The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mma Ramotswe sighed. She understood the system and the perfectly legitimate claims that Phuti’s aunt had as the senior female relative. ‘I know, Mma,’ she said. ‘But it can’t be easy for you. Is she taking the traditional view?’

  Mma Makutsi explained that Phuti Radiphuti’s aunt was extremely traditional. ‘She said that the baby should be kept inside for three months, Mma. She also wanted to rub ash into his skin – you’ll remember how they used to do that in the villages. But I said that nobody was going to put anything on my baby except Vaseline.’

  Mma Ramotswe smiled. ‘There is nothing better for a baby than to be covered in that jelly,’ she said. ‘It helps to…’ She faltered. She was not sure what purpose was served by polishing babies with petroleum jelly, but there must have been some reason, or it would not have been done. Some people said that it was an old custom and should be given up, but she thought it harmless, even if it was difficult to think of any scientific reason to do it.

  ‘It helps the mother,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘If the mother sees that the baby is nice and shiny, then that makes the mother feel better, and if the mother feels better, then she looks after the baby better. There is a lot of evidence for that, I think.’

  Mma Ramotswe wondered whether Mma Makutsi was going to disclose that she had learned this information at the Botswana Secretarial College, but she did not. ‘I am sure you are right, Mma,’ she said.

  Mma Makutsi glanced towards the doorway through which Phuti Radiphuti and the aunt had disappeared. Then she looked at Mma Ramotswe.

  ‘Would you like to see him?’ she whispered.

  Mma Ramotswe suppressed a giggle of glee. ‘Yes, I would love to, Mma. She needn’t know.’

  Quietly, like stealthy conspirators, they crept out of the kitchen and into the small bedroom that was acting as nursery. There was a large green cot in one corner of this room, a changing table and a tall chest full of baby supplies: powder and creams and neat piles of woollen clothing. There was also that wonderful, evocative smell of a small human creature – a smell of softness, a smell of milk, a smell of life just beginning.

  ‘There he is,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘See him, Mma Ramotswe? See my baby?’

  Mma Ramotswe leaned forward over the little figure in the cot. She reached out and very gently touched one of the tiny hands – carefully, as one might touch a butterfly or a delicate flower. The baby did not stir, not beyond the tiny movements of a sleeping infant – the almost imperceptible rise and fall of the soft blanket under which he slept, and the occasional twitch. She thought: for all he knows, he might still be in the womb, except here, in his new life, there was light and colour and the warm embrace of Africa.

  She straightened up and looked at Mma Makutsi, who was still gazing raptly at the minor miracle before them. She noticed that her assistant’s large round glasses had misted up. She reached and put an arm about Mma Makutsi’s shoulders. It was a long road they had travelled together over the last few years; a long road that led from that very first day when the newly minted secretary had talked herself into the job, with Bobonong behind her but poverty still snapping at her heels. A road that then led to the meeting with Phuti Radiphuti and now to this – to motherhood and all the happiness it brought.

  Mma Makutsi took off her glasses and dabbed at the lenses with a handkerchief. ‘My heart is full,’ she said.

  ‘That is why we are crying,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Makutsi replaced her glasses, but still there were tears in her eyes. ‘That is my baby, Mma,’ she whispered. ‘That is my own baby.’

  It is your own baby, thought Mma Ramotswe. It is yours, as these other things you have are yours. And none of this came to you at the start of your life, because then you had nothing, or next to nothing, and you have earned all of it, Mma, every single bit of all this by your hard work and your sacrifice and by being kind to Phuti Radiphuti and loving him for what he is rather than because he has many of the things of this world. This is all yours, Mma Makutsi – your ninety-seven per cent share of everything.

  They left the baby, returning to the kitchen where, for a few minutes, they sat together in complete silence, each with the thoughts that such a moment will always bring. There was no need for words, for there are times when words can only hint at what the heart would wish to say.

