The Good Husband of Zebra Drive tn1lda-8

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Her surprise turned to anger. “So I am that lady,” she snapped at the young man. “But that means nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “I’ve never met a detective,” said the young man with the cloth. “Is it interesting work, Mma? Do you come to places like this to investigate…”

  “Thefts,” supplied the mouth.

  Teenie gave a start. She had been watching the young men as they talked; now she spun round and looked at Mma Makutsi. Again there was that pleading look, as if she wanted Mma Makutsi to say that it was not true, that she was not a detective, and that she had certainly not come here to look into thefts.

  Mma Makutsi decided that the best tactic would be to pretend to be amused by the very suggestion. “We do not spend all our time investigating,” she said, smiling archly. “There are other things in our lives.”

  The young man with the large mouth cocked his head sideways as she spoke, as if he was trying to look at Mma Makutsi from a different angle. She glanced at him and found herself looking past his teeth and lips, into the very cave, the labyrinth. There were people who found such caves irresistible, she knew, who loved exploring. She imagined tiny people, equipped with minuscule ropes and picks, climbing into that mouth, leaning into the hot gusts of wind that came up from the lungs somewhere down below.

  Teenie took Mma Makutsi’s arm and led her off towards the offices. “They are not involved in it,” she said. “They would never steal.”

  Mma Makutsi was not so sure. “One can’t be too sure about that,” she said. “Sometimes it is the most unlikely person who is to blame for something. We have had many cases where you would never have suspected the person who turns out to be guilty. Ministers of religion for example. Yes. Even them.”

  “I cannot imagine a minister of religion doing anything bad,” said Teenie.

  Mma Makutsi sighed. “Well, they do. There are some very wicked ministers of religion. They hardly ever get caught, of course, because nobody thinks of looking into their affairs. If I wanted to commit a crime and get away with it, you know what I would do? I would become a minister of religion first, and then I would commit the crime. I would know that I would get away with it, you see.”

  “Or a detective,” said Teenie quietly.

  “Or a…” Mma Makutsi had been about to agree with this, but was stopped by professional pride. “No,” she continued. “I don’t think that it would be a good idea to become a detective if you were planning to commit a crime. The people you worked with would know, you see, Mma. They would just know.”

  Teenie said nothing. They were now outside the office cubicle and Teenie was reaching for the handle of the door. The man and the woman inside were watching them.

  “This is him,” whispered Teenie. “This one inside.”

  Mma Makutsi looked in through the glass wall. Her eyes met the gaze of the man in the office. Of course, she thought. Now I see.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHARLIE PICKS UP A PASSENGER

  THE TAXI LICENCE for which Charlie had applied would be approved, he had been told, but the document itself, the important piece of paper, would not be ready for at least two weeks. For a young man of Charlie’s age, and attitude, that was a long time—too long a time to wait for a mere bureaucratic formality. And so he had decided to start plying his trade rather than wait for the officials in the public transport department to get round to picking up their rubber stamps and validating his papers. Those idle civil servants! he thought. There are too many of them in this country. That is all that we make—civil servants. He smiled. He was a businessman now—he could think such thoughts.

  The car which he had acquired from Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been cleaned and polished until it shone. Charlie lived as a lodger with a maternal uncle, who had a small two-room house at the side of a busy street off the Francistown Road. The now gleaming Mercedes-Benz looked out of place among the shabby cars that stood outside these modest houses and Charlie was worried that it would be stolen. On the first night that the car spent in its new quarters, Charlie had decided to tie a piece of string to the front grille of the vehicle and then feed the other end of the string through the window of the room in which he slept. That would then be tied to his big toe before he got into bed.

  “You will certainly wake up if the car is stolen,” said his uncle, who had watched, bemused, as the string was unwound from its ball.

  “That is why I am doing it, Uncle,” Charlie had replied. “If I wake up when the car is moved, I can get out of bed and deal with the thieves.”

  The uncle had stared at his nephew. “There are two problems that I see,” he said. “Two. The first is this: What if the string does not break? This new string is very strong, you know. I think it could probably take the weight of a man. It could pull your toe out of the window, with you still attached.”

