‘A slip of the tongue, no doubt,’ said Gwithie.
Mma Ramotswe put down her teacup. ‘No doubt,’ she said, while thinking: Of course, of course. Quite suddenly, seated under the tree with her friend, with the air so still and hot, with a fly buzzing about the lip of the milk jug on the tea-tray, with all Botswana yearning for rain, it became clear to her. It had not occurred to her before because there was no reason for her to suspect that there was any other relationship between Mma Molapo and the young man who claimed to be Liso. She had been acting on the assumption that he was either her nephew or he was not, and the second of these options had not included the possibility that he was even more closely related to her – that he was a son. But now it seemed so obvious. If Mma Molapo had a son, then she would undoubtedly prefer him to succeed rather than her nephew. So if the nephew proved to be hard to locate, or had vanished altogether, then all she would have to do would be to substitute her son. And if he succeeded, then she could stay exactly where she was; whereas a nephew may well have views of his own as to whether his aunt continued to live on the property. The problem, though, would be that it would not work. There must be many people who had seen the boy over the years – neighbours and people who worked on the farm – and they would know if suddenly a different young man came along and claimed to be the person they had seen over the years. So a substitution was impossible, and that meant that Liso could not be Mma Molapo’s son.
Gwithie said a few words that Mma Ramotswe, sunk in thought, did not catch. Now she repeated them.
‘I’m sorry, Mmapuso,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘I was thinking of… something I hadn’t been thinking about… before, that is.’
‘I asked whether you would like to come for a walk with me,’ said Gwithie. ‘A brief walk.’
Mma Ramotswe knew where they would be going.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I would like to go with you, Mma. Of course I would.’
They made their way through thick acacia bush, following a rough twin-tracked road. The earth was red here, and there was little vegetation to hide it, with only the acacia trees providing a note of green. The track curved and then dipped down towards the lake that, though diminished by the dry season, was still home to a small family of hippos and flocks of water birds.
Neither spoke much on this walk, although Gwithie stopped at one point and drew Mma Ramotswe’s attention to a plant by the side of the track.
‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘I have a soft spot for this plant. It has quite a few Setswana names but the one I use is kgaba. Do you know it?’
Mma Ramotswe tried to remember. Her father had shown her plants when he had walked through the bush with her, and he had taught her the Setswana names, but she had had difficulty in remembering them. The old words, people said, were slipping away, remembered only by a handful of elderly people. The world as described in Setswana was becoming smaller and smaller with each year that passed. Gwithie, she knew, was working on a book of wild flowers and had gone out of her way to learn the old names before they were lost.
She peered at the plant. Like everything else it was struggling, and a thin layer of red dust had coated its leaves. But she thought she knew its blade-shaped leaves, and she nodded.
Gwithie reached down to touch the plant gently, as a doctor might touch a patient. ‘People use this for a variety of complaints,’ she said. ‘Like almost everything in the bush, it has its uses. This is good for arthritis and rheumatism, apparently. And you can also eat it as a sort of spinach.’ She straightened up, smiling as she spoke. ‘It can also be used to treat children who fail to look after their parents,’ she continued. ‘And to bind together the members of football teams.’
Mma Ramotswe laughed. ‘It must be a very busy plant,’ she said.
They continued on their walk. Now the track drew near the edge of the lake and she knew that this was the spot. Mma Ramotswe had been there on that sad day, and she remembered.
They stood before the rock, a natural boulder that had been used by rhinos as a rubbing stone. She saw the smooth parts of the stone where, for generations and for centuries, the animals had rubbed their hide. These were their landmarks, the monuments of animals that had once been plentiful; now, in many places, only the stones remained. As she stood there, she recalled a fragment of a story that her father had told her a long time ago, just a line of it: Our brothers, the rhinos, who are gone now.
A small brass plaque with the name Puso Kirby was attached towards the base of the rubbing stone. Underneath were the words: Light of Our Lives.
Mma Ramotswe took her friend’s hand. ‘Yes, Mma,’ she said. ‘This is his place.’
Gwithie was looking out over the waters of the lake. ‘You know, Mma,’ she said, ‘on the day that we lost him we heard a leopard nearby. We very rarely hear those creatures – they are so shy and secretive – but we heard a leopard. There is no mistaking them. And it was here when we buried him.’
Mma Ramotswe said nothing, but she pressed her friend’s hand in sympathy.
‘And then,’ Gwithie continued, ‘there was an extraordinary thing. I don’t expect people to believe it, but it happened. When the children came, much later, to see their father’s grave, as we were walking down here, we saw the leopard. He was following us, but we felt no fear – not for one moment.’
Mma Ramotswe looked at her. ‘Do you think it was him? His spirit?’
Gwithie lowered her eyes, and her head moved slightly. Her voice was quiet. ‘Why should I not think that?’
