Morality for Beautiful Girls

by Alexander McCall Smith

  The telephone rang for over a minute before it was picked up.

  “Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? This is me. How are you? Have you slept well?”

  The voice at the other end of the line sounded confused, and Mma Ramotswe realised that she had woken him up.

  “Oh. Yes. Oh. I am awake now. It is me.”

  Mma Ramotswe persisted with the formal greeting. It was important to ask a person if he had slept well; an old tradition, but one which had to be maintained.

  “But have you slept well, Rra?”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s voice was flat when he replied. “I do not think so. I spent all night thinking and there was no sleep. I only went to sleep when everybody else was waking up. I am very tired now.”

  “That is a pity, Rra. I’m sorry that I woke you up. You must go back to bed and get some sleep. You cannot live without sleep.”

  “I know that,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni irritably. “I am always trying to sleep these days, but I do not succeed. It is as if there is some strange animal in my room which does not want me to sleep and keeps nudging me.”

  “Animal?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “What is this animal?”

  “There is no animal. Or at least there is no animal when I turn on the light. It’s just that I think there is one there who does not want me to sleep. That is all I said. There is really no animal.”

  Mma Ramotswe was silent. Then she asked, “Are you feeling well, Rra? Maybe you are ill.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni snorted. “I am not ill. My heart is thumping away inside me. My lungs are filling up with air. I am just fed up with all the problems that there are. I am worried that they will find out about me. Then everything will be over.”

  Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Find out about you? Who will find out about what?”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni dropped his voice. “You know what I’m talking about. You know very well.”

  “I know nothing, Rra. All I know is that you are saying some very strange things.”

  “Ha! You say that, Mma, but you know very well what I am talking about. I have done very wicked things in my life and now they are going to find out about me and arrest me. I will be punished, and you will be very ashamed of me, Mma. I can tell you that.”

  Mma Ramotswe’s voice was small now as she struggled to come to terms with what she had heard. Could it be true that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had committed some terrible crime which he had concealed from her? And had he now been found out? It seemed impossible that this could be true; he was a fine man, incapable of doing anything dishonourable, but then such people sometimes had a murky secret in their past. Everybody has done at least one thing to be ashamed of, or so she had heard. Bishop Makhulu himself had given a talk about this once to the Women’s Club and he had said that he had never met anybody, even in the Church, who had not done something which he or she later regretted. Even the saints had done something bad; St Francis, perhaps, had stamped on a pigeon—no, surely not—but perhaps he had done something else which caused him regret. For her own part, there were many things which she would rather she had not done, starting from the time that she had put treacle on the best dress of another girl when she was six because she did not have such a dress herself. She still saw that person from time to time—she lived in Gaborone and was married to a man who worked at the diamond-sorting building. Mma Ramotswe wondered whether she should confess, even over thirty years later, and tell this woman what she had done, but she could not bring herself to do so. But every time that this woman greeted her in a friendly manner, Mma Ramotswe remembered how she had taken the tin of treacle and poured it over the pink material when the girl had left the dress in their classroom one day. She would have to tell her one day; or perhaps she could ask Bishop Makhulu to write a letter on her behalf. One of my flock seeks your forgiveness, Mma. She is grievously burdened with a wrong which she committed against you many years ago. Do you remember your favourite pink dress …

  If Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had done something like that—perhaps poured engine oil over somebody—then he should not worry about it. There were few wrongs, short of murder, which could not be put right again. Many of them, indeed, were more minor than the transgressor imagined, and could be safely left where they lay in the past. And even the more serious ones might be forgiven once they were acknowledged. She should reassure Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; it was easy to inflate some tiny matter if one spent the night worrying about it.

  “We have all done something wrong in our lives, Rra,” she said. “You, me, Mma Makutsi, the Pope even. None of us can say that we have been perfect. That is not how people are. You must not worry about it. Just tell me what it was. I’m sure that I’ll be able to set your mind at rest.”

  “Oh, I cannot do that, Mma. I cannot even start to tell you. You would be very shocked. You would never want to see me again. You see, I am not worthy of you. You are too good for me, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe felt herself becoming exasperated. “You are not talking sense. Of course you are worthy of me. I am just an ordinary person. You are a perfectly good man. You are good at your job and people think a great deal of you. Where does the British High Commissioner take his car to be serviced? To you. Where does the orphan farm turn when it needs somebody to fix something? To you. You have a very good garage and I am honoured that I am going to marry you. That is all there is to it.”

  Her remarks were greeted with silence. Then: “But you do not know how bad I am. I have never told you of these wicked things.”

  “Then tell me. Tell me now. I am strong.”

  “Oh I cannot do that, Mma. You would be shocked.”

  Mma Ramotswe realised that the conversation was getting nowhere, and so she changed her tack.

  “And speaking of your garage,” she said. “You were not there yesterday, or the day before. Mma Makutsi is running it for you. But that cannot go on forever.”

