Morality for Beautiful Girls tn1lda-3

by Alexander McCall Smith

  CHAPTER THREE

  GARAGE AFFAIRS

  ON HER way to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Mma Ramotswe had decided that she would simply have to make a clean breast of it to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. She knew that she had exceeded her authority by promoting Mma Makutsi to be Assistant Manager of the garage—she would have resented it greatly if he had attempted to promote her own staff—and she realised that she would just have to tell him exactly what had happened. He was a kind man, and although he had always thought that Mma Makutsi was a luxury whom Mma Ramotswe could ill afford, he would surely understand how important it was for her to have a position. After all, it would make no difference if Mma Makutsi called herself Assistant Manager, provided that she was doing the work that she was meant to do. But then there was the problem of the raise in pay. That would be more difficult.

  Later that afternoon, driving in the tiny white van which Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had recently fixed for her, Mma Ramotswe made her way to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. The van was performing well now that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni spent so much of his spare time tinkering with its engine. He had replaced many of its parts with brand new spares which he had ordered from over the border. There was a new carburettor, for example, and an entirely new set of brakes. Mma Ramotswe now had to do no more than touch the brake pedal and the van would screech to a halt. In the past, before Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had taken such an interest in her van, Mma Ramotswe had been obliged to pump the brake pedal three or four times before she even began to slow down.

  “I think I shall never again go into the back of somebody,” said Mma Ramotswe gratefully when she tried the new brakes for the first time. “I shall be able to stop exactly when I want to.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked alarmed. “It is very important to have good brakes,” he said. “You mustn’t let your brakes get like that again. Just you ask me, and I shall make sure that they are in tip-top order.”

  “I shall do that,” Mma Ramotswe promised. She had very little interest in cars, although she dearly loved her tiny white van, which had served her so faithfully. She could not understand why people spent so much time hankering after a Mercedes-Benz when there were many other cars which safely transported one to one’s destination, and back again, without requiring a fortune to do so. This interest in cars was a male problem, she thought. One saw it develop in small boys, with the little wire models they made of cars, and it never really went away. Why should men find cars so interesting? A car was no more than a machine, and one might think that men would be interested in washing machines or irons, for that matter. Yet they were not. You never saw men standing around talking about washing machines.

  She drove up to the front of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and alighted from the tiny white van. Through the small window that gave on to the forecourt, she could see that there was nobody in the office, which meant that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would probably be under a car in the workshop, or standing over his two difficult apprentices while he attempted to convey to them some difficult point of mechanics. He had confessed to Mma Ramotswe his despair of making anything of these boys, and she had sympathised with him. It was not easy trying to persuade young people of the need to work; they expected everything to be handed to them on a plate. None of them seemed to understand that everything they had in Botswana—and it was a great deal—had been acquired through hard work and self-denial. Botswana had never borrowed money and then sunk into debt as had happened in so many other countries in Africa. They had saved and saved and spent money very carefully; every cent, every thebe, had been accounted for; none had gone into the pockets of politicians. We can be proud of our country, thought Mma Ramotswe; and I am. I’m proud of what my father, Obed Ramotswe did; I’m proud of Seretse Khama and of how he invented a new country out of a place that had been ignored by the British. They may not have cared much about us, she reflected, but now they know what we can do. They admired us for that; she had read what the American Ambassador had said. “We salute the people of Botswana for what they have done,” he had announced. The words had made her glow with pride. She knew that people overseas, people in those distant, rather frightening countries, thought highly of Botswana.

  It was a good thing to be an African. There were terrible things that happened in Africa, things that brought shame and despair when one thought about them, but that was not all there was in Africa. However great the suffering of the people of Africa, however harrowing the cruelty and chaos brought about by soldiers—small boys with guns, really—there was still so much in Africa from which one could take real pride. There was the kindness, for example, and the ability to smile, and the art and the music.

  She walked round to the workshop entrance. There were two cars inside, one up on the ramp, and the other parked against a wall, its battery connected to a small charger by the front wheel. Several parts had been left lying on the floor—an exhaust pipe and another part which she did not recognise—and there was an open toolbox underneath the car on the ramp. But there was no sign of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

  It was only when one of them stood up that Mma Ramotswe realised that the apprentices were there. They had been sitting on the ground, propped up against an empty oil drum, playing the traditional stone game. Now one of them, the taller boy whose name she could never remember, rose and wiped his hands on his dirty overall.

  “Hallo, Mma,” he said. “He is not here. The boss. He’s gone home.”

  The apprentice grinned at her in a way which she found slightly offensive. It was a familiar grin, of the sort that one might imagine him giving a girl at a dance. She knew these young men. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had told her that all they were interested in was girls, and she could well believe it. And the distressing thing was that there would be plenty of girls who would be interested in these young men, with their heavily pomaded hair and their flashing white grins.

  “Why has he gone home so early?” she asked. “Is the work all finished? Is that why you two are sitting about?”

