In the Company of Cheerful Ladies tn1lda-6

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “That’s a very good idea,” said Mma Makutsi. “I do not mind being back on duty.”

  The opulent silver car set off towards town, and as it did so the tiny white van swung out from the side of the garage and set off behind the other car, but at a respectable distance. For a powerful car, the Mercedes-Benz was being driven slowly; most Mercedes-Benz drivers, Mma Ramotswe had observed, seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere, but this one, this woman of whom they had had only the briefest glimpse, seemed to be content to amble along.

  “She’s in no hurry,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They must be talking.”

  “I can just imagine it,” said Mma Makutsi grimly. “He’ll be telling her some tale about us, Mma. She’ll be laughing and urging him on.”

  When they reached the old Game Stores, the silver car suddenly turned into the Village and made its way down Odi Drive. The tiny white van, holding back in case the apprentice should turn and see them, proceeded at a safe distance, following the quarry past the school and the new flats until they reached the University gate. Now came a surprise: instead of turning left, which would have led them into town, the silver car went to the right, towards the prison and the old Gaborone Club.

  “This is very odd,” said Mma Makutsi. “I would have thought that they would be going somewhere like the Sun Hotel. What is there for them along here?”

  “Maybe she lives along this way,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But we shall see soon enough.”

  Mma Ramotswe turned to Mma Makutsi and smiled conspiratorially. The two women were enjoying themselves. There was no real reason for them to follow the apprentice and this woman. Indeed, had they stopped to consider what they were doing, they would have had to admit that it was surely no more than idle curiosity—nosiness, indeed, that motivated them. And it was interesting, in a gossipy sort of way. If Charlie was seeing an older woman, then it would be fascinating to see what sort of woman she would be. Not that there was much doubt about that, thought Mma Ramotswe.

  “What would Mr J.L.B. Matekoni think of us?” ventured Mma Makutsi, giggling. “Would he approve?”

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “He would say that we were two nosy women,” she said. “And I think he would be more interested in the Mercedes-Benz than the people in it. That is what mechanics are like. They think …”

  She did not complete her sentence. The silver car was now near the old Botswana Defence Force Club and was slowing down. Then an indicator light started to flash and the car turned into a driveway—into the driveway of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s house.

  When she saw the car turn, Mma Ramotswe swerved the tiny white van so violently that Mma Makutsi shouted out in alarm. A cyclist, who had been coming in the opposite direction, swerved too, wobbling off the road to avoid the van. Mma Ramotswe drew to a halt and climbed out.

  “Rra, oh Rra,” she shouted, as she ran towards the fallen man. “I’m so sorry, Rra.”

  The man picked himself up off the ground and then dusted his trousers. He used careful, deliberate gestures, as might be used by one who is dressed in expensive clothes; but his were worn, and crumpled. Then he looked up, and Mma Ramotswe saw that there were tears in his eyes.

  “Oh, Rra,” she said. “I’ve hurt you. I’m so sorry. I will take you straight to a doctor.”

  The man shook his head, and then wiped at his eyes with the back of a hand.

  “I am not hurt,” he said. “I am shaken, but I am not hurt.”

  “I was looking at something else,” said Mma Ramotswe, reaching out to take the man’s hand. “It was very silly of me. I took my eyes off the road, and then suddenly I saw you.”

  The man said nothing. Turning to his bicycle, he picked it up. The front wheel, which must have been caught in a rut in the ground, was now slightly twisted, and the handlebars were at a strange angle. He looked mutely at the bicycle, before trying, unsuccessfully, to straighten the handlebars.

  Mma Ramotswe turned and beckoned to Mma Makutsi to come out of the van. She had been holding back, out of a mixture of tact and embarrassment, but now she appeared and made a sympathetic remark to the man.

  “I will take you to where you are going,” said Mma Ramo-tswe. “We can put the bike in the back of the van and then I shall take that to your place, wherever that is.”

  The man pointed back towards Tlokweng. “I live over that way,” he said. “I would prefer to go home now. I do not want to go to the other place.”

  They lifted up the bicycle together and placed it in the back of the van. Then Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi got into the tiny white van on one side and the man on the other. With the three of them in the cab, there was barely enough room for Mma Ramotswe to change gear, and each time she did it she dug Mma Makutsi in the ribs.

  “This is not a big van,” Mma Ramotswe said brightly to their passenger. “But it always goes. So it will get us to Tlokweng very easily.”

  She looked sideways at the man. He looked as if he was in his late forties. He had a good face, she thought; an intelligent face, the face of a teacher, perhaps, or of a senior clerk. And he spoke well too, enunciating each word clearly, as if he meant it. So many people spoke carelessly these days, she thought, running their words together so that it was sometimes quite difficult to make out what they were saying. And as for people on the radio, these so-called disc jockeys, they spoke as if they had hiccups. Presumably they thought that it was fashionable to talk like this; that it made them more alluring, which it probably did if one was star-struck, and with nothing much in one’s head, but which only sounded ridiculous to her.

  “I will have your bicycle fixed for you,” she said to the man. “It will be made as good as new. I promise you that.”

