Alexander Mccall Smith - Ladies' Detective Agency 05 (12 page)

“Have you seen the paper today?” she
asked.

Mma Ramotswe shook her head as she walked over to her desk.
“I have not seen it,” she said. “I have been busy taking the
children here and there. I have had no time to sit down.” She threw Mma
Makutsi a quizzical glance. “Is there something special in
it?”

So she does not know, thought Mma Makutsi. Well, she would
have to tell her, and it would probably be a shock for her.

“Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni is going to jump,” she said. “It is in the paper
this morning.”

Mma Ramotswe stared at Mma Makutsi. What was she
talking about? What was this nonsense about Mr J.L.B. Matekoni jumping?

“Out of a plane,” went on Mma Makutsi quickly. “Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni is going to do a parachute jump.”

Mma Ramotswe laughed.
“What nonsense!” she said. “Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would never do
something like that. Who has put such nonsense in the newspapers?”

“It’s true,” said Mma Makutsi. “It’s one of
these charity jumps. Mma Potokwane …”

She had to say no
more. At the mention of Mma Potokwane’s name, Mma Ramotswe’s
expression changed. “Mma Potokwane?” she said sharply. “She
has been forcing Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to do things again? A parachute
jump?”

Mma Makutsi nodded. “It is in the paper,” she
said. “And I have spoken to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni myself. He has confirmed
that it is true.”

Mma Ramotswe sat quite still. For a moment she
said nothing, as the implications of Mma Makutsi’s revelations sank in.
Then she thought, I shall be a widow. I shall be a widow before I am even
married.

Mma Makutsi could see the effect the news was having on Mma
Ramotswe and she searched for words that might help.

“I
don’t think he wants to do it,” she said quietly. “But now he
is trapped. Mma Potokwane has told the newspapers.”

Mma Ramotswe
said nothing, while Mma Makutsi continued. “You must go into the garage
right now,” she said. “You must put a stop to it. You must forbid
him. It is too dangerous.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “I do not
think that it is a good idea. But I’m not sure that I can forbid him. He
is not a child.”

“But you are his wife,” said Mma
Makutsi. “Or you are almost his wife. You have the right to stop him
doing something dangerous.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. “No, I do
not have that right. I can talk to him about it, but if you try to stop people
from doing things they can resent it. I do not want Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to think
that I am telling him what to do all the time. That is not a good start for a
marriage.”

“But it hasn’t started yet,”
protested Mma Makutsi. “You are just an engaged lady. And you’ve
been an engaged lady for a long time now. There is no sign of a wedding.”
She stopped, realising that perhaps she had gone too far. What she said was
quite true, but it did not help to draw attention to their long engagement and
to the conspicuous absence of any wedding plans.

Mma Ramotswe was not
offended. “You are right,” she said. “I am a very engaged
lady. I have been waiting for a long time. But you cannot push men around. They
do not like it. They like to feel that they are making their own
decisions.”

“Even when they are not?” interjected Mma
Makutsi.

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We all know that
it is women who take the decisions, but we have to let men think that the
decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of
women.”

Mma Makutsi took off her glasses and polished them on her
lace handkerchief, now threadbare but so loved. This was the handkerchief that
she had bought when she was at the Botswana Secretarial College, at a time when
she had virtually nothing else, and it meant a great deal to her.

“So we should say nothing at the moment?” she said. “And
then …”

“And then we find a chance to say something
very small,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We shall find some way to get Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni out of this. But it will be done carefully, and he will think
that he has changed his mind.”

Mma Makutsi smiled. “You are
very clever with men, Mma. You know how their minds work.”

Mma
Ramotswe shrugged. “When I was a girl I used to watch little boys playing
and I saw what they did. Now that I am a lady, I know that there is not much
difference. Boys and men are the same people, in different clothes. Boys wear
short trousers and men wear long trousers. But they are just the same if you
take their trousers off.”

Mma Makutsi stared at Mma Ramotswe,
who, suddenly flustered, added quickly, “That is not what I meant to say.
What I meant to say is that trousers mean nothing. Men think like boys, and if
you understand boys, then you understand men. That is what I meant to
say.”

“I thought so,” said Mma Makutsi. “I did
not think that you meant anything else.”

“Good,” said
Mma Ramotswe briskly. “Then let us have a cup of tea and think about how
we are going to deal with this problem which Mma Holonga brought us the other
day. We cannot sit here all day talking about men. We must get down to work.
There is much to do.”

Mma Makutsi made the bush tea and they
sipped on the dark red liquid as they discussed the best approach to the issue
of Mma Holonga’s suitors. Tea, of course, made the problem seem smaller,
as it always does, and by the time they reached the bottom of their cups, and
Mma Makutsi had reached for the slightly chipped tea-pot to pour a refill, it
had become clear what they would have to do.

CHAPTER
NINE

HOW TO HANDLE YOUNG MEN THROUGH THE APPLICATION OF
PSYCHOLOGY

A
T THE end of that day’s work Mma
Ramotswe so engineered matters that she was standing at the door of her tiny
white van at precisely the time—one minute to five—that the two
apprentices came out of the garage entrance, wiping their greasy hands on a
handful of the loose white lint provided by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni knew all about oil-dermatitis, the condition which stalked mechanics
and which had struck several of his brother mechanics over the years, and he
made every effort to drum the lesson into the heads of his apprentices. Not
that this worked, of course; they were still inclined to limit themselves to a
quick plunge of the hands into a bucket of lukewarm water, but at least on
occasion they resorted to lint and made some effort to do it properly. There
was an old barrel for the used lint, and for other detritus of their calling,
but they tended to ignore this and now Mma Ramotswe saw the lint tossed
casually to the ground. As they did so, the older apprentice looked up and saw
her watching them. He muttered something to his friend, and they dutifully
picked up the lint and walked off to deposit it in the barrel.

