Precious and Grace

  CHAPTER NINE

  TRUST YOUR NOSE

  MR. J.L.B. MATEKONI sniffed at the air. There was no doubt about it—Mma Ramotswe was making his favourite stew. The aroma, detected even as he set foot on the stoep, was unmistakable, and enough to get the gastric juices going in anticipation. Onions were the key to that: the recipe, developed specially for him by Mma Ramotswe, advised by Mma Potokwane, involved onions chosen for their smallness and sweetness—“not these football-sized onions they try to sell us,” warned Mma Potokwane. These were gently softened in sunflower oil flavoured with a pinch of chilli flakes, and then the beef, fine Botswana grass-fed beef—“none better anywhere in the world,” claimed Mma Potokwane—was added in small pieces. This was then sealed before the addition of stock and a small quantity of chopped ostrich biltong, the dried and salted meat that people considered such a delicacy.

  He went into the kitchen, where the children were sitting at the table, a plate of macaroni cheese in front of them. If the stew was his own favourite, then macaroni cheese was theirs. They liked to add quantities of tomato sauce—something of which Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not approve but that he tolerated. He had eaten strange things as a boy—things that would turn his stomach today but had seemed delicious then—raw bacon sandwiches with added sugar; pineapple dipped in golden syrup; fried bread with a thick spreading of lard; flying ants, caught on the wing, that tasted like butter and could be popped into the mouth with a satisfying crunch. It was best not to think too much of what one ate—or had as a child—thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni; memory blotted things out for a reason, he believed.

  “So what is the mummy cooking for the daddy today?” he asked, as he slipped out of the pair of greasy suede shoes that Mma Ramotswe had been trying unsuccessfully—for years, it seemed—to replace.

  Motholeli looked up from her macaroni cheese. “The mummy is cooking the daddy that special stew he likes,” she said.

  “And we’re eating macaroni cheese,” chimed in Puso. “With ice cream for afters.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. “So it looks like everybody is happy,” he said. “Did you say grace, Motholeli?”

  She shook her head. “It’s Puso’s turn.”

  He sat down at the table and looked at the young boy. “Well then, young man. Let’s hear grace before you start on your macaroni cheese.”

  They lowered their heads, as did Mma Ramotswe, who laid down her stirring spoon.

  “Bless this macaroni cheese,” said Puso quickly. “Amen.”

  Without delay, the two children began to tackle their dinner. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni caught Mma Ramotswe’s eye, and they exchanged a grin.

  “Sometimes only a few words are needed,” remarked Mma Ramotswe.

  Motholeli looked up from her plate. “Least said, soonest mended.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked at her encouragingly. “Where did you learn that?” she asked. “At school?”

  Her mouth half full of macaroni cheese, Motholeli replied, “You said it, Mma.”

  “Don’t speak with your mouth full,” muttered Puso, swallowing as he spoke.

  “Don’t throw the first stone yourself,” retorted Motholeli mildly.

  Mma Ramotswe chuckled. “So you heard me say it? Well, I suppose I might have done. It’s true, after all.”

  She thought of the day’s events, and of the awkward journey with the woman whom Mma Makutsi had begun to refer to as Mma Not Rosie. It was a handy description, and she understood why Mma Makutsi might reach such a conclusion, but there was something about it that made her feel uncomfortable. Even if there were doubtful aspects to the woman’s story, inconsistencies could occur in even the truest of tales: people told the truth not as it necessarily was, but as they saw it. And of course that could lead to things not sounding quite right. It was the watertight story that often needed closest examination, thought Mma Ramotswe; stories that looked unassailable could be the result of careful planning—and careful invention.

