Alexander Mccall Smith - Ladies' Detective Agency 05 (17 page)

The repair took
less time than he had anticipated, and well before it was time for the morning
break Mr J.L.B. Matekoni found himself wiping the steering wheel and the
driver’s seat to make the car ready for collection by its owner. He was
always very careful to ensure that cars were returned to the customer in a
clean state—something he had attempted to drill into the apprentices, but
without success.

“How would you feel if your car came back to
you with greasy fingerprints all over it?” he said to them. “Would
you like it?”

“I would not see them,” said one of the
young men. “I am not worried about fingerprints. As long as a car goes
fast, that is the only thing.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni could barely
credit what he had heard. “Do you mean to say that the only thing that
advantages is speed? Is that what you really think?”

The
apprentice had looked at him blankly before he gave his reply. “Of
course. If a car goes fast, then it is a good car. It has a strong engine.
Everybody knows that, Boss.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head in
despair. How many times had he explained about solid engineering and the merits
of a reliable gearbox? How many times had he spelled out to these young men the
merits of an economical engine, particularly a good diesel engine that would
give years and years of service with very little trouble? Diesel-powered cars
did not usually go very fast, but that was not the point; they were good cars
anyway. None of these lessons, it appeared, had sunk in. He sighed. “I
have been wasting my time,” he muttered. “Wasting my
time.”

The apprentice smiled. “Wasting your time, Boss?
What have you been doing? Dancing? You and Mma Ramotswe going dancing at one of
those clubs? Hah!”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni wanted to say,
“Trying to teach a hyena to dance,” but did not. Where had he heard
that expression before? It seemed familiar, and then he remembered he had said
it himself only a few days ago when he had been discussing First Class Motors
with Mma Ramotswe. The memory made him start, and put the apprentices quite out
of his mind. There was something hanging over him; he had forgotten what it
was, but now it came back: he still had to deal with the issue of the
butcher’s car, which was due to be brought into the garage that morning.
The thought appalled him: he would be able to effect a temporary repair, until
such time as he tracked down the right parts, but there was more to it than
that. He had agreed that he would confront the Manager of First Class Motors
and tell him that his wrongdoing had been discovered. He did not relish this,
in view of the other man’s reputation. Indeed, it might have been
moderately more attractive to do a parachute jump, perhaps, rather than meet
the Manager of First Class Motors.

“You look worried,” said
the apprentice. “Is there something troubling you, Boss?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “I have an unpleasant duty to do,”
he said. “I have to go and speak to some bad mechanics about their work.
That is what is troubling me.”

“Who are these bad
mechanics?” asked the apprentice.

“Those people at First
Class Motors,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “The man who owns it and
the men who work for him. They are all bad, every one of them.”

The apprentice whistled. “Yes, they are bad all right. I have seen
those people. They know nothing about cars. They are not like you, Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni, who knows everything about all sorts of cars.”

The
compliment from the apprentice was unexpected, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, in spite
of his modesty, was touched by the young man’s tribute.

“I
am not a great mechanic,” he said softly. “I am just careful, that
is all, and that is what I have always wanted you to be. I would want you to be
careful mechanics. It would make me very happy if you would be
that.”

“We will be,” said the apprentice. “We
will try to be like you. We hope that people will always look at our work and
think: they learned that from Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.”

Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni smiled. “
Some
of your work, maybe …” he
began, but the apprentice interrupted him.

“You see,” he
said, “my father is late. He became late when I was a small
boy—just that high—very small. And I did not have uncles who were
any good, and so I think of you as my father, Rra. That is what I think. You
are my father.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was silent. He had always had
difficulty in expressing his emotions—as mechanics often do, he
thought—and it was hard for him now. He wanted to say to this young man:
What you have said makes me very proud, and very sad, all at the same
time—but he could not find these words. He could, however, place a hand
on the young man’s shoulder and leave it there for a moment, to show that
he understood what had been said.

