The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (13 page)

Charlie had come into her thoughts that morning as she walked about her garden. She wondered whether he would be at work that day. He had absented himself from the garage before on more than one occasion, but returned a day or two later, full of excuses, usually relating to family funerals or sick aunts or matters of that sort.

“Just how many grandfathers do you have, Charlie?” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had asked once. “If I remember correctly—and you must tell me if I am wrong—you went to the funeral of your grandfather ten months ago, and then again three months back. And now he has died again. This is very sad that he should be dying so much.”

Mma Makutsi, who had overheard this reproach, joined in gleefully. “That is very unfortunate, Charlie,” she said. “Most of us have to die only once. Once. You are making your poor grandfather die over and over. That is not very kind, Charlie.”

On those occasions he had come back, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who was not only a fine mechanic but a good and generous employer too, had done nothing more than dock a small amount from the young man’s pay—not even the proper amount that should have been forfeited, as Mma Makutsi had pointed out.

“Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, you are too kind to that young man,” she said. “He has to learn that no work means no pay. That is lesson number one, as they taught us at the Botswana Secretarial College.
Stay away, no pay; full day, can play.
That is what we were taught.”

But Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had just smiled. “When men are young, like Charlie, the brain is not quite right. It is like an engine
that goes smoothly most of the time, but then backfires. That is what is happening. And it doesn’t help to lose patience, you know.”

Mma Ramotswe thought that Charlie’s latest disappearance might be more serious. Although they had talked about the need for him to assume his responsibilities for his twins, she had her doubts as to the likelihood of this. It might have been unwise to put too much pressure on him, as he might just decide—as he probably already had done—simply to move away. There were jobs elsewhere to be had by young men with some mechanical skills, even if they were not fully qualified mechanics. Somebody had recently approached Fanwell with the offer of a well-paid post at a safari camp in the north, and had the young man not been reluctant to leave his family, he might well have seized the opportunity. If Fanwell, who was much quieter and less assertive than Charlie, could attract such offers, then Charlie could certainly do the same. The Okavango Delta, remote as it was, would be a good place for a young man seeking to avoid the demands of a girlfriend with twins.

She had finished her tea and walked back to the house. It was now that the day’s work began: the rousing of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who was quite capable of sleeping through his alarm clock; the waking up of the children and helping Motholeli to dress and get into her wheelchair; the preparation of breakfast—these were just the first of the many tasks that the day entailed. And then, of course, there was the office, and the …

… and the first cup of office tea, which she had almost finished by the time Mma Makutsi came in, put her bag down beside her desk, and started the day with a wail. “Oh, Mma Ramotswe, I am very, very upset. This is terrible. Oh, I do not know what to do—I do not.”

Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet, crossed the room and put an arm round her assistant’s shoulder. “Oh, Mma, what has happened?”

Mma Makutsi, feeling that perhaps she was being a trifle overdramatic, tried to smile. “I’m sorry, Mma, I didn’t mean to make you think the world is coming to an end. No, it is not that bad.” She paused as Mma Ramotswe, looking relieved, returned to her desk. “But it is still bad. Very bad.”

Mma Ramotswe did not have to prompt her assistant any further.

“I bought those shoes,” Mma Makutsi began. “They were not quite the shoes that you saw, but they were like them. They were very beautiful, with white flowers on the front, made of leather, of course.”

“Very suitable,” muttered Mma Ramotswe.

“I have never seen such pretty shoes before,” continued Mma Makutsi. “And they were comfortable too. They were very comfortable.”

Mma Ramotswe noticed the ominous use of the past tense. The shoes had been stolen, perhaps, or left behind in a minibus. Anything left behind in a minibus would never be seen again, as Mma Potokwane had once discovered. She had taken a minibus back to Tlokweng one day after shopping in town for a new dress. The parcel containing the dress had been left under a back seat; a few days later she had seen her new dress being worn by a woman standing by the side of the road. She had tackled her about it, of course, but the woman had claimed to have been given the dress by a friend, and would certainly not be handing it over. And if Mma Potokwane wished to take the matter any further, she was perfectly welcome to raise the matter with the woman’s brother, who was a policeman and did not take kindly to false accusations of crime being levelled against perfectly innocent persons …

Mma Makutsi sniffed. “I wore them out of the shop and I saw … well, I saw something and ran after it. And then I tripped
and I broke both heels and a strap.” She paused to sniff again. “And then I went home and Phuti came for dinner and I did not tell him what happened because I was so ashamed. And now I’m ashamed for not telling him. I am filled with shame, Mma Ramotswe—filled with shame.”

