The Colors of All the Cattle

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Charlie cleared his throat. “I didn’t know about her father,” he said. “That’s not why I’ve been seeing her. Word of honour.”

  “I didn’t say you had,” said Fanwell.

  Charlie sounded sullen. “But you thought it, didn’t you?”

  “Just for a short while,” said Fanwell. “But I don’t think it now.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY FOUND EDDIE at his uncle’s workshop, tucked away behind the hill that dominated the village. It was, like so many such businesses, an eyesore: several cars, well beyond repair, had been abandoned to the side, clearly cannibalised for their parts, occupied in one case by chickens. Elsewhere in the yard were piles of bodywork parts: mudguards, side panels, half of a truck’s cab, what looked like the side door of an ambulance.

  Eddie was standing beside his uncle, who was using a welding torch. Both wore protective visors, but when Eddie saw Charlie he moved away, took off his welder’s helmet, and walked over to meet him.

  “So, Charlie,” he said. “What brings you to the sticks?”

  They shook hands. “I thought it was time to look you up, Eddie,” Charlie said. “I wanted to see if you’d grown any taller.”

  Eddie looked at Fanwell and grinned. “Your friend’s got a great sense of humour, hasn’t he?”

  Fanwell laughed nervously. Eddie was certainly very tall—at least a head and shoulders above him and Charlie.

  “Who’s this?” asked Eddie, gesturing to Fanwell. He might not have intended to sound rude, but that was the effect. Fanwell looked down at the ground in embarrassment.

  “This is my assistant,” said Charlie, avoiding Fanwell’s eye.

  “Ha!” exclaimed Eddie. “You’ve got an assistant these days, Charlie? What does your assistant do—make you your lunch? Polish your shoes?” He laughed at his own wit. Charlie smiled patiently.

  “I’m not just working in the garage these days,” Charlie said. “I’m also working as a private detective. You may have heard of the place—the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”

  “Never heard of it,” said Eddie abruptly. “Working for ladies? You wouldn’t catch me working for a lady.”

  Fanwell looked up sharply. “Mma Ramotswe is a very good detective,” he said. “She is very well known…to people who know what’s what.”

  It was as stout a defence of Mma Ramotswe and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency as he could manage, but it did not seem to have a conspicuous effect on Eddie, who simply ignored it.

  “So where did you learn to be a private detective?” Eddie challenged.

  “It’s a practical training,” said Charlie. “Like training to be a mechanic.”

  “Sounds like a girl’s job,” said Eddie.

  Fanwell looked at Charlie, wondering whether he would respond to this provocative series of comments. Charlie returned the glance, making it clear that he did not want a confrontation.

  “I’m making certain enquiries,” Charlie continued patiently. There was pride in his voice; the words had been mentally rehearsed several times on that day’s journey.

  Eddie pointed to two white plastic chairs that had been placed under the shade of a nearby tree. “We could sit down,” he said. “It’s easier to talk if you’re sitting down.” There was no question of offering both chairs to the visitors; Eddie secured one for himself and then gestured for Charlie to occupy the other. Fanwell was left standing.

  Charlie started the conversation. “A month or two ago there was an accident here in Mochudi…,” he began.

  Eddie shrugged. “There’s an accident every day around here, if you count the small ones. People reverse into other people. They don’t look where they’re going and they scrape the side of somebody’s car. They stop too quickly and somebody hits them from the back. There are many different types of accidents.”

  Charlie nodded. “This one involved a vehicle. And a person. There was a person knocked down.”

  The effect of this on Eddie was immediate. The bemused, slightly bored expression was replaced by a sudden, wary attentiveness. “I didn’t hear anything about that,” he muttered.

  Charlie stared at him. “People must have talked about it,” he said. “Nothing happens in a village without everybody hearing about it sooner or later.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” said Eddie truculently. “Nobody told me about this.”

  “The person who was knocked over was a well-known man,” Charlie continued. “Dr. Marang. Do you know him?”

  Eddie shook his head quickly. “Never heard of him,” he said. And then, rising to his feet, he asked if Charlie had any other questions before he went back to work. “I can’t leave my uncle to do all the work,” he said. “Not while I sit around and talk about minor accidents.”

  “Not minor,” interjected Fanwell.

  Eddie threw him a glance. “Minor accidents,” he repeated. “When you see what we see in this workshop, you know what’s minor and what’s major. Some old guy being knocked down by a car is minor, believe me. Nothing to get worried about.”

  “That’s for us to judge,” said Charlie testily. He had been a friend of Eddie’s in the past, but now he found himself wondering what he saw in him. “So, what I’d like to know is this: Did you get anybody bringing in a blue car for repair?”

  Barely a second or two elapsed before Eddie gave his response to Charlie’s question. “No, never. Sorry.”

  “Can you think really hard?” asked Charlie.

  Again, the answer came immediately, and forcefully. “I’ve thought. No. No blue car.”

  Charlie looked at Fanwell, who bowed his head. This meeting with Eddie was proving very unproductive.

