself, that was different from the way in which people did these things in Botswana. Johannesburg was a city of swagger, and that was something which people in Botswana would never do. There were some people who swaggered these days, particularly those who had more money, but it was not really the Botswana way of doing things.

“And what do you think this man wanted from Mma Ramotswe?”

asked Mma Makutsi. “Did he bring her bad news, do you think? Did he tell her that somebody is late?”

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Mr Polopetsi shook his head. “I have very good hearing, Mma,” he said. “I can hear a car when it is far, far away. I can hear an animal

before you can see it in the bush. I am like one of those people out in the bush who can tell you everything just by listening to the wind. So I can tell you that he did not tell her that somebody is late.”

Mma Makutsi was surprised by this sudden disclosure on the part of Mr Polopetsi. He had seemed such a quiet and inoffensive man, and now he was admitting to the talents of a bush tracker. Such a person could be useful in a detective agency. You were not allowed to tape a person’s telephone line, but then there would be no need to do so if you had a Mr Polopetsi. You could just position

him on the other side of the street, with his ears pointed in the right direction, and he could report what was said behind closed doors. It would be one of those low technology solutions that people sometimes talked about.

“It must be useful to have hearing like that,” said Mma Makutsi. “We must talk about it more some day. But in the meantime,

you might wish to tell me what this man said to Mma Ramotswe.”

Mr Polopetsi looked Mma Makutsi straight in the eye. “I would not normally tell somebody about Mma Ramotswe’s business,”

he pronounced. “But this is different. I was going to tell you anyway—later on.”

“Well?” said Mma Makutsi.

Mr Polopetsi lowered his voice. The apprentice was standing beside the car on which they had been working and was looking at them intently.

“He asked her for money,” he whispered. “He asked her for ten thousand pula. Yes, ten thousand!”

“And?”

“And he said that if she didn’t pay, then he was going to go to the police and tell them that she is still married to him and that

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she should not have married Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.” He stopped, watching the effect of his words.

For a few moments Mma Makutsi did nothing. Then she reached forward and placed a finger across her lips.

“You must never mention this to anybody,” she said. “You must promise me that.”

He nodded gravely. “Of course I shall not.”

Mma Makutsi turned away and went back into her office, her heart cold within her. You are my mother and my sister, she thought. You gave me my job. You helped me. You held my hand and wept with me when my brother became late. You are the one who made me feel that it was possible for a person from Bobonong to do well and to hold her head up in anybody’s company. And now this man is threatening to bring shame upon you. I cannot allow that. I cannot.

She stopped. Mr Polopetsi had been watching her silently, but now he called out. “Mma! Do not worry. I will do something to stop that man. Mma Ramotswe is the woman who gave me a job. She is the one who knocked me down—but then she picked me up again. I will deal with that man.”

Mma Makutsi turned round and looked at Mr Polopetsi. It was kind of him to say that, and she was touched by his loyalty. But what could a man like that do? Not very much, she feared.

MMA RAMOTSWE AND MR J.L.B.

MATEKONI HAVE DINNER IN THEIR

HOUSE ON ZEBRA DRIVE

MR J.L.B. MATEKONI was late coming home for dinner that evening. Normally he came back to the house at about six o’clock, which was almost an hour later than Mma Ramotswe. She would leave the office at five, or thereabouts, although she sometimes came back even earlier. If there was nothing particular

happening at the agency, she would look at Mma Makutsi and ask her if there was any reason why they should stay in the office. Sometimes she did not even have to say anything, but would give a look that said, “I’ve had enough; it’s a hot afternoon and it would be so much better being at home.” And Mma Makutsi would return the look with a look of her own which said, “You’re right, as usual, Mma Ramotswe.” And with that unspoken exchange, Mma Ramotswe would pick up her bag and close the window that looked out to the side of the garage. Then she would give Mma Makutsi a ride into town, or back to her house in Extension Two, before she went home to Zebra Drive.

