The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (2 page)

The woman frowned. “When, Mma? I have only been sitting here for half an hour.”

“Oh, not that long ago,” said Mma Ramotswe. “About two or three minutes ago. Maybe four.”

The woman shook her head. “No, Mma. Nobody has been
down here for at least ten minutes, maybe more. And there have been no white vans—I would have seen one if there had been. I have been watching, you see.”

“Are you sure, Mma?”

The woman nodded vigorously. “I am very sure, Mma. I see everything. I was in the police, you see. For three years, a long time ago, I was one of those police ladies. Then I fell off a truck and they said that I could not walk well enough to stay in. They are very foolish sometimes, and that is why the criminals sit there in those bars and tell one another stories of what the police have not done. They laugh at them and drink their beer. That is what is happening today, and God will certainly punish the politicians one day for letting this happen.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “You are right, Mma. Those criminals need to be taught a lesson. But to go back to the van, are you absolutely sure, Mma?”

“I am one hundred per cent sure,” said the woman. “If you made me stand up in the High Court in Lobatse and asked me whether I had seen a van, I would say certainly not and that is the truth.”

Mma Ramotswe thanked her. “I hope that your son comes soon, Mma,” she said.

“He will. When he has finished dancing with ladies or whatever he is doing, he will come.”

MMA RAMOTSWE
continued with her journey, completing the tasks she had been on her way to perform. She thought no more of the sighting of the van until she returned to the office a couple of hours later and mentioned the matter to Mma Makutsi.

“I saw something very strange today, Mma,” she began as she settled herself at her desk.

“That is no surprise,” said Mma Makutsi from the other side of the room. “There are some very strange things happening in Gaborone these days.”

Mma Ramotswe would normally have agreed with this—there were very odd things happening—but she did not want Mma Makutsi to get launched on the subject of politics or the behaviour of teenagers, or any of the other subjects on which she harboured strong and sometimes unconventional views. So she went on to describe the sighting of the van and the curiously unsettling conversation she had had with the woman by the side of the road. “She was very sure that there had been no van, Mma, and I believed her. And yet I am just as sure that I saw it. I was not dreaming.”

Mma Makutsi listened attentively. “So,” she said. “You saw it, but she did not. What does that mean, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe considered this for a moment. There was something on the issue in Clovis Andersen’s book, she seemed to remember;
The Principles of Private Detection
had a great deal to recommend it in all departments, but it was particularly strong on the subject of evidence and the recollection of what people see.
When two or more people see something,
the great authority had written,
you would be astonished at how many different versions of events you will get! This is not because people are lying; it is more because we see things differently. One person sees one thing, and another sees something altogether different. Both believe that they are telling the truth.

Mma Makutsi did not wait for Mma Ramotswe to answer her question. “It means that one of you saw something that the other did not.”

Mma Ramotswe pondered this answer. It did not advance the matter very much, she thought.

“So the fact that one of you saw nothing,” Mma Makutsi continued, “does not mean that there was nothing. She saw nothing
because she did not notice anything. You saw something that she did not notice
because it was not there,
or it was not there in the way that you thought it was there.”

“I’m not sure I follow you, Mma Makutsi …”

Mma Makutsi drew herself up behind her desk. “That van, Mma Ramotswe, was a ghost van. It was the spirit of a late van. That’s what you must have seen.”

Mma Ramotswe was not certain whether her assistant was being serious. Mma Makutsi could make peculiar remarks, but she had never before said anything quite as ridiculous as this. That was what made her feel that perhaps she was joking and that the proper reaction for her was to laugh. But if she laughed and her assistant was in fact being serious, then offence would be taken and this could be followed by a period of huffiness. So she confined her reaction to an innocent question: “Do vans have ghosts, Mma? Do you think that likely?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Mma Makutsi. “If people have ghosts, then why shouldn’t other things have them? What makes us so special that only we can have ghosts? What makes us think that, Mma?”

“Well, I’m not so sure that there are ghosts of people anyway,” said Mma Ramotswe. “If we go to heaven when we die, then who are these ghosts that people talk about? No, it doesn’t seem likely to me.”

Mma Makutsi frowned. “Ah, but who says that everybody goes to heaven?” she asked. “There are people who will not get anywhere near heaven. I can think of many …”

Mma Ramotswe’s curiosity was too much for her. “Such as, Mma?”

Mma Makutsi showed no hesitation in replying. “Violet Sephotho,” she said quickly. “There will be no place for her in heaven—
that is well known. So she will have to stay down here in Gaborone, walking around and not being seen by anybody because she will be a ghost.” She paused, an expression of delight crossing her face. “And, Mma, she will be a ghost in high-heeled shoes! Can you imagine that, Mma? A ghost tottering around on those silly high heels that she wears. It is a very funny thought, Mma. Even those who saw such a ghost would not be frightened but would burst out laughing. Other ghosts would laugh, Mma—they would, although we wouldn’t hear them, of course.”

“Unless we were ghosts ourselves by that stage,” interjected Mma Ramotswe. “Then we would hear them.”

This warning made Mma Makutsi fall silent. It had been an appetising picture that she had been painting, and she slightly resented Mma Ramotswe’s spoiling it like this. But her resentment did not persist, as it occurred to her that Mma Ramotswe, having possibly just seen a ghost herself—even if only a ghost van—might be in need of a restorative cup of red bush tea.

