In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (20 page)

But when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni came home that evening and he too seemed to be preoccupied and distant, they knew that something was very wrong.

“There is something bad happening at the garage,” whispered Motholeli to her brother. “They are very unhappy.”

He had looked at her anxiously. “Will we have to go back to the orphan farm?” he asked.

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“I hope not,” she said. “I am happy living here in Zebra Drive. Perhaps they will get over it.”

She tried to sound confident, but it was difficult, and her spirits sank even further when they sat down at the table for supper

and Mma Ramotswe forgot even to say grace and remained silent for almost the whole meal. Afterwards, wheeling herself into her brother’s room, where she found him lying disconsolately on his bed, she told him that whatever happened, he was not to worry about being by himself.

“Even if we go back to Mma Potokwane,” she said, “she will make sure that we are kept together. She has always done that.”

Puso stared at her miserably. “I do not want to leave. I am very happy here in this house. This is the best food I have ever eaten in my life.”

“And they are the best people we have ever met,” she said. “There is nobody in Botswana, nobody, as good and kind as Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Nobody.”

The little boy nodded vigorously. “I know that,” he said. “Will they come and see us at the orphan farm?”

“Of course they will come—if we have to go back,” she reassured

him. But her reassurance could not prevent the tears that he now began to shed, tears for everything that had happened to him, for the loss of the mother whom he could not remember, for the thought that in this large and frightening world there was nobody, other than his sister, to whom he could turn, who might not be taken away from him.

AFTER THE CHILDREN had gone off to their rooms for the night, Mma Ramotswe made herself a cup of bush tea and walked out onto the verandah. She had thought that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was in the living room, as she had heard the radio on in there and had

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assumed that he was sitting in his favourite chair brooding over whatever mechanical problem it was that had made him so quiet that night. She imagined that it was a mechanical problem, because that was all that seemed to upset Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; and such problems inevitably solved themselves.

“You are very quiet tonight,” she observed.

He looked up at her. “And so are you,” he replied.

“Yes,” she said. “We are both quiet.”

She sat down beside him, balancing her tea cup on her knee. As she did so, she glanced at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; the thought had occurred to her that he might be feeling depressed—and that was an alarming prospect—but she quickly discounted this. He had behaved very differently when he had been depressed, acting in a listless, vague way. Now, by contrast, he was very obviously thinking of one particular thing.

She looked out into the garden, and the night. It was warm and the moon was almost full, throwing shadows of the acacia, of the mopipi tree, of shrubs that had no name. Mma Ramotswe liked to walk in her garden in the evening, taking care to move slowly and with firm tread; those who crept about at night risked stepping on a snake if they were not careful, as snakes move out of our way only if they feel vibrations in the ground. A light person—a person of non-traditional build, for example—was at far greater risk of being bitten by a snake for that very reason. That was another argument, of course, for maintaining traditional build—consideration for snakes, and safety too.

Mma Ramotswe was well aware of the difficulties now faced by traditionally built people, particularly by traditionally built ladies. There was a time in Botswana when nobody paid much attention to thin people—indeed thin people might sometimes simply not be seen at all, as they could so easily be looked past. If a thin person stood against a background of acacia trees and

IN THE COMPANY OF CHEERFUL LADIES 163

grass, then might he not either merge into the background or be thought to be a stick or even a shadow? This was never a danger with a traditionally built person; such a person would stand in the landscape with the same prominence and authority as a baobab

tree.

There was no doubt in Mma Ramotswe’s mind that Botswana had to get back to the values which had always sustained the country and which had made it by far the best country in Africa. There were many of these values, including respect for age—for the grandmothers who knew so much and had seen so much hardship—and respect for those who were traditionally built. It was all very well being a modern society, but the advent of prosperity

and the growth of the towns was a poisoned cup from which one should drink with the greatest caution. One might have all the things which the modern world offered, but what was the use of these if they destroyed all that which gave you strength and courage and pride in yourself and your country? Mma Ramotswe

was horrified when she read of people being described in the newspapers as consumers. That was a horrible, horrible word, which sounded rather too like cucumber, a vegetable for which she had little time. People were not just greedy consumers, grabbing

everything that came their way, nor were they cucumbers for that matter; they were Batswana, they were people!

But it was not on these matters, grave as they were, that Mma Ramotswe’s mind was dwelling; she was thinking, rather, of the meeting with Note and of the threat he had made. He had said that he would come for the money in a few days, and it was the prospect of this visit, rather than the paying over of the money itself, which was unsettling her. She could afford the money—just—but she was dreading the idea that Note would come to the house. It seemed to her that this would be a form of defiling; the house on Zebra Drive was a place of sun and of hap1

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piness, and she did not want it to be associated in any way with him. In fact, she had already made her decision, and was now mulling over how to put it into operation. She had written a cheque that afternoon and would take it to him, and the sooner that she did that the better.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took a sip of his tea. “You are very worried

about something,” he said quietly. “Do you want to tell me what it is?”

Mma Ramotswe did not reply. How could she tell him about what Note had said? How could she tell him that they were not married; that the ceremony which the Reverend Trevor Mwamba had conducted was legally meaningless, and that, moreover, it involved the commission of a criminal offence on her part? If there were words for all this, then they were words which she could not bring herself to utter.

The silence that hung so heavy between them was broken by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “That man came to see you, didn’t he?” he said.

Mma Ramotswe gripped her tea cup. Mma Makutsi must have told him, or perhaps it was Mr Polopetsi. This should not surprise her: there were few secrets in a business that small.

