The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mma Ramotswe felt a twinge of alarm. He had been in the bed, had he not, when she drifted off to sleep the previous night? He had. There were, she assumed, marriages where wives did not notice whether or not their husband was in bed with them, but her marriage was not like that. She had said goodnight to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni before going to sleep—she did that every night, and she would have noticed if she had said goodnight to an empty bed or to a pillow on which no head was resting.

  She put on her dressing gown and made her way out of the bedroom into the corridor outside. The children’s doors were closed—they would still be asleep, as she always awoke well before they did. The bathroom? She put her head round the door: he was not there.

  She went into the kitchen and switched on the kettle. Every so often, when some car needed to be fixed urgently, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had to make an unusually early start at the garage. When this happened, though, he usually told her first and she would get up early herself to make his breakfast before he left. Had he said something about this last night and had she forgotten about it? She did not think so.

  She looked out of the window. The seasons had changed, but in this period, when the memory of winter was still alive, there were times when the morning air still had a nip in it, and this was one such. A wisp of mist, just detectable, hung over the tree-tops; it would not last, she knew, but seeing it made her want to go outside, to stand under those trees and look up at the sky through their lattice-work of leaves. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni must have slipped away to the garage and forgotten to tell her; she would make him a large bacon sandwich and take it to him when she herself went into work in an hour or so.

  A steaming mug of red bush tea in her hand, she went outside. The doves who had taken up residence in her large acacia were preening themselves on their bough—to all intents and purposes a contented married couple preparing for an ordinary day of whatever work the world had in mind for doves. She smiled at them; they looked down at her for a second or two, fluffing up their neck feathers, and then returned to their task of grooming. She turned the corner of the house.

  Then she saw it. In the place where she had parked her blue van the previous evening was her old van. She stood quite still, closing her eyes and then reopening them, fully expecting the hallucination to have corrected itself. But it did not; it was there, as real and substantial as the house, as the garden about it, as the ground upon which she, and the van itself, stood.

  She stepped forward, half stumbling in her confusion. As she did so, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and Charlie came round the corner of the house. Both were beaming with pleasure, seemingly delighting in the surprise they had created.

  Her hand rose to her mouth. “What is this …?”

  “It’s what you wanted, I think,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Or it’s what Charlie told me you wanted.”

  “That’s right, Boss,” said Charlie.

  “So I decided that there was no point in trying to make you love that blue van,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni went on. “You cannot make somebody love something. They must have love in their heart first.”

  “That’s right, Boss,” repeated Charlie.

  Mma Ramotswe walked up to the van and opened the driver’s door.

  “He made a very good job of the restoration,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I thought it would be impossible, but it just goes to show that you can do these things if you really set out to. Charlie and I had a really good look at it. It’s a very nice job.”

  “And the blue van?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “What about that?”

  “We need a new vehicle for the garage,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “We can use it for there—if you’re happy enough with that. We can sort out the money.”

  “It is not the money,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It has never been the money. No, I am very happy indeed.”

  She lowered herself into the driver’s seat, caressing the steering wheel as she did so. Then she bent forward and kissed the wheel, as tenderly as one might kiss a much-loved child.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I am very happy now.”

  “Then I am happy as well,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

  “And me too,” said Charlie.

  Mma Ramotswe got out of the van. “Have you had breakfast yet, Charlie?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not yet, Mma. I will have a piece of bread when I get into work.”

  She shook her head. “No, you will not. You come in right now and I shall make you a couple of eggs and some bacon.”

  “Oh, Mma,” said Charlie. “That sounds very good.”

  The two of them went inside to watch Mma Ramotswe cooking breakfast. Charlie ate enthusiastically and was served a further two eggs after his initial helping. Then Mma Ramotswe went off to wake the children and begin her day in earnest, starting with the drive to the agency in her tiny white van, just as she had always done in the past, year in and year out, and just as she had never really lost hope of doing once more. She cried a little, out of sheer joy, and stopped for a minute or two at the corner of Zebra Drive to compose herself, so that tears should not interfere with her driving, with her triumphal journey, her proud return.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE MOTHER OF MPHO

  WITH MMA MAKUTSI out of the office now, on leave for the final preparations for her wedding, Mma Ramotswe had no excuse for putting off that which she knew she had to do. It was not that Mma Makutsi made it impossible for her to get on with her work; it was really just that if she and her assistant were in the office together, then there always seemed to be something to talk about, some office chore that could be tackled together, or a letter that needed to be dictated.

  She thought about dictation. Mma Makutsi was, of course, proud of her skills in this respect, having learned shorthand at the Botswana Secretarial College, where her average speed was one hundred and twenty-eight words per minute.

  “I cannot speak at that rate,” Mma Ramotswe had said when Mma Makutsi revealed this fact to her. “One hundred and twenty-eight words per minute is very fast, Mma. I am not sure if I can even think at that speed.”

