The Miracle at Speedy Motors

by Alexander McCall Smith

She stopped herself. She had said it. She had called herself his mother. She had not done that before; she had been Mma Ramotswe to the children, just as she was Mma Ramotswe to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. She had not wanted to be their mother because she had been a mother, once, and was no longer. But that was wrong, so wrong. Of course she was a mother. We could all be a mother, all of us; even a man could be a mother.

  Puso was looking at her. He began to say something, but did not; instead his eyes seemed to open wider and he stared at her in wonderment.

  “Yes,” she said. “You mustn’t be cross with your mummy. I should have talked to you about these things that some people say. Unkind things about Masarwa. They’re not true, you know. We are all the same. All the same people. Bushmen, San, whatever you want to call them, and us, Batswana. White people too. Everybody. Inside us, we are exactly the same. You know that, don’t you? And we all come from the same mother, a long, long time ago, right here in Africa, up in East Africa somewhere. There was a lady who had some children, and they were the ancestors of every one of us, even of people who do not live in Africa. We are all the sons and daughters of that lady.”

  He had stopped crying. His hand was resting on her wrist, lightly, but she felt the warmth. She looked down at the miracle, the sheer miracle of human flesh, so vulnerable, so valuable.

  “Better now?” It was not a good idea, she thought, to talk about these things at too great length. A few words were all that was needed.

  He nodded, and she eased herself back into her seat and started the engine again. He reached for the handle of the passenger door and closed it.

  “What was that lady’s name?” he asked as they continued their journey.

  “Which lady?”

  “That lady who had the children. The one in East Africa.”

  She laughed. “They didn’t have names in those days, Puso. It was a long, long time ago. Long before Botswana.”

  He looked disappointed. “Makutsi, maybe.”

  Mma Ramotswe bit her lip, suppressing a smile. For a moment she imagined an early woman, hirsute, half standing, half crouching, but wearing a large pair of glasses, like Mma Makutsi’s. She took a hand off the wheel and reached out to touch him gently on the shoulder. Then he took her hand and held it briefly, before she put it back on the wheel so that the tiny white van might not go off the road again.

  “Or maybe she was called Mma Ramotswe,” Puso said.

  NOW, sitting with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni on the verandah, she looked out into the dark of her garden. The light from the three-quarters moon was enough to reveal the shape of the shrubs, the outline of the mopipi tree, the flat umbrella of the acacia at the far end of her plot. By day her garden tended to reproach her, her eye always being drawn to the places where more watering was needed to keep things from wilting, or to those where the plants had withered and died; at night the bare patches were obscured, and forgiven.

  “I had a letter today,” she said.

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni inclined his head. “A letter?”

  “Not a nice one.”

  She told him of the contents, and he listened in silence. His voice was grave when he spoke. “That is just what I have been worried about, Mma Ramotswe. It’s what I’ve been fearing for a long time. Right from the beginning.”

  “You’ve been worried that I would receive a letter like that?”

  He shook his head. “No. No. I have been worried that sooner or later you would come up against some really wicked person—some dangerous person who would try to harm you. Now you have.”

  She reached out to put a reassuring hand on his arm. She knew that he was given to fretting about all sorts of things: about the garage, about the apprentices, about the state of the world; and she knew, too, that this was exactly what Dr. Moffat had warned about. When Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had recovered from his depressive illness, Dr. Moffat had said that he should avoid too much anxiety. “You can’t take away all of life’s cares,” the doctor had said. “But you can at least make sure that he doesn’t worry too much. If he worries too much, the illness could return.”

  I should not have told him about the letter, she thought. There was no point in burdening him with it when there was nothing that he could do about it and it would simply prey on his mind. But it was too late now; she had told him the exact contents of the letter and she could hardly take it back. Or could she?

  “You know what I think, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?” she said. “I think that it’s probably a joke. It’s the sort of letter schoolboys write. They think that it’s funny.”

