The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (13 page)

‘There is no reason why you should not think that,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘It is a lovely thing to believe. He loved wild animals. They were his work, weren’t they? He loved the bush. He loved the rocks that leopards love. So that is where your son must be, Mma. He must be. We are always in the place we love, Mma. We never leave it.’

They moved away, with Mma Ramotswe still holding Gwithie’s hand until they turned the corner, and the stone, with its heartfelt inscription, was no longer in sight.
The light of our lives
. Yes, thought Mma Ramotswe. That is what we should be to one another: light that shines whatever the darkness of loss. Always.

It did not seem right to return to the Molapo case until much later, when she had left her friend and was travelling back on the final stretch of road towards Gaborone. Then she allowed herself to wonder how she would be able to prove what might be the truth. One slip of the tongue by a young man could hardly be considered evidence sufficient to unmask an imposter. And then a further thought came: what if it were simply a mistake on his part? Liso Molapo – the real Liso Molapo – had not seen his mother for a long time and might easily call his aunt by that name because he viewed her as a substitute for the mother he no longer had. That was entirely plausible and, if true, it meant that she was no further along the road to sorting out this affair.

By the time she reached Zebra Drive it was four o’clock, and doubt had replaced the certainty of earlier. An hour later, she no longer knew what to think. She took a pumpkin out of the store cupboard and began to prepare it by splitting it with the heaviest of her kitchen knives. Pumpkin was something uncomplicated, something completely certain, and cooking a pumpkin, she felt, was a good thing to do when you did not know quite where you were.

T
here had been periods – sometimes rather long ones – in Mma Ramotswe’s life, as in the lives of most of us, when nothing very much had happened. There had, for instance, been the period shortly after the foundation of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency when there had been a marked paucity of clients – there had been none, in fact – and she and Mma Makutsi had spent long days trying to find tasks to do without giving the appearance of having no real work. It had been easier, perhaps, for Mma Makutsi, as she had been able first to invent and then to refine an elaborate filing system that, she claimed, catered for all possible eventualities. Thus there was an entry in this system entitled
MEN
, which at one level below was subdivided into
FAITHFUL MEN
and
UNFAITHFUL MEN
. Matters relating to men could also be filed under such disparate headings as:
DISHONEST MEN
,
GENERAL MEN
and
UNKNOWN MEN
. Then there were files for
CLIENTS WHO HAVE NOT PAID THEIR BILL
– rather a larger file than Mma Ramotswe would have liked – and for
CLIENTS WHO MIGHT NOT PAY THEIR BILL.
The judgement on whether or not a client was likely to pay the bill was one made entirely by Mma Makutsi – on criteria that Mma Ramotswe had tried unsuccessfully to get her to clarify.

‘It is not only done on the way they look,’ said Mma Makutsi, in answer to Mma Ramotswe’s enquiry.

‘I’m glad to hear that, Mma,’ Mma Ramotswe said.

But then Mma Makutsi went on firmly, ‘Although that is a very important factor. You see, dishonest people look dishonest, Mma. There is never any question about that.’

‘Well,’ said Mma Ramotswe, ‘I’m not at all —’

‘I never have any difficulty,’ Mma Makutsi cut in. ‘There are many ways of telling, Mma. There is the way their eyes look, for instance – if they are too close together.’

Mma Ramotswe frowned. ‘I don’t think so, Mma. There are many —’ She was not allowed to finish.

‘Oh, make no mistake about it, Mma. If the eyes are close together, that person is going to be trouble. I’ve always said that, Mma. And the same goes for those whose eyes are too far apart – the same thing there. They will be up to no good.’

Mma Makutsi stared intently at Mma Ramotswe, the light flashing off her large round spectacles. It was as if she were challenging her employer to contradict a fundamental scientific truth. Mma Ramotswe said nothing at first; she was at this time discovering that Mma Makutsi in full flight was not to be interrupted lightly. But when no further assertions came, she very gently ventured a question as to where Mma Makutsi had learned to discern character in this way.

‘Life experience,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘There are some things you cannot learn from books. You cannot be taught instinct.’

Mma Ramotswe absorbed this. ‘But surely you must be careful, Mma. People cannot help the way they look. A person who is good inside may look bad outside. I am sure there are many cases of that.’

Mma Makutsi’s glasses flashed a danger signal. ‘Really, Mma? Name one, please. Name one person who looks bad outside but who is good inside.’ She paused, before adding, ‘I am waiting.’

Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. She was sure that there were such people, but she found it difficult to bring anybody to mind. ‘Violet Sephotho?’ she suggested. ‘What about her? She looks all right on the outside but is definitely bad on the inside.’

Mma Makutsi let out a hoot of laughter. ‘Violet Sephotho, Mma? You say that she looks good on the outside? She does not, Mma! She does not! That woman looks on the outside exactly as she is on the inside. And that, I must say, is bad, very bad.’

Mma Ramotswe was kind. Surely even Violet Sephotho, for all her manifest faults, had her better moments. ‘I’m not sure that she looks bad absolutely one hundred per cent of the time, Mma,’ she said. She had almost said ninety-seven per cent of the time, but managed to stop herself. ‘I have seen her smiling sometimes.’

This was as a red rag to Mma Makutsi. ‘Smiling, Mma? A smile is the most dangerous disguise of all. Many people smile to disguise what they are thinking inside.’

There had been no further debate on the issue, and Mma Ramotswe had learned to steer clear of certain topics – such as that one – that could be guaranteed to elicit an extreme response from her somewhat prickly assistant. Mma Makutsi had many merits, she came to realise, and these easily outweighed her occasional faults. And now, with Mma Makutsi on maternity leave and the office seeming strangely quiet as a result, there was something else that she came to realise: she missed her assistant in a way and to a degree that she had never anticipated. She missed her occasional outbursts; she missed her comments on what was in the newspapers; she even missed the way in which she would intervene in the conversation Mma Ramotswe was having with clients, dropping in observations from her position to the rear and making them stop and turn their heads to reply to somebody over their shoulder – not an easy thing to do. All of that she missed, just as she missed Mma Makutsi’s knack of putting her teacup down on the desk in a manner that so completely revealed her thinking on the subject under discussion. There was nobody else she knew who could put a cup down on a desk to quite the same effect. It was, she decided, one of the many respects in which Mma Makutsi was – and here she could think of only one word to express it –
irreplaceable
. There simply could never be another Mma Makutsi. There could never be another woman from Bobonong, of all places, with flashing round glasses and ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College. There could never be another person who was even remotely capable of standing up to somebody like Mma Potokwani, or putting Charlie in his place when, with all the confidence and ignorance of the young male, he made some outrageous comment. If Mma Makutsi decided not to return from maternity leave then Mma Ramotswe thought that the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency would never be the same again, and might not be worth continuing with.

She looked about her. She had worked as a detective for some years now, and in that time she had done her best for her clients. She liked to think that she had made a difference to the lives of at least some people and helped them to deal with problems that had become too burdensome for them to handle on their own. Now, however, surveying the shabby little office, she wondered whether she really had achieved very much. It was a rare moment of gloom, and it was at this point that she realised she was doing something that she very seldom did. She supported many people in their tears – for tears could so easily come to those who were recounting their troubles – but there were few occasions on which she herself cried. If you are there to staunch the tears of the world, then it does not cross your mind that you yourself may weep. But now she did, not copiously but discreetly and inconsequentially, and barely noticeably – except to Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, who chose that moment to come into the room, wiping the grease off his hands, ready with a remark about what he had just discovered under the latest unfortunate car.

For a moment he stood quite still. Then, letting the lint fall from his hands, he swiftly crossed the room and put his arm about his wife’s shoulder, lowering his head so that they were cheek to cheek and she could feel the stubble on his chin and the warmth of his breath.

‘My Precious, my Precious.’

She reached up and took his hand. There was still a smear on it – some vital fluid of the injured car to which he had been attending – but she paid no attention to that.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘There is really no reason for me to cry. I am being silly.’

‘You are not silly, Mma. You are never silly. What is it?’

With her free hand she took the handkerchief from where it was tucked into the front of her dress. She blew her nose, and with some determination too. After all, the blowing of a nose can be the punctuation that brings such moments to an end.

‘I am much better now,’ she said. ‘I have been sitting and thinking when I should be working. And without Mma Makutsi to talk to, well, you know how hard it can be to sit with the problems of other people.’

He knew, or thought he knew. Yes, he knew how she felt. ‘Just like cars,’ he said. ‘You sit and look at a car and you think of all its problems, and it can get you down.’

‘Yes, I’m sure it can.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’ll be all right, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. Mma Makutsi will come back and everything will be the same again.’

He removed his hand from her shoulder and stood up. ‘I will make you tea,’ he said.

