Morality for Beautiful Girls (20 page)

“Then this lady said to the family that she would talk to the brother in Gaborone and that she was sure that he would understand. She said that she would pass on to him any words that they might wish to say. She said that the real poison within families is not the poison that you put in your food, but the poison that grows up in the heart when people are jealous of one another and cannot speak these feelings and drain out the poison that way.

“So she came back to Gaborone with some words that the family wanted to say. And the words of the youngest brother were these:
I love my brother very much. I will never forget him. I would never take anything from him. The land and the cattle are for sharing with him.
And the wife of this man said:
I admire the brother of my husband and I would never take away from him the brother’s love that he deserves to have.
And the mother said:
I am very proud of my son. There is room here for all of us. I have been worried that my sons will grow apart and that their wives will come between them and break up our family. I am not worried about that anymore. Please ask my son to come and see me soon. I do not have much time.
And the old father did not say very much except:
No
man could ask for better sons.
”

THE TYPEWRITER was silent. Now Mma Ramotswe stopped speaking and watched the Government Man, who sat quite still, only his chest moving slightly as he breathed in and out. Then he raised a hand slowly to his face, and leant forward. He raised his other hand to his face.

“Do not be ashamed to cry, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is the way that things begin to get better. It is the first step.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE WORDS FOR AFRICA

T
HERE WAS rain over the next four days. Every afternoon the clouds built up and then, amid bolts of lightning and great clashes of thunder, the rain fell upon the land. The roads, normally so dry and dusty, were flooded and the fields were shimmering expanses. But the thirsty land soon soaked up the water and the ground reappeared; but at least the people knew that the water was there, safely stored in the dam, and percolating down into the soil into which their wells were sunk. Everybody seemed relieved; another drought would have been too much to bear, although people would have put up with it, as they always had. The weather, they said, was changing and everybody felt vulnerable. In a country like Botswana, where the land and the animals were on such a narrow margin, a slight change could be disastrous. But the rains had come, and that was the important thing.

Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors became busier and busier, and Mma Makutsi decided that the only thing to do, as Acting Manager, was to employ another mechanic for a few months, to see how things developed. She placed a small advertisement in the newspaper, and a man who had worked on the diamond mines as a diesel mechanic, but who had now retired, came forward and offered to work three days a week. He was started immediately, and he got on well with the apprentices.

“Mr J.L.B. Matekoni will like him,” said Mma Ramotswe, “when he comes back and meets him.”

“When will he come back?” asked Mma Makutsi. “It is over two weeks now.”

“He’ll be back one day,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Let’s not rush him.”

That afternoon, she drove out to the orphan farm, parking her tiny white van directly outside Mma Potokwane’s window. Mma Potokwane, who had seen her coming up the drive, had already put on the kettle by the time that Mma Ramotswe knocked at her door.

“Well, Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “We have not seen you for a little while.”

“I have been away,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Then the rains came and the road out here has been very muddy. I did not want to get stuck in the mud.”

“Very wise,” said Mma Potokwane. “We had to get the bigger orphans out to push one or two trucks that got stuck just outside our drive. It was very difficult. All the orphans were covered in red mud and we had to hose them down in the yard.”

“It looks like we will get good rains this year,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That will be a very good thing for the country.”

The kettle in the corner of the room began to hiss and Mma Potokwane arose to make tea.

“I have no cake to give you,” she said. “I made a cake yesterday, but people have eaten every last crumb of it. It is as if the locusts had been here.”

“People are very greedy,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It would have been nice to have some cake. But I am not going to sit here and think about it.”

They drank their tea in comfortable silence. Then Mma Ramotswe spoke.

“I thought I might take Mr J.L.B. Matekoni out for a run in the van,” she ventured. “Do you think he might like that?”

Mma Potokwane smiled. “He would like it very much. He has been very quiet since he came here, but I have found out that there is something that he has been doing. I think it is a good sign.”

“What is that?”

“He has been helping with that little boy,” said Mma Potokwane. “You know the one that I asked you to find out something about? You remember that one?”

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe, hesitantly. “I remember that little boy.”

“Did you find out anything?” asked Mma Potokwane.

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I do not think that there is much that I can find out. But I do have an idea about that boy. It is just an idea.”

Mma Potokwane slipped a further spoon of sugar into her tea and stirred it gently with a teaspoon.

“Oh yes? What’s your idea?”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. “I do not think that my idea would help,” she said. “In fact, I think it would not be helpful.”

Mma Potokwane raised her teacup to her lips. She took a long sip of tea and then replaced the cup carefully on the table.

