Alexander Smith - The Full Cupboard of Life

Rather than enter the garage through the workshop, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni went round to the side, to the door of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Normally this was kept open, which meant that chickens sometimes wandered in and annoyed Mma Makutsi by pecking at the floor around her toes, but today it was closed, which suggested that Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi were out, or that there was a client inside. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni leaned forward to listen at the keyhole, to see if he could hear voices within, and at that moment, as he bent forward, the door was suddenly opened from inside.

Mma Holonga stared in astonishment at the sight of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, bent almost double. She half turned to Mma Ramotswe. “There is a man here,” she said. “There is a man here listening.”

Mma Ramotswe shot Mr J.L.B. Matekoni a warning glance. “He has hurt his back, I think, Mma. That is why he is standing like that. And anyway, it’s only Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who owns the garage. He is entitled to be standing there. He is quite harmless.”

Mma Holonga looked again at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who, feeling that he had to authenticate Mma Ramotswe’s explanation, put a hand to his back and tried to look uncomfortable.

“I thought that he was trying to listen to us,” said Mma Holonga. “That’s what I thought, Mma.”

“No, he would not do that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Sometimes men just stand around. I think that is what he was doing.”

“I see,” said Mma Holonga, making her way past Mr J.L.B. Matekoni with a sideways glance. “I shall go now, Mma. But I shall wait to hear from you.”

“Well, well!” said Mma Ramotswe as they watched Mma Holonga get into her car. “That was very awkward. What were you doing listening in at the keyhole?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “I was not listening. Or I was not listening, but just trying to hear…” He trailed off. He was not explaining it well.

“You wanted to see if I was busy,” prompted Mma Ramotswe. “Is that it?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “That was all I was doing.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “You could always knock and say Ko, Ko. That is how we normally do things, is it not?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took the reproach in silence. He did not wish to argue with Mma Ramotswe over this; he was keen to tell her about the butcher’s car and he looked eagerly at the tea-pot. They could sit over a cup of bush tea and he would tell her about the awful thing that he had discovered quite by chance and she would tell him what to do. So he made a remark about being thirsty, as it was such a hot day, and Mma Ramotswe immediately suggested a cup of tea. She could sense that there was something on his mind and it was surely the function of a wife to listen to her husband when there was something troubling him. Not that I’m actually a wife, she told herself; I’m only a fiancee. But even then, fiancees should listen too, and could give exactly the same sort of advice as wives gave. So she put on the kettle and they had bush tea together, sitting in the shade of the acacia tree, beside Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s parked truck. And in the tree above them, an African grey dove watched them from its branch, silently, before it flew off in search of the mate which it had lost.

MMA RAMOTSWE’S reaction to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s story was exactly as he had thought it would be. She was angry; not angry in the loud way in which some people were angry, but quietly, with only pursed lips and a particular look in her eye to show what she was feeling. She had never been able to tolerate dishonesty, which she thought threatened the very heart of relationships between people. If you could not count on other people to mean what they said, or to do what they said they would do, then life could become utterly unpredictable. The fact that we could trust one another made it possible to undertake the simple tasks of life. Everything was based on trust, even day-to-day things like crossing the road-which required trust that the drivers of cars would be paying attention-to buying the food from a roadside vendor, whom you trusted not to poison you. It was a lesson that we learned as children, when our parents threw us up into the sky and thrilled us by letting us drop into their waiting arms. We trusted those arms to be there, and they were.

Mma Ramotswe was silent for a while after Mr J.L.B. Matekoni finished speaking. “I know that garage,” she said. “A long time ago, when I first had my white van, I used to go there. That was before I started coming to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors of course.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni listened intently. This explained the state of the tiny white van when he had first seen it. He had assumed that the worn brake pads and the loose clutch were the results of neglect by Mma Ramotswe herself, rather than a consequence of the van having been looked after-if one could call it that-by First Class Motors, as it had the temerity to call itself. The thought made his heart skip a beat; it would have been so very easy for Mma Ramotswe to have had an accident as a result of her faulty brakes, and if that had happened he might never have met her and he would never have been what he was today-the fiance of one of the finest women in Botswana. But he recognised that there was no point in entertaining such thoughts. History was littered with events that had changed everything and might easily not have done so. Imagine if the British had given in to South African pressure and had agreed to make what was then the Bechuanaland Protectorate into part of the Cape Province. They might easily have done that, and then there would be no Botswana today, and that would have been a loss for everybody. And his people would have suffered so much too if that had happened; all those years of suffering which others had borne but which they had been spared; and all that had stood between them and that was the decision of some politician somewhere who may never even have visited the Protectorate, or cared very much. And then, of course, there was Mr Churchill, whom Mr J.L.B. Matekoni admired greatly, although he had been no more than a small boy when Mr Churchill had died. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had read in one of Mma Makutsi’s magazines that Mr Churchill had almost been run over by a car when he was visiting America as a young man. If he had been standing six inches further into the road when the car hit him he would not have survived, and that would have made history very different, or so the article suggested. And then there was President Kennedy, who might have leaned forward just at the moment when that trigger was pulled, and might have lived to change history even more than he had already done. But Mr Churchill had survived, as had Mma Ramotswe, and that was the important thing. Now the tiny white van was scrupulously maintained, with its tight clutch and its responsive brakes. And Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had fitted a new, extra-large seat belt in the front, so that Mma Ramotswe could strap herself in without feeling uncomfortable. She was safe, which was what he wanted above all else; it would be unthinkable for anything to happen to Mma Ramotswe.

“You will have to do something about this,” said Mma Ramotswe suddenly. “You cannot leave it be.”

“Of course not,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I have told the butcher to bring the car round here next week, and I shall start to fix it for him. I shall have to order special parts, but I think I know where I can find them. There is a man in Mafikeng who knows all about these old cars and the parts they need. I shall ask him.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “That will be a kind thing to do,” she said. “But I was really thinking that you would have to do something about First Class Motors. They are the ones who have been cheating him. And they will be cheating others.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked thoughtful. “But I don’t know what I can do about them,” he said. “You can’t make good mechanics out of bad ones. You cannot teach a hyena to dance.”