“He did,” she said, sighing. “He came and asked me for some money. I am going to give it to him—just to get him to go away.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “It is often like that with such people,” he said. “They come back. But you have to be careful. If you give them money, then they might just ask for more and more.”

Mma Ramotswe knew that what he said was true. She would tell Note that there would be no more money, and next time, if he came to see her again, she would refuse him. Or would she? What if he were to threaten her again with the police? Surely she would do anything rather than face the shame which that would involve?

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“I will give him this money and tell him not to come back,” she said. “I do not want to see him again.”

“All right,” he said. “But you must be careful.”

She looked at him. They had not spoken at any length, and she had kept the real truth from him, but even so she felt better after this brief airing of her worry. Now she could ask about him.

“What about you?” she said.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni groaned. “Oh dear,” he said. “I am in a bad mess. I have discovered something about my house.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. She knew that tenants were always a risk. They treated furniture with disrespect; they burned holes in the floor and on the edge of tables with their cigarettes. She had even heard of a farmhouse not far from town which had been rented by python smugglers. Some of the pythons had escaped and taken up residence in the roof even after the tenants had been evicted. One of these had almost succeeded in taking the owners’ baby when they returned. The father had gone into the bedroom and had found the python lying on the baby, its jaws opened wide around its feet. He had saved the child, but both of them had been badly bitten by the python’s needle-like teeth.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was unlikely to have pythons in his house, of course, but it was obviously something troublesome, nonetheless. She looked at him expectantly.

“It’s being used as a shebeen,” he blurted out. “I did not know this. I would not have allowed it to be a shebeen. But that is what it is.”

Mma Ramotswe let out a hoot of laughter. “Your house? A shebeen?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at her slightly reproachfully. “I do not think it is funny,” he said.

She corrected herself quickly. “Of course not.” Her tone became concerned. “You are going to have to do something about

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that.” She paused. Poor Mr J.L.B. Matekoni: he was far too gentle

and kind. He would never be able to take on a shebeen queen. She herself would have to sort this out; shebeen queens held no dread for her.

“Would you like me to sort all that out?” she asked. “I can get rid of those people. It’s the sort of thing that a detective agency can do quite easily.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s gratitude was palpable. “You are very kind,” he said. “It is really my problem, but I am not very good at these things. I am happy sorting out cars, but people …”

“You are a great mechanic,” said Mma Ramotswe, reaching across to pat him on the forearm. “That is enough for one person.”

“And you are a very great detective,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. This was true, of course, and he meant every word of the compliment,

but it was also inadequate. He knew that not only was Mma Ramotswe a great detective, but she was also a great cook, and a great wife, and a great foster-mother for the children. There was nothing that Mma Ramotswe could not do—in his view, at least. She could run Botswana if only they would give her the chance.

Mma Ramotswe drained the last of the tea from her cup and rose to her feet. She looked at her watch. It was only eight o’clock. She would go and seek out Note, hand him the cheque, and have put the whole matter to rest before she turned in that night. Her conversation with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had filled her with a new resolve. There was no point in waiting. She had a pretty fair idea where Note would be staying—his people lived in a small village about ten miles to the south. It would only take her half an hour at the most to get out there, to pay him off, and to put him out of her life again. Then she could return to Zebra Drive and go to sleep without any dread. He would not be coming there.

MMA RAMOTSWE did not like driving at night. She was not a timid driver, but she knew that there was one danger on the roads at night against which no amount of care could protect one—wandering cattle. Cattle liked to stand on the roadside at night and would suddenly step out into the paths of oncoming cars, almost as if they were curious to find out what lay behind the headlights. Perhaps they thought that the headlights were torches, held by their owners, and came out to see if they brought food; perhaps they were looking for warmth and thought the lights were the sun. Perhaps they thought nothing in particular, which was always possible with cattle, and with some people too, for that matter.

Mma Ramotswe’s friend Barbara Mooketsi was just one of the many people Mma Ramotswe knew who had collided with a cow at night. She had been driving down from Francistown late one evening and had hit a cow north of Mahalapye. The unfortunate

animal, which was black, and therefore almost completely

invisible at night, had been scooped up by the collision and had entered the car through the windscreen. One of its horns had scraped Mma Mooketsi’s shoulder and would have killed her had

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she been sitting in a slightly different position. Mma Ramotswe had visited her in her hospital bed and had seen the myriad of cuts on her face and arms from the shattered glass. This was the danger of driving at night, and it had been enough to put her off. Of course, in the town it was different. There were no cattle wandering

about, although sometimes they drifted into the outlying parts of Gaborone and caused accidents there.

Now, leaving the edge of the town and peering into the darkness

ahead of her, she searched the road for obstacles. It was not much of a road—a track ploughed out of the red earth and eroded into tiny canyons by the rains. Note’s people lived in the village at the end of this track, along with some twenty other families.

It was the sort of place that was halfway between town and country. The young people here would work in Gaborone and walk out along this track to the main road each morning to catch a minibus into town. Others would live in town and come out for weekends, when they would slip back into the role of village people, looking after cattle and ploughing a few meagre fields.

Mma Ramotswe hoped that she would remember the house where Note’s people lived. It was late now for village people, and there was a chance that there would be no light on in the house and she would have to turn round and go back home. It was also possible that Note would not be there—that he would be staying somewhere in the town. As she thought of these possibilities it occurred to her that the whole idea of coming out here was ridiculous. Here she was coming in search of a man who had ruined years of her life, planning to give him hard-earned money so that he could pursue some absurd plan, and all of this being done out of fear. She was a strong woman, a resourceful woman who had built up a business from scratch, and who had shown on numerous occasions in her professional life that she was prepared