  And there was something rather sad about Mma Not Rosie. Her little outburst in the car had a tragic feel to it. It sounded contrived—and she could see why Mma Makutsi had rolled her eyes—but pain, when exposed to others, could sometimes sound false. Mma Makutsi could be a bit brisk; she had a good instinct for people, but it was not infallible, and there had been occasions in the past when her instinct had misled her. Trust your nose, but make sure it’s pointing in the right direction. Who had said that? Mma Ramotswe realised that it was she herself. And I am right, she thought, modestly at first, but then with a tinge of self-satisfaction. Trust your nose, but make sure it’s pointing in the right direction. She would try that out on Mma Makutsi the following day and see how she reacted. It could give her something to think about—but on the other hand, it might not; you never knew with Mma Makutsi.

  She resumed her stirring of the stew. The oddest thing about the whole day had been that journey in which they had been led to Zebra Drive and her very own house. That had been a moment of utter astonishment, enough to make one laugh, although she had resisted the temptation to do so. Of course she had entertained the possibility that her house had previously been occupied by the Canadian doctor and his family, only to dismiss the proposition immediately. She knew that her house had belonged to the Public Works Department from its first construction in the mid-sixties, and that it had been the official residence of the deputy head of the Public Works right up to the point at which it had been sold off as surplus to requirements. That was when she had bought it, using her legacy from her father—the legacy of fine cattle that had so prospered out at the cattle post. It had never been a medical house, or a missionary house for that matter, and what was more, there was no large jacaranda tree in the yard. There were acacias and that favourite mopipi tree of hers, but no jacaranda. No, that claim by Mma Not Rosie must have been entirely made up.

  Once the children had finished their meal they settled in their bedrooms—Motholeli to read and Puso to complete his arithmetic homework. Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni went out onto the verandah; night had fallen with the suddenness of those latitudes, a curtain of darkness that came down after only a few minutes of dusk, heralding a world of dark shapes, of night-time sounds, of mystery, and, at times, of fear. They sat in their customary chairs and looked out beyond the small circle of light that the window behind them threw into the yard. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had poured himself a cold beer; Mma Ramotswe had the half-glass of lemonade that she had saved from the day before. The effervescence of the lemonade had all but disappeared, but enough of the taste remained to make the drink palatable. She sipped at it slowly; the acidity made her teeth tingle. Red bush tea never did that, she thought.

  He told her about his day. Fanwell had succeeded in finding the cause of an engine fault that had flummoxed him for two days. “I couldn’t work out what was going on,” he said. “It was not one of these cars that have all the computers in them—it was a good, honest car. But I couldn’t for the life of me see why it was overheating—and then Fanwell found the problem. It took him half an hour.”

  “That means he has become a good mechanic,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “Or I’m becoming a bad one,” remarked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, taking a sip of his beer.

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “Oh no, Rra. Nobody could ever say that. In fact, they say exactly the opposite—I’ve heard them. They say, ‘That Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is the best mechanic in all Botswana.’ I have heard at least three people say that—all in the last couple of years.”

  “Perhaps they know you’re married to me, Mma. Perhaps they are trying to be kind.”

  She denied this vigorously. “They mean it, Rra. You can tell when somebody means a compliment and when it’s just empty words. You can tell…”

  “How? How exactly can you tell?”

  She looked out into the darkness. His question was a good one; how could you tell something like that? Instinct? A sixth sense? That was all very well, but how could you explain what instinct or a s
ixth sense meant? Or did they both boil down, when all was said and done, to nothing more than a hunch?

  She thought of what had happened that day with Mma Not Rosie. She was sure that Mma Makutsi had been acting on some sort of hunch about that woman when she first met her, and then had tried to find grounds for dismissing her as a fraud. By contrast, Mma Ramotswe was now beginning to feel that whatever the flaws in her story might be, she was genuine. This feeling had been building up ever since she’d started to cook the stew, and now it was quite strong. That poor woman had been telling the truth and all she had encountered was a wall of suspicion from Mma Makutsi, and from herself something not much better—a bit politer, perhaps, but still not much better.

  She turned to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “What do you think it’s like, Rra, to be telling the truth and then to find that nobody believes you?”

