The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe (21 page)

“But I will not lie,” Mma Ramotswe assured him. “I shall say, ‘Have you seen a stray cat?' They will probably think that I am searching for my own cat, but the question I am actually asking them is quite different. I shall be asking them if they have seen a stray cat.”

“But that's ridiculous, Mma.”

“I don't think so. It's worked before. You'd be surprised at the number of people who are very happy to start talking to you once you mention a cat—or a dog, for that matter. Off they go, and before you know it, you've learned all about them—who they are, what sort
of dog or cat they themselves have, what they think of their neighbours' dogs, and so on.”

Charlie was unconvinced. “You can't do that, Mma! You can't go in like that and ask those silly questions …”

“You can stay in the van if you like, Charlie, but I think it would be better if you came in with me. Part of your training, you see.”

Charlie trailed behind her as she walked up to the gate. Once again, there was an intercom bell. As she pressed this, a blue light came on above the button. After a few seconds, a woman's voice, tinny and crackly, sounded through the small loudspeaker. “Yes. What is it?”

“It is me,” said Mma Ramotswe, winking at Charlie as she spoke.

The voice came back immediately. “Me? Who is this
me
?”

“I've come about a cat.”

The voice sounded puzzled. “About your hat?”

“A cat,” repeated Mma Ramotswe. “May I come in, please, Mma. It is hot standing here, and I am thirsty.”

It was a direct plea for something that Mma Ramotswe knew could not be ignored in any Botswana household. To say to somebody that you were thirsty was to appeal to a most basic rule of the old Botswana morality: you could never refuse to give drinking water to another. This came from a time when water was even more precious than it is now; from a time before there were pipes and public water supplies; from a time when, out in the Kalahari, the desert people husbanded their water in buried vessels—calabashes tucked away under the sand. These could be retrieved and broached to yield their life-saving supplies. But if you took a sip, then you had to be prepared to let others take a sip too. You simply had to. And in villages, where there were wells, people similarly had to allow a stranger to quench his thirst, for that was the morality of a people who had always lived in a dry place, on the very edge of a great waterless expanse.

The woman at the other end pressed a switch that cut off communication, and within a few seconds they heard the whirring of the electric motor controlling the gate.

“We are invited in,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You see, Charlie.”

The open gate revealed a surprisingly lush garden—a sign that the property had a good borehole. The house was markedly less opulent than the one they had just visited, being an older bungalow-style building, but it was clearly kept in good repair. A woman had emerged from the front door of the house and was coming down the drive to meet them.

Once again Mma Ramotswe offered the usual polite greetings. These were reciprocated, although while she enquired after Mma Ramotswe's health, the woman was looking suspiciously at Charlie.

“This is my assistant,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He works with me.”

The woman nodded but kept her eyes on Charlie, as if assessing him.

“May we come in, Mma?” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is very hot.”

“Yes, yes,” said the woman. “You may come in, Mma. I shall give you some water.”

“You are kind,” said Mma Ramotswe.

As they approached the house, they heard the electric gate closing behind them.

“You have a fine garden,” said Mma Ramotswe conversationally. “You must be proud of it.”

“Yes,” said the woman. “I set out this garden. My late husband was not interested in it.”

“I am sorry to hear that your husband is late,” said Mma Ramotswe. “When did he become late, Mma?”

“Two years ago,” said the woman, briskly. “He had a hole in his heart. He lived with it and then one day it became bigger and he became late. The Lord called him.”

They had reached the front door, and the woman gestured to Mma Ramotswe to go inside. She glanced at Charlie, and then whispered to Mma Ramotswe. “Would you mind if your assistant stayed outside, Mma? He will be comfortable on the verandah here.”

“Of course not,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Charlie, will you stay out here, please?”

Charlie said nothing, but made his way to the far end of the verandah, where he sat down on a chair. Mma Ramotswe accompanied her hostess inside.

As soon as they were through the door, the woman turned to Mma Ramotswe and gripped her upper arm. “Why have you brought that … that young man?” she hissed. “Did they not tell you that we do not allow men here? Did you not know that, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe thought quickly. “No,” she said. “I knew nothing about it.”

This answer seemed to irritate the woman. “That makes me very cross, Mma. We tell them and we tell them, and then some inexperienced person goes and spoils everything. We have to be confidential—we have to.”

“I'm sorry, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I won't do it again.”

The woman seemed mollified. “I should give you my name, Mma. I am called Maria. That is not my Setswana name—obviously—but I have always been called that. My mother was a Catholic, you see. I am not, because my late husband was Anglican. He was a sidesman at our church, you know. And the treasurer too.”

Mma Ramotswe inclined her head in recognition of the late husband's achievements. And she felt a flush of shame—she had gained entrance to this woman's house on false pretences. They were harmless false pretences, of course, and they had been made purely in the interests of a distressed client, but they were false pretences nonetheless. And she could tell that the woman to whom she was speaking was a good woman, and should not be deceived in any way.

What would her own father say—the late Obed Ramotswe, who would never have spoken anything but the truth, in any circumstances? What would he say, she asked herself, if he could see his own daughter going into the house of another with some ridiculous
story about a stray cat? She put the thought out of her mind, but mentally she made her apology to him, in the same way, and same spirit, as she had apologised to him when she was a young woman and had deceived him once about seeing Note Mokoti. He had asked her whether she was seeing anybody and she had said that she was not—but she was: she was seeing Note Mokoti, trumpeter and fatal attraction to any woman who got close to him. That had been a lie—there was no other way of describing it. She had lied to her father. And later, when her marriage to Note had come to its disastrous end, she had tried to tell him that she had deceived him and the words had stuck in her throat and she had become silent. He had taken her hand and told her that it did not matter what had happened; that he understood. He had accepted an apology that had not even been made.

