Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (16 page)

Behind the
verandah was the living room, the largest room in the house, with its big
window that gave out onto what had once been a lawn. There was a fireplace
here, too large for the room, but a matter of pride for Mma Ramotswe. On the
mantelpiece she had placed her special china, her Queen Elizabeth II teacup and
her commemoration plate with the picture of Sir Seretse Khama, President,
Kgosi
of the Bangwato people, Statesman. He smiled at her from the
plate, and it was as if he gave a blessing, as if he knew. As did the Queen,
for she loved Botswana too, and understood.

But in pride of place was
the photograph of her Daddy, taken just before his sixtieth birthday. He was
wearing the suit which he had bought in Bulawayo on his visit to his cousin
there, and he was smiling, although she knew that by then he was in pain. Mma
Ramotswe was a realist, who inhabited the present, but one nostalgic thought
she allowed herself, one indulgence, was to imagine her Daddy walking through
the door and greeting her again, and smiling at her, and saying: “My
Precious! You have done well! I am proud of you!” And she imagined
driving him round Gaborone in her tiny white van and showing him the progress
that had been made, and she smiled at the pride he would have felt. But she
could not allow herself to think like this too often, for it ended in tears,
for all that was passed, and for all the love that she had within her.

The kitchen was cheerful. The cement floor, sealed and polished with red
floor paint, was kept shining by Mma Ramotswe’s maid, Rose, who had been
with her for five years. Rose had four children, by different fathers, who
lived with her mother at Tlokweng. She worked for Mma Ramotswe, and did
knitting for a knitting cooperative, and brought her children up with the
little money that there was. The oldest boy was a carpenter now, and was giving
his mother money, which helped, but the little ones were always needing shoes
and new trousers, and one of them could not breathe well and needed an inhaler.
But Rose still sang, and this was how Mma Ramotswe knew she had arrived in the
morning, as the snatches of song came drifting in from the kitchen.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WHY
DON’T YOU MARRY ME?

H
APPINESS? MMA Ramotswe
was happy enough. With her detective agency and her house in Zebra Drive, she
had more than most, and was aware of it. She was also aware of how things had
changed. When she had been married to Note Mokoti she had been conscious of a
deep, overwhelming unhappiness that followed her around like a black dog. That
had gone now.

If she had listened to her father, if she had listened
to the cousin’s husband, she would never have married Note and the years
of unhappiness would never have occurred. But they did, because she was
headstrong, as everybody is at the age of twenty, and when we simply cannot
see, however much we may think we can. The world is full of twenty-year-olds,
she thought, all of them blind.

Obed Ramotswe had never taken to Note,
and had told her that, directly. But she had responded by crying and by saying
that he was the only man she would ever find and that he would make her
happy.

“He will not,” said Obed. “That man will hit
you. He will use you in all sorts of ways. He thinks only of himself and what
he wants. I can tell, because I have been in the mines and you see all sorts of
men there. I have seen men like that before.”

She had shaken her
head and rushed out of the room, and he had called out after her, a thin,
pained, cry. She could hear it now, and it cut and cut at her. She had hurt the
man who loved her more than any other, a good, trusting man who only wanted to
protect her. If only one could undo the past; if one could go back and avoid
the mistakes, make different choices …

“If we could go
back,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, pouring tea into Mma Ramotswe’s
mug. “I have often thought that. If we could go back and know then what
we know now …” He shook his head in wonderment. “My
goodness! I would live my life differently!”

Mma Ramotswe sipped
at her tea. She was sitting in the office of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors,
underneath Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s spares suppliers’ calendar, passing
the time of day with her friend, as she sometimes did when her own office was
quiet. This was inevitable; sometimes people simply did not want to find things
out. Nobody was missing, nobody was cheating on their wives, nobody was
embezzling. At such times, a private detective may as well hang a closed sign
on the office door and go off to plant melons. Not that she intended to plant
melons; a quiet cup of tea followed by a shopping trip to the African Mall was
as good a way of spending the afternoon as any. Then she might go to the Book
Centre and see if any interesting magazines had arrived. She loved magazines.
She loved their smell and their bright pictures. She loved interior design
magazines which showed how people lived in faraway countries. They had so much
in their houses, and such beautiful things too. Paintings, rich curtains, piles
of velvet cushions which would have been wonderful for a fat person to sit
upon, strange lights at odd angles …

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni warmed
to his theme.

“I have made hundreds of mistakes in my
lifetime,” he said, frowning at the recollection. “Hundreds and
hundreds.”

She looked at him. She had thought that everything had
gone rather well in his life. He had served his apprenticeship as a mechanic,
saved up his money, and then bought his own garage. He had built a house,
married a wife (who had unfortunately died), and become the local chairman of
the Botswana Democratic Party. He knew several ministers (very slightly) and
was invited to one of the annual garden parties at State House. Everything
seemed rosy.

“I can’t see what mistakes you’ve
made,” she said. “Unlike me.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni
looked surprised.

