The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Official tea came two hours later, at ten o’clock. It was Mma Makutsi’s responsibility to fill the kettle with water, which she did from the tap just outside the door that led to the garage. The sight of her holding the kettle under the tap was a signal to Mr Polopetsi that tea was about five minutes away, and he would then walk over to the sink on the other side of the workshop and begin to wash his hands free of grease. This, in turn, would be a signal to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to reach a decision on whether he would carry on with whatever he was doing, and have tea later, or whether he was at a point in the mechanical operation to set his tools to one side and take a break.

  Mma Makutsi made the tea in two pots. One was her own pot, rescued from disaster some time ago when one of the apprentices had used it as a receptacle for drained diesel oil; astonishingly, it was none the worse for that experience. That had been one of the more serious points of conflict between her and the two young men, and had resulted in an exchange of insults and a storming-out by Charlie. Now, as she poured the hot water into the tea-pots, she remembered that difficult occasion and wondered how Charlie was faring with his new business. It was undoubtedly quieter without him; there were none of the sudden shouts that used to emanate from the garage when something was dropped or when an engine proved recalcitrant. He had a tendency to shout at engines, using colourful insults, and although Mma Ramotswe had instructed him never to do this when she had a client in the office, the exclamations still came. And now all was silence; the young apprentice, whom Mma Makutsi had seen when she came into work, had a hang-dog expression on his face and seemed to be listless and unhappy. It would be no fun for him, she thought, now that Charlie had gone, and she wondered whether he too might hand in his notice to go off and do something else. That would inevitably provoke a crisis for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who would never be able to cope with just himself and Mr Polopetsi to do all the work.

  Mma Makutsi filled her own tea-pot and then reached for the small tin caddy in which Mma Ramotswe kept her supplies of red bush tea. She opened it, looked in, and then shut it again.

  “Mma Ramotswe.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked up from her papers. She had received a letter from somebody who wanted her to look for a missing person, but the writer of the letter had signed it indecipherably, neglected to give a proper address, and had not mentioned the name of the missing person. She held the letter up to the light in the vain hope of some clue, and sighed. This was not going to be an easy case.

  “Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Makutsi.

  “Yes, Mma? Is the tea ready?”

  Mma Makutsi held up the empty caddy and shook it demonstratively. “We have run out of bush tea,” she announced. “Empty.”

  Mma Ramotswe put down the letter and glanced at her watch. It was shortly after ten o’clock. “But this is ten o’clock tea,” she said. “When we had tea earlier this morning, there was bush tea.”

  “Yes, there was,” said Mma Makutsi. “But that was the last bag. Now there is nothing left. The tin is quite empty. Look.”

  She opened the caddy and tipped it up. Only a few flecks of tea, the detritus of long-vanished bags, floated down towards the ground.

  Mma Ramotswe knew that this was just a minor inconvenience; fresh supplies of tea could easily be obtained, but this could not be done in time for morning tea—unless she left the office and drove to the supermarket. If only Mma Makutsi had told her earlier on that they were down to the last bag, then she could have done this before ten o’clock. She wondered if she should say something about this to Mma Makutsi, but decided that she would not. She was still concerned that Mma Makutsi might suddenly revisit her decision to resign, and an argument over tea was exactly the sort of issue to precipitate that.

  “It is my fault,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I should have checked to see if we needed new tea. It is my fault, Mma.”

  Mma Makutsi peered into the tin again. “No,” she said. “I think it is my fault, Mma. I should have pointed out to you earlier on that we were down to the last bag. That is where I failed.”

  Mma Ramotswe made a placatory gesture with her hand. “Oh no, Mma. Anybody can make that sort of mistake. One can be thinking of something else altogether and not notice that the tea is getting low. That has happened many times before.”

  “Here?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Are you saying that it has happened here? That I have forgotten many times before?”

  “No,” said Mma Ramotswe hurriedly. “Not you. I’m just saying that it has happened elsewhere. Everybody makes that sort of mistake. It is easily done. I cannot remember a single time when you have done this before. Not one single time.”

  This seemed to satisfy Mma Makutsi. “Good. But what are we going to do now? Will you have ordinary tea, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe felt that she had no alternative. “If there is no bush tea, then I cannot very well sit here and not drink any tea. It would be better to drink a cup of ordinary tea rather than to have no tea to drink.”

  It was at this point that Mr Polopetsi came in. Greeting Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi politely, he made his way to the tea-pot which Mma Makutsi had placed on top of the filing cabinet. He was about to reach for the pot to pour his tea but stopped. “Only one tea-pot,” he said, looking at Mma Makutsi. “Is this bush tea or ordinary tea?”

  “Ordinary,” Mma Makutsi muttered.

  He looked surprised. “Where is the bush tea, Mma?”

  Mma Makutsi, who had been looking away, turned and faced him. “What is it to you, Rra? You drink ordinary tea, do you not? The pot is full of that. Go on, pour. There is plenty there.”

  Mr Polopetsi, a mild man—even milder than Mr J.L.B. Matekoni—was not one to argue with Mma Makutsi. He said nothing as he picked up the pot and began to pour. Mma Ramotswe, though, had been watching.

