Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Then they would eat together, sitting in the shade of the lean-to verandah which he had erected to the side of the house. She would tell him about the week’s activity in the bus office and he would take in every detail, asking for names, which he would link into elaborate genealogies. Everybody was related in some way; there was nobody who could not be fitted into the far-flung corners of family.

  It was the same with cattle. Cattle had their families, and after she had finished speaking, he would tell her the cattle news. Although he rarely went out to the cattle post, he had reports every week and he could run the lives of the cattle through the herd-boys. He had an eye for cattle, an uncanny ability to detect traits in calves that would blossom in maturity. He could tell, at a glance, whether a calf which seemed puny, and which was therefore cheap, could be brought on and fattened. And he backed this judgement, and bought such animals, and made them into fine, butterfat cattle (if the rains were good).

  He said that people were like their cattle. Thin, wretched cattle had thin, wretched owners. Listless cattle—cattle which wandered aimlessly—had owners whose lives lacked focus. And dishonest people, he maintained, had dishonest cattle—cattle which would cheat other cattle of food or which would try to insinuate themselves into the herds of others.

  Obed Ramotswe was a severe judge—of men and cattle—and she found herself thinking: what will he say when he finds out about Note Mokoti?

  SHE HAD met Note Mokoti on a bus on the way back from Mochudi. He was travelling down from Francistown and was sitting in the front, his trumpet case on the seat beside him. She could not help but notice him in his red shirt and seersucker trousers; nor fail to see the high cheekbones and the arched eyebrows. It was a proud face, the face of a man used to being looked at and appreciated, and she dropped her eyes immediately. She would not want him to think she was looking at him, even if she continued to glance at him from her seat. Who was this man? A musician, with that case beside him; a clever person from the University perhaps?

  The bus stopped in Gaborone before going south on the road to Lobatse. She stayed in her seat, and saw him get up. He stood up, straightened the crease of his trousers, and then turned and looked down the bus. She felt her heart jump; he had looked at her; no, he had not, he was looking out of the window.

  Suddenly, without thinking, she got to her feet and took her bag down from the rack. She would get off, not because she had anything to do in Gaborone, but because she wanted to see what he did. He had left the bus now and she hurried, muttering a quick explanation to the driver, one of her cousin’s husband’s men. Out in the crowd, out in the late afternoon sunlight, redolent of dust and hot travellers, she looked about her and saw him, standing not far away. He had bought a roast mealie from a hawker, and was eating it now, making lines down the cob. She felt that unsettling sensation again and she stopped where she stood, as if she were a stranger who was uncertain where to go.

  He was looking at her, and she turned away flustered. Had he seen her watching him? Perhaps. She looked up again, quickly glancing in his direction, and he smiled at her this time and raised his eyebrows. Then, tossing the mealie cob away, he picked up the trumpet case and walked over towards her. She was frozen, unable to walk away, mesmerised like prey before a snake.

  “I saw you on that bus,” he said. “I thought I had seen you before. But I haven’t.”

  She looked down at the ground.

  “I have never seen you,” she said. “Ever.”

  He smiled. He was not frightening, she thought, and some of her awkwardness left her.

  “You see most people in this country once or twice,” he said. “There are no strangers.”

  She nodded. “That is true.”

  There was a silence. Then he pointed to the case at his feet.

  “This is a trumpet, you know. I am a musician.”

  She looked at the case. It had a sticker on it; a picture of a man playing a guitar.

  “Do you like music?” he asked. “Jazz? Quella?”

  She looked up, and saw that he was still smiling at her.

  “Yes. I like music.”

  “I play in a band,” he said. “We play in the bar at the President Hotel. You could come and listen. I am going there now.”

  They walked to the bar, which was only ten minutes or so from the bus stop. He bought her a drink and sat her at a table at the back, a table with one seat at it to discourage others. Then he played, and she listened, overcome by the sliding, slippery music, and proud that she knew this man, that she was his guest. The drink was strange and bitter; she did not like the taste of alcohol, but drinking was what you did in bars and she was concerned that she would seem out of place or too young and people would notice her.

  Afterwards, when the band had its break, he came to join her, and she saw that his brow was glistening with the effort of playing.

  “I’m not playing well today,” he said. “There are some days when you can and some days when you can’t.”

  “I thought you were very good. You played well.”

  “I don’t think so. I can play better. There are days when the trumpet just talks to me. I don’t have to do anything then.”

  She saw that people were looking at them, and that one or two women were staring at her critically. They wanted to be where she was, she could tell. They wanted to be with Note.

  He put her on the late bus after they had left the bar, and stood and waved to her as the bus drew away. She waved back and closed her eyes. She had a boyfriend now, a jazz musician, and she would be seeing him again, at his request, the following Friday night, when they were playing at a braaivleis at the Gaborone Club. Members of the band, he said, always took their girlfriends, and she would meet some interesting people there, good-quality people, people she would not normally meet.