  Chapter Seven

  In the Chair of a Very Great Man

  It felt very strange to be carrying out an investigation without Mma Makutsi’s advice and assistance. Mma Ramotswe had become so accustomed to discussing issues with her assistant that now, on her own, it seemed to her as if a standard office procedure had suddenly changed. With Mma Makutsi at her desk on the other side of the room, she could toss ideas into the air in the certainty that they would be examined, debated and then either confirmed or rejected. Now she had only herself with whom to conduct those meandering dialogues by means of which she was used to sorting out the tangled issues that people brought to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. And these issues were sometimes hopelessly tangled – and then it was only through some extraordinary serendipitous insight that the situation became clearer. Often that insight was triggered by something that Mma Makutsi said, by some question that she asked. Not now, though, and, rather to her surprise, Mma Ramotswe felt vulnerable as a result. There was Mr J. L. B. Matekoni to run ideas past, but helpful though he was he did not have feminine insight – for which she could hardly blame him. Feminine insight did not always go with mechanical ability – it could, of course, especially now that men and women were being encouraged to do the same things, but as a general rule it did not. One had to be realistic about that.

  Mma Ramotswe was relieved that Mma Makutsi’s absence was not going to be a long one, but she could hardly shelve all cases until such time as her assistant returned. So the day after she had paid that first visit to the Radiphuti house to inspect the new baby, she decided that it was time to tackle the matter that Mma Sheba had recently entrusted to her. She had done nothing so far, and Mma Sheba had said something about phoning up to hear about progress in a week or so. She could not put it off any longer.

  Seated at her desk in the office, a cup of freshly brewed redbush tea within reach, she took a blank piece of paper and wrote a summary of what she knew. It was always useful – and sometimes sobering – to write down what you knew. Occasionally the paper remained blank, which was instructive, if somewhat unsettling.

  It was not blank that morning. Rra Edgar, she wrote. Had farm. Had brother. Brother went to Swaziland and had son, Liso Molapo. Sister, aunt of boy in Swaziland, stayed in Botswana, on farm. Rra Edgar dies. Farm goes to Liso. Liso comes back and claims legacy. Mma Sheba thinks he is not Liso. His papers say he is. Aunt on farm confirms his identity.

  Those were the facts of the case as she recalled them. But that was only the beginning. Now came the questions.

  How do we know that the boy is Liso? Papers: he has a passport that says that he is Liso Molapo. He has a birth certificate that says same. The aunt says that he is Liso Molapo. If he is not, then somebody is lying. The passport? The birth certificate? The aunt?

  She put down her pen and looked at what she had written so far. It seemed to her that the important questions had been asked, and now it was simply a matter of finding answers. That, however, was the difficult part; questions were easy enough to pose, but the answers to these questions were not always ready at hand. There was, however, one very obvious answer, and it was the one that she thought she should consider before she looked at any other possibilities. This was that Liso Molapo was indeed Liso Molapo, and that Mma Sheba’s doubts were unfounded, and even ill-intentioned. Did Clovis Andersen say something about that? She rose to her feet and took the well-thumbed copy of The Principles of Private Detection from the shelf above the filing cabinet.

  It did not take her long to find the relevant passage, and she read it out loud just as she would have done had Mma Makutsi been there. Remember, wrote Clovis Andersen, that of
all the possibilities you may address, the truth may lie in the simplest explanation. So if you are looking for something that is stolen, always remember that it may not be stolen at all, but mislaid. Similarly, if you are investigating a homicide, it is always possible that the victim died a natural death. Do not exclude this possibility even where the death seems very suspicious. I knew a man who stabbed himself to death. Everybody thought that he had been murdered, and they found plenty of suspects – he was one heck of an unpopular guy – but then they discovered a note in which he said that he was going to do this in order to make things look bad for his principal enemy. He even used his enemy’s knife to do it!

