Александр Макколл Смит - The Handsome Man's De Luxe Café

He looked up. For a few moments he said nothing, but then he began to speak. ‘I am feeling very sad, Precious. Very sad.’

She caught her breath. He addressed her as Precious only at times of great moment.

‘Oh Rra, that is very bad. We can telephone Dr Moffat…’

‘No. No. It is not that sort of sadness.’

She waited for him to continue.

‘It is because of something that I have to do.’

She frowned. It was a worrying thing to hear. Was he proposing to… She hardly dared think it. Did he have some dreadful confession to make? Was he going to tell her that he was having an affair? It was the worst thing that any husband had to do – to tell his wife that he had found somebody else. But Mr J. L. B. Matekoni would never do anything like that; he would never go off with another woman, because he was… because he was Mr J. L. B. Matekoni – that’s why. It was inconceivable.

‘What is this thing, Rra?’ she asked, her voice barely above a murmur.

But he heard. ‘It’s Charlie.’

She felt a flood of relief. Charlie, the apprentice who had consistently failed his examinations, was always getting into trouble of one sort or another.

She sighed. ‘What has Charlie done now? More girl trouble?’

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni shook his head. ‘I wish it was, Mma. No, it’s more serious than that.’

In Mma Ramotswe’s mind that could mean only one thing. ‘Police trouble?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘I’m going to have to lay him off. I’m going to have to fire him.’

Mma Ramotswe sighed again. She was aware that Charlie’s work was often unsatisfactory; that he was rough and impatient with engines and that he sometimes broke parts by forcing them. If Mr J. L. B. Matekoni had simply run out of patience with the young mechanic, then she would not be unduly surprised. ‘What has he done now?’

‘He has done nothing,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘But I cannot keep him on. There is less work than there used to be and I have to make a choice. Fanwell has got his qualification now and he is a far better worker than Charlie. One of them has to go, and it must be Charlie.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It has to be.’

She felt an immediate rush of sympathy for her husband. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni was a soft-hearted man, and she knew how painful it was for him to have to get rid of the young man whom he had trained and nurtured. Charlie was not easy – everybody knew that – but he was essentially a good young man. His obsession with girls and fashionable clothes was no worse in him, she thought, than in so many other young men, and he would surely grow out of it in the fullness of time. She had read somewhere that some young men did not really mature until they were in their late twenties; she had been surprised by this, but she had decided that it was probably true. She could think of several young men who had been her contemporaries who had not settled down until then, or even later in some cases. Charlie was probably one of those, and would become a respectable, settled citizen in due course, escorting his children to school and doing the sort of round-the-house tasks that husbands were now expected to do.

She squeezed Mr J. L. B. Matekoni’s shoulder. ‘Are you sure, Rra? Are you sure there’s no alternative?’

‘I have been thinking and thinking,’ he said. ‘But I cannot come up with any alternative. I have had a letter from the bank manager. He said that I have exceeded my overdraft limit again this month and he will freeze my account if I do it one more time.’ He paused, and looked up at her. She could see his anguish. ‘How am I going to pay anybody if the account is frozen? I won’t be able to pay Fanwell. I won’t be able to pay the petrol people for the petrol and oil. I won’t be able to pay the insurance premium and that means that if Fanwell’s hurt in an accident at work we could be sued and they could take the house. I cannot risk that, Mma; I just can’t.’

She knew he was right: there was no alternative. ‘When are you going to do it?’ she asked.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I shall tell him tomorrow morning. I will give him one week’s wages, which is all I can afford. He’s entitled to more, but I’ll ask him to give me time to pay those. He will get half at the end of this month and the other half next month.’

She said nothing because she felt that there was nothing she could say. Charlie, for all his faults, had been part of their life for many years. He would never get another job as a mechanic because he did not have the formal piece of paper he needed. This meant he would have to do something quite different, but in a world in which jobs were few and far between for young men without any qualifications, it was difficult to see what he could do.

‘He’ll have difficulty finding something else,’ she said. ‘It would have been different if he had finished his apprenticeship.’

‘I know,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘But what else can I do?’

‘You can do nothing else, Rra,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘This is one of those cases where being a boss is not easy.’

‘It is never easy,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘People don’t realise it, but it is never easy being a boss, no matter how well things are going.’

And so it proved. The following morning, Mma Ramotswe decided not to close the door between the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and the workshop of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. This was unusual, as the door was normally kept firmly closed to keep out mechanical noises emanating from the garage.

‘I shall close the door, Mma,’ said Mma Makutsi, glancing up from the statement of expenses she was preparing. ‘We do not want all that banging and clattering to distract us.’

Mma Ramotswe raised a hand. ‘No, Mma. Please don’t.’

Mma Makutsi frowned. ‘But the noise, Mma Ramotswe. Bang, bang, clatter, clatter, and so on. How can anybody work with that going on? And if somebody telephones us, what will they think? They’ll hear all that going on and they’ll wonder what sort of office we have. It could be bad for business.’

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. ‘I want to hear what happens out there,’ she said. ‘Mr J. L. B. Matekoni may have a crisis on his hands and we may need to help.’

Mma Makutsi was intrigued. ‘There’s something going on?’

Mma Ramotswe rose from her chair and crossed the room to stand beside her colleague. She bent down and whispered into Mma Makutsi’s ear. ‘Mr J. L. B. Matekoni has to fire Charlie this morning. He cannot keep him. He cannot pay him.’

There was a sharp intake of breath from Mma Makutsi. She and Charlie had had a tempestuous relationship over the years, but she would never have wished this on the young man. She thought that he was silly, but then most young men were silly to a greater or lesser extent, and Charlie would grow up – eventually. She started to say something to Mma Ramotswe, but at that moment they were aware that there was silence next door; the banging and the clattering had suddenly stopped.

‘I think he may be talking to him now,’ whispered Mma Ramotswe.

The silence was broken by the sound of voices, low at first, but gradually rising. And then, quite suddenly, there was a shout – a wail, rather. Mma Makutsi gasped. She had heard a wail like that before, when she had been obliged to break some bad news to a cousin – news of the loss of the cousin’s father in a road accident up near Francistown. There had been that same, heartfelt scream; that raw cry of pain which cut and cut, and could not be assuaged by the balm of human comfort.

‘It’s done,’ muttered Mma Ramotswe.

And then the door was flung wider and Charlie came into the room, an adjustable spanner in his hand. He stood there for a moment before dropping the spanner on the floor. It hit the concrete with a sharp, clanging sound.