‘There is no reason why you should not think that,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘It is a lovely thing to believe. He loved wild animals. They were his work, weren’t they? He loved the bush. He loved the rocks that leopards love. So that is where your son must be, Mma. He must be. We are always in the place we love, Mma. We never leave it.’
They moved away, with Mma Ramotswe still holding Gwithie’s hand until they turned the corner, and the stone, with its heartfelt inscription, was no longer in sight. The light of our lives. Yes, thought Mma Ramotswe. That is what we should be to one another: light that shines whatever the darkness of loss. Always.
It did not seem right to return to the Molapo case until much later, when she had left her friend and was travelling back on the final stretch of road towards Gaborone. Then she allowed herself to wonder how she would be able to prove what might be the truth. One slip of the tongue by a young man could hardly be considered evidence sufficient to unmask an imposter. And then a further thought came: what if it were simply a mistake on his part? Liso Molapo – the real Liso Molapo – had not seen his mother for a long time and might easily call his aunt by that name because he viewed her as a substitute for the mother he no longer had. That was entirely plausible and, if true, it meant that she was no further along the road to sorting out this affair.
By the time she reached Zebra Drive it was four o’clock, and doubt had replaced the certainty of earlier. An hour later, she no longer knew what to think. She took a pumpkin out of the store cupboard and began to prepare it by splitting it with the heaviest of her kitchen knives. Pumpkin was something uncomplicated, something completely certain, and cooking a pumpkin, she felt, was a good thing to do when you did not know quite where you were.
Chapter Nine
All Men Can Benefit
T
here had been periods – sometimes rather long ones – in Mma Ramotswe’s life, as in the lives of most of us, when nothing very much had happened. There had, for instance, been the period shortly after the foundation of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency when there had been a marked paucity of clients – there had been none, in fact – and she and Mma Makutsi had spent long days trying to find tasks to do without giving the appearance of having no real work. It had been easier, perhaps, for Mma Makutsi, as she had been able first to invent and then to refine an elaborate filing system that, she claimed, catered for all possible eventualities. Thus there was an entry in this system entitled MEN, which at one
level below was subdivided into FAITHFUL MEN and UNFAITHFUL MEN. Matters relating to men could also be filed under such disparate headings as: DISHONEST MEN, GENERAL MEN and UNKNOWN MEN. Then there were files for CLIENTS WHO HAVE NOT PAID THEIR BILL – rather a larger file than Mma Ramotswe would have liked – and for CLIENTS WHO MIGHT NOT PAY THEIR BILL. The judgement on whether or not a client was likely to pay the bill was one made entirely by Mma Makutsi – on criteria that Mma Ramotswe had tried unsuccessfully to get her to clarify.
‘It is not only done on the way they look,’ said Mma Makutsi, in answer to Mma Ramotswe’s enquiry.
‘I’m glad to hear that, Mma,’ Mma Ramotswe said.
But then Mma Makutsi went on firmly, ‘Although that is a very important factor. You see, dishonest people look dishonest, Mma. There is never any question about that.’
‘Well,’ said Mma Ramotswe, ‘I’m not at all —’
‘I never have any difficulty,’ Mma Makutsi cut in. ‘There are many ways of telling, Mma. There is the way their eyes look, for instance – if they are too close together.’
Mma Ramotswe frowned. ‘I don’t think so, Mma. There are many —’ She was not allowed to finish.
‘Oh, make no mistake about it, Mma. If the eyes are close together, that person is going to be trouble. I’ve always said that, Mma. And the same goes for those whose eyes are too far apart – the same thing there. They will be up to no good.’
Mma Makutsi stared intently at Mma Ramotswe, the light flashing off her large round spectacles. It was as if she were challenging her employer to contradict a fundamental scientific truth. Mma Ramotswe said nothing at first; she was at this time discovering that Mma Makutsi in full flight was not to be interrupted lightly. But when no further assertions came, she very gently ventured a question as to where Mma Makutsi had learned to discern character in this way.
‘Life experience,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘There are some things you cannot learn from books. You cannot be taught instinct.’
Mma Ramotswe absorbed this. ‘But surely you must be careful, Mma. People cannot help the way they look. A person who is good inside may look bad outside. I am sure there are many cases of that.’
Mma Makutsi’s glasses flashed a danger signal. ‘Really, Mma? Name one, please. Name one person who looks bad outside but who is good inside.’ She paused, before adding, ‘I am waiting.’
Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. She was sure that there were such people, but she found it difficult to bring anybody to mind. ‘Violet Sephotho?’ she suggested. ‘What about her? She looks all right on the outside but is definitely bad on the inside.’
Mma Makutsi let out a hoot of laughter. ‘Violet Sephotho, Mma? You say that she looks good on the outside? She does not, Mma! She does not! That woman looks on the outside exactly as she is on the inside. And that, I must say, is bad, very bad.’
