In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “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?”

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They went into your house, and that is what made me swerve and make that poor man fall off his bicycle. If it had not been your house, I would not have been so surprised and would not have swerved.”

  “And they stayed there for some time,” said Mma Makutsi. “I think they were visiting the people who live there now, whoever they are.”

  “That could be true,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “The people who live in my house will have friends, no doubt. Perhaps this lady with the Mercedes-Benz is a friend of those people.”

  Mma Ramotswe agreed that this was a possibility. But the apprentices were always happy to gossip, and if they were mixing socially with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s tenants they might well have been expected to mention the fact, surely?

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni now shrugged. “It is Charlie’s affair,” he said. “If he is going round with this woman in his own time, then that is his business. I cannot stop those young men from having girlfriends. That is not my job. My job is to teach them to work on engines, and that is difficult enough. If I had to teach them about looking after themselves once they leave the garage, then …” He spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.

  Mma Ramotswe glanced at Mma Makutsi, who asked, “Who is your tenant, Rra?”

  “His name is Ofentse Makola,” he said. “I do not know much about him, but he has been paying his rent very regularly every month. He has never been late with it—not once.”

  Mma Ramotswe caught Mma Makutsi’s eye, signalling to her that they should bring this discussion to an end. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked a little bit awkward, she thought, and it would be best not to press him at this stage. Besides, she wanted to find out who owned the silver Mercedes, and this would require his co-operation. If he thought that the two of them were up to something, then he might decline to help. So there should be no more talk of Charlie’s exploits for the time being.

  After Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had returned to work, Mma Ramotswe busied herself with some telephone calls before she turned to Mma Makutsi and asked her directly what she thought they should do.

  “Should we bother to find out anything about this woman?” she asked. “Is it really any of our business?”

  Mma Makutsi looked thoughtful. “Charlie is a young man,” she said. “He is responsible for himself. We cannot tell him what to do.”

  Mma Ramotswe agreed that this was true, but then, she asked, what should one do if, as an older person, one saw a younger person about to make a bad mistake, or do something wrong. Did one have the right to say anything? Or did one just have to stand by and let matters take their own course?

  Mma Makutsi considered this for a moment. “If I was about to do something foolish—really foolish—would you tell me, Mma?”

  “I would tell you,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I would tell you and hope that you would not do it.”

  “So should we tell Charlie to be careful? Is that what we should do?”

  Mma Ramotswe very much doubted whether Charlie would take advice when it came to the matter of a woman, but thought that perhaps they might try. “We could try talking to him about it,” she said. “But we don’t really have much to go on, do we? We don’t know anything about this woman, other than that she has a Mercedes-Benz. That is not enough to go on. You can’t warn somebody if you know only that. You can’t say: Have nothing to do with ladies who drive Mercedes-Benzes! You can’t say that, can you, Mma?”

  “Some people would say that,” suggested Mma Makutsi, mischievously.

  “But I think we need to know a little bit more,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “Then ask him. Isn’t that the way we work in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency? Don’t we just ask people if we want to find out something?”

  Mma Ramotswe had to agree that this was true. If she ever wrote a book like The Principles of Private Detection, she would add to what Clovis Andersen had to say. He suggested all sorts of clever ways of finding out facts—following people, looking at what they threw away in the bin, watching the sort of people they mixed with, and so on—but he did not say anything about asking them to their faces. That was often the best way of getting information, and in her book, if she ever wrote it (Private Detection for Ladies might be a good title), she would make much of this direct method. After all, this technique had served her well in many of her cases, and perhaps this was another occasion on which it might be used.

  She rose from her desk and sauntered into the garage, followed by Mma Makutsi. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was attending to a car which was parked outside, its owner standing anxiously by. Inside the garage, underneath the hydraulic ramp upon which a large red car was balanced, Charlie and the younger apprentice were peering up at the car’s suspension.

  “So,” said Mma Ramotswe conversationally. “So you are going to fix the suspension of that car. The driver will be very grateful to you. He will not feel so many bumps once you have finished.”

  Charlie looked away from the car and smiled at Mma Ramotswe. “That is right, Mma. We are going to make this suspension so smooth that the driver will think he is riding along on a cloud.”

  “You are very clever,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “That is right,” said Charlie. “I am.”

  Mma Ramotswe glanced at Mma Makutsi, who bit her lip. It was sometimes very difficult to remain civil when dealing with these boys. It would have been so easy to be sarcastic, but the problem was that they did not understand sarcasm: it was wasted on them.

  “We saw you yesterday afternoon,” she said airily. “We saw you getting into a very smart car, Charlie. You must have some very smart friends these days.”

  The apprentice laughed. “Very smart,” he said. “Yes. You’re right, Mma. I have some very smart friends. Hah! You think I’m nothing, but I have friends who do not think that.”

