Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s meeting had not been an easy one. “The members of the Benevolent Association are always complaining,” he said as he sat down at the kitchen table. “They expect the committee to deal with all their problems—not just one or two problems, but all of them.”
“Some people can be like that,” said Mma Ramotswe, as she mashed the potatoes for their shepherd’s pie. “Perhaps it is because we have become spoiled. We have so much these days that we think it is our due.”
“And I am just the treasurer,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I have about twenty-seven thousand pula in the common good fund at the moment, and so I can’t do everything. But they are always asking me to pay for their grandfather’s funeral, or to cover the school fees of the children of a late mechanic, or even to fund people’s weddings. They expect all that, Mma! That is what they ask for.”
“You cannot do it, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There is not enough money in Botswana to pay for half the things people want paid for. It just isn’t possible.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “Sometimes I feel like throwing everything in, you know. I feel like getting all the papers together—all the accounts and receipts and so on—and passing it over to the members and saying: ‘Here you are. You do it now.’ ”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Maybe you should do just that, Rra. That would show them.” She paused. “Maybe…maybe you could take a break.”
“From being treasurer?”
“From everything,” she said. “You could take a break from being treasurer and…” She turned round from the stove to look directly at her husband. “And you could take a break from the garage too. A holiday, in fact.”
He stared at her, puzzled. “Me?” he said. “Me?”
“Yes, why not? Everybody needs a holiday at some time. We’re not meant to go on working until…until we drop.”
She uttered the words “until we drop” with her heart in her mouth. Men did drop—they dropped rather often and with very little notice—and no woman with a husband should tempt Providence by talking lightly about such things. She knew many men who had dropped, often without the chance to say goodbye to their wives; they just dropped, more or less where they stood.
“But some of us have to go on working,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Some of us have to carry on, because if we did not, then everything would come to a stop. What would happen at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors if I said that I had had enough and was going to stop working? It would come to a grinding halt, Mma, and that would be that. It would be Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors (Now Late), Mma, that is what it would be.”
She took a moment to think about this. What Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said was probably true. There was Fanwell, of course, who was now a qualified mechanic even if she—and others—still called him an apprentice. And there was Charlie, who had recently been seconded to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency because there was not enough work for him in the garage. But could either of these—or indeed both together—manage the business in the absence of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni? She thought not. Charlie had always needed close supervision or he would lose his temper with an engine and start hitting it with a hammer; he would be no use. Fanwell was a much better, much more patient mechanic, but he was reticent in his manner, and it was difficult to see him coping with some of the more assertive customers, particularly those who objected to the size of the bills that had to be issued for servicing or repairing a car. Cars were expensive things, and anything to do with their maintenance was correspondingly costly, even if a garage was modest in its charges. Fanwell was too gentle, she thought, to fight that particular corner.
Mma Ramotswe returned to her task, but she had planted a seed in Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s mind. He sat in his chair, looking up at the ceiling, drumming his fingers lightly on the table. Then he stood up, crossed to the window, and looked out into the yard. It was dark outside, and the light in the kitchen prevented his seeing the stars that hung, in great draperies of silver, above the land.
Turning away from the window, he addressed Mma Ramotswe. “Of course, you could, you know. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”
She stirred the pot with the wooden spoon she had owned since the age of eight—an artefact of her childhood that still reminded her of the aunt who had given it to her. It was another world, the world of childhood and of Mochudi—a world of openness and innocence, a world in which the old Botswana ways were not just the customs that people remembered with fondness but the precepts and habits by which people led their day-to-day lives. We have lost so much, she thought. Our dear country has lost so much. But everybody had lost something—it was not just Botswana, which had perhaps lost less than others. So many people had lost that sense of identification with the land that gave meaning to life; that fixed one firmly to a place one loved. At least we still have that, she thought: at least we still have land that we can call our place; acacia trees that are our acacia trees; a sky that is our sky because it watched over our mothers and fathers and took them up into it, embraced them, when they became late. We still have that, no matter how big and frightening the world becomes.
The thoughts inspired by the simple wooden spoon gave way to his question. What had he suggested she do? Or not do, perhaps?
“Me? Do what, Rra?”
“Take a holiday, Mma. You work so hard—”
She cut him short. “A holiday? No, I was not talking about myself, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. I was talking about other people taking a holiday—maybe even you.”
He shook his head. “And I told you I cannot, Mma, but then I thought: Why doesn’t Mma Ramotswe take a holiday herself? That’s what I thought, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “But I can’t possibly take a holiday, Rra. Who would look after the agency?”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not hesitate. “Mma Makutsi.”