“I think it is time that I put the kettle on,” she said. “All this talk of ghosts …”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “There are no ghosts, Mma. No ghost people, no ghost vans. These things are just stories we make up to frighten ourselves.”

Mma Makutsi, now standing beside the kettle, looked out of the window. Yes, she thought, one can say that sort of thing in broad daylight, under this wide and sunlit Botswana sky, but would one say the same thing with equal conviction at night, when one was out in the bush, perhaps, away from the streetlights of town, and surrounded by the sounds of the night—sounds that could not be easily explained away and could be anything, things known or unknown, things friendly or unfriendly, things that it was better not to think about? She shuddered. It was not a good idea to let one’s
mind dwell on these matters, and she was sure it was best to think about something quite different. And so she said to Mma Ramotswe, “Mma, I am worried about Charlie. I am very worried.”

Mma Ramotswe looked up from her desk. “Charlie, Mma Makutsi? But we have always been worried about Charlie, right from the beginning.” She smiled at her assistant. “I’m sure that even when he was a very small boy, this high, his mother was shaking her head and saying that she was worried about Charlie. And all those girls, I’m sure that they have been saying the same thing for years. It is what people say about him.”

Mma Makutsi smiled too, but only weakly. “Yes, Mma,” she said. “But this time it’s different. I think now that we have to do something about him.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. Whatever it was, Mma Makutsi was probably right. But she was not sure that it was the responsibility of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency to deal with Charlie’s problems—whatever they were. Charlie was an apprentice of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, and it would have to be Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni who took action.

She looked across the room at her assistant, who was frowning with concentration as she poured the boiling water into the teapot. “Very well, Mma Makutsi,” she said. “Tell me what the trouble is. What has our young friend been up to now?”

 
CHAPTER TWO
 
 THE CHARLIE PROBLEM

T
HAT EVENING,
Mma Ramotswe pondered what she had been told by Mma Makutsi. She thought about this while she prepared the evening meal, in an empty house, as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had taken Puso and Motholeli to choir practice in the school hall. Both children had good voices, although Puso was plagued by embarrassment when he sang, closing his eyes as a result.

“Puso,” the choirmaster scolded him, “we do not close our eyes when we sing. We keep them open so that people who are listening know that we are not asleep. If you close your eyes, then maybe next you will start to close your mouth, and that is not good for singing, is it?”

In spite of this public upbraiding, Puso continued to close his eyes. The choirmaster learned to ignore the matter, though: the boy had a naturally good ear for music, and that was something that was worth cultivating in spite of other failings.

Mma Ramotswe went over Mma Makutsi’s revelations about Charlie and made sure that she knew how best to relate them to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. It was a matter for adults to discuss among themselves, not one for the ears of children, so when the three of
them eventually returned she fed the children first; that way, she and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni would be able to talk freely.

“We shall have our dinner a bit later,” she said to her husband. “If you are too hungry to wait, I can give you something. But it might be better not to eat until we can talk privately.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded, and sniffed at the cooking smells drifting out from the kitchen. “It smells very good, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “So I shall wait.”

“I have made—” she began, but he silenced her with a finger to his lips.

“It will be a surprise.” He paused, before whispering, “What do we have to talk about that cannot be spoken of in front of the children? Is it one of your cases?”

She shook her head. “No, it is one of
your
cases, Rra.”

He was puzzled. “I have no cases,” he said. “You are the detective; I am only—”

She leaned forward. “Charlie,” she whispered. “He is your responsibility, is he not?”

He looked grave. Ever since he had taken on Charlie as his apprentice—and that had been an inordinately long time ago—he had worried about the young man. At first his anxiety had been kept in check by the knowledge that apprenticeships do not last forever, but then the realisation slowly dawned on him that some apprenticeships appeared to disprove that rule. Charlie and Fanwell, his fellow apprentice, should have finished their training years earlier. Fanwell, at least, was now only a month or two short of completion, having at last passed the examinations of the Mechanical Apprenticeship Board and needing only a final period of assessment—a formality—before being registered as a fully qualified mechanic. Charlie, however, had failed his examinations time after time, mainly because he never bothered to prepare himself.

“You could pass very easily, you know,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni
told him after the last unsuccessful attempt. “All it needs is a bit of study. You are not a stupid young man—you have a brain in that head of yours, and yet you will not use it. You are like a farmer who has good rich soil and plants no melons in it. That is what you are like.”

“Mmm,” said Charlie, licking his lips. “I like melons, Boss!”

“There you are,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, with exasperation in his voice. “You are talking about melons when you should be talking about engines. That is exactly what I mean.”

“But you are the one who started talking about melons,” said Charlie. “I did not start it, Boss!”

It was extraordinarily frustrating, but it seemed that there was little that could be done. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not only the finest mechanic in Botswana, he was also the kindest. And it was for this reason that he could not bring himself to dismiss the young man and give his place to another who was more willing to learn. Charlie would have to content himself with being an unqualified mechanical assistant—a sort of perpetual apprentice.

There were other reasons to worry, of course. There was Charlie’s preoccupation with girls, and his constant talking about them. This distracted Fanwell, who was an altogether more serious young man, and it was also potentially bad for the image of the garage. On more than one occasion, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had been embarrassed in the presence of a client when the idle, girl-focused chatter of his apprentices had been quite audible. This had even happened once when a client who was a man of the cloth had been collecting his car and had heard Charlie talking about a girl. The two young men were under a truck and were probably unaware of the presence of the minister, but even so it had been a very awkward moment for their employer.