  “I am pleased that she is running it,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni flatly. “I am not feeling very strong at the moment. I think that I should stay here in my house. She will look after everything. Please thank her for me.”

  Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath. “You are not well, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. I think that I can arrange for you to see a doctor. I have spoken to Dr Moffat. He says that he will see you. He thinks it is a good idea.”

  “I am not broken,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I do not need to see Dr Moffat. What can he do for me? Nothing.”

  IT HAD not been a reassuring call, and Mma Ramotswe spent an anxious few minutes pacing about her kitchen after she had rung off. It was clear to her that Dr Moffat had been right; that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was suffering from an illness—depression, he had called it—but now she was more worried about the terrible thing that he said he had done. There was no less likely murderer than Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, but what if it transpired that this was what he was? Would it change her feelings for him if she discovered that he had killed somebody, or would she tell herself that it was not really his fault, that he was defending himself when he hit his victim over the head with a spanner? This is what the wives and girlfriends of murderers inevitably did. They never accepted that their man could be capable of being a murderer. Mothers were like that, too. The mothers of murderers always insisted that their sons were not as bad as people said. Of course, for a mother, the man remained a small boy, no matter how old he became, and small boys can never be guilty of murder.

  Of course, Note Mokoti could have been a murderer. He was quite capable of killing a man in cold blood, because he had no feelings. It was easy to imagine Note stabbing somebody and walking away as casually as if he had done no more than shake his victim’s hand. When he had beaten her, as he had on so many occasions before he left, he had shown no emotion. Once, when he had split the skin above her eyebrow with a particularly savage blow, he had stopped to examine his handiwork as if he were a doctor examining a wound.

  “You will need to take that to the hospital,” he had said, his voice quite even. “That is a bad cut. You must
be more careful.”

  The one thing that she was grateful for in the whole Note episode was that her Daddy was still alive when she left him. At least he had the pleasure of knowing that his daughter was no longer with that man, even if he had had almost two years of suffering while she was with him. When she had gone to him and told him that Note had left, he had said nothing about her foolishness in marrying him, even if he might have thought about it. He simply said that she must come back to his house, that he would always look after her, and that he hoped that her life would be better now. He had shown such dignity, as he always did. And she had wept, and gone to him and he had told her that she was safe with him and that she need not fear that man again.

  But Note Mokoti and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni were totally different men. Note was the one who had committed the crimes, not Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. And yet, why did he insist that he had done something terrible if he had not? Mma Ramotswe found this puzzling, and, as ever when puzzled, she decided to turn to that first line of information and consolation on all matters of doubt or dispute: the Botswana Book Centre.

  She breakfasted quickly, leaving the children to be cared for by Rose. She would have liked to give them some attention, but her life now seemed unduly complicated. Dealing with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had moved to the top of her list of tasks, followed by the garage, the investigation into the Government Man’s brother’s difficulties, and the move to the new office. It was a difficult list: every task on it had an element of urgency and yet there was a limited number of hours in her day.

  She drove the short distance into town and found a good parking place for the tiny white van behind the Standard Bank. Then, greeting one or two known faces in the square, she made her way to the doors of the Botswana Book Centre. It was her favourite shop in town, and she usually allowed herself a good hour for the simplest purchase, which gave plenty of time for browsing the shelves; but this morning, with such a clear and worrying mission on her mind, she set her face firmly against the temptations of the magazine shelves with their pictures of improved houses and glamorous dresses.

  “I would like to speak to the Manager,” she said to one of the staff.

  “You can speak to me,” a young assistant said.

  Mma Ramotswe was adamant. The assistant was polite, but very young and it would be better to speak to a man who knew a lot about books. “No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I wish to speak to the manager, Mma. This is an important matter.”

  The Manager was summoned, and greeted Mma Ramotswe politely.

  “It is good to see you,” he said. “Are you here as a detective, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe laughed. “No, Rra. But I would like to find a book which will help me deal with a very delicate matter. May I speak to you in confidence?”

  “Of course you may, Mma,” he said. “You will never find a bookseller talking about the books that his customers are reading if they wish to keep it private. We are very careful.”

  “Good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am looking for a book about an illness called depression. Have you heard of such a book?”

  The Manager nodded. “Do not worry, Mma. I have not only heard of such a book, but I have one in the shop. I can sell that to you.” He paused. “I am sorry about this, Mma. Depression is not a happy illness.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked over her shoulder. “It is not me,” she said. “It is Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. I think that he is depressed.”

  The Manager’s expression conveyed his sympathy as he led her to a shelf in the corner and extracted a thin red-covered book.

  “This is a very good book on that illness,” he said, handing her the book. “If you read what is written on the back cover, you will see that many people have said that this book has helped them greatly in dealing with this illness. I am very sorry about Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, by the way. I hope that this book makes him feel better.”

  “You are a very helpful man, Rra,” she said. “Thank you. We are very lucky to have your good book shop in this country. Thank you.”