  For a moment he seemed to weigh this possibility, but then he shook his head again, more vigorously this time. “It is not a joke, Mma Ramotswe. Those words are not the words of a schoolboy. They are the words of a dangerous person. A maniac.”

  She tried to be dismissive. “I don’t think such a person is dangerous! Ridiculous, maybe; not dangerous.”

  But her levity had no effect. He was becoming animated now, emphasising his points with movements of his hands. “It makes me even more sure,” he said. “It makes me certain that you should give it up. Detective work is not for women. It is for men who can look after themselves.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked out into the darkness. He spoke in this way, she knew, because he loved her, and was anxious about her safety. She had suspected from time to time that he did not want her to continue with the agency, but she had always ignored these suspicions. She felt that in the fullness of time he would get used to her profession and what it entailed; that he would accept her calling, even be proud of it, in the way in which a husband can be proud of a successful wife. But she knew that once Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni got an idea in his head, it could be difficult to dislodge it. And this notion, she thought, was one of those that would be difficult to move.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AN UNCLE WITH AN UNSOPHISTICATED, BROKEN NOSE

  AS MMA RAMOTSWE and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni conversed on their verandah that evening, Mr. Phuti Radiphuti sat in the modest living room of his fiancée, Mma Grace Makutsi, waiting for her to serve his dinner. They were having their meal rather later than usual that evening, as they had been shopping together and had been distracted by a display of beds in the large furniture store at River Walk. Phuti Radiphuti had been surprised at the prices, which he thought were below cost, but Mma Makutsi had been taken by the headboards, which not only were covered in a deep red velvet but were heart-shaped into the bargain.

  “These are very fine beds,” she observed, reaching out to feel the texture of the velvet headboard. “A person would sleep very well in a bed like that. And there is a lot of room too.”

  It was a potentially indelicate reference, at least in its last part, to the fact that these beds would accommodate both husband and wife in comfort; the sort of reference which, if made by an engaged woman to her fiancé, might be interpreted as a hint. Phuti Radiphuti and Mma Makutsi did not live together, and both had their own beds. This was Phuti’s doing, and indeed Mma Makutsi had been slightly concerned that he had not been more passionate, so far. But that would come, she thought, in the fullness of time, and in the meantime there were plenty of matters to attend to without worrying about such things. As Mma Ramotswe had once delicately pointed out to Mma Makutsi, far too many people were permanently miserable because they allowed love affairs and everything that went with such things to dominate their lives. It is only one thing, she said, that business between men and women, and there are many other more important things, including food.

  If Mma Makutsi’s remarks on the bed and its heart-shaped headboard might have been interpreted by Phuti Radiphuti as a reproach, or indeed as an encouragement, this was not the way in which he took them.

  “It would fit very well in my house,” he said. “When we are married, this would be a very good bed for our room. And remember—beds are the one thing we don’t sell at the Double Comfort Furniture Shop.”

  Mma Makutsi caught her breath. They had a firm date, or rather a tentatively fi
rm date, for the wedding, but they had yet to deal with anything quite as concrete as a bed. This was progress, and she tried very hard to conceal her excitement. “You’re right,” she said. “And this velvet is very fine. Feel it.”

  Phuti Radiphuti stretched to run his fingers over the soft cloth. “Very good,” he said. “But I don’t see how they can do this bed at this price. Where’s their profit?” He paused, glancing at the price of a nearby set of chairs. “A loss leader,” he said. “That is what they are doing. It’s an old trick.”

  Mma Makutsi wondered whether she should suggest that he purchase the bed. She, of course, could not buy it herself, as she had very little money of her own. Her financial position had been immeasurably improved when she set up her small, part-time typing school for men, but that had now been abandoned and she was dependent on her salary from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Even with Mma Ramotswe’s generous rates of pay, that was not much; the agency barely made a profit and effectively relied on subventions from Mma Ramotswe’s own purse—she still had her fine herd of cattle, which meant that she was comfortably off—and from Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, in the form of rent-free premises.

