Alexander Smith - The no. 1 ladies' detective agency

He said: "Girls must learn this thing. Has anybody taught you?"

She shook her head. She had not learned and now, she felt, it was too late. She would not know what to do.

"I am glad," he said. "I knew straightaway that you were a virgin, which is a very good thing for a man. But now things will change. Right now. Tonight."

He hurt her. She asked him to stop, but he put her head back and hit her once across the cheek. But he immediatelykissed her where the blow had struck, and said that he had not meant to do it. All the time he was pushing against her, and scratching at her, sometimes across her back, with his fingernails. Then he moved her over, and he hurt her again, and struck her across her back with his belt.

She sat up, and gathered her crumpled clothes together. She was concerned, even if he was not, that somebody might come out into the night and see them.

She dressed, and as she put on her blouse, she started to weep, quietly, because she was thinking of her father, whom she would see tomorrow on his verandah, who would tell her the cattle news, and who would never imagine what had happened to her that night.

Note Mokoti visited her father three weeks later, by himself, and asked him for Precious. Obed said he would speak to his daughter, which he did when she came to see him next. He sat on his stool and looked up at her and said to her that she would never have to marry anybody she did not want to marry. Those days were over, long ago. Nor should she feel that she had to marry at all; a woman could be by herself these days-there were more and more women like that.

She could have said no at this point, which is what her father wanted her to say. But she did not want to say that. She lived for her meetings with Note Mokoti. She wanted to marry him. He was not a good man, she could tell that, but she might change him. And, when all was said and done, there remained those dark moments of contact, those pleasures he snatched from her, which were addictive. She liked that. She felt ashamed even to think of it, but she liked what he did to her, the humiliation, the urgency. She wanted to be with him, wanted him to possess her. It was like a bitter drink which bidsyou back. And of course she sensed that she was pregnant. It was too early to tell, but she felt that Note Mokoti's child was within her, a tiny, fluttering bird, deep within her.

THEY MARRIED on a Saturday afternoon, at three o'clock, in the church at Mochudi, with the cattle outside under the trees, for it was late October and the heat was at its worst. The countryside was dry that year, as the previous season's rains had not been good. Everything was parched and wilting; there was little grass left, and the cattle were skin and bones. It was a listless time.

The Reformed Church Minister married them, gasping in his clerical black, mopping at his brow with a large red handkerchief.

He said: "You are being married here in God's sight. God places upon you certain duties. God looks after us and keeps us in this cruel world. God loves His children, but we must remember those duties He asks of us. Do you young people understand what I am saying?"

Note smiled. "I understand."

And, turning to Precious: "And do you understand?"

She looked up into the Minister's face-the face of her father's friend. She knew that her father had spoken to him about this marriage and about how unhappy he was about it, but the Minister had said that he was unable to intervene. Now his tone was gentle, and he pressed her hand lightly as he took it to place in Note's. As he did so, the child moved within her, and she winced because the movement was so sudden and so firm.

AFTER TWO days in Mochudi, where they stayed in the house of a cousin of Note's, they packed their possessions into the back of a truck and went down to Gaborone. Note had found somewhere to stay-two rooms and a kitchen in somebody's house near Tlokweng. It was a luxury to have two rooms; one was their bedroom, furnished with a double mattress and an old wardrobe; the other was a living room and dining room, with a table, two chairs, and a sideboard. The yellow curtains from her room at the cousin's house were hung up in this room, and they made it bright and cheerful.

Note kept his trumpet there and his collection of tapes. He would practise for twenty minutes at a time, and then, while his lip was resting, he would listen to a tape and pick out the rhythms on a guitar. He knew everything about township music-where it came from, who sang what, who played which part with whom. He had heard the greats, too; Hugh Masekela on the trumpet, Dollar Brand on the piano, Spokes Machobane singing; he had heard them in person in Johannesburg, and knew every recording they had ever made.

She watched him take the trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it to his lips and then, so suddenly, from that tiny cup of metal against his flesh, the sound would burst out like a glorious, brilliant knife dividing the air. And the little room would reverberate and the flies, jolted out of their torpor, would buzz round and round as if riding the swirling notes.

She went with him to the bars, and he was kind to her there, but he seemed to get caught up in his own circle and she felt that he did not really want her there. There were people there who thought of nothing but music; they talked endlessly about music, music, music; how much could one say about music?

They didn't want her there either, she thought, and so she stopped going to the bars and stayed at home.

He came home late and he smelled of beer when he returned. It was a sour smell, like rancid milk, and she turned her head away as he pushed her down on the bed and pulled at her clothing.

"You have had a lot of beer. You have had a good evening."

He looked at her, his eyes slightly out of focus.

"I can drink if I want to. You're one of these women who stays at home and complains? Is that what you are?"

"I am not. I only meant to say that you had a good evening."

But his indignation would not be assuaged, and he said: "You are making me punish you, woman. You are making me do this thing to you."

She cried out, and tried to struggle, to push him away, but he was too strong for her.

"Don't hurt the baby."

"Baby! Why do you talk about this baby? It is not mine. I am not the father of any baby."

MALE HANDS again, but this time in thin rubber gloves, which made the hands pale and unfinished, like a white man's hands.

"Do you feel any pain here? No? And here?"

She shook her head.

"I think that the baby is all right. And up here, where these marks are. Is there pain just on the outside, or is it deeper in?"

"It is just the outside."

"I see. I am going to have to put in stitches here. All the way across here, because the skin has parted so badly. I'll spray something on to take the pain away but maybe it's better for you not to watch me while I'm sewing! Some people say men can't sew, but we doctors aren't too bad at it!"

She closed her eyes and heard a hissing sound. There was cold spray against her skin and then a numbness as the doctor worked on the wound.

"This was your husband's doing? Am I right?"

She opened her eyes. The doctor had finished the suture and had handed something to the nurse. He was looking at her now as he peeled off the gloves.

"How many times has this happened before? Is there anybody to look after you?"

"I don't know. I don't know."

"I suppose you're going to go back to him?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her.

"Of course you are. It's always the same. The woman goes back for more."

He sighed. "I'll probably see you again, you know. But I hope I don't. Just be careful."

SHE WENT back the next day, a scarf tied around her face to hide the bruises and the cuts. She ached in her arms and in her stomach, and the sutured wound stung sharply. They had given her pills at the hospital, and she had taken one just before she left on the bus. This seemed to help the pain, and she took another on the journey.