  He thought for a moment. “Horrible,” he said with conviction. “It is a very horrible feeling, Mma.”

  The forcefulness of his answer surprised her. “Has it happened to you, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?”

  He took his time to answer. “Once,” he said. “And it was very, very bad.”

  She glanced at him. Marriage was all about honesty, and being open, but she had always felt that just about every married person had something, some sorrow or secret, that was not shared, that was a private area of their lives that might not be shared with a spouse. It could be something sad or painful, or it could be something just mildly embarrassing, some tiny failing or silliness, some moment of mild shame, but it was no reflection on the marriage that this thing should be kept tucked away. We are the people we want ourselves to be, and then there are the people we actually are: sometimes it is easier to be the people we want ourselves to be if we keep at least some things to ourselves. That, thought Mma Ramotswe, is only human.

  And she thought of what Note Mokoti, her first, abusive husband, had done to her. She had never told anybody—not her father, to whom she had run for protection, not her friend Mma Potokwane, not even Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Note had beaten her; he had hurt her. She did not talk about it because she felt ashamed, and she wanted to forget it. There was a time for talking about things that distressed us, but there was also a time for not talking about them. These days people seemed to suggest that you should talk about everything, even those things that people never talked about in the past, but did this make life any easier? She was not sure. In fact, she thought there were occasions on which talking about distressing things merely kept those things alive, whereas not talking about them, consigning them to the past, forgetting them, allowed one to think about things that were positive, things that made the world a bit better.

  She was unsure whether to ask him about it. But he continued anyway.

  “You know I did my service in the brigades?” he said.

  She nodded. The brigades had been part of the national service that Botswana had required of young people. Some of the brigades still survived as training organisations, especially in the rural areas; others were now merely a memory of the time when the country was just emerging, when Botswana was learning to walk.

  “I was in a brigade that did mechanical training,” he went on. “We were based up at Serowe. I enjoyed myself—and learned a lot.”

  “Many people did,” she said. “And it was good work.”

  “It helped us grow up,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “We went in as teenagers—rather aimless teenagers, perhaps—and came out as adults.”

  She waited. In some respects, even after years of marriage, they were strangers to one another. He had never talked about his time in the brigades before.

  “It was after I had been in the brigade for five or six months,” he continued. “I had been given extra responsibility—I was in charge of organising extra transport for those occasions when we had too many people for our own vehicles. We would hire a minibus from one of the taxi people, and I paid them. I had a float for that—money that was kept in a tin and then locked away in a drawer in the office. I was the only person with a key to that drawer—or so I thought.”

  Mma Ramotswe put down her glass. It was obvious which way this was going—and it was clear that the story would be one of major injustice. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was a person of the utmost probity—she had known that right from the beginning. He was scrupulously honest in all his dealings, but particularly where money was involved. On one occasion he had driven twenty miles to hand over an inadvertent overpayment made by a client: a fifty-pula note had been stuck to the back of another note and had not been counted.

  “I can imagine what’s coming, Rra,” she said.

  He sounded sad. “Yes, that’s what happened. I went to open the drawer and found that exactly half the money had gone from the tin. Thieves don’t always take the full amount, I believe—if they leave some, then the person they’ve robbed might think that he had made a mistake about how much was there in the first place. It’s a common trick.

  “But I knew I hadn’t made a mistake,” he continued. “I knew that there had been exactly six hundred pula in that tin—I was certain of it. And so I decided that I would tell the director about it and start looking into the question of who else might have got hold of a key to the drawer.”

  “That was the right thing to do,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Go straight to the relevant authorities. That’s what I always advise—then you’re protected.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head sadly. “I wish I had gone straightaway. I didn’t. I was going to go first thing the following morning, but…”

  Mma Ramotswe’s heart sank. “Oh no, Rra!”