“I think I know what you mean, Mma,” she said. “I think that I have had the same idea. But I cannot believe it. Surely it cannot be true.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “That is what I have said to myself. People talk about these things, but they have never proved it, have they? They say that there are these wild children and that every so often somebody finds one. But do they ever actually prove that they have been brought up by animals? Is there any proof?”

“I have never heard of any,” said Mma Potokwane.

“And if we told anybody what we think about this little boy, then what would happen? The newspapers would be full of it. There would be people coming from all over the world. They would probably try to take the boy off to live somewhere where they could look at him. They would take him outside Botswana.”

“No,” said Mma Potokwane. “The Government would never allow that.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They might. You can’t be sure.”

They sat silently. Then Mma Ramotswe spoke. “I think that there are some matters that are best left undisturbed,” she said. “We don’t want to know the answer to everything.”

“I agree,” said Mma Potokwane. “It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don’t know everything.”

Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. It was an interesting proposition, and she was not sure if it was always true; it would require further thought, but not just then. She had a more immediate task in hand, and that was to drive Mr J.L.B. Matekoni out to Mochudi, where they could climb the kopje and look out over the plains. She was sure that he would like the sight of all that water; it would cheer him up.

“Mr J.L.B. Matekoni has been helping a bit with that boy,” said Mma Potokwane. “It has been good for him to have something to do. I have seen him teaching him how to use a catapult. And I also hear that he has been teaching him words—teaching him how to speak. He is being very kind to him, and that, I think, is a good sign.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. She imagined Mr J.L.B. Matekoni teaching the wild boy the words for the things that he saw about him; teaching him the words for his world, the words for Africa.

MR J.L.B. Matekoni was not very communicative on the way up to Mochudi, sitting in the passenger seat of the tiny white van, staring out of the window at the unfolding plains and the other travellers on the road. He made a few remarks, though, and he even asked about what was happening at the garage, which he had not done at all when she had last gone to see him in his quiet room at the orphan farm.

“I hope that Mma Makutsi is controlling those apprentices of mine,” he said. “They are such lazy boys. All they think about is women.”

“There are still those problems with women,” she said. “But she is making them work hard and they are doing well.”

They reached the Mochudi turnoff and soon they were on the road that ran straight up towards the hospital, the kgotla, and the boulder-strewn kopje behind it.

“I think we should climb up the kopje,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There is a good view from up there. We can see the difference that the rains have made.”

“I am too tired to climb,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You go up. I shall stay down here.”

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe, firmly. “We shall both go up. You take my arm.”

The climb did not take long, and soon they were standing on the edge of a large expanse of elevated rock, looking down on Mochudi: on the church, with its red tin roof, on the tiny hospital, where the heroic daily battle was fought, with small resources against such powerful enemies, and out, over the plains to the south. The river was flowing now, broadly and lazily, winding its way past clumps of trees and bush and the clusters of compounds that made up the straggling village. A small herd of cattle was being driven along a path near the river, and from where they stood the cattle looked tiny, like toys. But the wind was in their direction, and the sound of their bells could be made out, a distant, soft sound, so redolent of the Botswana bushland, so much the sound of home. Mma Ramotswe stood quite still; a woman on a rock in Africa, which was who, and where, she wanted to be.

“Look,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Look down there. That is the house where I lived with my father. That is my place.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked down and smiled. He smiled; and she noticed.

“I think you are feeling a bit better now, aren’t you,” she said.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded his head.

ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

MORALITY FOR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS

Alexander McCall Smith is a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He is the author of over fifty books on a wide range of subjects, including specialist titles such as
Forensic Aspects of Sleep
and
The Criminal Law of Botswana
, children’s books such as
The Perfect Hamburger
, and a collection of stories called
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
.

THE NO. 1 LADIES’
DETECTIVE AGENCY
BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

Tears of the Giraffe

Morality for Beautiful Girls

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2002

Copyright ©
2001 by Alexander McCall
Smith

All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,
and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto.
Originally published in softcover
in Scotland by Polygon, Edinburgh, in
2001.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered
trademarks
of Random House, Inc.

Library of
Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCall Smith, R. A.

Morality for beautiful girls / Alexander McCall Smith.

p.  cm.

1. Ramotswe,
Precious (Fictitious character)—Fiction.  2. Women private
investigators—Botswana—Fiction.  3. Beauty
contests—Fiction.  
4.
Botswana—Fiction.  I. Title.

PR6063.C326 M67 2002

823'.914—dc21            2002071712

www.anchorbooks.com

eISBN: 978-1-4000-7766-3

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