In the time of five pump.., p.5
In the Time of Five Pumpkins, page 5
“Cake always helps,” she said. “But you know that, don’t you?”
Mma Ramotswe did. “I shall take this back home to give to the children,” she said. “Puso loves your cake, Mma—as does Motholeli. They are hoping one day that you will teach them how to bake it for themselves.”
“I shall be happy to do that, Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Potokwane.
Mma Potokwane came with her to the door. “Have you got a moment, Mma?” she asked as they stood on the verandah. “I would like to show you something I am growing.” She pointed in the direction of the small vegetable garden behind the office. “I have been working hard, Mma. I have some very promising pumpkins.”
“Pumpkins!”
Mma Potokwane smiled. “I knew you’d be interested. They’re not ready, of course, but when they are, oh, my goodness, they will be the number one pumpkins in the Tlokweng Agricultural Show. These are competitive pumpkins, you see, Mma.”
They went together to the patch of garden, where Mma Ramotswe was shown the pumpkin vines with their promising fruit.
“Those are very fine indeed,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are a very fortunate woman, Mma.”
“I know,” said Mma Potokwane.
She spoke without any suggestion of self-satisfaction or smugness. She was fortunate, and she did not feel that she had to conceal the fact. She was fortunate to be who she was, living where she was, and doing what she did. She was fortunate to be able to spend time with a friend like Mma Ramotswe, drinking tea, talking about matters of the day, and having a slice—or two—of cake at the same time. She was fortunate to have this little patch of garden on which to grow a few pumpkins of such…of such status. These were all fine things, as Mma Ramotswe so rightly said.
She looked fondly at her friend, who would shortly be getting into her tiny white van and driving back down the road to Gaborone, just a few miles away.
“Please come back soon,” she said.
Mma Ramotswe smiled. That was the best sort of farewell, she thought. Please come back soon. And she replied, “I shall, Mma Potokwane. I shall come back soon.”
Chapter Three
Listen to Your Shoes
We are two very different businesses in one,” Mma Ramotswe was fond of saying. “But we are also two businesses that are very similar. On one side we cater for cars—and the things that go wrong with cars—and on the other, we look after people—and the things that go wrong with people.”
Broadly speaking, this was true. Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors was, as the name suggested, a garage, and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was, also as the name suggested, a detective agency run by two ladies and committed to helping people who were encountering some issue in their lives and who, as a result, needed help. Both businesses were therefore caring businesses—concerns to which the mechanically troubled and the otherwise troubled might have recourse.
Both businesses were small. Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors was run by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, that great garagiste, with the regular assistance of a young mechanic called Fanwell, formerly an apprentice under Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s direction, and the less frequent assistance of another young man, Charlie. This young man had begun his mechanical apprenticeship at the same time as Fanwell had, but had not completed the theoretical part of the course insisted upon by the Botswana Motor Trades Authority, and was therefore not, strictly speaking, a qualified mechanic. And there were other grounds for distinguishing between these two. Fanwell was cautious: he never forced machinery and he gave his mechanical diagnoses only after careful consideration of all the evidence. In particular he had absorbed the teaching that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni gave: he understood the importance of listening to what a car’s engine had to say.
“An engine will always tell you what is wrong,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said. “Engines do not believe in suffering in silence. All you have to do is to listen to what they have to say, and to learn the words that they use.”
Charlie had never concealed his amusement over this advice. “The boss goes on about listening to engines,” he remarked. “He says they talk. I do not think that is the case. An engine either goes brum brum or it is silent because it is not working. That’s it. Story over.”
Fanwell took a different view. “The boss knows what he’s talking about,” he said. “If you’ve been fixing engines as long as the boss has been doing, then you know what they sound like. Brum brum may be their normal sound, but what about brim brim? What if an engine goes knock knock? They do, you know. That’s the bearings—every time. You only have to listen.”
There had not been enough work for both young men once they had completed their apprenticeship period, and so Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had, quite properly, offered the one available job to Fanwell, who had at least passed his exams. This had been a very painful decision for him, as he was a sympathetic man, and he did not like the thought of turning Charlie out into the world without a qualification and with no other post to which he might go. That was when Mma Ramotswe, whose heart was every bit as large as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s, had come to the rescue and had offered, at some cost to herself, to take Charlie on as an assistant on the agency side. By providing him with part-time work as an apprentice private detective, she made it possible for him to take up her husband’s offer of part-time employment in the garage as an unqualified mechanic.
That suited Charlie perfectly. He was happy enough to keep his hand in at the garage, but the idea of being an employee of a detective agency was, in his view, far more glamorous. He leapt at the opportunity that Mma Ramotswe gave him, even if he could hardly miss Mma Makutsi’s lack of enthusiasm for his being on the staff of the detective agency. She had initially refused to confer on him any status at all, pointedly referring to him as an office assistant and occasionally even as an assistant office assistant, rather than by the title that he himself preferred: junior detective. She had come round slowly, though, eventually thawing to the point of acknowledging that there were circumstances in which Charlie could be useful enough—“for routine matters, that is.”
