Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (8 page)

“I'm going to stretch my legs,” she said to Mma Makutsi. “I have been sitting down for too long.”

Mma Makutsi looked up from a letter she was reading. “That is a very good idea, Mma. If you do not stretch your legs, the blood sinks down to the feet and there is not enough for the brain. That is why some people are so stupid. They are the ones who have too much blood in their feet.”

Mma Ramotswe stared at her assistant. “That is an interesting theory, Mma. But I am not sure that it is quite true. I know some very clever people who sit down all the time. Look at them up at the University of Botswana. They spend most of the time sitting down, but they are very clever. They clearly have enough blood for their brains. No, Mma, I don't think that has anything to do with it.”

Mma Makutsi had pouted. “You should not argue with science, Mma,” she muttered. “Many people have made that mistake.” It had looked for a moment as if she was going to say something else, but she did not. So Mma Ramotswe left the office and made her way round to the front of the garage.

The two apprentices were standing underneath a car that had been raised for inspection. Charlie was pointing at something with a screwdriver, and Fanwell was peering up into the undercarriage of the car, a region of pipes and cables not unlike the
intestines of a living creature, and as vulnerable, she thought with a shudder.

Fanwell turned to look at Mma Ramotswe, and she beckoned him discreetly to join her.

“Will you come for a little walk with me?” she said. “Charlie can take care of that car.” It would be a short walk, she thought, as she still had her blister, even though it had stopped throbbing.

Fanwell glanced over to Charlie, who nodded to him. Mma Ramotswe occasionally asked the apprentices to run errands for her, and he imagined that this was what she wanted of him.

They walked away from the garage towards the piece of scrubland that lay immediately behind the building. This was the edge of the town, half bush, half suburb, where cattle sometimes wandered, bringing with them their sounds of the true countryside, the sound of cattle bells. Here hornbills might perch on branches and contemplate the bustle of the Tlokweng Road before flying away again, in long swooping curves that led from tree to tree. Here small gusts of wind, the sort of wind that came from nowhere in particular, might briefly blow scraps of paper or the occasional plastic bag, lifting these bits of detritus half-heartedly before dropping them again and moving on. Here paths would begin and lead off into the deeper bush before disappearing altogether at the foot of the hills to the south of the town.

“I wanted to talk to you, Fanwell,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I wanted to ask you a favour.”

The young man looked at her nervously and then glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the garage. He was not as confident as the older apprentice, and he usually relied on Charlie to answer for both of them.

“Don't worry,” soothed Mma Ramotswe. “It's not a big favour. Or, maybe it is a bit big. Not too big, but a bit big.”

“I will always help you, Mma,” said Fanwell uncertainly. “You can ask me. I will do my best.”

Mma Ramotswe touched him gently on the forearm. “Thank you, Fanwell. It is my van. I need you to look at my van.”

They stopped walking. The apprentice looked at her in puzzlement. “Your van?”

“My van is very ill,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There is something very badly wrong with it.”

Fanwell thought for a moment. “Have you spoken to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni about it? He is the man, Mma. There is nothing that he cannot fix.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. He was right to say that there was nothing that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni could not fix, but that was not the same thing as saying that there was nothing that he
would
not fix. There comes a time in the life of machinery, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was fond of saying, when it is right to say goodbye. That had happened eventually with the water pump at the orphan farm; he had insisted that he could no longer fix the ancient machine, dating back to the days of the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Mma Ramotswe was in no doubt that this is what he thought of the tiny white van. In his view, its time had clearly come.

She explained the difficulty to Fanwell. “So,” she said, “if I am to keep my van, then I must have it fixed by somebody else. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni would just get rid of it.”

“But he would see me,” the apprentice protested. “If I took your van into the garage, he would see it and know what I was doing.”

“Of course he would,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That's why I would like you to take a look at it at home. At your place.”

Fanwell frowned. “But I haven't got the tools I need there. I haven't got an inspection pit. There is nothing.”

“Just look at it,” pleaded Mma Ramotswe. “Could you not just look at it? You wouldn't need many tools for that. A few spanners maybe. Nothing more.”

Fanwell scratched his head. “I don't know, Mma. I don't know …”

“I could drive you home,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Then you could look at it and let me know what you think. Maybe it is just a small thing, which you could fix very easily. I will pay you, of course.”

Fanwell hesitated. He was notoriously impecunious and the prospect of a bit of pin money was very attractive. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I could look. I can't guarantee anything, though, Mma.”

“None of us can guarantee anything, Fanwell,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Not even that the sun will come up tomorrow.”

Fanwell smiled. “Would you like to bet on that one, Mma Ramotswe?” he asked. “Ten pula?”

WHEN THE TIME CAME
to leave the office that evening, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was out on a call, and so there was no need for discretion.

“I am going to drive Fanwell back to his place,” Mma Ramotswe announced to Mma Makutsi. “I can drop you off first, Mma, and then go on to Old Naledi, where he lives.”

“And what about me?” asked Charlie, who had overheard the conversation from outside the door. “Why are you taking him and not me, Mma? What is wrong with me?”

“There is a lot wrong with you, Charlie,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “I have been making a big list these last few years, and it is now about three pages long.”

“I was talking to Mma Ramotswe,” Charlie called out. “I was talking to the lady who is the boss. It is best to talk to the man who is selling the cow and not to the cow itself.”

Mma Makutsi's eyes flashed in anger. “Are you calling me a
cow, Charlie? Did I hear you right? Are you saying that I am a cow?” She turned to Mma Ramotswe in outrage. “Did you hear that, Mma? Did you hear what he said?”

