Alexander Mccall Smith - Ladies' Detective Agency 05 (13 page)

The apprentice looked immediately defeated. “That is
not good news for me,” he said. “I shall never be well-known. I
shall never get into the papers.”

“Why not?” asked
Mma Ramotswe. “Why give up before you have started?”

“Because nobody is ever going to write about me,” said the
apprentice. “I am just an unknown person. I am not going to be
famous.”

“But look at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” said Mma
Ramotswe. “Look at him. He was in the papers today. Now he is
well-known.”

“That is different,” the apprentice
retorted. “He is in the papers because he is going to do a parachute
jump.”

“But you could do that,” said Mma Ramotswe, as
if the idea had just occurred. “If you were to jump out of an aeroplane
you would be all over the papers and the glamorous girls would notice all
right. They would be all over you. I know how these girls think.”

“But …” began the apprentice.

He did not finish.
“Oh yes they would,” Mma Ramotswe went on. “There is
nothing—nothing—that they like more than bravery. If you jumped out
of the plane—maybe instead of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who is possibly too old
to do that these days—then you would be the one who would get all the
attention. I guarantee it. Those girls would be waiting for you. You could take
your pick. You could choose the one with the biggest car.”

“If she had the biggest car then she would also have the biggest
bottom,” said the apprentice, smiling. “She would need a big car to
fit her bottom in. Such a girl would be very nice.”

Mma Ramotswe
would normally not have let such a remark pass without a sharp retort, but this
was not the occasion, and she simply smiled. “It seems simple to
me,” she said. “You do the jump. You get the girl. It’s
perfectly safe.”

The apprentice thought for a moment. “But
what about that Botswana Defence Force man? The one whose parachute
didn’t open. What about him?”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head.
“You are wrong there, Charlie. His parachute would have opened
if
he
had pulled the cord
. You yourself said to Mma Makutsi that
that man had probably gone to sleep. There was nothing wrong with his
parachute, you see. You are much cleverer than that man. You will not forget to
pull the cord.”

The apprentice thought for a moment. “And
you think that the papers will write about me?”

“Of course
they will,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I shall get Mma Potokwane to talk
to them again. She is always giving them stories about the orphan farm. She
will tell them to put a big photograph of you on the front page. That will
certainly be read by the sort of girl we are talking about.”

Mma
Ramotswe slowed down. A small herd of donkeys had wandered onto the road ahead
of them and had stopped in the middle, looking at the tiny white van as if they
had never before encountered a vehicle. She brought the van to a halt, glancing
quickly at the apprentice as she did so. Psychology, she thought; that is what
they called it these days, but in her view it was something much older than
that. It was woman’s knowledge, that was what it was; knowledge of how
men behaved and how they could be persuaded to do something if one approached
the matter in the right way. She had told the apprentice no lies; there were
girls who would be impressed by a young man who did a parachute jump and who
had his photograph in the papers. If men were prepared to use psychology, which
they usually were not, then they too could get women to do what they wanted
them to do. Perhaps it was fortunate, then, that men were so bad at psychology.
Men got women to do what they wanted through making them feel sorry for them,
or making them feel guilty. Men did not do this deliberately, of course, but
that was the effect.

The apprentice leaned out of his window and
shouted at the donkeys, who looked at him balefully before they began to move
slowly out of the way. Then, sitting back in his seat, he turned to Mma
Ramotswe. “I think I will do it, Mma. I think that maybe it is a good
idea to help the orphan farm. We should all do that we can.”

WHEN MMA RAMOTSWE returned to Zebra Drive it was already
beginning to get dark. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck was parked at the side
of the house, in the special spot that she had set aside for him, and she
tucked the tiny white van into its own place near the kitchen door. Lights were
on in the house, and she heard the sound of voices. They would be wondering,
she thought, where she was, and they would be hungry.

She went into
the kitchen, kicking off her shoes as she entered. Motholeli was in her
wheelchair, behind the kitchen table, chopping carrots, and Puso was stirring
something on the stove. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, standing just behind the boy, was
dropping a pinch of salt into the mixture in the pot.

“We are
cooking your dinner tonight,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You can go
and sit down, with your feet on a stool. We will call you when everything is
ready.”

Mma Ramotswe gave a cry of delight. “That is a very
big treat for me,” she said. “I am very tired for some
reason.”

She went through to the sitting room and dropped into
her favourite chair. Although the children helped in the kitchen, it was
unusual for them to cook a full meal. It must have been Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni’s idea, she reflected, and the thought filled her with gratitude
that she had such a man who would think to cook a meal. Most husbands would
never do that—would regard it as beneath their dignity to work in the
house—but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was different. It was as if he knew what it
was like to be a woman, to have all that cooking to do, for the rest of
one’s life, a whole procession of pots and pans stretching out into the
distance, seemingly endless. Women knew all about that, and dreamed about
cooking and pots and the like, but here was a man who seemed to
understand.

When they sat down to table half an hour later, Mma
Ramotswe watched proudly as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and Puso brought in the plates
of good rich food and set them at each place. Then she said grace, as she
always did, her eyes lowered to the tablecloth, as was proper.

“May the Lord look down kindly on Botswana,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“And now we thank Him for the food on our plates which has been cooked so
well.” She paused. There was more to be said about that, but for the time
being she felt that what she had said was enough and since everybody was very
hungry they should all begin.

“This is very good,” she said
after the first mouthful. “I am very happy that I have such good cooks
right here in my own house.”