If Tlokweng Speedy Motors was a small business, then so too was the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. The full complement of staff was two ladies—Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi—and part of Charlie. The agency’s premises were similarly restricted in size, consisting of a single room in which there were two desks, two and a half filing cabinets and three chairs: one for Mma Ramotswe, another for Mma Makutsi, and a third for the use of clients. Charlie had no chair, and if he needed to sit down, he was obliged to perch on top of the half-size filing cabinet.
Mma Ramotswe had raised with Mma Makutsi the possibility of getting a chair for Charlie, and possibly a small table, if not a proper office desk.
“It would be nice if he could sit down occasionally,” she said to Mma Makutsi. “Everybody needs to sit down from time to time, Mma.”
Mma Makutsi was not convinced. “There is very little room in our office,” she argued. “If Charlie has a chair, then what will he do with it? He will try to sit down all the time, Mma. That is what happens when you give people a chair—they try to sit down.”
Mma Ramotswe had waited for this objection to be expanded upon, but there had been nothing more, and the matter was dropped. Privately, though, she had explained to Charlie that there was a shortage of space in the office, and that although she would like to give him somewhere to sit, it was not possible to do so—just yet.
“You are very kind, Mma Ramotswe,” the young man said. “I would like to have a chair one day, but I am not unhappy standing up. And I can sit down on the filing cabinet if I want to. It is not too uncomfortable.”
Mma Ramotswe appreciated his understanding. “You are a very uncomplaining young man,” she said. “People like that quality. People don’t like moaners.”
Charlie nodded. “Like Mma Makutsi, Mma. She is a big moaner, isn’t she?”
Mma Ramotswe had not let him get away with that. “Mma Makutsi is not just anybody, Charlie. She is an equal partner with me in this business, and you must not call your employers moaners.”
“I am not calling you that,” said Charlie. “You are not going on about this thing and that thing all the time. Not you, Mma Ramotswe. I am referring to a certain Mma Makutsi, who thinks she’s Miss Big Time Special because she got ninety-two per cent or whatever it was at the Botswana Secretarial College. That is who I’m talking about.”
“Ninety-seven per cent,” Mma Ramotswe corrected. “And I do not want you to pick a fight with Mma Makutsi, Charlie. This is a happy office and we all get on with one another very well—all the time.”
Such exchanges had not been infrequent at the beginning of Charlie’s career in the agency, but they had become much rarer as time went by. And in due course, the unwelcoming attitude that Mma Makutsi showed to Charlie was replaced by an attitude of greater tolerance and, eventually, what might even be described as affection.
“I have to admit that Charlie is making progress,” Mma Makutsi observed to Mma Ramotswe while Charlie was out of the office on some errand. “It’s interesting, isn’t it, Mma, how young men grow out of their earlier nonsense and become more responsible. I have read somewhere that this is because when they are younger, men’s brains are all mixed up and need time to sort themselves out. They are like a big jumble of wires and fuses and so on, but they become a bit more like women’s brains as they get older. I have read all about that, Mma. This is something called neuroscience.”
Mma Ramotswe had listened to this and expressed cautious agreement. “It is very hard for young men,” she said. “They need time. And yes, Charlie is much less headstrong than he used to be. He is doing very well, and I am glad that you are becoming so fond of him, Mma.”
“Not so fond,” Mma Makutsi said quickly. “A bit fond, perhaps. You are right, though: Charlie is less…less like he used to be. But there is still room for improvement.”
* * *
—
On that particular afternoon, while Mma Ramotswe was out at Tlokweng, watching the sports at the Orphan Farm and subsequently having tea with Mma Potokwane, the premises of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, if not actually somnolent in the afternoon heat, were nonetheless quieter than usual. On the garage side, Fanwell had been sent off to attend a refresher course in automotive hydraulics—a subject that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had never enjoyed but that needed to be understood by at least one member of the garage staff. Charlie, although he would normally have been on duty if Fanwell was away, had requested and been given the afternoon off to attend a family gathering of his wife’s people: an aunt, recently widowed, had found a prospective new husband, who had come down from Palapye to meet his possible new relatives. Delicate property negotiations were involved, as the new husband was comfortably off and had avaricious children. Both sides wanted to be represented in the largest possible numbers, to give weight to their respective family positions, and so Charlie had been inveigled into attending. That left only Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni in attendance at the garage, which did not matter particularly, as there was little, if anything, to do. There had been a couple of cars in for servicing, but this had been a simple matter of changing oil and filters, checking batteries, and attending to one or two minor electrical issues. This had all been done before lunch, with the result that there seemed to be nothing left to do during the long, warm hours of the afternoon.