Mma Ramotswe made a placatory gesture. “I do not think you two should fight. And you must not say things like that, Charlie. It is very rude to call another person a chicken.”

“A chicken? I did not call her a chicken. I called her a …”

“Well, there you are,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You've admitted it.”

Charlie was silent.

“And I'll drive you home some time next week. I promise you. It will be your turn then. Now it is Fanwell's.”

They closed up the office and walked over to the tiny white van. The blister had stopped troubling her; it had burst, she thought, and walking was comfortable again. If only all our troubles were like that; and perhaps they were. Perhaps the trick was to do what was necessary to deal with them, to put a plaster on them and then forget that they were there.

Mma Makutsi got into the passenger seat while Fanwell climbed into the back. Then, as they set off, Mma Makutsi launched into a description of what she was planning to cook for Phuti Radiphuti that evening. She would make a stew, she said, which had the best Botswana beef in it, the very best. She had been given the meat by a cousin who had slaughtered it himself and who said that he knew the parents and the grandparents of the animal in question. “And they were all delicious, he said, Mma. He said that they were a very delicious family.”

Mma Ramotswe dropped Mma Makutsi off at her house and Fanwell came to take her place in the passenger seat. As they drove off, he listened very carefully to the engine note, frowning in concentration as Mma Ramotswe took the van up to the speed at which the noise became noticeable.

“That is a very bad sound, Mma,” he said. “Very bad.”

Mma Ramotswe had been expecting this verdict, but she urged him not to make up his mind before he had actually looked at the engine. “It could be a temporary noise,” she ventured. “Don't you think that it could be a temporary noise, Fanwell?”

He did not. “It is permanent,” he said. “That is a very permanent noise, Mma Ramotswe.”

They turned off the main road and began to travel into the heart of Old Naledi, the sprawling collection of meagre houses, some not much better than shelters, that stood cheek by jowl with the rest of well-set Gaborone. By the standards of African shanty towns elsewhere, it was princely, with standpipes for fresh water and lighting along the bumpy roads, but it was still the most deprived part of town and if one was looking for poverty in an otherwise prosperous country, then this was the place to find it.

I
T WAS NOT
the smallest of houses, as it had two rooms; there were smaller places nearby—single-roomed, made of baked-mud bricks and topped with slanting roofs of corrugated iron, kept standing not so much by the builder's art but by gravity and hope. Fanwell's house stood at the intersection of two unpaved roads in the middle of Old Naledi, surrounded by a tiny yard at the back of which stood a lean-to privy and a couple of small thorn trees. The front door, which gave more or less directly onto the road, was painted bright blue, the national colour, a sign of pride. And although the yard was meagre and the surroundings bleak, the whole place had a tended air about it, the look of having been swept, dusted perhaps by some house-proud hand.

They arrived at that time of the day when late afternoon imperceptibly becomes early evening, a time of lengthening shadows and softening light. There would still be a good hour before darkness descended, and Mma Ramotswe hoped that this would give the apprentice time enough to examine the van. She would sit under one of the trees, she thought, while he worked; there was a comfortable-looking stone there that was obviously used for
just such purposes. That would be where the owner of the house sat, she thought; well, she was Fanwell's guest and could sit there if invited.

“So this is your place, Fanwell,” she said as she negotiated the van off the road and onto the small patch of yard.

He turned and smiled at her proudly. “Yes, this is my place, Mma. Or rather it is my grandmother's place. I live here, you see. I live here with the others.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. It was not unusual for a grandmother to be the head of a household, especially now, with that illness that had stalked the land. But who, she wondered, were the others? They could be anybody: Fanwell's brothers and sisters, his cousins, even uncles and aunts. It did not really matter what the relationship was; a home was a home whoever lived in it, it was the same family no matter how attenuated the links of blood and lineage.

She parked the van carefully beside a large tin tub turned upside down in the yard. That would be the family bath. As she switched off the engine and opened her door, the front door of the house opened and a child of about ten peered out. Fanwell gestured to the child, who stepped out shyly, followed by a smaller child, a boy and then another boy.

Mma Ramotswe smiled at the girl. “How are you, little one?”

The child lowered her eyes, as was respectful. “I am very well, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe reached out and took her hand. It felt strangely dry, as the hands of children sometimes can. “And these are your brothers?”

The child nodded and then pointed to the smaller boy. “That one is my brother by another mother.”

The door opened and another girl came out—this one rather older, thirteen, perhaps, or fourteen. Mma Ramotswe noticed the
early signs of womanhood and thought: if only she could be protected. But how could one do that in the absence of a mother and a father? She looked away. Somehow humanity got by; somehow children grew up in the most unpromising of surroundings, as in this cramped little house in this clutter of lanes and paths and tumbledown dwellings. And many of them, against all the odds, made something of their lives, studying by candlelight or by electric light dangerously stolen from the mains outside, poring over the books that could lead them out of this and into something better. Fanwell had done it: he must have had to battle to get the school certificate that meant that he could start a mechanics' apprenticeship. And if it had not been for Charlie, who had distracted him and led him astray, he would have completed the apprenticeship by now and would be earning enough, perhaps, to escape Old Naledi altogether.

Fanwell turned to the teenage girl. “Take the aunty into the house and make her some tea,” he said. “The aunty likes tea.”

The girl nodded and gestured for Mma Ramotswe to follow her.

“My grandmother will be back soon,” said Fanwell. “She will also look after you, Mma. In the meantime, I'll start on your van.”