She looked at him with fondness. For some reason, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni did not make very good tea. It was something to do with the quantities of tea he put in the pot, or with not allowing the water to boil properly, or with the way he poured it. For whatever reason, his tea was never quite of the standard achieved by her or by Mma Makutsi. So she thanked him and said that it would be good for her to do something instead of sitting at her desk and moping, and then she made the tea for herself and for her husband, and for Charlie and Fanwell too, and Mr J. L. B. Matekoni took his cup back into the garage where he sipped at it thoughtfully while he decided what to do.

Later that afternoon, on the pretext of taking a recently repaired car for a test drive, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni went out along the Tlokweng Road in the direction of the orphan farm. There was a good reason for taking that particular car on that particular road – he had fitted new shock absorbers and he wanted to check that they were properly bedded in – but his real motive was to see Mma Potokwani. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni held the matron in high regard, in spite of her habit of finding something for him to fix whenever she saw him, and he wanted to talk to her about what had happened earlier that day.

She was in her office when he arrived and happened to be looking out of the window.

‘So, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni,’ she called out to him as he got out of the car. ‘So you’re coming to see me.’

He waved to her and made his way into the small building from which Mma Potokwani, as matron and general manager, ran the lives of the children under her care. She welcomed him warmly and enquired after the health of Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi.

‘Mma Makutsi is doing fine,’ he said. ‘She has a baby now.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘That is very good for her and for Mr Radiphuti. They will be very happy.’

‘They are, although Mma Ramotswe tells me that Phuti’s aunt has moved in. I think that is difficult for her.’

Mma Potokwani made a face. ‘That is a very sour woman, that aunt. I think she eats too many lemons.’ She paused. ‘And Mma Ramotswe, Rra? What about her?’

He suspected that she had sensed that something was wrong.

His reply was hesitant. ‘I think that in general she is all right, but…’

She waited for him to go on. He looked down at his hands. It was sometimes difficult for him, as a mechanic, to find the words that seemed to come easily to women.

‘Something is wrong, Rra,’ she prompted.

He drew in his breath. ‘Mma Potokwani, may I talk to you in private?’

She looked surprised. ‘Of course, Rra. There’s nobody else here. And remember I am a matron, and a matron hears all sorts of secrets. I could tell you, Rra! Only this morning there was…’ She stopped herself in time. ‘So you can talk, Rra.’

He looked awkward, and she made a further suggestion. ‘Why don’t we go for a walk, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni?’ she said. ‘It is easy to talk when you are walking.’

She did not wait for an answer, but rose and guided him out of her office. It was warm outside, but the afternoon sun was less oppressive than it had been earlier in the day and they were not uncomfortable. Mma Potokwani suggested that they follow a path that skirted round the edge of the grounds. This would enable them to see the children playing on the small sports field – now not much more than a square of parched and frazzled grass – and also to inspect the new vegetable patch that had been planted near the borehole.

Mma Potokwani did not walk fast. This was not because of any physical impediment, but because of her tendency to stop and examine what she came across; the ancient habit, he thought, of a matron who was used to inspecting and prodding things – and people – for whom she was responsible. So they stopped and looked at a gate that might need rehanging – if anybody could find the time to do it. And as she said this, she looked meaningfully at Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, who nodded meekly and made the offer she was expecting.

‘I should be able to do that some time,’ he said. ‘I can bring Charlie or Fanwell and they will give me a hand.’

‘That is very kind,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘I was not going to ask you, Rra, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘But since you offer, what about next week some time?’

He nodded.

‘But tell me, Rra,’ Mma Potokwani said. ‘What is the trouble? It is not a marriage thing, is it?’

He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, never that.’

‘I didn’t think it would be. I know that you and Mma Ramotswe are very happy.’

‘We are,’ he said. ‘But she is happy and unhappy, if you see what I mean.’

Mma Potokwani frowned. ‘I’m not sure that I do, Rra.’

‘I found her crying.’

She appeared to absorb this for a few moments. Then she asked why this was.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She said it was to do with sitting there and thinking about problems. She said that was why she was crying. But she normally never cries – not even when she has a whole lot of problems to think about.’

Mma Potokwani’s pace became even slower. ‘Do you remember what happened to you, Rra?’ she asked. Normally Mma Potokwani spoke in stentorian tones – the result of having to make herself heard over the voices of hordes of children; now her voice was softer, gentler.

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni was not sure what she was referring to. ‘Many things have happened to me,’ he said. ‘In fact, Mma, things happen to me every day.’