In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “It must be useful to have hearing like that,” said Mma Makutsi. “We must talk about it more some day. But in the meantime, you might wish to tell me what this man said to Mma Ramotswe.”

  Mr Polopetsi looked Mma Makutsi straight in the eye. “I would not normally tell somebody about Mma Ramotswe’s business,” he pronounced. “But this is different. I was going to tell you anyway—later on.”

  “Well?” said Mma Makutsi.

  Mr Polopetsi lowered his voice. The apprentice was standing beside the car on which they had been working and was looking at them intently.

  “He asked her for money,” he whispered. “He asked her for ten thousand pula. Yes, ten thousand!”

  “And?”

  “And he said that if she didn’t pay, then he was going to go to the police and tell them that she is still married to him and that she should not have married Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.” He stopped, watching the effect of his words.

  For a few moments Mma Makutsi did nothing. Then she reached forward and placed a finger across her lips.

  “You must never mention this to anybody,” she said. “You must promise me that.”

  He nodded gravely. “Of course I shall not.”

  Mma Makutsi turned away and went back into her office, her heart cold within her. You are my mother and my sister, she thought. You gave me my job. You helped me. You held my hand and wept with me when my brother became late. You are the one who made me feel that it was possible for a person from Bobonong to do well and to hold her head up in anybody’s company. And now this man is threatening to bring shame upon you. I cannot allow that. I cannot.

  She stopped. Mr Polopetsi had been watching her silently, but now he called out. “Mma! Do not worry. I will do something to stop that man. Mma Ramotswe is the woman who gave me a job. She is the one who knocked me down—but then she picked me up again. I will deal with that man.”

  Mma Makutsi turned round and looked at Mr Polopetsi. It was kind of him to say that, and she was touched by his loyalty. But what could a man like that do? Not very much, she feared.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MMA RAMOTSWE AND MR J.L.B. MATEKONI HAVE DINNER IN THEIR HOUSE ON ZEBRA DRIVE

  M R J.L.B. MATEKONI was late coming home for dinner that evening. Normally he came back to the house at about six o’clock, which was almost an hour later than Mma Ramotswe. She would leave the office at five, or thereabouts, although she sometimes came back even earlier. If there was nothing particular happening at the agency, she would look at Mma Makutsi and ask her if there was any reason why they should stay in the office. Sometimes she did not even have to say anything, but would give a look that said, “I’ve had enough; it’s a hot afternoon and it would be so much better being at home.” And Mma Makutsi would return the look with a look of her own which said, “You’re right, as usual, Mma Ramotswe.” And with that unspoken exchange, Mma Ramotswe would pick up her bag and close the window that looked out to the side of the garage. Then she would give Mma Makutsi a ride into town, or back to her house in Extension Two, before she went home to Zebra Drive.

  One advantage of getting home early was that she would be there for the children when they returned from school. Motholeli always came back a little later than Puso, as her wheelchair had to be pushed all the way from the school. The girls in her class had arranged a rota for this, and took it in turns, week and week about, to wheel their classmate home. The boys had been involved in this too, and had vied with one another for the privilege, but they had, on the whole, been found to be unsatisfactory. Several of the boys—indeed most of them—had been unable to resist the temptation of pushing the wheelchair too fast and there had been an unfortunate incident when one of them had lost control of the chair and Motholeli had careered into a ditch and tumbled out. She had been unharmed by this fall, but the boy had run away in fright and a passer-by, a cook at one of the large houses on Nyerere Drive, had come to her rescue and had helped her back into the chair and pushed her back, at reasonable speed, to the house.

  “That boy is very stupid,” said the cook.

  “He is usually a nice boy,” Motholeli replied. “He became frightened. Maybe he thought that he had killed me or something.”

  “He should not have run away,” said the cook. “That is what they call a hit and run. It is very bad.”

  Puso was too young to be involved in getting his sister home. He could manage the wheelchair, but he had a tendency to be unreliable. He could not be counted upon to come to Motholeli’s classroom at the right time, and it was also quite possible that he would lose interest halfway through and run after a lizard or something else that attracted his attention. He was a dreamy boy, moody even, and it was sometimes rather difficult to make out what he was thinking about.

  “He thinks differently,” observed Mma Ramotswe, not saying, out of delicacy, that the obvious reason for this—in her mind, and in the mind of most, no doubt—was that Puso had in his veins a fair measure of bushman blood. People were funny about that. Some were unkind to such people, but in Mma Ramotswe’s opinion there was no need for this. There should be room in our hearts for all the people of this country, she said, and those people are our brothers and sisters too. This is their place as much as it is ours. That seemed clear to her, and she had no time for those who had raised an eyebrow when she and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had taken on these children from the orphan farm. There were some households where this would not have happened, on the grounds that they were not of pure Tswana blood, but not that house on Zebra Drive.