One advantage of getting home early was that she would be there for the children when they returned from school. Motholeli always came back a little later than Puso, as her wheelchair had to be pushed all the way from the school. The girls in her class

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had arranged a rota for this, and took it in turns, week and week about, to wheel their classmate home. The boys had been involved in this too, and had vied with one another for the privilege, but they had, on the whole, been found to be unsatisfactory. Several of the boys—indeed most of them—had been unable to resist the temptation of pushing the wheelchair too fast and there had been an unfortunate incident when one of them had lost control of the chair and Motholeli had careered into a ditch and tumbled out. She had been unharmed by this fall, but the boy had run away in fright and a passerby, a cook at one of the large houses on Nyerere Drive, had come to her rescue and had helped her back into the chair and pushed her back, at reasonable speed, to the house.

“That boy is very stupid,” said the cook.

“He is usually a nice boy,” Motholeli replied. “He became frightened. Maybe he thought that he had killed me or something.”

“He should not have run away,” said the cook. “That is what they call a hit and run. It is very bad.”

Puso was too young to be involved in getting his sister home. He could manage the wheelchair, but he had a tendency to be unreliable. He could not be counted upon to come to Motholeli’s classroom at the right time, and it was also quite possible that he would lose interest halfway through and run after a lizard or something else that attracted his attention. He was a dreamy boy, moody even, and it was sometimes rather difficult to make out what he was thinking about.

“He thinks differently,” observed Mma Ramotswe, not saying,

out of delicacy, that the obvious reason for this—in her mind, and in the mind of most, no doubt—was that Puso had in his veins a fair measure of bushman blood. People were funny about that. Some were unkind to such people, but in Mma Ramotswe’s opinion there was no need for this. There should be room in our

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hearts for all the people of this country, she said, and those people are our brothers and sisters too. This is their place as much as it is ours. That seemed clear to her, and she had no time for those who had raised an eyebrow when she and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had taken on these children from the orphan farm. There were some households where this would not have happened,

on the grounds that they were not of pure Tswana blood, but not that house on Zebra Drive.

Yet Mma Ramotswe had to admit that there were aspects about Puso’s behaviour that people could well point to and say, “Well, there you are! That is because he is thinking of the Kalahari

all the time and wants to be out in the bush. It is just the way his heart works.” Well, thought Mma Ramotswe, that might be so; perhaps there stirred within this strange little boy some ancient yearnings which came to him from his people. But even if this were so, then what difference did it make? The important thing was that he should be happy, and in his way he was. He would never be a mechanic, he would never take over the business

from Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, but then did that matter all that much? His sister, to the surprise of all, had shown great interest in machinery and had declared her intention of training as a mechanic. So that left it open for him to pursue some quite different

career, even if it was difficult to think at the moment what such a career might be. He liked to chase lizards and to sit under trees and look up at the birds. He also liked to make small piles of rocks—they were all over the yard—on which Mma Ramotswe’s maid, Rose, sometimes stubbed her toes when she went to hang out the washing. What might such a boy expect to do when he grew up? What clues did such pursuits give to the turn his life would take?

“There are jobs with the game department,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had pointed out. “They need people who can track animals.

Maybe he will be happy out there in the bush, tracking

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giraffe or whatever it is they do. For some people that is the best job there is.”

On that evening, after the awful encounter with Note Mokoti, the children had noticed that there was something wrong with Mma Ramotswe. Puso had asked a question to which she had begun to respond before she had trailed off into silence, as if her thoughts had drifted off elsewhere. He had repeated his question, but this time she had said nothing, and he had gone off in puzzlement. Motholeli, finding her standing in the kitchen staring blankly out of the window, had offered to help her with the preparation of the evening meal, and had received a similar, rather distracted response. She had waited for Mma Ramotswe to say something else, and when nothing further came she had asked her whether there was anything wrong.

“I am thinking of something,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I’m sorry if I am not listening to you. I am thinking of something that happened today.”

“Was it a bad thing?” asked Motholeli.

“It was,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But I cannot talk about it now. I’m sorry. I am feeling sad and I do not want to talk.”

The children had left her to herself. Adults were sometimes strange in their behaviour—all children knew that—and the best thing to do in such circumstances was to leave the adult alone. Matters preyed on their mind, matters to which children could never be party; a tactful child understood that very well.