Mma Ramotswe was kind. Surely even Violet Sephotho, for all her manifest faults, had her better moments. ‘I’m not sure that she looks bad absolutely one hundred per cent of the time, Mma,’ she said. She had almost said ninety-seven per cent of the time, but managed to stop herself. ‘I have seen her smiling sometimes.’
This was as a red rag to Mma Makutsi. ‘Smiling, Mma? A smile is the most dangerous disguise of all. Many people smile to disguise what they are thinking inside.’
There had been no further debate on the issue, and Mma Ramotswe had learned to steer clear of certain topics – such as that one – that could be guaranteed to elicit an extreme response from her somewhat prickly assistant. Mma Makutsi had many merits, she came to realise, and these easily outweighed her occasional faults. And now, with Mma Makutsi on maternity leave and the office seeming strangely quiet as a result, there was something else that she came to realise: she missed her assistant in a way and to a degree that she had never anticipated. She missed her occasional outbursts; she missed her comments on what was in the newspapers; she even missed the way in which she would intervene in the conversation Mma Ramotswe was having with clients, dropping in observations from her position to the rear and making them stop and turn their heads to reply to somebody over their shoulder – not an easy thing to do. All of that she missed, just as she missed Mma Makutsi’s knack of putting her teacup down on the desk in a manner that so completely revealed her thinking on the subject under discussion. There was nobody else she knew who could put a cup down on a desk to quite the same effect. It was, she decided, one of the many respects in which Mma Makutsi was – and here she could think of only one word to express it – irreplaceable. There simply could never be another Mma Makutsi. There could never be another woman from Bobonong, of all places, with flashing round glasses and ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College. There could never be another person who was even remotely capable of standing up to somebody like Mma Potokwani, or putting Charlie in his place when, with all the confidence and ignorance of the young male, he made some outrageous comment. If Mma Makutsi decided not to return from maternity leave then Mma Ramotswe thought that the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency would never be the same again, and might not be worth continuing with.
She looked about her. She had worked as a detective for some years now, and in that time she had done her best for her clients. She liked to think that she had made a difference to the lives of at least some people and helped them to deal with problems that had become too burdensome for them to handle on their own. Now, however, surveying the shabby little office, she wondered whether she really had achieved very much. It was a rare moment of gloom, and it was at this point that she realised she was doing something that she very seldom did. She supported many people in their tears – for tears could so easily come to those who were recounting their troubles – but there were few occasions on which she herself cried. If you are there to staunch the tears of the world, then it does not cross your mind that you yourself may weep. But now she did, not copiously but discreetly and inconsequentially, and barely noticeably – except to Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, who chose that moment to come into the room, wiping the grease off his hands, ready with a remark about what he had just discovered under the latest unfortunate car.
For a moment he stood quite still. Then, letting the lint fall from his hands, he swiftly crossed the room and put his arm about his wife’s shoulder, lowering his head so that they were cheek to cheek and she could feel the stubble on his chin and the warmth of his breath.
‘My Precious, my Precious.’
She reached up and took his hand. There was still a smear on it – some vital fluid of the injured car to which he had been attending – but she paid no attention to that.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘There is really no reason for me to cry. I am being silly.’
‘You are not silly, Mma. You are never silly. What is it?’
With her free hand she took the handkerchief from where it was tucked into the front of her dress. She blew her nose, and with some determination too. After all, the blowing of a nose can be the punctuation that brings such moments to an end.
‘I am much better now,’ she said. ‘I have been sitting and thinking when I should be working. And without Mma Makutsi to talk to, well, you know how hard it can be to sit with the problems of other people.’
He knew, or thought he knew. Yes, he knew how she felt. ‘Just like cars,’ he said. ‘You sit and look at a car and you think of all its problems, and it can get you down.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it can.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’ll be all right, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. Mma Makutsi will come back and everything will be the same again.’
He removed his hand from her shoulder and stood up. ‘I will make you tea,’ he said.
She looked at him with fondness. For some reason, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni did not make very good tea. It was something to do with the quantities of tea he put in the pot, or with not allowing the water to boil properly, or with the way he poured it. For whatever reason, his tea was never quite of the stand
ard achieved by her or by Mma Makutsi. So she thanked him and said that it would be good for her to do something instead of sitting at her desk and moping, and then she made the tea for herself and for her husband, and for Charlie and Fanwell too, and Mr J. L. B. Matekoni took his cup back into the garage where he sipped at it thoughtfully while he decided what to do.
Later that afternoon, on the pretext of taking a recently repaired car for a test drive, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni went out along the Tlokweng Road in the direction of the orphan farm. There was a good reason for taking that particular car on that particular road – he had fitted new shock absorbers and he wanted to check that they were properly bedded in – but his real motive was to see Mma Potokwani. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni held the matron in high regard, in spite of her habit of finding something for him to fix whenever she saw him, and he wanted to talk to her about what had happened earlier that day.
She was in her office when he arrived and happened to be looking out of the window.
‘So, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni,’ she called out to him as he got out of the car. ‘So you’re coming to see me.’