  Charlie said nothing. He stared down at the ball of string. The label proclaimed: Extra Strong.

  “Then there is another problem,” said the uncle. “Even if the string woke you up and then broke before it pulled your toe off, what would happen then? How exactly are you going to deal with your car being driven away? Run after it?”

  Charlie put the ball of string down on the table. “Maybe I will not do this,” he said.

  “No,” said the uncle. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  The car was not stolen that night. When Charlie awoke the next morning, he immediately rose from his mattress on the floor and pulled aside the thin cotton curtain that covered his window. The car was still there, exactly where he had left it, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  That morning he had arranged for a sign-painter to stencil the name of his taxi firm on the driver’s door. This took barely an hour to do, but consumed almost half of the final week’s pay that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had given him. At least he would not have to pay for fuel just yet, as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had given him a full tank of petrol as a parting gift. So now he was ready, apart from the licence.

  Charlie stood outside the sign-painter’s shop and admired the newly painted legend on the side of the car.

  The sign-painter, a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth, contemplated his handiwork. “Why are you calling it the No. 1 Ladies’ Taxi Service?” he asked. “Are you getting a lady driver?”

  Charlie explained the nature of the service to the painter, an explanation which was followed by a brief silence. Then the painter said, “There are some very good business ideas, Rra. In my job, I see many businesses starting. But I hardly ever see one which is as good an idea as this.”

  “Do you mean that?” asked Charlie.

  “Of course. This is going to be a big success, I can tell you, Rra. A big success. You are going to be very rich. Next month, maybe the month after that, you will be starting to get rich. You’ll see. You come back and tell me if I’m wrong.”

  Charlie drove away with the sign-painter’s prediction ringing in his ears. Of course the thought of being rich appealed to him; apart from that brief spell when he had been taken up by that wealthy, married, and older woman, he had known only poverty so far, had owned only a single pair of shoes, had made do with turned collars on his shirts. If he had the money, he could dress in a way which he knew would attract the girls; not that he had ever had any difficulty in doing that, but in a way which would attract a fancier sort of girl. That was what interested him.

  He had intended to drive straight home in order to conserve fuel, but then, as he rounded a corner, a woman stepped out from a driveway and waved him down. For a moment he was puzzled, and then he remembered. I am a taxi driver! I get waved down.

  He drew in at the side of the road, coming to rest immediately abreast of the woman. She stepped smartly to the back door and climbed in. He watched her in his rear-view mirror; a well-off woman, he thought; well-dressed, carrying a small leather briefcase.

  “Where to?” he asked. He had not rehearsed the phrase, but it sounded right.

  She told him that she wanted to g
o to the bank at the top of the Mall. “I have an appointment,” she said. “I am a bit late for it. I hope that you can get me there quickly.”

  He shifted the car into gear and drove off. “I will do my best, Mma.”

  In the mirror he saw the woman in the back relax. “A friend was coming to collect me,” she said, looking out of the window as she spoke. “She has obviously forgotten. It was a good thing you came along.”

  “Yes, Mma. We are here to help.”

  The woman seemed impressed with this. “Some of you taxi people are really rude,” she said. “You are not like that. That is a good thing.”

  Charlie looked in the mirror again, his eyes meeting his passenger’s gaze. She was a good-looking woman, he thought; a bit too old for him, but one never knew. That last time, when he had been involved with that older woman, he had enjoyed a marvellous time, until her husband…Well, one could never tell how these things would work out. He glanced into the mirror once more. She was wearing a necklace with green stones and a pair of large dangling ear-rings. Charlie liked ear-rings like that. They were a sign that a woman liked a good time, he always thought. Perhaps he might ask this woman at the end of the journey whether he could come back and pick her up after her appointment. And she would say to him that this would be a very good idea because, as it happened, she had nothing to do and perhaps they could go out to a bar somewhere and have a beer because it was getting hot again, did he not think, and it would be a good thing to say goodbye to these winter nights when one really needed somebody nice and warm in one’s bed to keep the chill away…

  He did not see the traffic lights, which were red, against him; nor the truck that was approaching and that had no time to apply its brakes. Charlie, gazing in his rear-view mirror, saw nothing that lay ahead; not the frantic movements of the truck driver as he realised that impact was inevitable; not the crumpling of metal as the front of the car folded in; not the shattering of the windscreen as it fragmented into little pieces, like diamonds or droplets of water in the sun. But he heard the screaming of the woman in the seat behind him and a slow ticking sound from the engine of his car; he heard the slamming of the door of the truck as the driver, shaking, let himself out of his relatively unharmed cabin. He heard the protests of metal as his own door was prised open.