  “I have never thought you were nothing,” protested Mma Ramotswe. “You have no right to say that.”

  Charlie looked to the younger apprentice for support, but there was none forthcoming. “All right,” he said. “Maybe you do not think that. But I’m telling you, Mma, my life is going to change. It’s going to change very soon, and then …”

  They waited for him to finish speaking, but he did not.

  “You are going to get married?” suggested Mma Makutsi. “That is very good news! Marriage is always a big change for people.”

  “Hah!” said the apprentice. “Who said anything about marriage? No, I am not going to get married.”

  Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath. The time had come to be direct, and to see what response she could draw. “Is it because that girlfriend of yours, that rich lady, is already married? Is that it, Charlie?”

  The moment her question had been posed, she knew that her instinct had been correct. There was no need for Charlie to tell them anything further. The way he had stood up and bumped his head on the bottom of the car made it abundantly clear that the question needed no answer. It was answered already.

  THAT EVENING, Mma Ramotswe made sure that she and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni returned to the house
on Zebra Drive well before five o’clock, something which seemed to be becoming more and more difficult. Both of them had busy working lives—she as a private detective whose services were increasingly in demand, and he as one of the finest mechanics in all Botswana. Both of these positions had been attained through hard work and a strict adherence to certain principles. For Mma Ramotswe the principle which governed her practice was honesty. Sometimes it was necessary to resort to minor deception—but never anything harmful—in order to get at the truth, but one should never do this with a client. One’s duty to a client was never to mislead: if the truth was unpalatable or hurtful, then there were ways of presenting the truth in a gentle way. Often all that one had to do was to get clients to work out conclusions by themselves, merely assisting them by pointing out things that they might have found out for themselves had they been willing to confront them.

  Of course there was more to Mma Ramotswe’s success than that. Another reason why she was so popular was her sympathetic nature. People said that you could say anything to Mma Ramotswe, anything, and she would not scold you or shake her head in condemnation (as long you did not show an arrogant face; that she would not tolerate). So people could go to see her and tell her frankly of things that they had done wrong—things which had landed them in difficulty—and she would do her best to extricate them from the consequences of their selfishness or their folly. A man could go into Mma Ramotswe’s office and confess to adultery, and she would not purse her lips or mutter under her breath, but would say, “I am sure that you are sorry, Rra. I know how difficult it is for you men, with all your weaknesses.” This would reassure them, without giving them the impression that she was condoning what they had done. And once the confession was made, then Mma Ramotswe would often prove resourceful in finding a solution, and these solutions usually avoided too much pain. It seemed as if the forgiveness which she was capable of showing was infectious. Competitors and enemies, locked in pointless feuds, would find that Mma Ramotswe would hit upon a solution that preserved dignity and face. “We are all human,” she would say. “Men particularly. You must not be ashamed.”

  And as for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s reputation, again this was built on that most simple and immediately recognisable of human virtues: decency. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would never overcharge nor allow shoddy work to go out of the garage (which brought him into frequent conflict with his feckless apprentices and their slipshod ways; “These boys will drive me to an early grave,” he said, shaking his head. “Tlokweng Road Late Motors, that will be it: proprietor the late Mr J.L.B. Matekoni”).

  No less a person than the British High Commissioner, who was driven around in a handsome Range Rover, was amongst those who recognised the merits of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He, and his predecessor in office, had entrusted their cars to the care of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni when other diplomats took theirs to large garages with glittering forecourts. But the first British High Commissioner to use Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors had been a good judge of men and had immediately known that he had made a great discovery when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, quite unasked, had adjusted something in the vehicle’s engine when he had merely stopped to fill the tank. A change in the engine note had alerted Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to the fact that a problem was developing and he had dealt with it on the spot, and without charge. That was the beginning of a long relationship, in which the spotless diplomatic vehicle was routinely serviced by Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

  And just as Mma Ramotswe was tactful in the breaking of difficult news, so too could Mr J.L.B. Matekoni convey bad news about a car in such a way as to soften the blow to the owner. He had seen some mechanics shake their heads when looking at an engine—even if the car’s owner was standing right next to them. Indeed, when he had been an apprentice himself, he had served alongside a German-trained mechanic who would simply point at an engine and shout Kaput! This was no way of letting a customer know that all was not well, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni wondered whether German doctors did the same with their patients and just shook their heads and said Kaput! Perhaps they did.