  Mma Makutsi laughed—the relaxed laugh of one who knows that her secretarial skills are beyond question. “It’s true, Mma, that most people cannot write shorthand at even one hundred words per minute. Take Violet Sephotho, for example: she managed forty-two words per minute, and probably couldn’t even do that these days. Forty-two words, Mma! It would take all day to write one letter at that rate.” She paused; there are some remarks, like some temptations, that simply cannot be resisted—at least by those of us who are made of ordinary human stuff. “Of course, Violet was always much faster in some other matters …”

  Mma Ramotswe smiled. “I see,” she said. “Well, there we are. There are all sorts of people, aren’t there?”

  It was not a remark with which one could disagree, but Mma Makutsi felt that it did not convey very much. Of course there were all sorts of people—surely that went without saying. If there were not all sorts of people then life would be remarkably dull, and indeed she felt that she and Mma Ramotswe would be out of a job. But she did not wish to say anything further about Violet Sephotho: her point had been made, and it was clear enough.

  “Typing speed is important too,” Mma Makutsi had continued. “I have been known to type at just under one hundred words per minute, Mma. There are some typists who are quicker than that, but I have not met one yet—personally, that is. I have read about these people, but have not met them.”

  “They will type many pages, those people,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “I think so, Mma.”

  That sort of conversation could go on for hours, and sometimes did. That meant tasks which had been put off would remain undone, and that was exactly what had happened with the Moeti case. Mma Ramotswe knew what she had to do: she had to make a journey out to Mr. Moeti’s place and speak to Mpho’s mother. This woman, she felt, somehow held the key to what had happened. She was now inclined to discount Mpho’s confe
ssion, but she would still have to raise with his mother the possibility that the boy was responsible for the attack. She was not looking forward to this, as no mother likes to hear of the delinquency of her son, especially when, as Mma Ramotswe imagined would be the case here, the son was one of the few things she had in this world. People lived for their children, and she could imagine how difficult must be the realisation that your child has done something terrible. What would you do if you discovered that a member of your family—a husband or a son, perhaps—was wanted by the police? Would you have to give him up? Surely no mother would do that.

  Her mind wandered. What if she were to discover that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni were a car thief—that all those cars sitting around the garage were in fact stolen? But that was something she found it impossible to contemplate: Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was incapable of doing anything underhand or unkind, and if anybody were ever to accuse him of such a thing, she would simply not believe it. And that, she thought, might be how Mpho’s mother would react. She remembered now how she had looked when she first met her at Mr. Moeti’s house. She looked guilty, and Mma Ramotswe had thought that she might well have been responsible for the attack on the cattle. Now, of course, that guilt made sense: a mother who knows that her son has something to answer for will of course look guilty.

  She decided that she would go out to the Moeti farm in the late afternoon. She wanted to speak to Mpho’s mother without Mr. Moeti himself being present, and she felt that her best chance of doing that would be when she had finished her work for the day. A domestic helper might return later on to make dinner, serve it, and then wash up, but round about five or six she would probably be allowed to be in her own quarters. She would go there, talk to the woman, and then go to Mr. Moeti and speak to him. She was not yet sure what she would say; there were still matters needing to be resolved, and what she said to him would be dependent on how these worked out.

  The trip itself was an unalloyed pleasure. The white van was running quietly and contentedly; the terrible knocking sound was nowhere to be heard, the brakes were responsive and silent, and the suspension was comfortable and evenly balanced. That could change, of course, and the van could resume its list to starboard, but that would be a minor irritation and one that traditionally built people were well accustomed to. The old van, of course, was slower than the new one, but that did not bother Mma Ramotswe in the slightest; she was not the sort of detective—or person, indeed—who needed to get anywhere fast. In her experience, the places one set off for were usually still there no matter when one arrived; it would be different, naturally enough, if towns, villages, houses moved—then one might have a real reason to hurry—but they did not. Nor did people themselves move very much, in Mma Ramotswe’s experience; she remembered how in Mochudi, in what people fondly called the old days, there were people who could be seen standing or sitting in one place for days on end. If one wanted to see a certain man—an expert in goats—then it was well known that he could be found sitting under a particular tree, and that was where advice on goats could always be obtained. Her father told her that this man had once been accused of stock theft by somebody from a neighbouring village. The police at Mochudi had listened to the complaint but had dismissed it out of hand—and quite rightly too. They had explained that the man in question never went anywhere, as everybody knew very well, and that it was quite out of the question that he could have participated in a stock theft elsewhere. “That shows, Precious,” Obed Ramotswe had said, “that if you do one thing all the time, then people will know that is what you do.”

  The old days: people sometimes laughed at those who talked about the old days, but Mma Ramotswe was not one of them. She knew that all of us, even the youngest, had some old days to remember. Children of ten remember how it was when they were five, just as men or women of fifty remember the way things were when they were twenty; and if those distant pasts are coated with sweetness and longing, then that might be because people indeed felt happier then. She did not think that people now were any worse than they used to be, but it was very clear to her that they had less time. In the old days Botswana people were rarely in a rush to get somewhere else—why should they be? Nowadays, people were always thinking of getting somewhere—they travelled around far more, rushing from here to there and then back again. She would never let her life go that way; she would always take the time to drink tea, to look at the sky, and to talk. What else was there to do? Make money? Why? Did money bring any greater happiness than that furnished by a well-made cup of red bush tea and a moment or two with a good friend? She thought not.