  The man nodded. “I cannot pay myself,” he said. “I have not got the money for that.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. She had thought as much. In spite of all the progress which Botswana had made, and in spite of the prosperity which the diamonds had brought to the country, there were still many, many poor people. They should not be forgotten. But why was this man, who seemed to be educated, not in a job? She knew that there were many people who could not find a job, but usually these were people who had no skills. This man did not seem to be like that.

  It was Mma Makutsi who asked the question for her. She had been thinking the same thing as Mma Ramotswe. She had noticed the disparity between the signs of poverty—something that Mma Makutsi knew all about—and the educated voice. She had seen, too, that the man’s hands were what she would describe as well-kept. These were not the hands of a manual labourer, nor those of a man who tended the land. She noticed such hands at her part-time typing classes at the Kalahari Typing School for Men. Many of her pupils there, who worked in offices, had hands like this man’s.

  “Do you work in an office, Rra?” she asked. “And may I ask you: What is your name?”

  The man glanced at her, and then turned away.

  “My name is Polopetsi,” he said. “And no, I have no work. I am looking for work, but there is no place that will take me.”

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. “It is hard now,” she said. “That must be very bad for you.” She paused. “What did you do before?”

  Mr Polopetsi did not answer directly, and the question seemed to hang in the air for a while. Then he spoke.

  “I was in prison for two years. I have been out for six months.”

  The tiny white van swerved slightly, almost imperceptibly. “And nobody will give you a job?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “They will not,” he answered.

  “And you always tell them that you have been in prison?” interjected Mma Makutsi.

  “I do,” said Mr Polopetsi. “I am an honest man. I cannot lie to them when they say what have you been doing this last year. I cannot tell them that I was in Johannesburg or something like that. I cannot tell them that I have been working.”

  “So, you are an honest man,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But why were you in prison? Are there honest men in prison?” She as
ked the question before she thought about it and she immediately realised that it sounded very rude; as if she were questioning the man’s story.

  He did not seem to take objection. “I was not sent to prison for dishonesty,” he said. “But there are honest men in prison, by the way. There are some very dishonest men there, and some very bad men. But there are also men who are there because of other things that they did.”

  They waited for him to continue, but he did not.

  “So,” said Mma Ramotswe. “What did you do, Rra? Why did they send you to prison?”

  Mr Polopetsi looked at his hands. “I was sent to prison because of an accident.”

  Mma Makutsi turned to look at him. “An accident? They sent you instead of somebody else?”

  “No,” said the man. “I was sent to prison because there was an accident while I was in charge of something. It was my fault, and a person was killed. It was an accident, but they said that it would not have happened had I been more careful.”

  They were nearing Tlokweng now, and Mma Ramotswe had to ask for directions to the man’s house. He pointed to a dusty side-road, not much more than a bumpy track, and she drove the tiny white van down that, trying to avoid the larger holes in the ground. If there was a grader in Tlokweng, then it must rarely have bothered to come this way.

  “Our road is not very good,” said Mr Polopetsi. “When it rains all these holes fill up with water and you can go fishing if you like.”

  Mma Makutsi laughed. “I have lived along a road like this in the past,” she said. “I know what it is like.”

  “Yes,” said Mr Polopetsi. “It is not easy.” He stopped, and pointed at a house a short way down the road. “That is my place.”

  It was a simple, two-room house, and Mma Ramotswe could see that it was in need of painting; the lower part of the outside walls was specked with dried red mud, which had been splashed up at the last rains. The yard, which was small, was well-swept, which suggested that there was a conscientious woman in charge of it, and there was a small chicken coop to one side, again well-kept.

  “This is a very tidy place,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is good to see a place that is well-kept, as this one is.”

  “It is my wife,” said Mr Polopetsi. “She is the one who keeps this place so clean.”

  “You must be proud of her, Rra,” said Mma Makutsi.

  “And she must be proud of you,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  There was silence for a moment. Then Mr Polopetsi spoke. “Why do you say that, Mma?” he asked.

  “Because you are a good man,” said Mma Ramotswe quietly. “That is why I said that. You may have been in prison for two years, but I can tell that you are a good man.”

  THEY LEFT Mr Polopetsi in his house and drove back down the pothole-ridden road. The bicycle was still in the back of the tiny white van and Mma Ramotswe had agreed with Mr Polopetsi that she would take it to be fixed the following day and bring it out to him when it was ready. As he had stepped out of the van, she had offered him money to compensate him for the accident, but he had shaken his head.

  “I can tell when something is an accident,” he said. “And people are not to blame for accidents. I know that.”

  She had not pressed the matter. This man had his pride, and it would have been rude for her to persist. So they agreed about the bicycle and left him outside his house. They were largely silent as they drove back. Mma Ramotswe was thinking of Mr Polopetsi, and his house, and the humiliation that he had suffered in his life. That must have been why he was in tears after the accident; it was just one more thing that he had to bear. Of course they had heard only his side of the story of the prison sentence. Surely people were not sent to prison in Botswana for nothing? She knew that they could be proud of their system of justice—of their judges who would not kow-tow to anybody, who were not afraid of criticising the Government. There were so many countries where this was not so, where the judges were browbeaten or chosen from amongst the ranks of the party faithful, but this had never been the case in Botswana. So surely these judges would never have sent a man to prison unless he deserved punishment?