  Yet Mma Ramotswe had to admit that there were aspects about Puso’s behaviour that people could well point to and say, “Well, there you are! That is because he is thinking of the Kalahari all the time and wants to be out in the bush. It is just the way his heart works.” Well, thought Mma Ramotswe, that might be so; perhaps there stirred within this strange little boy some ancient yearnings which came to him from his people. But even if this were so, then what difference did it make? The important thing was that he should be happy, and in his way he was. He would never be a mechanic, he would never take over the business from Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, but then did that matter all that much? His sister, to the surprise of all, had shown great interest in machinery and had declared her intention of training as a mechanic. So that left it open for him to pursue some quite different career, even if it was difficult to think at the moment what such a career might be. He liked to chase lizards and to sit under trees and look up at the birds. He also liked to make small piles of rocks—they were all over the yard—on which Mma Ramo-tswe’s maid, Rose, sometimes stubbed her toes when she went to hang out the washing. What might such a boy expect to do when he grew up? What clues did such pursuits give to the turn his life would take?

  “There are jobs with the game department,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had pointed out. “They need people who can track animals. Maybe he will be happy out there in the bush, tracking giraffe or whatever it is they do. For some people that is the best job there is.”

  On that evening, after the awful encounter with Note Mokoti, the children had noticed that there was something wrong with Mma Ramotswe. Puso had asked a question to which she had begun to respond before she had trailed off into silence, as if her thoughts had drifted off elsewhere. He had repeated his question, but this time she had said nothing, and he had gone off in puzzlement. Motholeli, finding her standing in the kitchen staring blankly out of the window, had offered to help her with the preparation of the evening meal, and had received a similar, rather distracted response. She had waited for Mma Ramotswe to say something else, and when nothing further came she had asked her whether there was anything wrong.

  “I am thinking of something,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I’m sorry if I am not listening to you. I am thinking of something that happened today.”

  “Was it a bad thing?” asked Motholeli.

  “It was,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But I cannot talk about it now. I’m sorry. I am feeling sad and I do not want to talk.�
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  The children had left her to herself. Adults were sometimes strange in their behaviour—all children knew that—and the best thing to do in such circumstances was to leave the adult alone. Matters preyed on their mind, matters to which children could never be party; a tactful child understood that very well.

  But when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni came home that evening and he too seemed to be preoccupied and distant, they knew that something was very wrong.

  “There is something bad happening at the garage,” whispered Motholeli to her brother. “They are very unhappy.”

  He had looked at her anxiously. “Will we have to go back to the orphan farm?” he asked.

  “I hope not,” she said. “I am happy living here in Zebra Drive. Perhaps they will get over it.”

  She tried to sound confident, but it was difficult, and her spirits sank even further when they sat down at the table for supper and Mma Ramotswe forgot even to say grace and remained silent for almost the whole meal. Afterwards, wheeling herself into her brother’s room, where she found him lying disconsolately on his bed, she told him that whatever happened, he was not to worry about being by himself.

  “Even if we go back to Mma Potokwane,” she said, “she will make sure that we are kept together. She has always done that.”

  Puso stared at her miserably. “I do not want to leave. I am very happy here in this house. This is the best food I have ever eaten in my life.”

  “And they are the best people we have ever met,” she said. “There is nobody in Botswana, nobody, as good and kind as Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Nobody.”

  The little boy nodded vigorously. “I know that,” he said. “Will they come and see us at the orphan farm?”

  “Of course they will come—if we have to go back,” she reassured him. But her reassurance could not prevent the tears that he now began to shed, tears for everything that had happened to him, for the loss of the mother whom he could not remember, for the thought that in this large and frightening world there was nobody, other than his sister, to whom he could turn, who might not be taken away from him.

  AFTER THE CHILDREN had gone off to their rooms for the night, Mma Ramotswe made herself a cup of bush tea and walked out onto the verandah. She had thought that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was in the living room, as she had heard the radio on in there and had assumed that he was sitting in his favourite chair brooding over whatever mechanical problem it was that had made him so quiet that night. She imagined that it was a mechanical problem, because that was all that seemed to upset Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; and such problems inevitably solved themselves.

  “You are very quiet tonight,” she observed.

  He looked up at her. “And so are you,” he replied.

  “Yes,” she said. “We are both quiet.”

  She sat down beside him, balancing her tea cup on her knee. As she did so, she glanced at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; the thought had occurred to her that he might be feeling depressed—and that was an alarming prospect—but she quickly discounted this. He had behaved very differently when he had been depressed, acting in a listless, vague way. Now, by contrast, he was very obviously thinking of one particular thing.

  She looked out into the garden, and the night. It was warm and the moon was almost full, throwing shadows of the acacia, of the mopipi tree, of shrubs that had no name. Mma Ramotswe liked to walk in her garden in the evening, taking care to move slowly and with firm tread; those who crept about at night risked stepping on a snake if they were not careful, as snakes move out of our way only if they feel vibrations in the ground. A light person—a person of non-traditional build, for example—was at far greater risk of being bitten by a snake for that very reason. That was another argument, of course, for maintaining traditional build—consideration for snakes, and safety too.