  “It’s all right, Rra,” she said soothingly. “Mma Makutsi did not mean to be rude. Unfortunately we have run out of bush tea. It is my fault. I should have seen this coming. It is not a big thing.”

  Mr Polopetsi put down the tea-pot and picked up his mug, which he cupped with his hands, as if warming them. “Perhaps we should have a system,” he said. “When the number of tea-bags in the tin drops down to five, then it is time for us to get more tea. When I worked in the pharmacy, we had a stock control system like that. When there was only a certain number of boxes of a drug on the shelves, we would automatically order more.” He paused, and took a sip of his tea. “It always worked.”

  Mma Ramotswe listened in some discomfort. She glanced at Mma Makutsi, who had returned to her desk with her cup of tea and was tracing an imaginary pattern on her desk with a finger.

  “Yes,” Mr Polopetsi went on. “A system is a very good idea. Did they teach you about systems at the Botswana Secretarial College, Mma Makutsi?”

  It was a moment of electric tension, thrilling in retrospect, but at the time it was dangerous to a degree. Mma Ramotswe hardly dared look at Mma Makutsi, but found her eyes drawn inexorably to the other side of the room, where the gaze of the two women met. Then Mma Ramotswe smiled, out of nervousness perhaps, but a smile nonetheless, and to her immense relief Mma Makutsi returned the smile. This was a moment of conspiracy between women, and it drew all the tension from the situation.

  “We shall have to put you in charge of tea, then, Rra,” said Mma Makutsi evenly. “Since you know all about systems.”

  Mr Polopetsi, flustered, mumbled a non-committal reply and left the room.

  “Well, that sorts that out,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

  ON THE MORNING that the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency ran out of bush tea, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni left Mr Polopetsi and the younger apprentice in charge of the garage. There was not a great deal of work—only two cars were in that morning, one, a straightforward family saloon, had been delivered for a regular service, which Mr Polopetsi was now quite capable of doing unaided, and the other required attention to a faulty fuel-injection system.
That was trickier, but was probably just within the competence of the apprentice, provided his work could be checked later.

  “I am going out to do some enquiries for Mma Ramotswe,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni announced to Mr Polopetsi. “You will be in charge now, Rra.”

  Mr Polopetsi nodded. There was a certain envy on his part of the fact that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been given this assignment which should, in his view, have been given to him. He had been led to understand that he was principally an employee of the agency, an assistant detective or whatever it was, and that his garage duties would be secondary. Now it seemed that he was expected to be more of a mechanic than a detective. But he would not complain; he was grateful for the fact that he had been given a job, whatever it was, after he had found such difficulty in getting anything.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni drove his truck to the chemist’s shop where he had left the photographs for developing. The assistant there, a young man in a red tee-shirt, greeted him jauntily. “Your photographs, Rra? They’re ready. I did them myself. Money back if not satisfied!” He reached behind him into a small cardboard box and extracted a brightly coloured folder. “Here they are.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni began to take a fifty-pula note from his wallet.

  “I won’t charge you the full cost,” the young man said. “You only had two exposures on the roll of film. Is there something wrong with your camera?”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni wondered what the other photograph was. “Two photographs?”

  “Yes. Here we are. Look. This one.” The young man opened the folder and took out two large glossy prints. “That one is of a house. Down there, round the corner. And this one here … this one is of a lady with a man. He must be her boyfriend, I think. That is all. The rest—blank. Nothing.”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni glanced at the photograph of the house—it had come out very well and he could make out the figure of a woman standing on the verandah although the man on the steps, his head turned away from the camera and obscured by the low branch of a tree, could not be identified. But it was not Mr Botumile who was the object of interest here—it was the woman, and she was shown very clearly. He looked at the other photograph—it must have been on the roll of film already, taken some time ago and forgotten. He took it from the young man and stared at it.

  Mma Ramotswe was standing in front of a tree somewhere. There were a couple of chairs behind her, in the shade, and there, standing next to Mma Ramotswe, was a man. The man was wearing a white shirt and a thin red tie. He had highly polished brown shoes and a gleaming buckle on his belt. And his arm was around Mma Ramotswe’s waist.

  For a few moments Mr J.L.B. Matekoni simply stared at the photograph. His thoughts were muddled. Who is this man? I do not know. Why is his arm around Mma Ramotswe? There can be only one reason. How long has she been seeing him? When has she been seeing him? The questions were jumbled and painful.

  The young man was watching; he had guessed that the photograph of Mma Ramotswe was a shock. Some of the photographs he handled were like that, he was sure; but he did not normally hand them to the husband. “This photograph of the house,” he said, pushing it into Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s hand. “I know that place. It is off the Tlokweng Road, isn’t it? It is the Baleseng house. I know those people. That’s Mma Baleseng there. Mr Baleseng helped to teach soccer at the boys’ club. He is good at soccer, that man. Did you ever play soccer, Rra?”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni did not respond.

  “Rra?” The young man’s voice was solicitous. I’m right, he thought: that photograph has ended something for him.