  Charlie stood up. “I don’t want to waste your time, Eddie.”

  “No. Lots to do.”

  Charlie hesitated. “You remember how I helped you once. Remember?”

  Eddie looked flustered. He stood up, towering over Charlie. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yes,” said Charlie, “but I haven’t forgotten, Eddie.”

  Eddie looked about him furtively. Inside the workshop, his uncle had finished welding and taken off his protective clothing. He turned towards the three young men and began to walk towards them. Eddie pointed an accusing finger at Charlie. “You said you wouldn’t—”

  He did not finish. Charlie grabbed his finger. “All I’m asking is that you try to find out some information for me. Look around, Eddie. You know most of the cars in this place.”

  The uncle had almost reached them now. Eddie leaned forward and muttered to Charlie, “All right. I’ll do that. Now you can go home.”

  * * *

  —

  THAT EVENING, while Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni were sitting on the verandah of their house on Zebra Drive, she told him of her change of mind. “I had decided not to stand,” she said, “and then, I’m afraid I changed my mind today. I have now decided to be a candidate after all.” She paused. That was not strictly true; Mma Potokwane had decided that she should be a candidate—it was the matron’s decision rather than hers. “Or rather, Mma Potokwane has changed my mind.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni heard this in silence. Then he sighed. It was not the first time that this had happened; this was what Mma Potokwane did—she decided for people, but did it in such a way that they thought they were making their own decisions. But they were not, and once they reflected on what had happened they often realised that they had ended up doing exactly as Mma Potokwane wanted them to do. He remembered, in particular, the occasion on which Mma Potokwane had enrolled people for a sponsored parachute jump in aid of the Orphan Farm. He himself had been one of those targeted—not as a sponsor, but as a jumper—and he had spent an unpleasant period of time in utter terror at the prospect. Then, on another occasion, Mma Ramotswe had been inveigled into baking two
hundred scones for sale at an Orphan Farm fund-raising bazaar. When he heard about this, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had queried the figure of two hundred. Was Mma Ramotswe sure that she had not agreed to baking twenty scones? It was very easy to add a zero to any sum, and perhaps that had been done here. But no, it was two hundred, and Mma Ramotswe had spent an entire Sunday mixing the ingredients and sliding the baking trays into the oven. That was another case of what he now called the Potokwane effect, and here it was again.

  “But you don’t want to do it, Mma,” he said. “You told me that, just last night.”

  Mma Ramotswe sighed. “You’re right, Rra. But you know how it is. Or rather, you know how she is.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s dismay at the thought of his wife being forced to do something against her will was mitigated by his admiration for Mma Potokwane’s persuasive ability. “At least she’s on the right side of things,” he said. “Imagine what it would be like if she were on the other side.”

  “You mean, if she were selfish? If she were just out for herself and what she could get?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “Yes. If she were a property developer, for instance.” And then he added, hurriedly, “Not that I’m suggesting that all property developers are selfish or out for themselves. They aren’t.”

  “No, of course not,” agreed Mma Ramotswe. “But some…well, some are clearly very bad people who will do anything to turn a profit. Some of them would not hesitate to knock down their own grandmother’s house if it got in the way of their schemes.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “You would be surprised, Mma, to know that that is just what happened down in Lobatse once. There was a builder down there who bought up old houses and knocked them down. One of those houses really did belong to his grandmother. She did not want to move, and they say that he had to put a snake into her house to shift her.”

  Mma Ramotswe’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. “A snake, Rra? In his own grandmother’s house?”

  “Yes,” he said. “He put a mamba underneath the floorboards. Those old houses have a space under the floor to let the air circulate. That is a very good place for a snake to live.”

  Mma Ramotswe shuddered. “But a mamba, Rra! Those snakes will never move once they decide to live somewhere. And if you anger them…” It did not bear thinking about. Of all possible nightmares, encountering an angry mamba was undoubtedly the worst. Most snakes would do their utmost to avoid human contact, would slide discreetly away when they heard—or felt—footsteps approaching, but some snakes did not. Puff adders would refuse to budge because they were too lazy and sluggish to get out of the way, waiting until you trod on them before they sank their fangs into your leg. Mambas, although they were as fast as any other snake, if not even faster, would defend their territory rather than avoid contact. They knew that they had a decisive weapon in their arsenal—a venom that could kill a grown human within an hour of its injection. And they had copious quantities of it too, as they used it in their hunting, swiftly reducing their prey—a rat or a similar creature—to the paroxysms that precede an agonising death.

  “So what happened, Rra?” she asked.

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni explained how he had only heard the story second-hand, and that sometimes these stories tended to be exaggerated in the re-telling. But he had been told that the girl who worked in the grandmother’s kitchen had seen the snake watching her through a small hole in the floor and, panicking, had fetched the grandmother. After that, every sound the grandmother heard—and an old house is full of sounds—she imagined was the sound of the mamba moving around beneath her feet. It was not long, then, before she begged her grandson to find her a new house. This new house was some way out of town, and much smaller and cheaper than the one she had been living in. There had been no cash adjustment, said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni; the grandson had pocketed the profits he made when he knocked the old house down and erected a new one.