  Phuti Radiphuti was a kind man, and he was tactful in the exercise of his generosity. He had stopped short of giving Mma Makutsi an allowance, but he had taken on many of her expenses, paying grocery bills and giving her regular and frequent presents. Now he raised a hand to attract the attention of one of the assistants who had been hovering in the background.

  “That is a very good bed, Rra,” said the assistant, sensing a sale. “And you and your wife will like it. It suits you.”

  Phuti Radiphuti appeared momentarily flustered. He began to stammer. “I…I—”

  “We are not yet married,” Mma Makutsi cut in. “We are engaged now, but not yet married. That will happen soon.”

  The assistant apologised fulsomely. He saw the ring on her finger, that ring with the dazzling Botswana diamond, her proudest possession, the symbol of the man who loved her and of the country they both loved; such purity and light. “I thought…You looked as if you were married, Mma. And soon you will be.”

  “Quite soon,” said Mma Makutsi.

  The assistant looked down at the floor.

  “I will buy this bed,” said Phuti Radiphuti, recovering from his embarrassment. “Yes, I will take it.”

  The assistant’s face broke into a smile. He made a little boxing feint in the air, narrowly missing Phuti Radiphuti in his exuberance. “An excellent decision, Rra. It’s a very good buy.” He took a notebook out of his pocket and began to take Phuti’s details. The bed, he said, would be delivered the following day. And then, “Will you be buying the headboard too, Rra?”

  The unexpected question hung unanswered in the air. Mma Makutsi glanced at Phuti Radiphuti, who was looking in a worried way at the price tag on the bed. “But it says…” he began.

  The assistant bent down to point to the wording at the bottom of the tag. “You’ll see, Rra,” he said, “that the headboard is excluded. You see here. It says, ‘Headboard excluded.’ The headboard is twelve hundred pula, Rra.” He paused. “That is a very big bargain, I think.”

  Mma Makutsi thought. Twelve hundred pula was almost her monthly salary; for many people it was more than that. Her cousins up in Bobonong, where there was little work, would have to save for months, a year perhaps, to accumulate such an amount.

  Phuti hesitated. “You…You sh…should…” He was beginning to stammer. Mma Makutsi frowned at the assistant. It was his fault that this misunderstanding had arisen—he should have made it clear at the outset that the bed and the headboard were separate items. And now Phuti’s stammer was starting again, which was frustrating for her, after all the efforts she had made to help him overcome it. Perhaps she should ask to speak to the manager and give him a piece of her mind about the need to make terms and conditions clear to customers. In her business practice course at the Botswana Secretarial College they had stressed that one should never try to mislead the customer. And indeed Clovis Andersen, whose book Mma Ramotswe was always going on about, said much the same thing about telling the truth to clients. Never put anything in small print and then spring it on the client. That breaks trust.

  “That breaks trust,” she muttered.

  The assistant only half heard her. “What was that, Mma?”

  Phuti cleared his throat. “I’ll take the headboard too,” he said. The stammer had gone, replaced by a note of resignation in his voice.

  “We’ll deliver them both tomorrow,” said the assistant. “To your address, Rra?”

  Phuti turned to Mma Makutsi. “It can go to your house first, Grace,” he said. “You can enjoy sleeping in it until we move it to my house after the wedding.”

  Mma Makutsi accepted demurely. She gave the address to the assistant, who wrote it down in his notebook. So much had changed in her life since she had become engaged to Phuti. Now, with the arrangements being made for the delivery of the bed, it seemed to her that a further, tangible improvement was about to be achieved. This bed, with its elaborate headboard, would have been an impossible self-indulgence in her earlier state. Phuti had made the decision to purchase the bed as if the expense were something that one would hardly notice, and yet it had cost so much. She wondered if that was what it would be like to have buying power—not having to worry about what one had to pay, but deciding whether or not to buy something purely on the basis of whether one wanted it. And would that apply, she asked herself, to shoes? For a moment she imagined the shoes she might have—a cupboard full of new shoes, all set out on racks. She would wear a different colour each day, depending on her mood, and perhaps take a spare pair along with her to work so that she could change them as the spirit moved her. She closed her eyes at the thought.