Mma Ramotswe laid down the wooden spoon. Mma Makutsi had many virtues—she was the first to admit that—but the thought of leaving her in sole charge of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was absurd. Judgement was needed to run something like a detective agency, and she was not at all sure that Mma Makutsi had that. Yes, she was keen and hard-working, and yes, her filing was probably second to none in all Botswana, but the agency dealt with some very delicate matters and Mma Makutsi had never been renowned for her tact. If she were left in charge, there was bound to be a point at which she would say something ill-considered or even downright confrontational. Look at how she always succeeded in riling Charlie when anybody with any real sense would know that a young man like that has to be handled with circumspection. If you criticised somebody like Charlie or, worse still, shouted at him, you would be guaranteed to get nowhere; in fact, you could more or less be assured of going backwards. No, she could not countenance leaving Mma Makutsi in charge of the agency, and she explained to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni why this should be so.
He listened courteously, as he always did when she—or anybody else, for that matter—addressed him. Once she had finished, he smiled. “Everything you say may be true, Mma,” he conceded. “It is true that Mma Makutsi can be a little bit difficult from time to time, but in spite of that she is still very good at her job. And remember that she got ninety-seven per cent in the—”
“Oh, I know all about that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We have all heard about that ninety-seven per cent. But that was for things like filing and shorthand. I’m talking about ordinary human skills now.”
“Well, I think she has those too,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And even if she doesn’t have them at the moment, how is she going to develop them if you never give her a chance? How does somebody who is down at the bottom”—and here he gestured with one hand to demonstrate the lowest rung on the ladder—“how can somebody who is down there get up here?” His hand was raised to above his head—a social and professional elevation separated from the starting point by an ascent beyond scaling.
He waited for her to respond, but she did not. She realised that he w
as right: people had to be given their chance.
“Well, Mma?” pressed Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.
“I still don’t think I need a holiday,” she said. “Everything is going very well at the moment, and I don’t want to put a spanner in the works.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s eyes lit up at the use of the mechanical metaphor. “Talking of putting spanners in the works,” he said, smiling in pleasure at the recollection, “one of our clients brought his car in today. We had serviced it only six months ago and so I wasn’t expecting it.”
“And?”
“He said that the engine was making a strange noise.”
“Ah.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s tone changed. He was now the concerned doctor, conveying to the family of a patient some item of bad news. “So I drove it round the block and listened. And yes, the engine was making a very discouraging noise—a sort of clanking sound that meant that all was very definitely not going well. So I took the vehicle back to the garage and opened up the engine compartment. And you know what I found?”
Mma Ramotswe could not resist answering. “A spanner? There was a spanner in the works?”
He looked crestfallen. “Well, yes, that’s exactly what I found. It had been left there by Charlie when he serviced the car some months earlier, and it had become entangled with all sorts of bits and pieces.”
Mma Ramotswe rolled her eyes heavenwards. “Charlie is very slow to learn, isn’t he?”
“He is, I’m afraid,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “But remember that he is still very young and things could get better.”
“Do you think they will?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni thought for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he said at last.
It was not the answer that Mma Ramotswe would have given. She was of the view that things were getting better, even if there were temporary setbacks and even if there was very little light at the end of the tunnel. But in her opinion, the last thing one should do was to bemoan the fact that things were changing. She would not slip into a position that failed to see any progress in human affairs. There was a great deal of progress being made, right under their noses, particularly in Africa, and this progress was good. Life was much harder for tyrants than it had been before. There were more civil liberties, more literacy, more children surviving that first critical year of infancy; there was a lot of which one could be proud. And Charlie would be a better young man eventually—all he needed was time, which was what we all required.
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni tried another tack. “But you deserve it, Mma. We all agree about that. We all think you deserve a holiday.”
She smiled at the kindness, but then, as she turned back towards the pot on the stove, the implications of what he had just said sunk in. We all think you deserve a holiday…This meant that they had been discussing it among themselves. Why had they done this? Was it a…she hardly dared say the word to herself, but now she forced herself to face it. Was it a plot?
She closed her eyes and for a moment saw Mma Makutsi lurking in the shadows somewhere with some faceless ally, her presence only betrayed by a glint of light catching the glass of her spectacles. And she heard her saying, “Well, that’s got rid of her for the time being. She’ll be off for…” And the other conspirator would say, “She’ll be off forever, not that she’ll suspect it.”
The resentment welled up within her, but subsided very quickly when she reminded herself that she was putting these words into Mma Makutsi’s mouth and there was no evidence, not one scrap, that suggested that her colleague—or anybody else—wanted her out of the way. Even so, she saw no reason at all to take a holiday—none whatsoever. And Mma Makutsi would never betray her; she just would not. There were some people about whom one could say that sort of thing—and Mma Makutsi was one such person—but generally one had to be careful about trusting the rest of humanity; sometimes the people who were closest to you were also those who were furthest away. One should remember that, she told herself: there were no plots being hatched against her—there just were not. But how do you know that? asked a tiny voice, from somewhere down below. How can you be so sure?