  “And the snake?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “What would you like the answer to be, Mma?”

  She thought for a moment. “I would like to hear that it moved out of the old house when the bulldozers came to knock the house down. I would like to be told that it ran off and searched for another place to live. I would like to hear that the first house it came to was the grandson’s, and that it moved in there, under his bed perhaps, or just behind the laundry basket in the bathroom.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “And bit him?”

  “No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I would not wish that on anyone—even on a man who knocks down his own grandmother’s house. Just frightened, Rra. Badly frightened him.”

  “I didn’t hear what happened,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And that makes me think the story is a true one. It is often only those stories that are made up that have endings in which bad people get what they deserve.”

  Mma Ramotswe’s disappointment showed in her tone of voice. “So he got away with it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “A lot of people get away with a lot of things. We don’t want them to, and we think that somewhere there is justice to be found. But they get away with it—time after time.”

  Mma Ramotswe said nothing. She was thinking of the issue that had triggered her candidacy—the building of the Big Fun Hotel. The thought made her skin prickle. The people who were planning that should not be allowed to get away with it. And that made her think that, even if Mma Potokwane had browbeaten her, what she was doing was the right thing. She would fight the election even if she found the whole process distasteful. She had to, because this was not a fight from which one could walk away and feel easy. This was a line in the sand, drawn as clearly and unambiguously as any line could be drawn.

  She looked at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Is it a bad thing to change your mind?” she asked.

  He was in no doubt about the answer. “Not if what you end up doing is the right thing.” He paused. “And I think I can say, Mma Ramotswe, that what you’re doing—and I suppose also what Mma Potokwane is doing—is exactly the right thing. And I am very proud of that.”

  She reached out to touch him on his forearm. “Thank you, Rra. It will be easier for me if I know you are with me.”

  “I am,” he reassured her. “You are a heroine, Mma. You are an eighty-four-horse-power, six-cylinder heroine—you really are.”

  It was the highest praise a mechanic could ever give, and he meant every word of it, every single word. He said nothing about upholstery, or suspension, or any of those matters pertaining to cars: a metaphor should not be strained, lest praise be diluted and made less glowing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TELL THEM YOU BELIEVE IN PROGRESS

  THE FIRST MEETING of the Elect Mma Ramotswe committee took place at mid-morning the following day, chaired by Mma Potokwane. As well as Mma Makutsi, of course, who had agreed to act as secretary to the committee, the membership had expanded to include Mr. Polopetsi, who had been extremely excited to hear of Mma Ramotswe’s nomination, and Charlie and Fanwell, who had promised to devote their evenings to leafleting and going from house to house to canvass votes. Mma Ramotswe herself was on the committee, of course, although Mma Potokwane now insisted on calling her “the candidate” rather than “Mma Ramotswe.” Only Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not participate. He had been invited, but had thought it better to distance himself. “We do not want people thinking that we’re trying to start a dynasty,” he explained. “You know how you get those politicians who are sons of other politicians and grandsons of even more politicians. I do not think that is very democratic, and so I shall not be involved in this campaign, even if I fully support it and put the whole resources of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors behind it.”

  That was a fairly long speech for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and nobody had wanted to argue with the logic—or the dignity—that underpinned it. And so the leadership of the group, which he, as spouse of the candidate, might have been expec
ted to assume, passed naturally to Mma Potokwane, whose idea the whole thing had been in the first place.

  There was an air of almost palpable excitement in the room when Mma Potokwane entered. She was the last to arrive, and the others were all in their places when she came in and seated herself in the chair beside Mma Ramotswe’s desk. Mma Makutsi was in her usual place, Mr. Polopetsi was standing by a filing cabinet, and Charlie and Fanwell were squatting on the ground in that effortless pose adopted by those who hamstrings had yet to seize.

  Mma Potokwane cleared her throat, looked about her, and then, in a voice that Mma Makutsi thought was a little bit louder than the occasion required, called the meeting to order.

  Charlie looked sideways at Fanwell. “But there was no disorder,” he said. “I didn’t see any.”

  Mma Potokwane gave him a warning glance. “That’s how meetings begin, Charlie,” she said. “The chairman calls the meeting to order. That’s the signal for everybody to stop talking.”

  “But nobody was talking,” protested Charlie. “Nobody said a thing, did they, Fanwell?”

  Fanwell did not want to be drawn in. He looked away.

  “And anyway,” Charlie continued, “there is no chairman here, Mma. You are a lady. You are not a man.”

  Mma Makutsi drew in her breath. “Charlie,” she hissed. “There is no call for disrespect.”

  “It was not disrespect, Mma Makutsi,” Charlie retorted. “I’m just pointing something out. You yourself have often said it’s important to be accurate.”

  Mma Makutsi sighed. “You don’t understand, Charlie. The word chairman covers both men and women.” She paused. “Mind you, Mma Potokwane, many people these days just use the word chair. Perhaps you’d like—”