  Another motorist had stopped and had put his arm around Charlie’s passenger. She was standing beside the car, weeping with shock. There was no blood.

  “Everybody is all right,” said the other motorist. “I saw it happen. I saw it.”

  “I was coming that way,” stuttered the truck driver. “The light was green.”

  “Yes,” said the motorist. “I saw that. The light was green.”

  They looked at Charlie. “Are you all right, Rra? You are not injured?”

  Charlie could not speak. He shook his head. He had escaped injury, thanks to the solidity of German engineering.

  “God must be watching,” said a passer-by, who had seen all three step unharmed from the wreckage. “But look at that car! I’m sorry, Rra. Your poor car.”

  Charlie had now sat down on the side of the road. He too was shaking. He was staring at his shoes; now he looked up and saw the ruins of his Mercedes-Benz, with its crumpled front, stained green by spurting coolant; at the metal rubbed bare where the truck had ground across it; at the buckled door with its newly painted sign. The ruptured metal had shortened the sign. The No. 1 Ladies’ Tax it now read; a curious legend which caused the policeman who shortly afterwards arrived at the scene to scratch his head. Tax?

  Charlie reached home four hours later. His aunt was there, and she could tell immediately that there was something wrong.

  “I have had an accident,” he said.

  The aunt let out a wail. “Your beautiful new car?”

  “It is finished, Aunty. That car is finished now.”

  The aunt looked fixedly at the ground; she had known, of course, that this, or something like this, would happen. Charlie, silent now that he had pronounced the requiem on his car, sat down. I am twenty, he thought. Twenty, and it is all finished for me.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MMA POTOKWANE ON THE SUBJECT OF TRUST, AMONGST OTHER THINGS

  ON THE DAY following Charlie’s accident—an accident of which nobody at the garage or the agency was yet aware—Mma Ramotswe decided not to work in her office but instead to go for a picnic. It was not a decision that was made on the spur of the moment; she had been invited almost two weeks previously by Mma Potokwane, had accepted, and then forgotten about it until a few hours before the gathering was due to take place. In some respects she would have preferred not to have remembered at all, as that would have given her a perfect excuse, even if a retrospective one, for not attending. But now it was too late: Mma Potokwane, the redoubtable matron of the orphan farm, would be expecting her and she had to go.

  Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane were old friends. Mma Makutsi, who had her difficulties with Mma Potokwane, the two having crossed swords on more than one occasion, had once asked Mma Ramotswe how they had first met. Mma Ramotswe had been unable to provide an answer. Some friends, she explained, seemed always to have been part of one’s life. Obviously there was a first meeting, but in the case of old friends that was usually so long ago, and so mundane at the time, that all memory of it had faded. Such friends were like favoured possessions—a cherished book, a favourite picture—how one acquired them was long forgotten, they were just there.

  It had not always been the smoothest of friendships and there were some aspects of Mma Potokwane’s behaviour of which Mma Ramotswe frankly disapproved. Her bossiness was one such thing, particularly when it was directed at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who had long been incapable of refusing Mma Potokwane’s requests to fix various antiquated pieces of equipment at the orphan farm. It was all very well for her to order the orphans about—that was what one expected of the matron of an orphanage, since it was undoubtedly good for the children to lead ordered lives—but it was another thing altogether for her to adopt a similar manner when it came to adults.

  “I feel sorry for that woman’s husband,” Mma Makutsi had once remarked, following upon a call that Mma Potokwane had made to the office. “No wonder he doesn’t ever say anything. Have you watched him? He just stands there. The poor man must be afraid to open his mouth.”