  Mma Makutsi was anxious about being late for the typing class she was due to give at seven o’clock, and so they did not linger on their way back, although they did go slightly out of their way in order to drive past Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s house—or, rather, the house which belonged to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni but which was now occupied by a tenant. The silver Mercedes-Benz was still there.

  “Does she live in that house?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Did Mr J.L.B. Matekoni let the house to a woman?”

  “No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He let it out—without first asking me, mind you—to a man whose car he used to fix. He does not know him very well, but he said that he always used to pay his bills.”

  “It is very strange,” said Mma Makutsi. “We will have to find out more about this.”

  “We certainly shall,” agreed Mma Ramotswe. “There are many mysteries developing in our lives, Mma Makutsi, what with these rich ladies in silver cars, bicycles, pumpkins, and all the rest, and we shall have to sort them all out.”

  Mma Makutsi looked puzzled. “Pumpkins?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There is a pumpkin mystery, but we do not have time to talk about it now. I shall tell you about it some other time.”

  THAT EVENING Mma Makutsi could not get pumpkins out of her mind, and it was one of the words which she got the typing class to type. She held these classes several times a week in a church hall that she rented for the purpose. The Kalahari Typing School for Men, which admitted only men, was based on the supposition that men usually cannot type very well but are afraid to admit this fact. And while it would be perfectly possible for them to register for any of the part-time courses provided by the Botswana Secretarial College, they tended not to do this for reasons of shame. Men would not wish to be outstripped by women in typing, which would be sure to happen. So Mma Makutsi’s discreet classes had proved very popular.

  She stood now before a class of fifteen men, all eager students of the art of typing, and all making good progress, although at different rates. This class had worked on finger position, had worked its way through the simple words which start every typing career (hat, cat, rat, and the like), and was now ready for more advanced tasks.

  “Pumpkin,” Mma Makutsi called out, and the keys immediately began to clatter. But she had something to add: “Do not leave out the p. That is very important.”

  A number of the keys stopped, and then started afresh, on a new line.

  CHAPTER SIX

  FURTHER DETAILS

  MMA RAMOTSWE had intended to ask Mr J.L.B. Matekoni about his new tenant that evening, but it was busy at home, with the children making demands to be taken here and there and Rose staying late to talk to her about her sick child. So by the time that nine o’clock arrived, and the pots and pans had been washed in the kitchen, and sandwiches made and wrapped up for the children to take to school the next day, Mma Ramotswe was too tired to start a new conversation, particularly one which might prove awkward for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. So they both retired to bed, where she read a magazine for a few minutes before drowsiness forced her to abandon her reading and she switched off the light.

  So it was not until the next morning when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni came into the office for his mid-morning cup of tea, that she was able to raise the subject of what she and Mma Makutsi had seen the previous evening. She had told him about the accident, of course, and he had told the apprentices to fix the bicycle that morning.

  Mma Ramotswe had expressed doubts about their abilities to fix it properly. “They are very rough with machinery,” she said. “You’ve told me that yourself. And we’ve all seen it. I don’t want them to make that poor man’s bicycle worse.”

  “It is only a bicycle,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, reassuringly. “It’s not a Mercedes-Benz.”

  Now the topic of Mercedes-Benzes came up again, as she passed Mr J.L.B. Matek
oni his brimming mug of bush tea.

  “Mma Makutsi and I saw a Mercedes-Benz yesterday,” she began, glancing at Mma Makutsi for confirmation. “It stopped right outside this place.”

  “Oh yes,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, in a tone which suggested that he was not very interested. “There are many Mercedes-Benzes these days. You see them all the time. What sort was it?”

  “It was silver,” offered Mma Makutsi.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. “That is its colour. There are silver Toyotas too. Many cars are silver. I meant what model was it?”

  “It was a Mercedes E class,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  This remark made Mma Makutsi look up in astonishment, and then look down in shame. Of course that was exactly the sort of detail which a detective should spot, and which Mma Ramotswe had indeed noted. Whereas she, Mma Makutsi, a mere assistant detective, had noticed nothing other than the colour.

  “A good car,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “Not that I would ever spend that much money—even if I had that much—on a car like that. There must be a lot of rich people around.”

  “I think that the driver was a rich lady,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I think that she is a rich lady who is seeing Charlie out there. Yes. I believe that.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni stared down into his tea. He did not like to think of the private life of his apprentices, largely because he imagined that it would be distasteful in the extreme. It would all be girls, he thought, because that is all they had in their minds. Just girls. So he said nothing, and Mma Ramotswe continued.

  “Yes. Mma Makutsi and I saw Charlie getting into this Mercedes-Benz with the rich lady who was driving it and then they drove off.”

  She waited for a reaction from Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, but he merely continued to drink his tea.

  “So,” she went on, “they drove off towards the old airfield and then they went to a house.” She paused before adding, “Your house, in fact.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni put down his mug of tea. “My house?”