Of course, that was the sort of thing we all did when we were young. You cannot judge somebody of eighteen by the standards of somebody of thirty, even less by the standards of somebody who was forty. And those things that we did when we were young were not so important, really, provided that we stopped doing them as we grew older and saw them for what they were. Which was what worried her now: she had no excuse for deceiving this woman. Her job as a private detective in itself gave no justification. She was a woman first and foremost, a citizen of this fine country, the wife of a respected mechanic, and, perhaps most importantly of all, the daughter of that great man, the late Obed Ramotswe. Those were all things that outweighed the requirements of her unusual and sometimes rather demanding job. They outweighed them. They just did.

She looked at Maria. “I need to tell you something, Mma,” she began. “I did not come about a cat.”

The woman did not seem surprised. “Of course you didn't, Mma. I didn't think that you did.”

This took Mma Ramotswe by surprise. “Oh…,” she said.

The woman held out her hand. “You are safe here, Mma. I shall not tell anybody you have come. You can trust me.”

This was a strange thing to say, thought Mma Ramotswe. But everything about this encounter so far was strange. What did Maria mean by saying that she was safe? Safe from whom?

“You see,” Maria went on, “this is a house of trust. Any woman who comes here must be able to trust anybody she meets under this roof. I insist on that, Mma. It is the basis of what we do.”

Mma Ramotswe was beginning to understand. “I see,” she said.

“Yes,” said Maria. “We get women here who are at the end of their tethers, Mma. They will have suffered so much from people whom they once trusted, and that trust has been abused. That is why they come to us, and we never turn anybody away. Never.”

It was clear now. And it confirmed that this was the right house. Mrs. had come here because she was in danger. It all made sense. “I see,” said Mma Ramotswe.

Maria started to lead her towards the kitchen, but continued to talk. “But almost everybody who comes here starts off without telling me the whole truth. There is often a reason for that. They are so used to having to cover up, to having to say all sorts of things to the men who are tormenting them that they carry on with it. It takes time for them to be able to speak without fear—and that is when the truth will start to come out.”

“I have not—” began Mma Ramotswe.

Maria interrupted her. “No, of course you haven't. All in good time. But you might tell me one thing: Why did you come, Mma? Who was it?”

“There is an Indian woman,” said Mma Ramotswe. “She came to see you yesterday with her friend, Miss Rose. I have been asked—”

Maria brightened. “Ah, Lakshmi. She said that she knew another woman who was suffering too, and that she would pass on our details. So she has sent you.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. The work that Maria did was good work, and she did not want to mislead her. “I do not really know her, Mma.”

Maria was brisk. “But she said to me that she told you everything. She said that she told you about what happened with her husband.”

“She…,” began Mma Ramotswe.

Maria brushed the interjection aside. “I thought that the two of you were close friends, but maybe she is closer to you than you are to her. That can happen, you know, Mma. Women who are desperate for somebody to talk to can seize on people they don't really know all that well. They can become dependent very quickly. Maybe that is what happened when you met her.”

They had reached the kitchen, and Maria now poured Mma Ramotswe a glass of water. “There,” she said. “That will make you less thirsty.” She paused. Mma Ramotswe, now actually thirsty, drained the glass.

“Lakshmi told me about your husband, Mma. I was very sorry to hear about it. I said to her that you should even consider going to your brother. You have to be careful about getting other male members of the family involved, as it can lead to trouble, but since your brother—”

Mma Ramotswe put down the glass. The misunderstanding had gone on quite long enough.

“Excuse me, Mma,” she said firmly. “She was not talking about me. There is nothing wrong with my husband. He is a good man. And I have not come here because—”

Again, Maria did not let her finish. “Mma,” she said, holding up a hand, “Mma, we understand. You are being loyal, because women are loyal—in the face of everything, they are loyal.”

Mma Ramotswe found that she had to laugh. She tried to stop herself, but she failed. Maria looked at her severely.

“This is no laughing matter, Mma.”

No, of course not; and suddenly she was back in school, in
Mochudi, on a hot afternoon. She was sitting in the classroom with the summer sun like a hammer on the tin roof and the bolts that kept the sheets of tin in place cracking loudly as the heat made them move; she was sitting at her desk with a schoolbook open in front of her,
The History of Botswana
, and she noticed the name of the publisher:
Published by Longman
, and the question occurred to her: Who is this Longman? She imagined him—a tall man, much taller than those around him, carrying copies of
The History of Botswana
under his arm—and the thought made her begin to giggle. At first the giggles were controlled and barely audible, but then they welled up within her and began to attract attention.
There is nothing funny
, the teacher had snapped, glaring at her from the front of the classroom, and of course that only made it worse, for when somebody says that there is nothing funny, it only makes everything seem even funnier. Eventually she had been sent out of the classroom until she got her giggling under control, and was then admitted back in after a stern rebuke from the teacher for laughing over nothing and disturbing the whole class. But it was not nothing—it was poor Mr. Longman, the publisher…

She collected herself. “I'm sorry, Mma. I understand. It's just that you and I are talking at cross-purposes. I have come here because I wanted to find something out, and you have imagined that I have come here because I am being mistreated by my husband.” She paused. “Is that right, Mma? I take it that this is what you do—you help people with bad husbands.”

Maria visibly stiffened. “What did you come to find out? Are you from the newspaper?”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “No, I am nothing like that.”

This did little to reassure Maria. “Then you have been sent by a man … by a husband?”

Mma Ramotswe held up her hands in protest. “Definitely not.”

“Then why have you come?”

Mma Ramotswe spoke carefully. She knew that this was her
chance to elicit the information she needed. At the same time, she knew that she should not deceive Maria; she would not lie.

“I am interested in helping Lakshmi. I suspect she has suffered much.”