“I have never said thank you,
Rra,” went on the apprentice. “And I would not want you to die
without being thanked by me.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni gave a start.
“Am I going to die?” he asked. “I am not all that old surely.
I am still here.”

The apprentice smiled. “I did not mean
that you were going to die soon, Rra. But you will die one of these days, like
everybody else. And I wanted to say thank you before that day came.”

“Well,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, “what you say is
probably true, but we have spent too much time standing here talking about
these things. There is work to be done in the garage. We have to get rid of
that dirty oil over there. You can take it over to the special dump for
burning. You can take the spare truck.”

“I will do that
now,” said the apprentice.

“And don’t pick up any
girls in the truck,” warned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You remember what
I told you about the insurance.”

The apprentice, who had been
already walking away, suddenly stopped in his tracks, guiltily, and Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni knew immediately that this was precisely what he had been planning to
do. The young man had made a moving statement, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been
touched by what he had said, but some things obviously never changed.

A few hours later, as the sun climbed up the sky and made shadows short
and even the birds were lethargic, when the screeching of the cicadas from the
bush behind Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors had reached a high insistent pitch, the
butcher drew up in his handsome old Rover. He had had the time to reflect on
what Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had told him, and he now spoke angrily of First Class
Motors, with whom he intended to have no further dealings. Only shame, the
shame of being a victim, prevented him from returning there to ask for his
money back.

“I shall do that for you, Rra,” said Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni. “I feel responsible for what my brother mechanics have done to
you.”

The butcher took Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s hand and shook
it firmly. “You have been very good to me, Rra. I am glad that there are
still some honest men left in Botswana.”

“There are many
honest men in Botswana,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I am no better
than anybody else.”

“Oh yes you are,” said the
butcher. “I see many men in my work and I can tell …”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni cut him short. This was clearly a day for excessive
compliments, and he was beginning to feel embarrassed. “You are very
kind, Rra, but I must get on with my work. The flies will be settling on the
cars if I don’t look out.”

He had spoken the words without
thinking that a butcher might take such a remark as a slight, as a suggestion
that his own meat was much beset by flies. But the butcher did not appear to
mind, and he smiled at the metaphor. “There are flies everywhere,”
he said. “We butchers know all about that. I would like to find a country
without flies. Is there such a place, do you think, Rra?”

“I have not heard of such a country,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
“I think that in very cold places there are no flies. Or in some very big
towns, where there are no cattle to bring the flies. Perhaps in such places.
Places like New York.”

“Are there no cattle in New
York?” asked the butcher.

“I do not think so,” said
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

The butcher thought for a moment. “But there
is a big green part of the town. I have seen a photograph. This part, this bit
of bush, is in the middle. Perhaps they keep the cattle there. Do you think
that is the place for cattle, Rra?”

“Perhaps,” said
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, glancing at his watch. It was time for him to go home for
his lunch, which he always ate at noon. Then, after lunch, fortified by a plate
of meat and beans, he would drive round to First Class Motors and speak to the
Manager.

MMA MAKUTSI ate her own lunch in the office.
Now that she had a bit more money from the Kalahari Typing School for Men, she
was able to treat herself to a doughnut at lunchtime, and this she ate with
relish, a magazine open on the desk before her, a cup of bush tea at her side.
It was best, of course, if Mma Ramotswe was there too, as they could exchange
news and opinions, but it was still enjoyable to be by oneself, turning the
pages of the magazine with one hand and licking the sugar off the fingers of
the other.

The magazine was a glossy one, published in Johannesburg,
and sold in great numbers at the Botswana Book Centre. It contained articles
about musicians and actors and the like, and about the parties which these
people liked to attend in places like Cape Town and Durban. Mma Ramotswe had
once said that she would not care to go to that sort of party, even if she were
to be invited to one—which she never had been, as Mma Makutsi helpfully
pointed out—but she was still sufficiently interested to peer over Mma
Makutsi’s shoulder and comment on the people in the pictures.

“That woman in the red dress,” Mma Ramotswe had said.
“Look at her. She is a lady who is only good for going to parties. That
is very clear.”