“It was Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni’s idea,” said Motholeli. “Maybe he could start a
Tlokweng Road Speedy Restaurant.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni laughed.
“I could not do that. I am only good at fixing cars. That is all I can
do.”

“But you can jump by parachute,” said Motholeli.
“You can do that too. They were talking about it at school.”

There was a sudden silence, and it seemed as if a cloud had passed over the
gathering. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s fork paused where it was, half way to his
mouth, and Mma Ramotswe’s knife stopped cutting into a large piece of
pumpkin. She looked up at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who held her glance only for a
moment before he looked away.

“Oh that,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“That is all a mistake. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was going to do a parachute
jump, but now Charlie, the apprentice at the garage, has offered to do it
instead. I have already spoken to Mma Potokwane about it and she is very
pleased with the new arrangements. She said that she was sure that Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni would want to give that young man a chance, and I said I would ask him
what he thought.”

They all looked at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, whose
eyes had opened wide as Mma Ramotswe spoke.

“Well?” said
Mma Ramotswe, returning to her task of cutting the pumpkin. “What would
you like to do, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? Would you like to give that boy a
chance?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked up at the ceiling. “I
could do, I suppose,” he said.

“Good,” said Mma
Ramotswe. “You are a very generous man. Charlie will be very
pleased.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. “It is nothing,”
he said. “Nothing.”

They continued with the meal. Mma
Ramotswe noticed that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni appeared to be in a very good mood and
made several amusing remarks about the day’s events, including a joke
about a gearbox, which they all laughed at but which none of them understood.
Then, when the plates were cleared away and the children were out of the room,
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni left his chair and, standing over Mma Ramotswe’s
chair, he took her hand and said, “You are a kind woman, Mma Ramotswe,
and I am very lucky to have found a lady like you. My life is a very happy one
now.”

“And I am happy too,” said Mma Ramotswe. She
was not going to be a widow after all, and she had managed to make it seem as
if it had been his decision. That was what men liked—she was sure of
it—and why should men not be allowed to think that they were getting what
they liked, occasionally at least? She saw no reason why not.

CHAPTER TEN

MR J.L.B. MATEKONI’S DREAM

M
R J.L.B. Matekoni was, of course, immensely relieved that Mma
Ramotswe had presented him with the opportunity to withdraw from the parachute
jump. She had done it so graciously, and so cleverly, that he had been saved
all embarrassment. Throughout that day he had been plagued by anxiety as he
reflected on the position in which Mma Potokwane had placed him. He was not a
cowardly man, but he had felt nothing but fear, sheer naked fear, when he
thought about the parachute jump. Eventually, by mid-afternoon, he had reached
the conclusion that this was going to be the way in which he would die, and he
had spent almost an hour thinking about the terms of a will which he would draw
up the following day. Mma Ramotswe would get the garage, naturally, and she
could run it with Mma Makutsi, who could become Manager again. His house would
be sold—it would get a very good price—and the money could then be
distributed amongst his cousins, who were not well-off and who would be able to
use it to buy cattle. Mma Ramotswe should keep some of it, perhaps as much as
half, as this would help to keep the children, who were his responsibility
after all. And then there was his truck, which could go to the orphan farm,
where a good use would be found for it.

At this point he stopped.
Leaving the truck to the orphan farm was tantamount to leaving it to Mma
Potokwane, and he was not at all sure whether this was what he wanted. It was
Mma Potokwane, after all, who had caused this crisis in the first place and he
saw no reason why she should profit from it. In one view of the matter, Mma
Potokwane would be responsible for his death, and perhaps she should even be
put on trial. That would teach her to push people around as she did. That would
be a lesson to all powerful matrons, and he suspected that there were many such
women. Men would simply have to fight back, and this could be done, on their
behalf, by the Attorney-General of Botswana himself, who could start a show
trial of Mma Potokwane—for homicide—for the sake of all men. That
would at least be a start.

Such unworthy thoughts were now no longer
necessary, and after that glorious release pronounced by Mma Ramotswe at the
dinner table, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni felt no need to plan his will. That night,
after he had returned to his house near the old Botswana Defence Force Club, he
contemplated his familiar possessions, not with the eye of one who was planning
their testamentary disposal, but with the relief of one who knew that he was
not soon to be separated from them. He looked at his sofa, with its stained
arms and cushions, and thought about the long Saturday afternoons that he had
spent just sitting there, listening to the radio and thinking about nothing in
particular. Then he looked at the velvet picture of a mountain that hung on the
wall opposite the sofa. That was a fine picture which must have taken the
artist a great deal of time to make. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew every detail of
it. All of this would go over to Mma Ramotswe’s house one of these days,
but for the time being it was reassuring to see things so firmly and
predictably in their proper place.

It was almost midnight by the time
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni went to bed. He read the paper for a few minutes before he
put out the light, drowsily dropping the paper by his bedside, and then,
enveloped in darkness, he drifted into the sleep that had always come so easily
to him after a day of hard work. Sleep was welcome; the nightmare that he had
experienced had been a diurnal one, and now it was resolved. There was to be no
drop, no plummet to the ground, no humiliation as his fear made itself manifest
to all …

That was in the waking world; the sleeping world of Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni had not caught up with the events of that evening, with the
release from his torment, and at some point that night, he found himself
standing on the edge of the tarmac at the airport, with a small white plane of
the sort used by the Kalahari Flying Club taxi-ing towards him. A door of the
plane was opened, and he was beckoned within by the pilot, who, as it happened,
was Mma Potokwane herself.