  The apprentice smiled. He had the air, she thought, of somebody who knew something, and she wondered what it was. Or was it just his sense of superiority, the condescending manner that he probably adopted towards all women?

  “No,” he replied, glancing down at his friend. “Anything but finished. We still have to deal with that vehicle up there.” He gestured casually towards the car on the ramp.

  Now the other apprentice arose. He had been eating something and there was a thin line of flour about his mouth. What would the girls think of that? thought Mma Ramotswe mischievously. She imagined him turning on his charm for some girl, blissfully unaware of the flour round his mouth. He may be good-looking, but a white outline around the lips would bring laughter rather than any racing of the heart.

  “The boss is often away these days,” said the second apprentice. “Sometimes he goes off at two o’clock. He leaves us to do all the work.”

  “But there’s a problem,” chipped in the other apprentice. “We can’t do everything. We’re pretty good with cars, you know, but we haven’t learned everything, you know.”

  Mma Ramotswe glanced up at the car on the ramp. It was one of those old French station wagons which were so popular in parts of Africa.

  “That one’s an example,” said the first apprentice. “It’s making steam out of its exhaust. It comes up in a big cloud. That means that a gasket has gone and that the coolant’s getting into the piston chamber. So that makes steam. Hiss. Lots of steam.”

  “Well,” said Mma Ramotswe, “why don’t you fix it? Mr J.L.B. Matekoni can’t hold your hand all the time, you know.”

  The younger apprentice pouted. “You think that it’s simple, Mma? You think it’s simple? You ever tried to take the cylinder head off a Peugeot? Have you done that, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe made a calming gesture. “I was not criticising you,” she said. “Why don’t you get Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to show you what to do?”

  The older apprentice looked irritated. “That’s all very well, M
ma. But the trouble is that he won’t. And then he goes off home and leaves us to explain to the customers. They don’t like it. They say: Where’s my car? How do you expect me to get around if you’re going to take days and days to fix my car? Am I to walk, like a person with no car? That’s what they say, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe said nothing for a moment. It seemed so unlikely that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who was normally so punctilious, would allow this to happen in his own business. He had built his reputation on getting repairs done well, and speedily. If anybody was dissatisfied with a job that he had done, they were fully entitled to bring the car back and he would do the whole thing again without charge. That was the way that he had always worked, and it seemed inconceivable that he would leave a car up on the ramp in the care of these two apprentices who seemed to know so little about engines and who could not be trusted not to take shortcuts.

  She decided to press the older apprentice a bit further. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said, her voice lowered, “do you mean to tell me that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni doesn’tcare about these cars?”

  The apprentice stared at her, rudely allowing their eyes to lock. If he knew anything about proper behaviour, thought Mma Ramotswe, he wouldn’t keep eye contact with me; he would look down, as befits a junior in the presence of a senior.

  “Yes,” said the apprentice simply. “For the last ten days or so, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni seems to have lost interest in this garage. Only yesterday he told me that he thought he would go away to his village and that I should be left in charge. He said I should do my best.”

  Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath. She could tell that the young man was telling the truth, but it was a truth which was very difficult to believe.

  “And here’s another thing,” said the apprentice, wiping his hands on a piece of oil rag. “He hasn’t paid the spare parts supplier for two months. They telephoned the other day, when he had gone away early, and I took the call, didn’t I, Siletsi?”

  The other apprentice nodded.

  “Anyway,” he went on. “Anyway, they said that unless we paid within ten days they would not provide us with any further spare parts. They said that I should tell that to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and get him to buck up his ways. That’s what they said. Me tell the boss. That’s what they said I should do.”

  “And did you?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “I did,” he said. “I said: A word in your ear, Rra. Just a word. Then I told him.”

  Mma Ramotswe watched his expression. It was clear that he was pleased to be cast in the role of the concerned employee, a role, she suspected, which he had not had occasion to occupy before.

  “And then? What did he say to your advice?”

  The apprentice sniffed, wiping his hand across his nose.

  “He said that he would try to do something about it. That’s what he said. But you know what I think? You know what I think is happening, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe looked at him expectantly.

  He went on, “I think that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni has stopped caring about this garage. I think that he has had enough. I think he wants to hand it over to us. Then he wants to go off to his lands out there and grow melons. He is an old man now, Mma. He has had enough.”

  Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath. The sheer effrontery of the suggestion astonished her: here was this … thisuseless apprentice, best known for his ability to pester the girls who walked past the garage, the very apprentice whom Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had once seen using a hammer on an engine, now saying that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni himself was ready to retire.

  It took her the best part of a minute to compose herself sufficiently to reply.

  “You are a very rude young man,” she said at last. “Mr J.L.B. Matekoni has not lost interest in his garage. And he is not an old man. He is just in his early forties, which is not old at all, whatever you people think. And finally, he has no intention of handing the garage over to you two. That would be the end of the business. Do you understand me?”

  The older of the apprentices looked for reassurance from his friend, but the other was staring fixedly at the ground.