“I can’t imagine you making any
mistakes,” she said. “You’re too clever for that. You would
look at all the possibilities and then choose the right one. Every
time.”

Mma Ramotswe snorted.

“I married
Note,” she said simply.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked
thoughtful.

“Yes,” he said. “That was a bad
mistake.”

They were silent for a moment. Then he rose to his
feet. He was a tall man, and he had to be careful not to bump his head when he
stood erect. Now, with the calendar behind him and the fly paper dangling down
from the ceiling above, he cleared his throat and spoke.

“I would
like you to marry me,” he said. “That would not be a
mistake.”

Mma Ramotswe hid her surprise. She did not give a
start, nor drop her mug of tea, nor open her mouth and make no sound. She
smiled instead, and stared at her friend.

“You are a good kind
man,” she said. “You are like my Daddy … a bit. But I cannot
get married again. Ever. I am happy as I am. I have got the agency, and the
house. My life is full.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sat down. He looked
crestfallen, and Mma Ramotswe reached out to touch him. He moved it away
instinctively, as a burned man will move away from fire.

“I am
very sorry,” she said. “I should like you to know that if I were
ever to marry anybody, which I shall not do, I would choose a man like you. I
would even choose you. I am sure of this.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni
took her mug and poured her more tea. He was silent now—not out of anger,
or resentment—but because it had cost him all his energy to make his
declaration of love and he had no more words for the time being.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HANDSOME MAN

A
LICE BUSANG was nervous about
consulting Mma Ramotswe, but was soon put at ease by the comfortable,
overweight figure sitting behind the desk. It was rather like speaking to a
doctor or a priest, she thought; in such consultations nothing that one could
possibly say would shock.

“I am suspicious of my
husband,” she said. “I think that he is carrying on with
ladies.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. All men carried on with ladies, in
her experience. The only men who did not were ministers of religion and
headmasters.

“Have you seen him doing this?” she
asked.

Alice Busang shook her head. “I keep watching out but I
never see him with other women. I think he is too cunning.”

Mma
Ramotswe wrote this down on a piece of paper.

“He goes to bars,
does he?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where
they meet them. They meet these women who hang about in bars waiting for other
women’s husbands. This city is full of women like that.”

She looked at Alice, and there flowed between them a brief current of
understanding. All women in Botswana were the victims of the fecklessness of
men. There were virtually no men these days who would marry a woman and settle
down to look after her children; men like that seemed to be a thing of the
past.

“Do you want me to follow him?” she said. “Do
you want me to find out whether he picks up other women?”

Alice
Busang nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I want proof. Just for
myself. I want proof so that I can know what sort of man I married.”

MMA RAMOTSWE was too busy to take on the Busang
case until the following week. That Wednesday, she stationed herself in her
small white van outside the office in the Diamond Sorting Building where
Kremlin Busang worked. She had been given a photograph of him by Alice Busang
and she glanced at this on her knee; this was a handsome man, with broad
shoulders and a wide smile. He was a ladies’ man by the look of him, and
she wondered why Alice Busang had married him if she wanted a faithful husband.
Hopefulness, of course; a naïve hope that he would be unlike other men.
Well, you only had to look at him to realise that this would not be so.

She followed him, her white van trailing his old blue car through the
traffic to the Go Go Handsome Man’s Bar down by the bus station. Then,
while he strolled into the bar, she sat for a moment in her van and put a
little more lipstick on her lips and a dab of cream on her cheeks. In a few
minutes she would go in and begin work in earnest.

IT WAS not crowded inside the Go Go Handsome
Man’s Bar and there were only one or two other women there. Both of them
she recognised as bad women. They stared at her, but she ignored them and took
a seat at the bar, just two stools from Kremlin Busang.

She bought a
beer and looked about her, as if taking in the surroundings of the bar for the
first time.

“You’ve not been here before, my sister,”
said Kremlin Busang. “It’s a good bar, this one.”

She
met his gaze. “I only come to bars on big occasions,” she said.
“Such as today.”

Kremlin Busang smiled. “Your
birthday?”

“Yes,” she said. “Let me buy you a
drink to celebrate.”

She bought him a beer, and he moved over to
the stool beside her. She saw that he was a good-looking man, exactly as his
photograph had revealed him, and his clothes were well chosen. They drank their
beers together, and then she ordered him another one. He began to tell her
about his job.

“I sort diamonds,” he said.
“It’s a difficult job, you know. You need good
eyesight.”

“I like diamonds,” she said. “I like
diamonds a lot.”

“We are very lucky to have so many
diamonds in this country,” he said. “My word! Those
diamonds!”

She moved her left leg slightly, and it touched his.
He noticed this, as she saw him glance down, but he did not move his leg
away.

“Are you married?” she asked him quietly.

He
did not hesitate. “No. I’ve never been married. It’s better
to be single these days. Freedom, you know.”

She nodded. “I
like to be free too,” she said. “Then you can decide how to spend
your own time.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Dead
right.”