  His ways were gentler. If a repair was going to be very expensive, he would sometimes offer the customer a chair before he told them what it would cost. And if there was nothing he could do, he would start off by telling them that there was a limit to the life of everything and this applied to shoes, cars, and even man himself. In this way the passing of a car might be seen by the customer as something inevitable. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni could understand, though, how people might be strongly attached to their cars, as he had found out in his dealings with both Mma Potokwane, the matron at the orphan farm, and with Mma Ramotswe herself. The orphan farm had an old minibus which Mma Potokwane had persuaded him to maintain (free of charge). This van should have been replaced some time ago, just as the water pump at the orphan farm should have been replaced well before it actually was. Mma Potokwane had no particular emotional attachment to the minibus, but was reluctant to spend money if she could possibly avoid it. He had pointed out to her that one day the suspension on the bus would have to be replaced, along with the braking system, the electric wiring, and several of the panels in the floor. He had pointed out the danger if those panels gave way through rust; an orphan could fall out onto the road, he said, and what would people say if that happened? It will not happen, she had replied. You will not let that happen.

  In Mma Ramotswe’s case, her attachment to the tiny white van was more emotional than financial in origin. She had bought the tiny white van when she first came to live in Gaborone, and it had served her loyally since that day. It was not a fast vehicle, nor a particularly comfortable one; the suspension had been in a bad way for some time, especially on the driver’s side, in view of Mma Ramotswe’s traditional build, which posed some degree of strain on the system. And the engine had a tendency to go out of tune very shortly after Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had attended to it, which meant that the tiny white van would splutter and jerk from time to time. In Mma Ramotswe’s view, though, these were small matters: as long as the tiny white van was capable of getting her around, and as long as it did not break down too often, she proposed holding on to it. She thought of it as a friend, a staunch ally in this world, an ally to whom she owed a strong debt of loyalty.

  These professional reputations meant that both Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni were rather busier than they would have liked to be. So it was with some pleasure that Mma Ramotswe managed that evening to secure the hour between five and six as time when the two of them could sit on the verandah, and walk about their garden, and drink a cup of bush tea. She wanted to do this, not only to give Mr J.L.B. Matekoni a chance to unwind (he was, she thought, working far too hard), but also because she wanted to spend some time talking to him, alone, without Mma Makutsi or the apprentices, or even Motholeli and Puso listening in.

  They sat together on the verandah, mugs of tea in hand. The sky was of that colour which it assumed at the end of the day—a late afternoon colour of tired blue—and was great and empty. On the leaves of the acacia trees that grew here and there in the garden, the gentle rays of the afternoon sun fell forgivingly, as if the battle between heat and life, between red and green, was temporarily over.

  “I am very happy that we can just sit here,” said Mma Ramotswe. “All the time these days it is work, work, work. We must be careful or we will work so much that we forget how to sit and talk about things.”

  “You are right, Mma,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “But it is very hard, isn’t it? You can’t say to people: go away, we cannot help you. And I can’t say to people: I can’t fix your car. We cannot do that.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. He was right, of course. Neither of them would want to turn people away, no matter how busy they were. So where did the solution lie? Should they allow the businesses to expand? This was one of the matters that she wished to discuss with him—this, and the difficult issue of Charlie and the older woman.

  “I suppose we could make the businesses bigger,” she ventured. “You could g
et another mechanic to help you, and I could take on somebody else.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni put down his mug and looked at her. “We could not do that,” he said. “We are small businesses. If you allow your business to get too big, then you have many headaches. Headaches, headaches—all the time.”

  “But if you have too much work to do, you end up with a headache too,” said Mma Ramotswe mildly. “And what is the point of working so much? We have enough money, I think. We do not need to be rich people. Other people can be rich if they want to. We are happy just as we are.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was sure that they were happy, but pointed out that he would not be happy if he had to turn people away, or cut corners in his work.

  “I cannot do quick, shoddy work,” he said. “That catches up with you sooner or later. The worst thing a mechanic can see is a car he looks after broken down at the edge of the road. Such a mechanic has to hide his face. I could not live like that.”

  “Well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Perhaps you could take another apprentice. A good one this time. Or you could employ an assistant mechanic—a qualified person.”

  “How would I know that he would be any good?” asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I cannot just employ the first person who walks into the garage.”

  Mma Ramotswe explained that there were ways of preventing this from happening. They could check up on references which the candidate provided, and they could even employ somebody on a temporary basis, on the understanding that they were on approval. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni listened to these suggestions but was noncommittal. Mma Ramotswe changed tack; she had an idea that had occurred to her during the day and which she wanted to put to him.

  “Of course,” she began, “it might be possible to employ somebody who could do a bit of work for you and a bit of work for me. There might be a person who could be taught some simple garage tasks—changing oil, for instance—and who would at the same time be able to do some enquiry work in the agency. I was not thinking of somebody who was a detective, but of somebody who could take some of the burden off Mma Makutsi and myself. We seem to have too much work these days and it would be useful.”