On the agency side, Mma Makutsi was at her desk, but was giving serious consideration to closing the office for the afternoon. There had been a few things to do that morning—including making a trip to the bank and to the stationery store, but once that was done, Mma Makutsi could think of nothing that had to be done. She was up to date with her filing—indeed she was more than up to date, having reclassified some of the aged files and weeded out unnecessary material from others. These were highly skilled tasks, in Mma Makutsi’s opinion, which she alone was qualified to perform. She had received a particular commendation for filing at the end of that module of her secretarial course, and had been described by the tutor as being “arguably the best filer ever to have attended the college.” That commendation had meant so much, but had unfortunately only been a verbal one. If only, thought Mma Makutsi, it had been written down somewhere, it could have been given the prominence it deserved—but this was not to be.
Mma Ramotswe filed papers occasionally, although Mma Makutsi wished that she would not. She could not stop her, of course, as technically the business belonged to her, but Mma Makutsi had nonetheless discouraged her from interfering. “I have a very good system, Mma Ramotswe,” she had said. “In general, it is better, in the world of filing, for one person—and I mean one qualified person—to attend to all the filing, even if there are others who, quite naturally, want to be as helpful as possible.” There had then come a pause that had hung heavily in the air for almost a full minute. This was followed by, “There’s a reason for this, you see. People may think that they know which file a letter should go into, but they may have it wrong. As a result, a letter, for instance, may be put into the file pertaining to its sender, whereas the correct procedure might be to put it in the file pertaining to its subject. There is a difference there, you see. A sender is one thing, and a subject is another. There is a very important distinction that some people—and I am not suggesting that you are one of them, Mma Ramotswe—would not grasp. I am just giving that as an example. There are many others.”
Without any filing to do, with no letters to be opened, and with no reports to write, the afternoon stretched out in front of Mma Makutsi. She toyed with the idea of locking up and going home, but tempting though that was, she had assured Mma Ramotswe that she would be there until she returned from Tlokweng and she did not want to let her down. Inevitably, when the office was closed during normal working hours, somebody would arrive without an appointment, and business might be lost. So she sat back in her chair and opened a magazine that she had been saving for just such a moment. The magazine was engaging. There were several articles on home decoration, with excellent ideas, she thought, and a long first-person piece about a woman who took secret driving lessons in the face of her husband’s opposition. Mma Makutsi was surprised that any husband these days should imagine he had the right to stop his wife from learning to drive. She read the article with a growing sense of indignation, and was pleased when, in the final paragraph, the wife passed her driving test with what was described as “an almost perfect score of almost one hundred per cent.” The precise figure was not mentioned, and Mma Makutsi momentarily speculated as to whether it was above ninety-seven per cent, or below it. Probably below, she decided, but it was impressive nonetheless.
She listened for sounds coming from the garage. When Fanwell or Charlie were working with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, a radio could often be heard in the background, playing the sort of music that the two young men enjoyed but that she knew Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not particularly like. It all seemed so much the same to her—an endless beat that never seemed to be going anywhere. Now there was silence, although it was punctuated from time to time by the ringing of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s phone and the sound of ensuing, business-like conversations. She looked at her watch. In fifteen minutes or so, she would go through to the garage and announce that tea was ready. Until then, there was the magazine, and, in particular, her horoscope to look at. Not that she believed in such nonsense, but it was always entertaining to see what the stars had in store for one, even though there might be no point in paying any attention to their predictions.
You are in for a big surprise, said the resident astrologist. Well, thought Mma Makutsi, that was hardly very helpful. We were all in for big surprises, given the state of the world. What would be truly surprising would be if there were no surprises.
You will meet a new person, the column continued. Always be open to new experiences, but remember to be cautious. Not everybody you encounter on life’s journey wishes you well. Old friends and acquaintances are always best.
Mma Makutsi frowned, and read the prediction once more. Not everybody you encounter on life’s journey wishes you well. That was undoubtedly true, as a moment’s thought would surely confirm. She wondered whether the warning was a general one—or whether it was specific to some person whom she was about to encounter. And as for old friends and acquaintances—that must refer to people like Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. On that subject, the caster of the horoscope was undoubtedly correct. Friends like that were irreplaceable.
She lowered the magazine with a smile. Horoscopes were harmless enough, perhaps, but there was really little point in reading them. So she laid the magazine aside and looked up at the ceiling. It was at this point that she heard the sound of voices in the garage. She strained to make out what was being said. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was talking to somebody, but it was clear neither what he was saying nor to whom he was talking. There was another voice, but not one she recognised. It was certainly neither Fanwell nor Charlie. This was a new person…
Mma Makutsi rose from her desk and crossed the floor. The door that led into the garage was closed, masking the sound of voices beyond, but by crouching down and putting an ear to the door panels she was able to hear a little bit more clearly. That was Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni talking—saying something about a car—and that was the other person, a man. The visitors said something about having to go somewhere—Francistown, was it? Or was it Lobatse? Then Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said that there would have to be rain soon and that the weather surely could not get any hotter.
The handle of the door turned—somebody on the other side was preparing to open it. Mma Makutsi moved back guiltily: it would not do to be caught listening at doors, even if the door at which one was listening was the door to one’s own office.