  “I understand you, Mma. I am sorry.”

  “As well you should be,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And here’s a bit of news for you. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni has just appointed an assistant manager for this garage. This new manager will be starting here very soon, and you two had better look out.”

  Her remarks had the desired effect on the older apprentice, who dropped his oily piece of cloth and looked anxiously at the other.

  “When does he start?” he asked nervously.

  “Next week,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And it’s a she.”

  “A she? A woman?”

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe, turning to leave. “It is a woman called Mma Makutsi, and she is very strict with apprentices. So there will be no more sitting around playing stones. Do you understand?”

  The apprentices nodded glumly.

  “Then get on with trying to fix that car,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I shall come back in a couple of hours and see how it’s going.”

  She walked back to the van and climbed into the driving seat. She had succeeded in sounding very determined when she gave the apprentices their instructions, but she felt far from certain inside. In fact, she felt extremely concerned. In her experience, when people began to behave out of character it was a sign that something was very wrong. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was a thoroughly conscientious man, and thoroughly conscientious men did not let their customers down unless there was a very good reason. But what was it? Was it something to do with their impending marriage? Had he changed his mind? Did he wish to escape?

  MMA MAKUTSI locked the door of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Mma Ramotswe had gone off to the garage to talk to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and had left her to finish the letters and get them to the post. No request made of her would have seemed excessive, so great was Mma Makutsi’s joy at her promotion and the news of her increase in wages. It was a Thursday, and tomorrow was payday, even if it would be a payday at the old rate. She would treat herself to something in anticipation, she thought—perhaps a doughnut on the way home. Her route took her past a small stall that sold doughnuts and other fried foods and the smell was tantalising. Money was the problem, though. A large, fried doughnut cost two pula, which made it an expensive treat, especially if one thought what the evening meal would cost. Living in Gaborone was expensive; everything seemed to cost twice as much as it did at home. In the country, ten pula would get one a long way; here in Gaborone ten pula notes seemed to melt in one’s hand.

  Mma Makutsi rented a room in the backyard of a house off the Lobatse Road. The room formed half of a small, breezeblock shack which looked out to the back fence and a meandering lane, the haunt of thin-faced dogs. The dogs were loosely attached to the people who lived in the houses, but seemed to prefer their own company and roamed about in packs of two or three. Somebody must have fed them, at irregular intervals, but their rib cages still showed and they seemed constantly to be scavenging for scraps from the rubbish bins. On occasion, if Mma Makutsi left her door open, one of these dogs would wander in and gaze at her with mournful, hungry eyes until she shooed it out. This was perhaps a greater indignity than that which befell her at work, when the chickens came into the office and started pecking about her feet.

  She bought her doughnut at the stall and ate it there and then, licking the sugar off her fingers when she had finished. Then, her hunger assuaged, she began the walk home. She could have ridden home in a minibus—it was a cheap enough form of transport—but she enjoyed the walk in the cool of the evening, and she was usually in no hurry to reach home. She wondered how he was; whether it had been a good day for her brother, or whether his coughing would have tired him out. He had been quite comfortable over the last few days, although he was very weak now, and she had enjoyed one or two nights of unbroken sleep.

  He had come to live with her two months earlier, making the long journey from their home by bus. She had gone
to meet him at the bus station down by the railway, and for a brief moment she had looked at him without recognising him. The last time she had seen him he had been well-built, even bulky; now he was stooped and thin and his shirt flapped loosely about his torso. When she realised that it was him, she had run up and taken his hand, which had shocked her, for it was hot and dry and the skin was cracked. She had lifted his suitcase for him, although he had tried to do that himself, and had carried it all the way to the minibus that plied its trade down the Lobatse Road.

  After that, he had settled in, sleeping on the mat which she had set up on the other side of her room. She had strung a wire from wall to wall and hung a curtain over it, to give him privacy and some sense of having his own place, but she heard every rasping breath he drew and was often woken by his mumbling in his dreams.

  “You are a kind sister to take me in,” he said. “I am a lucky man to have a sister like you.”

  She had protested that it was no trouble, and that she liked having him with her, and that he could stay with her when he was better and found a job in Gaborone, but she knew that this was not going to happen. He knew too, she was sure, but neither spoke about it or the cruel disease which was ending his life, slowly, like a drought dries up a landscape.

  Now, coming home, she had good news for him. He was always very interested to hear what had happened at the agency, as he always asked her for all the details of her day. He had never met Mma Ramotswe—Mma Makutsi did not want her to know about his illness—but he had a very clear picture of her in his head and he always asked after her.

  “I will meet her one day, maybe,” he said. “And I will be able to thank her for what she has done for my sister. If it hadn’t been for her, then you would never have been able to become an assistant detective.”

  “She is a kind woman.”

  “I know she is,” he said. “I can see this nice woman with her smile and her fat cheeks. I can see her drinking tea with you. I am happy just to think about it.”