  She paid for the book and walked back to the tiny white van, leafing through the pages as she did so. One sentence in particular caught her eye and she stopped in her tracks to read it.

  A characteristic feature of acute depressive illness is the feeling that one has done some terrible thing, perhaps incurred a debt one cannot honour or committed a crime. This is usually accompanied by a feeling of lack of worth. Needless to say, the imagined wrong was normally never committed, but no amount of reasoning will persuade the sufferer that this is so.

  Mma Ramotswe reread the passage, her spirits rising gloriously as she did so. A book on depression might not normally be expected to have that effect on the reader, but it did now. Of course Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had done nothing terrible; he was, as she had known him to be, a man of unbesmirched honour. Now all that she had to do was to get him to see a doctor and be treated. She closed the book and glanced at the synopsis on the back cover. This very treatable disease … it said. This cheered her even further. She knew what she had to do, and her list, even if it had appeared that morning to be a long and complicated one, was now less mountainous, less daunting.

  SHE WENT straight from the Botswana Book Centre to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. To her relief, the garage was open and Mma Makutsi was standing outside the office, drinking a cup of tea. The two apprentices were sitting on their oil drums, the one smoking a cigarette and the other drinking a soft drink from a can.

  “It’s rather early for a break,” said Mma Ramotswe, glancing at the apprentices.

  “Oh, Mma, we all deserve a break,” said Mma Makutsi. “We have been here for two and half hours already. We all came in at six and we have been working very hard.”

  “Yes,” said one of the apprentices. “Very hard. And we have done some very fine work, Mma. You tell her, Mma. You tell her what you did.”

  “This Acting Manager is a No. 1 mechanic,” interjected the other apprentice. “Even better than the boss, I think.”

  Mma Makutsi laughed. “You boys are too used to saying nice things to women. That will not work with me. I am here as an acting manager, not as a woman.”

  “But it’s true, Mma,” said the elder apprentice. “If she won’t tell you, then I will. We had a car here, one which had been sitting for four, five days. It belongs to a senior nurse at the Princess Marina Hospital. She is a very strong woman and I would not like to have to dance with her. Ow!”

  “That woman would never dance with you,” snapped Mma Makutsi. “What would she be doing dancing with a greasy boy like you, when she can dance with surgeons and people like that?”

  The apprentice laughed off the insult. “Anyway, when she brought the car in she said that it stopped from time to time in the middle of the traffic and she would have to wait for a while and then start it again. Then it would start again and go for a while and then stop.

  “We looked at it. I tried it and it started. I drove it over to the old airport and even out on the Lobatse Road. Nothing. No stopping. But this woman said that it was always stopping. So I replaced the spark plugs and tried it again. This time it stopped right at the circle near the Golf Club. Just stopped. Then it started again. And a very funny thing happened, which that woman had told us about. The windscreen wipers came on when the car stopped. I didn’t touch them.

  “So, early this morning I said to Mma Makutsi here: ‘This is a very strange car, Mma. It stops and then starts.’

  “Mma Makutsi came and looked at the car. She looked in the engine and saw that the plugs were new and there was a new battery too. Then she opened the door and got in, and she made a face like this, see. Just like this, with her nose all turned up. And she said: ‘This car smells of mice. I can tell that it has a mouse smell.’

  “She began to look about. She peered under the seats and she found nothing there. Then she looked under the dash and she started to shout out to me and my brother here. She said: ‘There is a nest of mice in this car. And they have eaten the insulation off
the wires right here. Look.’

  “So we looked at those wires, which are very important wires for a car—the ones which are connected to the ignition, and we saw that two of them were touching, or almost touching, just where the mice had gnawed off the covering. This would mean that the engine would think that the ignition was off when the wires touched and power would go to the wipers. So that is what happened. In the meantime, the mice had run out of the car because they had been found. Mma Makutsi took out their nest and threw it away. Then she bound the wires with some tape that we gave her and now the car is fixed. It has a mouse problem no longer, all because this woman is such a good detective.”

  “She is a mechanic detective,” said the other apprentice. “She would make a man very happy, but very tired, I think. Ow!”

  “Quiet,” said Mma Makutsi, playfully. “You boys must get back to work. I am the Acting Manager here. I am not one of the girls you pick up in bars. Get back to your work.”

  Mma Ramotswe laughed. “You obviously have a talent for finding things out, Mma. Perhaps being a detective and being a mechanic are not so different after all.”

  They went into the office. Mma Ramotswe immediately noticed that Mma Makutsi had made a great impression on the chaos. Although Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s desk was still covered with papers, these appeared to have been sorted into piles. Bills to be sent out had been placed in one pile, while bills to be paid had been put in another. Catalogues from suppliers had been stacked on top of a filing cabinet, and car manuals had been replaced on the shelf above his desk. And at one end of the room, leaning against the wall, was a shiny white board on which Mma Makutsi had drawn two columns headed CARS IN and CARS OUT.