  So that’s what you think of us, Boss! Too grand for us—after all we’ve done for you! The voice of her shoes, her green shoes with sky-blue linings, was filled with reproach, and her eyes popped open. She looked away, ashamed at her greed. She would have to be careful. It was all very well becoming Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti, wife of the proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, but one should not forget where it was that one had come from; although, if one did, there were always one’s shoes to remind one.

  CURIOUSLY ENOUGH, while Mma Makutsi prepared Phuti Radiphuti’s dinner that evening, happily anticipating the arrival of the new bed the following morning, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and Mma Ramotswe, comfortably seated on their verandah, were talking about her. Although their conversation did not have anything to do—directly—with the bed in question, nonetheless it did concern an intimate problem arising from Mma Makutsi’s engagement.

  “Mma Makutsi spoke to me about her engagement this morning,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We were having tea…”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. They were always having tea, as far as he could work out. There was the first cup, served shortly after they arrived in the office in the morning, and then there was the ten o’clock cup, which was sometimes taken at nine thirty in the hot weather. That was followed by the tea which was brewed at eleven thirty (the mid-morning tea), and of course there was tea immediately after lunch and again at three in the afternoon. He thought it was a good thing that the red bush tea contained no caffeine, or Mma Ramotswe would surely find it difficult to get to sleep at night, with all that caffeine in her system. Yet Mma Makutsi drank ordinary tea, which had ample quantities of caffeine in it, he believed; indeed he thought that this might explain why she was sometimes so tetchy with the apprentices, especially with Charlie. Mind you, anybody might be forgiven for being irritated by Charlie, with his constant boasting and that endless silly chatter about girls; even one with no caffeine at all in his system could find himself snapping at such a young man.

  “Her engagement? That is a long story.” He laughed, but stopped himself quickly. His own engagement had not been exactly brief. It had lasted for some years and had only been brought to a successful conclus
ion when Mma Potokwane had somehow managed to stand with Mma Ramotswe before that improvised altar on the orphan farm. He did not regret that day for one moment, and the memory of it was unquestionably a warm one; but the length of the preceding engagement perhaps precluded his passing comment on the length of time for which Mma Makutsi and Phuti Radiphuti were engaged.

  So he said, “Not that engagements should not be a long story, Mma. It is better, is it not, to be sure of the person you are marrying before you marry. That is what I have always thought.”

  Mma Ramotswe suppressed a smile, remembering how she had almost resigned herself to a date never being set for their wedding. If Mma Potokwane owed Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni a great deal for all that he had done for her by way of fixing things, then she herself owed a heavy debt of gratitude to the orphan farm matron for managing to cajole her husband into marriage. But that, she thought, was what so much of life was like: we allowed one another something for some service or favour, sometimes for something done a long time ago, even before our birth; debts to parents, debts to ancestors.

  “No,” Mma Ramotswe agreed. “One does not want to marry too quickly. Nor too slowly, perhaps…But Mma Makutsi did not say that Phuti Radiphuti was refusing to name a day. He has done that now.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked puzzled. “So what can the problem be? If they have decided on a day—”

  “The day is not the issue. It is the bogadi.”

  “Ah!” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni understood now. Bogadi, or lobola, was the dowry that the Radiphutis would have to pay to Mma Makutsi’s people. This would have to be negotiated before the formal agreement between the families would bring the marriage into existence.

  After Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had said, “Ah,” there was a brief silence. Then he continued, firstly by saying “Ah” again, and then, “Eight cattle. Maybe nine.”

  Mma Ramotswe appeared to consider this for a moment. “Some people might say six head of cattle for a lady like Mma Makutsi. I am not saying that she is not pretty—I think she is—but—”