“You are very tidy,” called out Mma Ramotswe when they
re-emerged. “Mr J.L.B. Matekoni will be pleased.”

“We
were going to put it there anyway,” said the younger apprentice
reproachfully. “You don’t have to tell us to do it,
Mma.”

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I knew that. I
thought perhaps you had just dropped it by mistake. That sometimes happens,
doesn’t it? I have often seen you drop things by mistake. Sweet papers.
Chip bags. Newspapers.”

The apprentices, who had now drawn level
with the tiny white van, looked at their shoes sheepishly. They were no match
for Mma Ramotswe, and they knew it.

“But I don’t want to
talk about litter,” said Mma Ramotswe kindly. “I can see that you
have been working very hard today, and I thought I would drive you both home.
It will save you waiting for a minibus.”

“You are very
kind, Mma,” said the older apprentice.

Mma Ramotswe gestured to
the passenger seat. “You sit in there, Charlie. You are the older one.
And you,” she looked at the younger apprentice and pointed to the back of
the van, “you can go there. Next time you can ride in front.”

She had a rough idea where the two young men lived. The younger one stayed
with his uncle in a house beyond the Francistown Road brewery and the older one
lodged with an aunt and uncle near the orphan farm at Tlokweng. It would take
over half an hour to deliver them both, and the children would be waiting for
her at home, but this was important and she would do it cheerfully.

She would deliver the younger one first, skirting the edge of the town,
driving past the university and the Sun Hotel and the road to Maru-a-Pula. Then
Nyerere Drive bore left, past the end of Elephant Road, and ran down to Nelson
Mandela Drive, which she still thought of as the old Francistown Road. They
crossed the dry course of the Segoditshane River and then the older apprentice
directed her to a side road lined by a row of small, well-kept houses.

“That is his uncle’s place over there,” he said, pointing
to one of the houses. “He lives in that shack on the side. That is where
he sleeps, but he eats inside with the family.”

They stopped
outside the gate and the younger apprentice jumped out of the van and clapped
his hands in gratitude. Mma Ramotswe smiled and said through the open window,
“I am glad that I saved you a walk.” Then she waved and they drove
off.

“He is a good boy,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He will
make a good husband for some girl one day.”

“Hah!”
said the older apprentice. “That girl will have to catch him first. He is
a quick runner, that boy. It will not be easy for the girls!”

Mma
Ramotswe pretended to look interested. “But what if a very beautiful girl
with lots of money saw him? What then? Surely he would like to marry a girl
like that and have a large car? Perhaps even one of those German cars that you
think are so smart. What then?”

The apprentice laughed.
“Oh, I would marry a girl like that double-quick. But girls like that
won’t look at boys like us. We are just apprentice mechanics. Girls like
that want boys from rich families or with very good jobs. Accountants. People
like that. We just get ordinary girls.”

Mma Ramotswe clucked her
tongue. “Oh! That is very sad. It is a pity that you don’t know how
to attract more glamorous girls. It is a great pity.” She paused before
saying, almost as an aside, “I could tell you, of course.”

The apprentice looked at her incredulously. “You, Mma? You could tell
me how to attract that sort of girl?”

“Of course I
could,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am a woman, remember? I used to be a
girl. I know how girls think. Just because I am a bit older now and I do not
run round looking at boys doesn’t mean that I have forgotten how girls
think.”

The apprentice raised an eyebrow. “You tell me
then,” he said. “You tell me this secret.”

Mma
Ramotswe was silent. This, she thought, was the difficult part. She had to make
sure that the apprentice would take what she had to say seriously, and that
meant that she should not be too quick to impart the information.

“I don’t know whether I should tell you,” she said.
“I cannot just tell anybody. I would only want to tell a man who would be
kind to these glamorous girls. Just because they are glamorous doesn’t
mean that they do not have their feelings. Maybe I should wait a few years
before I tell you.”

The apprentice, who had been smiling, now
frowned. “I would treat such a girl very well, Mma. You can count on
me.”

Mma Ramotswe concentrated on her driving. There was an
elderly man on a bicycle ahead of them, a battered hat perched on his head, and
a red hen tied to the carrier on the back of his cycle. She slowed down, giving
him a wide berth.

“That hen is making its last journey,”
she said. “He will be taking it to somebody who will eat it.”

The apprentice glanced behind him. “That is what happens to all hens.
That is what they are for.”

“They may not think
that,” said Mma Ramotswe.

The apprentice laughed. “They
cannot think. They have very small heads. There are no brains in a
chicken.”

“What is in their heads, then?” asked Mma
Ramotswe.

“There is just blood and some bits of meat,” said
the apprentice. “I have seen it. There is no brain.”

Mma
Ramotswe nodded. “Oh,” she said. There was no point in arguing with
these boys about matters of this sort; they were usually quite adamant that
they were right, even if there was no basis for what they said.

“But what is this thing about girls?” the apprentice persisted.
“You can tell me, Mma. I may talk about girls a lot, but I am very kind
to them. You ask Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He has seen how well I treat
girls.”

They were now nearing the Tlokweng Road, and Mma Ramotswe
thought that the time was ripe. She had aroused the apprentice’s
attention and now he was listening to her.

“Well then,”
she began, “I will tell you a very certain way to attract the attention
of one of these glamorous girls. You must become well-known. If you are
well-known—if your name is in the papers—then these girls cannot
resist you. You look about you and see what sort of man has that sort of lady.
It is always the ones who are in the papers. They get those girls every
time.”