  I’M SORRY, Mmampho. You never told me your name.”

  Mma Ramotswe felt that it was her fault. People ignored domestic helpers—presences in the background—and rarely asked their names. She usually did, but had forgotten to do so when she first met this woman; addressing her as Mother of Mpho was perfectly polite in such circumstances, of course, but using her real name would be even better.

  The courtesy had its effect. “I am Pelenomi, Mma. Thank you.”

  Mma Ramotswe held out her hands in greeting. She was pleased that she had found the woman at home, as she had hoped to do, and that Mpho did not appear to be there.

  “Your little boy?” she asked. “Is he looking after the cattle?”

  Pelenomi nodded. “He must count them each night before it gets dark. Then he comes home for his food.”

  “He has a busy day,” said Mma Ramotswe. “School, and then the cattle.”

  “Yes. He is a good boy, Mma. He works hard.” She looked at her visitor. “You have children yourself, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe explained about the fostering of Puso and Motholeli. “I am their mother now,” she said. “Their own mother is late.” She paused. “And I have a late baby, Mma. It is a long time ago now.”

  “But it is never long ago when that happens,” said Pelenomi. “I have a late child too, Mma. Mpho had a sister. She was never well. God took her back.”

  There was a silence—a moment of shared loss. Then Pelenomi asked why Mma Ramotswe had come to see her. “It is something to do with that cattle business?” she asked.

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “It is very difficult, Mma. I am not sure how to talk to you about this.”

  They were standing outside the entrance to her single-roomed servants’ quarters—not much more than a whitewashed shack. Pelenomi now invited Mma Ramotswe inside and sat down—with the natural grace of one accustomed to sitting on the floor. Mma Ramotswe lowered herself to the ground. One should not forget how to sit on the floor, she thought—never, no matter what happened in one’s life, no matter where one’s life journey took one. A president, she believed, should be able to sit on the floor with as much ease as the humblest herdsman.

  “What have you found, Mma?” asked Pelenomi.

  “I was at the school, Mma.”

  Pelenomi stiffened. “At the school? Why?”

  “I wanted to speak to Mpho. I didn’t want adults to be around him when we spoke. I’m sorry, Mma, I didn’t ask your permission—I hope you don’t mind. I thought he was a witness, you see.”

  “He did not see anything. He is just a boy.”

  Mma Ramotswe said nothing for a moment. Then she said, “He told me that he did it, Mma.”

  There was no mistaking Pelenomi’s surprise. “Mpho told you that, Mma? Oh, that is just a child speaking, Mma. A child says the first thing that comes into his mind. You should not listen to a child. My son did not do anything, Mma. Nothing.”

  Her voice had risen towards the end of this, as her indignation grew. It was as Mma Ramotswe had imagined—the loyal mother refusing to accept that her son could have done something like that. But what was said next was less than expected.

  “No, it is not my son, Mma. It is … it is another person altogether.” She paused. “I know who it is, Mma. I know.”

  Mma Ramotswe watched her carefully. This woman was not lying.

  “Who then, Mma? Mr. Fortitude Seleo?�
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  Pelenomi’s lip curled. “Not that man. He could not do a thing like that. He is too busy walking around smiling at people.”

  There was bitterness in this last remark.

  “That is better than scowling at them, I think, Mma. But that is neither here nor there. If it is not Seleo, then who is it?”

  “It is another man altogether. I cannot name him, Mma. I’m sorry.”

  “But why did Mpho say that it was him? I saw his face when he told me, Mma. I could tell that he was very upset. A child does not make these things up.”

  The answer came quickly. “Because he thought it was me, Mma. He thought that his mother had done it. He was frightened for his mother. That is why he told you it was him. A child does not want his mother to go to prison.”

  “Why did he think it was you?”

  “Because he saw something. And I told him. I had to tell him something.”

  “What did he see?”

  Pelenomi was now becoming flustered, and was clearly regretting allowing herself to be pushed into a corner by Mma Ramotswe’s questions. “There are some things that children see …”

  “What did he see, Mma?”

  “He saw some blood. He saw a handkerchief with blood on it.”

  A small insect moved slowly across the floor, a spider perhaps, making Mma Ramotswe move her legs slightly. Pelenomi watched the movement.

  “I keep this house clean, Mma,” she muttered.

  “I’m sure you do. There are ants everywhere. It is not your fault. But what about this handkerchief, Mma?”

  The misery came through Pelenomi’s voice. “It was the handkerchief of the man who had done that thing to the cattle. He was in this house after he had done it. Mpho was asleep—he never wakes up. He saw the cloth in the morning.”

  “And he thought it was yours?”

  Pelenomi nodded. “I told him it was mine. I told him that Moeti had done some bad thing to me and that I had taken my revenge on his cattle. That is why he lied to protect me.”