  Mma Ramotswe let out a little cry, half of surprise, half of disapproval. She had forgotten about that example but now it came back to her. It must be very unusual to stab oneself; people shot or poisoned themselves, but self-inflicted stabbing was an altogether different matter. She reminded herself that there was nothing like that in this case. Yet Clovis Andersen’s words brought home to her that it was entirely possible that Liso Molapo was quite genuine. Indeed, the more she thought about it, the more she felt that this was the likely outcome and that… She stopped herself. Was it possible that Mma Sheba stood to benefit in some way if the legacy of the farm to the boy were to fail? What if he were really Liso but was shown, falsely perhaps, to be an imposter? Who would get the farm then?

  She explored the possibility for a few minutes. She was well disposed towards Mma Sheba because she had been kind to her at the lunch all those years ago. But lawyers could be calculating people and perhaps she should be cautious about accepting her story at face value. Again, Clovis Andersen said something about being politely sceptical and not trusting everything that a person told you, even if you liked the person. Friends can be good liars, he said. Yes, that was true; presumably liars had friends, as everybody had. But did liars lie to their friends, or did they tell them the truth while they went about lying to other people? She stared up at the ceiling but saw no answer there. She would have to think about that again – perhaps when Mma Makutsi returned to work. She could say: ‘Mma, I have been thinking about liars and whether they can have true friends.’ And Mma Makutsi would say, ‘Don’t ask a liar that question, Mma,’ and they would both burst out laughing, as they often did.

  She closed The Principles of Private Detection and returned it to the shelf. She had now decided what she needed to do, which was to go to the farm, introduce herself, and form her own assessment of the situation. She had wondered about how she could explain her interest in the matter without revealing her client’s suspicions. This was going to be difficult as she did not like using deception. Of course, she could claim to be lost. Nobody in Botswana would turn away somebody who had lost her way, or they would not do so in the Botswana in which she had been born and brought up; whether that was still the case in the Botswana of today, she was not so sure. But she thought, on balance, that however much things might have changed on the surface, people were still good at heart and had not forgotten everything that the country had tried to teach them. No, people will not turn another away. Not yet at least, not until the old Botswana ways – the code that had been followed by her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, and had served him so well all his life – no longer accounted for anything at all, which was not the case, she felt, thank heavens.

  ‘Don’t worry, Daddy,’ she said under her breath. ‘Botswana has not changed – not in the things that really matter.’

  There was silence. She would have loved him to reply. She would have loved to hear his voice again saying, Precious, my Precious, I know, I know. And behind that voice she would perhaps hear the lowing of those cattle that he always said lived in heaven and were there to greet us when it was time for us to go. But she heard none of this, and so, with a sigh at the inevitability of duty, she closed the office and set off down the Lobatse Road towards the farm that was the cause of the trouble.

  Further reflection on the way led her to rule out any deception. She would not pretend to be lost, but would tell the truth – that she was working for the lawyers and had come to check that everything was in order. That was quite true, even if it was one of those truths that left something unsaid. But you did not have to say everything all the time, especially if you were a detective and you were interested in trapping those who might be less attached to the truth than you were.

  The Lobatse Road was straight as an arrow here – an undulating strip of black tar that shimmered in the noon heat. Mma Sheba had told her where to turn, and the landmark appeared on cue. Now she was on a rough farm track that meandered off into scrub bush. Behind the level of the trees, squat hills that had seemed blue from a distance now took on the grey-green hue of acacia. The track had been scraped into the red earth carelessly, without regard to the land it crossed, and was interrupted here and there by obstacles it had not bothered to avoid – an outcrop of rock, a cluster of termite mounds, the beginnings of a donga – one of those deep eroded ditches that criss-crossed the land. The tiny white van had been through worse, and its suspension was in such a state that little by way of potholes or humps could discourage it further. Even so, Mma Ramotswe drove with caution; a broken axle or a shattered oil sump would no doubt bring renewed suggestions from Mr J. L. B. Matekoni that the time had arrived to get a new van. It would also mean a long walk back to the Lobatse Road in the full heat of day, hard enough for anyone but particularly demanding for those of traditional build.