She looked down at her shoes. Had they spoken? If there were any speaking shoes, then they belonged to Mma Makutsi, not to her; unless, of course, the condition, whatever it was, were an infectious one, and she had now caught it. No, that was ridiculous—patently so. She knew that any utterances that came from down below were almost certainly no more than tricks played by the mind, even if the questions they asked, or the observations they made, seemed penetrating and acute. One might hear anything, if one allowed one’s mind to wander; people said, for instance, that if you stood out under the stars above the Kalahari, under those great silver-white fields of distant light, you could hear a tsk-tsk sound that was the stars calling to their hunting dogs. But in reality there was no sound—or if there was, it came from somewhere closer at hand, from scurrying insects, timid creatures whose job it was to whistle and whisper in the darkness.
“I just know,” she muttered.
“More fool you,” said the shoes.
CHAPTER TWO
THE BIRDS HAVE THEIR WORK TO DO
THE EVENTS that preceded Mma Ramotswe’s holiday happened in such rapid succession that later it was difficult for her to identify the point at which she had reached the decision to take the holiday. In fact, when she came to think about it, she even wondered whether she had actually made such a decision, or whether it had somehow been made for her.
The day after her discussion in the kitchen with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, she had gone into work early, expecting to be the first to arrive in the office. But she was not—not only was Mma Makutsi already there, seated at her desk, but Charlie was there too, leaning nonchalantly against one of the two filing cabinets, a mug of steaming tea in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other.
“So!” exclaimed Mma Ramotswe as she entered the office. “So, here we all are already—and I thought I would be the first one in.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s only seven-fifteen, I see.”
“It is always good to start early,” said Mma Makutsi brightly. “If there are many things to do, then it is best to start them early in the morning—chop, chop—and get them finished. That is the way to do things.”
Charlie nodded his agreement. “Chop, chop,” he said.
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “That is a very good way of approaching things. Yes, I agree.” She paused. “But are we particularly busy at the moment? I thought things were a bit quiet. Have other things come in?”
Charlie glanced at Mma Makutsi. She was unfazed by this, and shook her head as if to say that one could never be too careful. “You never know,” she said. “We are often quiet, and then the next moment we are very busy. You can never tell.”
“True,” said Mma Ramotswe. “What goes up can also come down.”
“Or what is down can always go up,” added Charlie.
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe, crossing to her desk. “That is also true.”
She sat down at her desk while Mma Makutsi switched on the kettle to make her a cup of red bush tea.
“Somebody is coming in at eight,” she said.
Mma Ramotswe turned a page of her desktop diary—a gift from the Botswana Stationery Company. “I don’t see anything in the diary.”
“No, it is not there yet,” said Mma Makutsi. “I have not had time to put it in. But I shall do that now.”
She crossed the room to Mma Ramotswe’s desk, took the diary from her, and made an entry. Then she handed it back and Mma Ramotswe read: 8 a.m.—Mr. Polopetsi. She looked up enquiringly at Mma Makutsi. “A social call, Mma?”
Mma Makutsi busied herself with the teapot. “Not exactly.”
“So did he just ask for an appointment about something?”
Mma Makutsi affected a casual shrug of the shoulders. “Actually, I suggested that he come in. I asked him, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe frowned. “You didn’
t hold out the prospect of a job, did you?” She glanced at Charlie. “You know that we can’t really take anybody else on. You know that, don’t you?” Charlie was expensive enough, and his wages were paid as an act of charity more than anything else. He was useful enough—in his way—but a small business such as the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency had very little spare cash to spend on salaries.
Mma Makutsi was quick to reassure her. “Mr. Polopetsi is all right, Mma. He does not need to earn more money because his wife has got that very good job now and she is well paid. He also gets something for his afternoons teaching chemistry. No, he is not looking for a full-time job.”
“Nor a part-time one,” muttered Mma Ramotswe. “At least I hope he isn’t.”
“No, he is not looking for anything involving money. I can assure you of that, Mma. This is not about money.”
“Then what is it about, Mma?”
The kettle had now boiled, and Mma Makutsi was filling the teapot set aside for red bush tea. “It’s to do with that holiday you were talking about, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath. The breezy effrontery of Mma Makutsi was quite extraordinary; it deserved a response, but what could one say to somebody who took such liberties with historical truth? “That I was…” She trailed off.
“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi with all the casual confidence of one who was simply recalling what had happened rather than spinning a web of half-truths and distortions. “Yesterday. Remember? You said you were thinking of taking a holiday.”
Mma Ramotswe was genuinely perplexed. She could not recall her exact words when the subject had been raised; it was always possible that she had been misinterpreted, or that she had said something she had not intended to say. “Did I say that?” she asked.