  “Yes. That afternoon the accountant and the director carried out an on-the-spot check. The director asked me for the key to the drawer and before I could say anything he had opened it and discovered the shortfall. I said to him that I was just about to tell him about the missing three hundred pula, but he just looked at me as if to say, ‘That’s a likely story!’ I felt awful. I knew that I was telling the truth, but I also knew that if I were in the director’s position I would probably think exactly the same thing. So I could do nothing but protest my innocence, knowing that I was not believed.”

  Mma Ramotswe groaned. “An awful situation, Rra. A nightmare.”

  “Yes. And no matter how much I tried, I could not convince him that I was telling the truth. So he said to me that I had one week to pay the money back, or he would report the matter to the police. He said that he was giving me a chance because, apart from this incident, he had been impressed with my work.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes, of course, I borrowed it from my uncle and I handed it over to the director. When I did that, he looked at me sternly and said, ‘Don’t ever be dishonest again. Never, ever take money that does not belong to you—even if you think you can repay it.’ I felt so wronged, Mma. I felt that I was being judged to be dishonest when I was not. I felt dirtied by the whole matter.”

  Mma Ramotswe wondered whether the real culprit had ever been found.

  “We never found out who it was,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “But here’s a thing, Mma: there were several thefts after I had left the brigade—after the end of my time there. They were the same sort of thing, and I heard that the director then realised that I had, in fact, been innocent. But do you know what? I saw him about six months after that—I met him in the street—and he did not say sorry to me. He did not say, ‘I was wrong to accuse you of theft.’ He said nothing, in fact. He just asked me what I was doing and left it at that. He could have said sorry. He could have said that they had found the real thief, but he did not. What do you think of that, Mma?”

  “Not very much,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But then I’ve noticed it, Rra: people are very slow to say sorry. I don’t know why this should be, but they do not say sorry easily.”

  “Perhaps it’s because they think that saying sorry means that they were wrong. Perhaps it makes them feel small. Or look small.”

  Mma Ramotswe was q
uick to propose the exact opposite. “Saying sorry does not make you look small—it makes you look big.”

  “I think so too,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “But some people are small inside, and if you’re small inside, you can’t be big outside. It just won’t come to you.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Mma Ramotswe. She looked at her watch. “I think it is time for dinner. Shall we go inside, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?”

  They left the verandah and went back into the kitchen. The smell of the stew was rich on the air. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni closed his eyes in delighted anticipation of the treat ahead. It was the onions, he decided; they had to be small and sweet—they just had to be.

  —

  MR. J.L.B. MATEKONI LAY under a sheet, there being no need for a blanket in this warm weather. He was already dead to the world when Mma Ramotswe went to bed that night; she slipped into bed, being careful not to wake him up, although she knew that he was a sound sleeper and would not be disturbed by her coming to bed, as she often did, an hour or so after him.

  She settled herself, turned out the light, and composed herself for sleep. Normally this involved deliberately putting out of her mind the affairs of the office. It was always tempting to think about what had happened in the working day, but it could be fatal for the onset of sleep. What she should have done, what she had done, what she might do the following morning—these were all matters that did not belong in the bedroom. But that night, as she lay there in the dark, she found herself staring up at the darkened, all but invisible ceiling, thinking about what had been said on that curious, unsatisfactory car journey. She could no longer think of the woman as Mma Not Rosie and now thought of her as Rosie; nor could she get out of her mind the glimpse she had been afforded—in the rear-view mirror—of the expression on Rosie’s face as she vented her anger. When she cried I was there; I was the one who comforted her. That was exactly what a nurse might say…And when her little dog became sick and died I was the one who helped her bury it at the end of the garden and put the stones around its grave. You would not make that up; that had the ring of the heartfelt about it. And I was the one who nursed her when she was ill because the real mother was always working or playing tennis. The reference to tennis did not sound like part of a prepared script; that, again, had a genuine feel. I was the one, and you people don’t know that—and you don’t care, do you? The final accusation, voiced with all the feeling of one who had been discourteously treated. By me, she thought; by me and my assistant—co-director, or whatever Mma Makutsi now was; in my husband’s car…