Mma Ramotswe waited to see if Mma Makutsi had finished. She understood why anybody should feel upset about such a thing—particularly if shoes meant as much to you as they did to Mma Makutsi—but she had heard of considerably worse disasters than this. She knew, however, that it never helped to tell another that their troubles were eclipsed by the troubles of others, tempting though that might be. If you have a sore tooth, it does not help to be told that there are people with far more severe toothaches. Yet one thing in this story intrigued her: What had Mma Makutsi seen that made her want to run after it? People spoke of chasing a bargain: Had she seen something on sale in one of the shops? For a moment, she allowed an irreverent image to form in her mind of Mma Makutsi, her large glasses catching the sun, running towards a stall with a sign on it reading
BIG SALE—HURRY! HURRY!

She banished the picture from her thoughts. “Tell me, Mma, what did you see that made you want to run?”

Mma Makutsi hesitated. “I will tell you in a moment, Mma. First, look at my poor shoes.”

She extracted the damaged shoes from her bag to show Mma Ramotswe.

“See? See how beautiful they were, and now … Now, they are just rubbish.”

Mma Ramotswe rose from her desk to examine the shoes. “This is very sad, Mma, but don’t you think they could be fixed? These heels, they could be glued together, and this strap could be stitched. It should not be hard to stitch something like that.”

She handed the shoes back to Mma Makutsi. “But what did you see, Mma? What made you run?”

Mma Makutsi replaced the shoes in her bag. “I think I saw a ghost,” she said quietly.

There was silence. Then Mma Ramotswe spoke. “In broad daylight?”

Mma Makutsi examined her fingernails. “If ghosts exist, Mma—and I am not prepared to exclude that possibility—then why should they just appear at night? Where do they go during the day, might one ask?”

“I don’t know,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It would be interesting to find out.”

Mma Makutsi agreed that it would. “In this case,” she went on, “the ghost that I think I saw was the ghost that maybe you yourself saw only a few days ago—the ghost of your late van.”

Mma Ramotswe gasped. “My van?”

“Yes, Mma. It was in the parking lot near the shops, on the Tlokweng Road side. I saw it reversing out of a parking place and I tried to stop it. But the driver did not hear me, and he just drove off.”

Mma Ramotswe reflected on this. So the van really was running once more, in spite of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s conviction that it would not. And the driver was a man—that was an additional piece of information; as was the fact that he shopped at the Riverwalk shops—another piece of potentially useful knowledge. “I do not think it is a ghost,” she said. “It is my van. I had heard that it had been bought by a young man up north somewhere, near the Tuli Block. I thought it had been bought for parts, but he must have changed his mind.” She paused; perhaps something about the van had stayed his hand and he had been unable to end its life. “Yes,” she continued. “That’s what must have happened.”

Mma Makutsi nodded. This seemed quite reasonable to her. “Well, you must be happy that it is back on the road, Mma.”

Yes, thought Mma Ramotswe, I am. But in a curious way, if the knowledge that the tiny white van had been restored was reassuring, it was also saddening. Some other person—somebody who did not necessarily appreciate the white van—would be driving it while she, who loved it, was driving a new blue van of very little character. If only they were able to change places … She stopped herself. The thought had occurred to her on a whim, but now that she thought of it more seriously it seemed so obvious. The person who currently owned the white van would probably very much like to have a newer van. If she were to approach him and offer to exchange vans, he would no doubt leap at the chance.

The idea was a delicious one, and it brought a broad smile to her face.

“So you’re happy, Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Makutsi. “You are smiling. That is very good.”