  Mma Ramotswe was well aware of the difficulties now faced by traditionally built people, particularly by traditionally built ladies. There was a time in Botswana when nobody paid much attention to thin people—indeed thin people might sometimes simply not be seen at all, as they could so easily be looked past. If a thin person stood against a background of acacia trees and grass, then might he not either merge into the background or be thought to be a stick or even a shadow? This was never a danger with a traditionally built person; such a person would stand in the landscape with the same prominence and authority as a baobab tree.

  There was no doubt in Mma Ramotswe’s mind that Botswana had to get back to the values which had always sustained the country and which had made it by far the best country in Africa. There were many of these values, including respect for age—for the grandmothers who knew so much and had seen so much hardship—and respect for those who were traditionally built. It was all very well being a modern society, but the advent of prosperity and the growth of the towns was a poisoned cup from which one should drink with the greatest caution. One might have all the things which the modern world offered, but what was the use of these if they destroyed all that which gave you strength and courage and pride in yourself and your country? Mma Ramotswe was horrified when she read of people being described in the newspapers as consumers. That was a horrible, horrible word, which sounded rather too like cucumber, a vegetable for which she had little time. People were not just greedy consumers, grabbing everything that came their way, nor were they cucumbers for that matter; they were Batswana, they were people!

  But it was not on these matters, grave as they were, that Mma Ramotswe’s mind was dwelling; she was thinking, rather, of the meeting with Note and of the threat he had made. He had said that he would come for the money in a few days, and it was the prospect of this visit, rather than the paying over of the money itself, which was unsettling her. She could afford the money—just—but she was dreading the idea that Note would come to the house. It seemed to her that this would be a form of defiling; the house on Zebra Drive was a place of sun and of happiness, and she did not want it to be associated in any way with him. In fact, she had already made her decision, and was now mulling over how to put it into operation. She had written a cheque that afternoon and would take it to him, and the sooner that she did that the better.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took a sip of his tea. “You are very worried about something,” he said quietly. “Do you want to tell me what it is?”

  Mma Ramotswe did not reply. How could she tell him about what Note had said? How could she tell him that they were not married; that the ceremony which the Reverend Trevor Mwamba had conducted was legally meaningless, and that, moreover, it involved the commission of a criminal offence on her part? If there were words for all this, then they were words which she could not bring herself to utter.

  The silence that hung so heavy between them was broken by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “That man came to see you, didn’t he?” he said.

  Mma Ramotswe gripped her tea cup. Mma Makutsi must have told him, or perhaps it was Mr Polopetsi. This should not surprise her: there were few secrets in a business that small.

  “He did,” she said, sighing. “He came and asked me for some money. I am going to give it to him—just to get him to go away.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “It is often like that with such people,” he said. “They come back. But you have to be careful. If you give them money, then they might just ask for more and more.”

  Mma Ramotswe knew that what he said was true. She would tell Note that there would be no more money, and next time, if he came to see her again, she would refuse him. Or would she? What if he were to threaten her again with the police? Surely she would do anything rather than face the shame which that would involve?

  “I will give him this money and tell him not to come back,” she said. “I do not want to see him again.”

  “All right,” he said. “But you must be careful.”

  She looked at him. They had not spoken at any length, and she had kept the real truth from him, but even so she felt better after this brief airing of her worry. Now she could ask about him.

 
; “What about you?” she said.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni groaned. “Oh dear,” he said. “I am in a bad mess. I have discovered something about my house.”

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. She knew that tenants were always a risk. They treated furniture with disrespect; they burned holes in the floor and on the edge of tables with their cigarettes. She had even heard of a farmhouse not far from town which had been rented by python smugglers. Some of the pythons had escaped and taken up residence in the roof even after the tenants had been evicted. One of these had almost succeeded in taking the owners’ baby when they returned. The father had gone into the bedroom and had found the python lying on the baby, its jaws opened wide around its feet. He had saved the child, but both of them had been badly bitten by the python’s needle-like teeth.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was unlikely to have pythons in his house, of course, but it was obviously something troublesome, nonetheless. She looked at him expectantly.

  “It’s being used as a shebeen,” he blurted out. “I did not know this. I would not have allowed it to be a shebeen. But that is what it is.”

  Mma Ramotswe let out a hoot of laughter. “Your house? A shebeen?”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at her slightly reproachfully. “I do not think it is funny,” he said.

  She corrected herself quickly. “Of course not.” Her tone became concerned. “You are going to have to do something about that.” She paused. Poor Mr J.L.B. Matekoni: he was far too gentle and kind. He would never be able to take on a shebeen queen. She herself would have to sort this out; shebeen queens held no dread for her.

  “Would you like me to sort all that out?” she asked. “I can get rid of those people. It’s the sort of thing that a detective agency can do quite easily.”