  And that is where Note Mokoti proposed to Precious Ramotswe and where she accepted him, in a curious sort of way, without saying anything. It was after the band had finished and they were sitting in the darkness, away from the noise of the drinkers in the bar. He said: “I want to get married soon and I want to get married to you. You are a nice girl who will do very well for a wife.”

  Precious said nothing, because she was uncertain, and her silence was taken as assent.

  “I will speak to your father about this,” said Note. “I hope that he is not an old-fashioned man who will want a lot of cattle for you.”

  He was, but she did not say so. She had not agreed yet, she thought, but perhaps it was now too late.

  Then Note said: “Now that you are going to be my wife, I must teach you what wives are for.”

  She said nothing. This is what happened, she supposed. This is how men were, just as her friends at school had told her, those who were easy, of course.

  He put his arm around her and moved her back against the soft grass. They were in the shadows, and there was nobody nearby, just the noise of the drinkers shouting and laughing. He took her hand and placed it upon his stomach, where he left it, not knowing what to do. Then he started to kiss her, on her neck, her cheek, her lips, and all she heard was the thudding of her heart and her shortened breath.

  He said: “Girls must learn this thing. Has anybody taught you?”

  She shook her head. She had not learned and now, she felt, it was too late. She would not know what to do.

  “I am glad,” he said. “I knew straightaway that you were a virgin, which is a very good thing for a man. But now things will change. Right now. Tonight.”

  He hurt her. She asked him to stop, but he put her head back and hit her once across the cheek. But he immediately kissed her where the blow had struck, and said that he had not meant to do it. All the time he was pushing against her, and scratching at her, sometimes across her back, with his fingernails. Then he moved her over, and he hurt her again, and struck her across her back with his belt.

  She sat up, and gathered her crumpled clothes together. She was concerned, even if he was not, that someb
ody might come out into the night and see them.

  She dressed, and as she put on her blouse, she started to weep, quietly, because she was thinking of her father, whom she would see tomorrow on his verandah, who would tell her the cattle news, and who would never imagine what had happened to her that night.

  Note Mokoti visited her father three weeks later, by himself, and asked him for Precious. Obed said he would speak to his daughter, which he did when she came to see him next. He sat on his stool and looked up at her and said to her that she would never have to marry anybody she did not want to marry. Those days were over, long ago. Nor should she feel that she had to marry at all; a woman could be by herself these days—there were more and more women like that.

  She could have said no at this point, which is what her father wanted her to say. But she did not want to say that. She lived for her meetings with Note Mokoti. She wanted to marry him. He was not a good man, she could tell that, but she might change him. And, when all was said and done, there remained those dark moments of contact, those pleasures he snatched from her, which were addictive. She liked that. She felt ashamed even to think of it, but she liked what he did to her, the humiliation, the urgency. She wanted to be with him, wanted him to possess her. It was like a bitter drink which bids you back. And of course she sensed that she was pregnant. It was too early to tell, but she felt that Note Mokoti’s child was within her, a tiny, fluttering bird, deep within her.

  THEY MARRIED on a Saturday afternoon, at three o’clock, in the church at Mochudi, with the cattle outside under the trees, for it was late October and the heat was at its worst. The countryside was dry that year, as the previous season’s rains had not been good. Everything was parched and wilting; there was little grass left, and the cattle were skin and bones. It was a listless time.

  The Reformed Church Minister married them, gasping in his clerical black, mopping at his brow with a large red handkerchief.

  He said: “You are being married here in God’s sight. God places upon you certain duties. God looks after us and keeps us in this cruel world. God loves His children, but we must remember those duties He asks of us. Do you young people understand what I am saying?”

  Note smiled. “I understand.”

  And, turning to Precious: “And do you understand?”

  She looked up into the Minister’s face—the face of her father’s friend. She knew that her father had spoken to him about this marriage and about how unhappy he was about it, but the Minister had said that he was unable to intervene. Now his tone was gentle, and he pressed her hand lightly as he took it to place in Note’s. As he did so, the child moved within her, and she winced because the movement was so sudden and so firm.

  AFTER TWO days in Mochudi, where they stayed in the house of a cousin of Note’s, they packed their possessions into the back of a truck and went down to Gaborone. Note had found somewhere to stay—two rooms and a kitchen in somebody’s house near Tlokweng. It was a luxury to have two rooms; one was their bedroom, furnished with a double mattress and an old wardrobe; the other was a living room and dining room, with a table, two chairs, and a sideboard. The yellow curtains from her room at the cousin’s house were hung up in this room, and they made it bright and cheerful.

  Note kept his trumpet there and his collection of tapes. He would practise for twenty minutes at a time, and then, while his lip was resting, he would listen to a tape and pick out the rhythms on a guitar. He knew everything about township music—where it came from, who sang what, who played which part with whom. He had heard the greats, too; Hugh Masekela on the trumpet, Dollar Brand on the piano, Spokes Machobane singing; he had heard them in person in Johannesburg, and knew every recording they had ever made.

