Alexander McCall Smith: Tears of the Giraffe

Mma Ramotswe was given to philosophical speculation, but only up to a point. Such questions were undoubtedly challenging, but they tended to lead to further questions which simply could not be answered. And at that point one ended up, as often as not, having to accept that things are as they are simply because that is the way they are. So everybody knew, for instance, that it was wrong for a man to be too close to a place where a woman is giving birth. That was something which was so obvious that it hardly needed to be stated. But then there were these remarkable ideas in other countries that suggested that men should actually attend the birth of their children. When Mma Ramotswe read about that in a magazine, her breath was taken away. But then she had asked herself why a father should not see his child being born, so that he could welcome it into the world and share the joy of the occasion, and she had found it difficult to find a reason. That is not to say it was not wrong-there was no question that it was profoundly wrong for a man to be there-but how could one justify the prohibition? Ultimately the answer must be that it was wrong because the old Botswana morality said that it was wrong, and the old Botswana morality, as everybody knew, was so plainly right. It just felt right.

Nowadays, of course, there were plenty of people who appeared to be turning away from that morality. She saw it in the behaviour of schoolchildren, who strutted about and pushed their way around with scant respect for older people. When she was at school, children respected adults and lowered their eyes when they spoke to them, but now children looked straight at you and answered back. She had recently told a young boy-barely thirteen, she thought-to pick up an empty can that he had tossed on the ground in the mall the other day. He had looked at her in amazement, and had then laughed and told her that she could pick it up if she liked as he had no intention of doing so. She had been so astonished by his cheek that she had been unable to think of a suitable riposte, and he had sauntered away, leaving her speechless. When she was young, a woman would have picked up a boy like that and spanked him on the spot. But today you couldn't spank other people's children in the street; if you tried to do so there would be an enormous fuss. She was a modern lady, of course, and did not approve of spanking, but sometimes one had to wonder. Would that boy have dropped the can in the first place if knew that somebody might spank him? Probably not.

THOUGHTS ABOUT marriage, and moving house, and spanking boys, were all very well but everyday life still required to be attended to, and for Mma Ramotswe, this meant that she had to open up the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency on Monday morning, as she did on every working morning, even if there was very little possibility of anybody coming in with an enquiry or telephoning. Mma Ramotswe felt that it was important to keep one's word, and the sign outside the agency announced that the opening hours were from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon, every day. In fact, no client had ever consulted her until well into the morning, and usually clients came in the late afternoon. Why this should be, she had no idea, although she sometimes reflected that it took people some time to build up the courage to cross her threshold and admit to whatever it was that was troubling them.

So Mma Ramotswe sat with her secretary, Mma Makutsi, and drank the large mug of bush tea which Mma Makutsi brewed for them both at the beginning of each day. She did not really need a secretary, but a business which wished to be taken seriously required somebody to answer the telephone or to take calls if she was out. Mma Makutsi was a highly skilled typist-she had scored 97 percent in her secretarial examinations-and was probably wasted on a small business such as this, but she was good company, and loyal, and, most important of all, had a gift for discretion.

"We must not talk about what we see in this business," Mma Ramotswe had stressed when she engaged her, and Mma Makutsi had nodded solemnly. Mma Ramotswe did not expect her to understand confidentiality-people in Botswana liked to talk about what was happening-and she was surprised when she found out that Mma Makutsi understood very well what the obligation of confidentiality entailed. Indeed, Mma Ramotswe had discovered that her secretary even refused to tell people where she worked, referring only to an office "somewhere over near Kgale Hill." This was somewhat unnecessary, but at least it was an indication that the clients' confidences would be safe with her.

Early morning tea with Mma Makutsi was a comforting ritual, but it was also useful from the professional point of view. Mma Makutsi was extremely observant, and she also listened attentively for any little snippet of gossip that could be useful. It was from her, for instance, that Mma Ramotswe had heard that a medium-ranking official in the planning department was proposing to marry the sister of the woman who owned Ready Now Dry Cleaners. This information may have seemed mundane, but when Mma Ramotswe had been engaged by a supermarket owner to discover why he was being denied a licence to build a dry-cleaning agency next to his supermarket, it was useful to be able to point out that the person making the decision may have an interest in another, rival dry-cleaning establishment. That information alone stopped the nonsense; all that Mma Ramotswe had needed to do was to point out to the official that there were people in Gaborone who were saying- surely without any justification-that he might allow his business connections to influence his judgement. Of course, when somebody had mentioned this to her, she had disputed the rumour vehemently, and had argued that there could be no possible connection between his dry-cleaning associations and the difficulty which anybody else might be having over getting a licence to open up such a business. The very thought was outrageous, she had said.

On that Monday, Mma Makutsi had nothing of significance to report. She had enjoyed a quiet weekend with her sister, who was a nurse at the Princess Marina Hospital. They had bought some material and had started to make a dress for the sister's daughter. On Sunday they had gone to church and a woman had fainted during one of the hymns. Her sister had helped to revive her and they had made her some tea in the hall at the side of the church. The woman was too fat, she said, and the heat had been too much for her, but she had recovered quickly and had drunk four cups of tea. She was a woman from the north, she said, and she had twelve children up in Francistown.

"That is too much," said Mma Ramotswe. "In these modern days, it is not a good thing to have twelve children. The Government should tell people to stop after six. Six is enough, or maybe seven or eight if you can afford to feed that many."

Mma Makutsi agreed. She had four brothers and two sisters and she thought that this had prevented her parents from paying adequate attention to the education of each of them.

"It was a miracle that I got 97 percent," she said.

'If there had only been three children, then you would have got over 100 percent," observed Mma Ramotswe.

"Impossible," said Mma Makutsi. "Nobody has ever got over 100 percent in the history of the Botswana Secretarial College. It's just not possible."

THEY WERE not busy that morning. Mma Makutsi cleaned her typewriter and polished her desk, while Mma Ramotswe read a magazine and wrote a letter to her cousin in Lobatse. The hours passed slowly, and by twelve o'clock Mma Ramotswe was prepared to shut the agency for lunch. But just as she was about to suggest that to Mma Makutsi, her secretary slammed a drawer shut, inserted a piece of paper into her typewriter and began to type energetically. This signalled the arrival of a client. A large car, covered in the ubiquitous thin layer of dust that settled on everything in the dry season, had drawn up and a thin, white woman, wearing a khaki blouse and khaki trousers, had stepped out of the passenger seat. She glanced up briefly at the sign on the front of the building, took off her sunglasses, and knocked on the half-open door.