  Out of loyalty to her friend, Mma Ramotswe refrained from saying anything about this, but when she gave some thought to Mma Makutsi’s less-than-charitable remark she had to acknowledge that it was probably true. Mma Potokwane’s husband was a small man, neither as tall nor as well built as his wife, and he gave every appearance of being both physically and emotionally floundering in the wake created by his wife.

  “I wonder why he married her,” Mma Makutsi went on. “Do you think that he asked her, or did she ask him?” She paused as she mulled over the possibilities. “Maybe she even ordered him to marry her. Do you think that happened, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe pursed her lips. It was difficult not to smile when Mma Makutsi got going on remarks like this, but she knew that she should not. It was none of Mma Makutsi’s business how Rra Potokwane had proposed to Mma Potokwane; such things were the private business of man and wife and people had no right to pry into such areas. Mind you, Mma Makutsi might not be far wrong; she could just imagine Mma Potokwane instructing her mild, rather timid husband to marry her or face some unnamed unpleasant consequences.

  “I wonder what their bed is like,” went on Mma Makutsi. “I can just see their bedroom, can’t you?—with her taking up most of the space on the bed and leaving only a few inches at the edge for him. Maybe he sleeps on the floor next to the bed. And then she wakes up and thinks: Where on earth did I put my husband? Do you think that is what happens, Mma Ramotswe?”

  This was overstepping the mark. Mma Ramotswe did not like to speculate on the bedrooms, or beds, of others. That was private. “You mustn’t talk like that,” she said. “It is not funny.”

  “
But you are smiling,” Mma Makutsi said. “I can see that you are trying not to smile, but you are.”

  Mma Ramotswe had changed the subject at this point, but at home that evening she had narrated the conversation to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and he had laughed. “Those two just can’t get on,” he said. “They are really the same, under the skin. In ten years’ time, Mma Makutsi will be just like her. She has been ordering the apprentices around—for practice. Soon she will move on to Mr Phuti Radiphuti. Once they are married, then the ordering about will begin.” He looked at Mma Ramotswe. “Not all men are fools, you know, Mma. We know the plans that you women have for us.”

  Oh, thought Mma Ramotswe, although she did not say oh. If Mr J.L.B. Matekoni thought that she had plans for him, then what exactly were they? There were undoubtedly women who had plans for their husbands; they were often ambitious for them in their jobs, and urged them to apply for promotion above the husbands of other women. Then there were women who liked their men to have expensive cars, to be wealthy, to dress in flashy clothes. But she had no plans of that nature for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. She did not want Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors to get any bigger or to make more money. Nor did she want Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to change in any way; she liked him exactly as he was, with his old, stained veldschoen, his overalls, his kind face, his gentle manner. No, if she had any plan for him it was that they would continue to live together in the house on Zebra Drive, that they would grow old in one another’s company, and maybe one day go back to Mochudi and sit in the sun there, watching other people do things, but doing nothing themselves. Those were plans of a sort, she supposed, but surely they were plans that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would himself endorse.

  Now, driving her tiny white van along the road that led to the Gaborone dam, she let her thoughts wander: Mma Potokwane, men and their little ways, the Government, next year’s rains, Motholeli’s homework problems: there was so much to think about, even before she started to dwell upon any of her cases. Once she started to think about that side of her life, Mochudi Hospital came to mind, with its cool corridors, and the ward where three people had died, all in the same bed. Three fingers raised, one after the other, and then lowered. Three stitches taken out of our shared blanket. She had talked to how many people now? Four, if one did not count Tati Monyena, who was really the client, even if it was the hospital administration that was paying. Those four people, the three nurses and Dr Cronje, had all endorsed the view that Tati Monyena had voiced right at the beginning—that the deaths were just an extraordinary coincidence. But if that was what everybody believed, then why had they sought to involve her in the whole business? Perhaps it was one of those cases where doubts simply refused to lie down until somebody independent, somebody from the outside, had come and put them to rest. So she was not a detective, then, but a judge brought in to make a ruling, as judges, chiefs, will do when with a few carefully chosen words they bury a cause of conflict or doubt. If that were so, then there was not much for her to do but to declare that she had looked into the situation and found nothing suspicious.