  She watched him take the trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it to his lips and then, so suddenly, from that tiny cup of metal against his flesh, the sound would burst out like a glorious, brilliant knife dividing the air. And the little room would reverberate and the flies, jolted out of their torpor, would buzz round and round as if riding the swirling notes.

  She went with him to the bars, and he was kind to her there, but he seemed to get caught up in his own circle and she felt that he did not really want her there. There were people there who thought of nothing but music; they talked endlessly about music, music, music; how much could one say about music? They didn’t want her there either, she thought, and so she stopped going to the bars and stayed at home.

  He came home late and he smelled of beer when he returned. It was a sour smell, like rancid milk, and she turned her head away as he pushed her down on the bed and pulled at her clothing.

  “You have had a lot of beer. You have had a good evening.”

  He looked at her, his eyes slightly out of focus.

  “I can drink if I want to. You’re one of these women who stays at home and complains? Is that what you are?”

  “I am not. I only meant to say that you had a good evening.”

  But his indignation would not be assuaged, and he said: “You are making me punish you, woman. You are making me do this thing to you.”

  She cried out, and tried to struggle, to push him away, but he was too strong for her.

  “Don’t hurt the baby.”

  “Baby! Why do you talk about this baby? It is not mine. I am not the father of any baby.”

  MALE HANDS again, but this time in thin rubber gloves, which made the hands pale and unfinished, like a white man’s hands.

  “Do you feel any pain here? No? And here?”

  She shook her head.

  “I think that the baby is all right. And up here, where these marks are. Is there pain just on the outside, or is it deeper in?”

  “It is just the outside.”

  “I see. I am going to have to put in stitches here. All the way across here, because the skin has parted so badly. I’ll spray something on to take the pain away but maybe it’s better for you not to watch me while I’m sewing! Some people say men can’t sew, but we doctors aren’t too bad at it!”

  She closed her eyes and heard a hissing sound. There was cold spray against her skin and then a numbness as the doctor worked on the wound.

  “This was your husband’s doing? Am I right?”

  She opened her eyes. The doctor had finished the suture and had handed something to the nurse. He was looking at her now as he peeled off the gloves.

  “How many times has this happened before? Is there anybody to look after you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “I suppose you’re going to go back to him?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her.

  “Of course you are. It’s always the same. The woman goes back for more.”

  He sighed. “I’ll probably see you again, you know. But I hope I don’t. Just be careful.”

  SHE WENT back the next day, a scarf tied around her face to hide the bruises and the cuts. She ached in her arms and in her stomach, and the sutured wound stung sharply. They had given her pills at the hospital, and she had taken one just before she left on the bus. This seemed to help the pain, and she took another on the journey.

  The door was open. She went in, her heart thumping within her chest, and saw what had happened. The room was empty, apart from the furniture. He had taken his tapes, and their new metal trunk, and the yellow curtains too. And in the bedroom, he had slashed the mattress with a knife, and there was kapok lying about, making it look like a shearing room.

  She sat down on the bed and was still sitting there, staring at the floor, when the neighbour came in and said that she would get somebody to take her in a truck back to Mochudi, to Obed, to her father.

  There she stayed, looking after her father, for the next fourteen years. He died shortly after her thirty-fourth birthday, and that was the point at which Precious Ramotswe, now parentless, veteran of a nightmare marriage, and mother, for a brief and lovely five days, became the first lady private detect
ive in Botswana.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHAT YOU NEED TO OPEN

  A DETECTIVE AGENCY

  MMA RAMOTSWE had thought that it would not be easy to open a detective agency. People always made the mistake of thinking that starting a business was simple and then found that there were all sorts of hidden problems and unforeseen demands. She had heard of people opening businesses that lasted four or five weeks before they ran out of money or stock, or both. It was always more difficult than you thought it would be.

  She went to the lawyer at Pilane, who had arranged for her to get her father’s money. He had organised the sale of the cattle, and had got a good price for them.

  “I have got a lot of money for you,” he said. “Your father’s herd had grown and grown.”

  She took the cheque and the sheet of paper that he handed her. It was more than she had imagined possible. But there it was—all that money, made payable to Precious Ramotswe, on presentation to Barclays Bank of Botswana.

  “You can buy a house with that,” said the lawyer. “And a business.”

  “I am going to buy both of those.”

  The lawyer looked interested. “What sort of business? A store? I can give you advice, you know.”

  “A detective agency.”

  The lawyer looked blank.

  “There are none for sale. There are none of those.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “I know that. I am going to have to start from scratch.”

  The lawyer winced as she spoke. “It’s easy to lose money in business,” he said. “Especially when you don’t know anything about what you’re doing.” He stared at her hard. “Especially then. And anyway, can women be detectives? Do you think they can?”

  “Why not?” said Mma Ramotswe. She had heard that people did not like lawyers, and now she thought she could see why. This man was so certain of himself, so utterly convinced. What had it to do with him what she did? It was her money, her future. And how dare he say that about women, when he didn’t even know that his zip was half undone! Should she tell him?