Alexander Smith - Tea Time for the Traditionally Built People

“We will not play well,” said Puso. “We are full of bad luck at the moment.”

And when he was collected at the end of the match, his expression told Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni everything, even before the young boy had climbed into the cab of the truck.

“No?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“The Squibs won,” said Puso. “They are not a very strong team, but they won. They scored so many goals.”

“But it was a good game?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“If you were a Squib,” said Puso.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was thoughtful. There would have to be a lesson about sportsmanship, and about enjoying a game, no matter what the outcome. It was sometimes a hard lesson to be learned, and some people never learned it, but it was needed. He looked at Puso and tried to remember what it was like to be that age. You wanted things so much-that was it: you wanted things so much that you ached . And sometimes you believed that you could make the things you yearned for happen, just by willing them. He had done that himself-he remembered it vividly, when as a boy he had lost a favourite uncle and he had walked out into the bush and looked up at the sky and addressed God directly: Please make him not be dead. Please make him not be dead. And when he had got home, he had half expected that his act of willing would have somehow worked and his uncle would have miraculously recovered. But of course there was still the sound of keening women and the black armbands and all the other signs that it had not worked: the world is the world in spite of all our wishes to the contrary.

When they returned to the house, Mma Ramotswe was up from her nap and was chopping onions in the kitchen. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni told her that the Kalahari Swoopers had not played well-as everyone expected-and that Puso was taking it badly.

“He'll learn,” she said. “We all learn about losing.”

“Except Mr. Molofololo,” mused Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I'm not sure that he's learned about losing.”

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Some people like that seem not to have learned these simple lessons.”

Puso came into the kitchen and began to tell her about the game. After a few minutes, she lost track of what he was saying. It was something about tackles and fouls and penalties- technical details that she had heard people talking about over the past weeks but that still meant very little to her. And then, by chance, she said, “And did you talk to the players? Did Mr. Molofololo let you help, as he said he would?”

Puso nodded. “I was allowed to hold the ball while they were waiting to go on. Some of them talked to me.”

She began to peel another onion. She was not really interested in football any more, now that she had written her report and was intending to bring the investigation to an unsatisfactory conclusion. But Puso was, and she was listening with half an ear. “And what did they say?” she asked.

“Most of them said they didn't like their boots,” he said. “One of them said that they were very uncomfortable, and the others all joined in.”

Mma Ramotswe hesitated. She put down the onion.

“They said that their boots were uncomfortable?”

“Yes. They said that Mr. Molofololo had made them wear boots that a sponsor had given them. They said that they had been wearing them for six months and they were still uncomfortable. I thought they looked very nice…”

Mma Ramotswe looked out of the window. It was so obvious. So obvious. But then the solutions to complex problems were often such simple things. If you wore uncomfortable boots, then how could you play good football? Of course you cannot-everybody, even a woman who owned a detective agency and who came from Mochudi and who had a fine mechanic for a husband, and two children who loved her although she was not their real mother, and who was the daughter of a man called Obed Ramotswe-even such a woman, with absolutely no knowledge of football, and no interest in it-even she would know that.

Then she remembered something, and the remembering of it struck her so forcefully that she found herself holding her breath, almost afraid to breathe. Of course. Of course. Mr. Molofololo had made that strange remark, right at the beginning: I am the one. It is me. He knew! He knew-on one level-that he was the problem, and it had slipped out. He knew but did not know, as was often the case with a person's own faults. We know what is wrong, but we cannot bring ourselves to admit it. She had helped clients like that before-people who really knew the answer to their problems but wanted somebody else to help them admit it. She breathed out. Yes. Yes.

She turned round and suddenly picked Puso up and hugged him. It was exactly the sort of gesture that a small boy would find acutely embarrassing-that they would run away from to avoid- but he suffered it. “You clever, clever boy!”

The boy's embarrassment turned to puzzlement. “Why, Mma?”

“Oh, Puso, it is a very big case that you have just solved. What… what treat would you like? Tell me.”

He looked up at her. “Ice cream,” he said. “Lots of it.”

“There will be ice cream,” she said. “We shall go right now. In the van. Ice cream-lots and lots of ice cream. More than you can eat-I promise you.”

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY MORNING, at eleven o'clock, Mma Ramotswe drove out to the orphan farm to have tea with Mma Potokwane. She had received no specific invitation, and when she left the office of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency she had no idea even that the matron would be in. But in the event she received her usual warm greeting from her friend, who was standing in front of her office in an apparently idle moment.

“Nothing to do, Mma Ramotswe?” Mma Potokwane called out. “Time for a cup of tea?”

“You do not look very busy yourself,” replied Mma Ramotswe, as she walked up to greet her.

“I am standing here planning,” said Mma Potokwane. “I do my best thinking when I am on my feet watching the children playing.”

Mma Ramotswe looked round. A group of very small children were playing under a tree-some strange game of childhood that involved tagging and running. There had been so many of those games, thought Mma Ramotswe-all with complicated rules and a history behind them; just like the affairs of the adult world- complicated rules and a history.

“They look happy,” Mma Ramotswe said.

Mma Potokwane smiled. “They are very happy. No matter what they have had in their lives before, they are very happy.” She gestured for Mma Ramotswe to follow her into the office.

“I see you are driving a new van,” she said, as they sat down. “It is very smart.”

Mma Ramotswe said nothing.

“And your old van? The white one?” asked Mma Potokwane.

“My old van has been retired. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni decided that he could not fix it any more.”

“He did that with our water pump,” said Mma Potokwane. “I thought that it could go on a bit longer, but he said that it could not. They are like that sometimes-mechanics. They decide that the end has come and then nothing you say can make them think otherwise.” She paused. “Are you sad, Mma? Sad about your van?”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. “I am. But I think that I am going to get it back. I know where it has gone and I am going to go up there one day soon and find it. There is a man who has bought it to fix it up. I shall go up there-it's in Machaneng-and buy it back.”

She had not told anybody of this plan, had hardly determined it in her own mind, but now, rehearsed in this way before Mma Potokwane, it was the obvious thing to do. Yes, that was what would happen. She would go and find the tiny white van and bring it back. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni could hardly complain if she brought it back restored-it was not as if she would have to ask him to fix it.