Mma Ramotswe brought herself back to reality. It would be ridiculous to exchange a new van for an old one—far better to buy the tiny white van back. She now became aware that Mma Makutsi was speaking to her …

“I was thinking of something,” she said quickly. “But we should really get back to work, Mma Makutsi, or we would spend our whole day talking and thinking about this and that.”

“Yes, you’re quite right,” agreed Mma Makutsi. She knew, though, that talking and thinking about this and that was exactly what both she and Mma Ramotswe would love to do, but could not, as that brought in a great deal of happiness but no money, and a lack of money had a tendency to diminish happiness in the long run. It need not, of course, and she remembered that she had been happy enough when money had been tight. Now things were different, but she realised that she
would have to remind herself of how life had been before. Those who had enough money, she thought, often forgot those who had none. Mma Ramotswe had once told her that, and she had remembered it. “Never forget, Mma,” she had said, “that there are people who will be looking at you and wishing to be in your shoes. Because they have no shoes, you see.” It was a puzzling comment, and a rather odd one, but now that she called it back to mind she found that she knew exactly what Mma Ramotswe had meant.

BY THE TIME
of the mid-morning tea-break, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi had more or less completed the task of sending out the month’s-end invoices. This was a pleasant task—the direct opposite of the business of paying bills, and now that the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was reasonably well established, the invoices always added up to more than the bills to be paid. It had not always been so, especially in the early days of the agency, when there had been the merest trickle of clients and an even smaller number of invoices, given Mma Ramotswe’s habit of taking on meritorious cases for no fee. She still did that, but there were plenty of cases that paid well enough to give them both a modest but adequate living.

“That’s that then,” said Mma Makutsi, as she stuck the last stamp on the final invoice. “Two thousand pula for knowing that your wife is a bad woman. I feel sorry for that man, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe glanced at the envelope. The Ditabonwe case. “Yes, that poor man does not deserve it. He should not have married that woman.”

“Three boyfriends,” said Mma Makutsi disapprovingly. “And all the time she was living in that expensive house and eating her husband’s food.”

“And where will the boyfriends be when they discover that she
no longer has any money and has been thrown out of the house? Will they be at her side, Mma Makutsi?”

“They will not,” said her assistant.

They were silent for a moment, both contemplating the foolishness of others—their bread and butter. Then Mma Ramotswe made a gesture of resignation. “People do not learn, Mma,” she said. “But I suppose we must carry on hoping that they will. You never know.” She paused, looking at the kettle. “And now, I think, it’s time for tea. Would you mind switching on the kettle, Mma Makutsi?”

The tea was infusing in the pot when Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni came in, closely followed by Fanwell. Mma Makutsi, who was lining up the mugs on the filing cabinet, turned and looked the two men up and down. “No Charlie,” she said.

At the mention of his fellow apprentice, Fanwell looked down at the floor.

“No,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “There is no Charlie, is there, Fanwell?”

Fanwell muttered something that none of them could make out.

“Well, Fanwell?” Mma Makutsi pressed. “I did not quite hear what you said. No Charlie, is there?”

“He is not here,” said Fanwell. “I am here, but he is not. I am not his boss. I cannot answer for him.”

Mma Makutsi glanced at Mma Ramotswe before turning again to the young man. “You know where he is, though, don’t you?”

“I do not,” muttered Fanwell.

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “I think you do, Fanwell.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, pouring tea into his mug, made a gentle intervention. “I don’t think we can expect Fanwell to know Charlie’s whereabouts,” he said. “You would tell us if you knew, wouldn’t you, Fanwell?”

Fanwell thought for a moment. “He asked me not to tell you,” he said.

“Ha!” exclaimed Mma Makutsi. “So he told you. You see? I was right. You cannot lie to me, Fanwell. You can’t fool a detective.”

Fanwell looked to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni for help. Mma Ramotswe noticed this, and came to his rescue. “You mustn’t worry, Fanwell,” she said quietly. “Mma Makutsi is trying to be helpful, you see. We don’t want to punish Charlie—we just want to make sure that he’s all right.”

“And make sure that he faces up to his responsibilities,” interjected Mma Makutsi.