  It took the best part of half an hour to reach the farm gate. Once through this, the track improved somewhat, and showed signs of recent use. She noticed the tyre-tracks in the dusty ground and reflected on how a good Kalahari tracker could have told her precisely when the last vehicle had passed by and whether it had been lightly or heavily laden. For those trackers with the necessary knowledge, an antelope or a truck were much the same, both leaving on the earth information about themselves that could be as clearly read as if it were writing on a page.

  A farmhouse came into view – a low-slung building with a red tin roof and a long, shady veranda. Behind the house were several outbuildings, including an open-sided garage and a high water-tank made of corrugated iron. A metal windmill of the sort that was common on farms stood beside the tank, its vane sticking out behind it like a pointing finger, its blades turning slowly. The trees themselves were still, but the windmill, being taller, had picked up an invisible breeze, enabling it to pump water into the tank. She stopped the van and got out to stretch her legs. She had not been to this farm before, but the scene seemed both familiar and peaceful. This, she thought, was how you should live, if you possibly could: with your cattle around you, with the land beneath you, with this air about you.

  She sniffed at the air. It was pure and dry, and it carried the scent of cattle and dust, and of acacia too – a smell you could never describe, but you took in nonetheless. She listened. There were cicadas somewhere, that shrill note that seemed to fill the sky, and, barely audible, the familiar clanking of the windmill pump. It was a miracle that there was water in such a place, but it was there, deep below; water that came from a long way away but was cool and fresh and pure.

  She got back into the van and completed her journey. As she pulled up in front of the house, a door opened and a woman stepped out on to the veranda to peer at the unexpected visitor. Inside the van, Mma Ramotswe composed herself. She felt as she often did before she started an investigation: there was a familiar fluttering of the heart, a feeling of risk, an awareness that she had to be on the lookout for any information that might be presented to her by the body language of the other. It is the first few minutes of any encounter, said Clovis Andersen, that can be most revealing; it is what people do before they have the chance to work out what they should be doing.

  The woman came down the couple of steps that led from the veranda. She greeted her visitor courteously, but Mma Ramotswe could sense the curiosity that lay behind the greeting.

  ‘I work for Mma
Sheba,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘I have come to see that everything is all right.’

  The woman visibly relaxed. ‘You are very welcome, Mma. I am Mma Molapo – I am the sister of my brother, who is late.’

  Mma Ramotswe lowered her gaze respectfully. ‘I am sorry about that, Mma. I am very sorry.’

  Mma Molapo accepted the sympathy gracefully. ‘It was too early, Mma, but when it is the will of the Lord, then we must accept it.’

  ‘That is true, Mma,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  There was a brief pause before Mma Molapo invited her in. ‘Would you like some water, Mma?’ she asked. ‘Or perhaps some tea?’

  ‘If there is tea,’ said Mma Ramotswe, ‘then I will be very happy.’

  ‘There is tea.’

  ‘Then I am very happy.’

  Mma Molapo led her into the house, into a rather dark and empty corridor, and then, from there, into a sitting room. The room was furnished with several green armchairs, angular and box-like in their construction, with wooden facings on the arms that provided a place for chrome ashtrays. The dark green fabric of the chairs had been stained here and there by ancient cups of tea that had toppled and spilled. The shabbiness of the furniture was compounded by the appearance in one or two places of cigarette burns. On the walls, several pictures hung from a picture-rail below the ceiling. There was a picture of a Brahman bull with its great white hump; another picture of a Dakota aircraft on the runway of the old Gaborone airfield; and a framed photograph of Sir Seretse Khama meeting a much younger Prince Charles.

  Mma Molapo noticed Mma Ramotswe’s interest in the picture of Seretse Khama. ‘Do you like that picture, Mma?’ she asked.

  Mma Ramotswe nodded, and moved closer to examine it.

  Mma Molapo, who had been polite but perhaps a bit reserved, became animated. ‘If you look at Prince Charles you can see that he knows that this is a great man whose hand he is shaking.’