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked up from the photograph. He seemed dazed, thought the young man; on the point of tears.

  “I won’t charge you, Rra,” said the young man, looking over his shoulder. “When there are only one or two photographs on a roll, we don’t charge. It seems a pity to make people pay for failure.”

  Pay for failure. The words cut deep, each a little knife. I am paying for my failure as a husband, he thought. I have not been a good husband, and now this is my reward. I am losing Mma Ramotswe.

  He turned away, only just remembering to thank the young man, and went back to his truck. It was so bright outside, with the winter sun beating down remorselessly, and the air thin and brittle, and everything in such clear relief. Under such light our human failures, our frailty, seemed so pitilessly illuminated. Here he was, a mechanic, not a man who was good with words, not a man of great substance, just an ordinary man, who had loved an exceptional woman and thought that he might be good enough for her; such a thought, when there were men with smooth words and sophisticated ways, men who knew how to charm women, to lure them away from the dull men who sought, so unrealistically, to possess them.

  He slipped the ignition key into the truck. No, he said to himself; you are jumping to conclusions. You have no evidence of the unfaithfulness of Mma Ramotswe; all you have is a photograph, a single photograph. And everything you know about Mma Ramotswe and her character, everything you know of her loyalty and her honesty, suggests that these conclusions are simply unfair. It was inconceivable that Mma Ramotswe would have an affair; quite inconceivable, and he should not entertain even the merest suspicion along those lines.

  He laughed out loud. He sat alone in his truck and laughed at his stupidity. He remembered what Dr Moffat had told him about his illness—how a person suffering from depression could get strange ideas—delusions—about what he had done, or what others were doing. Although he was better now, and was no longer required to take his pills, he had been warned that there could be a recurrence of such thinking, of irrational feelings, and he should be on the look-out for them. Perhaps that was what had happened—he had merely had a passing idea of that nature and had allowed it to flower. I must be rational, he told himself. I am married to a loyal, good woman, who would never take a lover, who would never let me down. I am safe; safe in the security of her affection.

  And yet, and yet … who was in that photograph?

  WITH A SUPREME EFFORT, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni put out of his mind all thoughts of that troubling photograph and concentrated on the photograph of Mma Baleseng and the house. He had been to see Mma Botumile at her own house, a large old bungalow just off Nyerere Drive. It was an expensive part of town, one in which the houses had been built shortly after Gaborone had been identified as the capital of the newly independent country of Botswana. The plots of land here were of a generous size, and the houses had the rambling comfort of the period, with their large rectangular rooms, and their wide eaves to keep the sun away from the windows. It was only later, when architects began to impose their ideas of clean-cut building lines, that windows had been left exposed to the sun, a bad mistake in a country like Botswana. In the Botumile house there was shade, and there were whirring fans, even now at the tail end of winter, and red-polished stone floors that were cool underfoot.

  Mma Botumile received him on the verandah of the house, in a spot that looked out directly onto a spreading jacaranda tree and an area of crazy-paving. She did not rise to greet him as he was shown in by the maid, but continued with a telephone call that she was making. He looked up at the ceiling, and then studied the pot plants; averting his eyes from the rudeness of his hostess.

  Eventually she finished with her call. “Yes, Rra,” she said, tossing the cordless telephone down on a cushion beside her. “You have some information for me.”

  There was no greeting, no enquiry after his health, but he was used to that now, and he did not let it upset him.

  “I have carried out enquiries,” he said solemnly. He looked at the chair next to hers. “May I sit down, Mma?”

  She made a curt gesture. “If you wish. Yes. Sit down and tell me what you have found out about this husband of mine.”

  He lowered himself into the chair and took the photograph out of its envelope. “I have followed your husband, Mma,” he began. “I followed him from his work in the evening and I was able to establish that he has been seeing another woman.”<
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  He watched her reaction to this disclosure. She was controlled, merely closing her eyes briefly for a few moments. Then she looked at him. “Yes?”

  “The lady is called Mma Baleseng, I believe, and she lives over at …”

  There was a sudden intake of breath by Mma Botumile. “Baleseng?”

  “Yes,” he said. “If you look at this photograph you will see her. That is her house. And that person there, whom you cannot see properly because of the tree, that is your husband going up the steps. Those are his legs.”

  Mma Botumile peered at the photograph. “That is her,” she hissed. “That is her.”

  “Do you know her?” asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

  Mma Botumile looked up from the photograph and addressed him with fury. “Do I know her? You’re asking me—do I know her?” She flung the photograph down on the table. “Of course I know her. Her husband works with my husband. They do not like one another very much, but they are colleagues. And now she is carrying on with my husband. Can you believe that, Rra?”

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni clasped his hands together. He wished that he had spoken to Mma Ramotswe about the proper way to convey information of this nature; was one expected to sympathise? Should one try to comfort the client? He thought that it would be difficult to comfort somebody like Mma Botumile, but wondered if he should perhaps try.

  “I never thought that he would be carrying on with her,” Mma Botumile spat out. “She’s a very ugly woman, that one. Very ugly.”