“She is a very famous lady, that
one,” Mma Makutsi had replied. “I have seen her picture many times.
She knows where there are cameras and she stands in front of them, like a pig
trying to get to the food. She is a very fashionable lady over in
Johannesburg.”

“And what is she famous for?”

“The magazine has never explained that,” Mma Makutsi had said.
“Maybe they do not know either.”

This had made Mma Ramotswe
laugh. “And then that woman there, that one in the middle, standing next
to …” She had stopped, suddenly, as she recognised the face in the
photograph. Mma Makutsi, engrossed in the contemplation of another photograph,
had not noticed anything untoward. So she did not see the expression on Mma
Ramotswe’s face as she recognised, in the middle of the group of smiling
friends, the face of Note Mokoti, trumpet player, and, for a brief and unhappy
time, husband of Precious Ramotswe and father—not that it had meant
anything to him—of her tiny child, the one who had left her after only
those few, cherished hours.

Now, though, Mma Makutsi paged through the
magazine on her own, while from within the garage there came the sound of a
car’s wheels being taken off. The sounds of wheel-nuts being thrown into
an upturned hub-cap was one she recognised well, and was reassuring, in a
strange way, just as the sound of the cicadas in the bush was a comforting one.
The sounds that were alarming were those that came from nowhere, strange sounds
that occurred at night, which might be anything.

She abandoned her
magazine and reached for her tea cup, and it was at that point that she saw the
envelope at the end of her desk. She had not noticed it when she came in that
day, and it was not there last night, which meant that it must have been put
there first thing in the morning. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had opened the garage and
the office, and he must have found it slipped under a door. Sometimes customers
left notes that way, when they passed by and the garage was closed. Bills were
even settled like this, with the money tucked into an envelope and pushed into
the office through a crack in the door. That worried Mma Makutsi, who imagined
that it would be very easy for money to go missing, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni
seemed unconcerned about it, and said that his customers had always paid in all
sorts of ways and money had never been lost.

“One man used to pay
his bills with bags of coins,” he said. “Sometimes he would drive
past, throw out one of those old white Standard Bank bags, wave, and drive off.
That is how he settled his bills.”

“That’s all very
well,” Mma Makutsi had said. “But that would never have been
recommended to us at the Botswana Secretarial College. They taught us there
that the best way to pay bills was by cheque, and to ask for a
receipt.”

That was undoubtedly true, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had
not cared to argue with one who had achieved the since then unequalled score of
ninety-seven per cent in her final examinations at the Botswana Secretarial
College. This letter, though, was plainly not a bill. As Mma Makutsi stretched
across her desk to pick it up, she saw, written across the front of the
envelope:
To Mr Handsome, Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

She
smiled. There was no means of telling who this Mr Handsome was—there
were, after all, three men who worked at the garage and it could be addressed
to any one of them—and this meant that she would be quite within her
rights to open it.

There was a single sheet of paper inside the
envelope, and Mma Makutsi unfolded this and began to read.
Dear Mr
Handsome
, the letter began.
You do not know who I am, but I have been
watching out for you! You are very handsome. You have a handsome face and
handsome legs. Even your neck is handsome. I hope that you will talk to me one
day. I am waiting for you. There is a lot we could talk about. Your
admirer.

Mma Makutsi finished reading and then folded the letter
up and put it back in the envelope. People did send such notes to one another,
she knew, but the senders usually made sure that the letters were picked up by
those for whom they were intended. It was strange that this person, this
admirer, whoever she was, should have put the letter under the door without
giving any further clue as to which Mr Handsome she had in mind. Now it was up
to her to decide who should get this letter. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? No. He was not
a handsome man; he was pleasant-looking in a comfortable sort of way, but he
was not handsome, in that sense. And anyway, whoever it was who had left the
letter had no business in sending a letter like that to an engaged man and she,
Mma Makutsi, would most certainly never pass on a letter of this nature to Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni, even if it had been intended for him.