Mma Makutsi might do well to reflect on the example of this Orange Queen, with her pleasant smile and self-evidently optimistic outlook. She should remind herself that even if she did come from Bobonong, she had put that behind her and was now a person who lived in the capital, in Gaborone itself. She should also remind herself that even if she thought that her complexion was too dark, there were plenty of men who were very happy with women who looked that way rather than those pallid creatures one sometimes saw who had made their skins look blotchy with lightening creams. And as for those large glasses which Mma Makutsi wore, there might be some who would find them a little bit intimidating, but many other men simply would fail to notice them, in much the same way as they failed to notice what women were wearing in general, no matter what efforts women made with their clothing.
The trouble with men, of course, was that they went about with their eyes half closed for much of the time. Sometimes Mma Ramotswe wondered whether men actually wanted to see anything, or whether they decided that they would notice only the things that interested them. That was why women were so good at tasks which required attention to the way people felt. Being a private detective, for example, was exactly the sort of job at which a woman could be expected to excel (and look at the success of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency). That was because women watched and tried to understand what was going on in people’s minds. Of course there were some men who could do this-one thought immediately of Clovis Andersen, author of The Principles of Private Detection, Mma Ramotswe’s well-thumbed copy of which occupied pride of place on the shelf behind her desk. Clovis Andersen must be a most sympathetic man, Mma Ramotswe thought; more like a woman, in many ways, with his advice to study people’s clothing carefully. (There are many clues in what people wear, he wrote. Our clothes reveal a great deal about us. They talk. A man who wears no tie does not dress that way because he has no tie-he probably has an appreciable number of ties in his wardrobe at home-he is wearing no tie because he has chosen to do so. That means that he wishes to appear casual.) Mma Ramotswe had found that a puzzling passage and had wondered where it was leading. She was not sure what one could deduce from the fact that a man wished to appear casual, but she was sure that, like all the observations of Clovis Andersen, this was in some way important.
She looked up from her desk and glanced at Mma Makutsi, who was busying herself with the typing of a letter which Mma Ramotswe had drafted, in pencil, earlier on. We must try to help her, she thought. We must try to persuade her to value herself more than she does at present. She was a fine woman, with great talents, and it was absurd that she should go through life thinking less of herself because she had no husband. That was such a waste. Mma Makutsi deserved to be happy. She deserved to have something to look forward to other than a bleak existence in one room in Old Naledi; a room that she shared with her sick brother, and into which no light came. Everybody deserved more than that, even in this unlucky world, a world which had brought such rewards to Mma Ramotswe but which seemed to be grudging in its appreciation of Mma Makutsi. We shall change all that, thought Mma Ramotswe, because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what it is that has to be changed.
CHAPTER TWO
LIFE AT Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors (and, indeed, at the No. 1
Ladies’ Detective Agency) was returning to normal. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had resumed his old practice of coming in to work shortly before seven in the morning, and would already be prostrate on his inspection board shining a torch up into a car’s underbelly by the time the two apprentices arrived at eight o’clock. Their contract of apprenticeship stipulated that they should work eight hours a day, with time off for study every three months, but Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had given up expecting them to comply with this. Certainly they arrived at eight and left at five, which made nine hours each day, but from this total there was deducted an hour for lunch, and two tea breaks of forty-five minutes each. It was the tea breaks that were the problem, but any attempt to insist on a far shorter break had been met with sullen resistance. Eventually he had given up; he was a generous man and did not like conflict.
“You may have it easy here,” he had warned them on more than one occasion, “but don’t think that all bosses are like this. When you finish your apprenticeship-if you finish-then you’ll have to find another job, a real job, and you’ll learn all about it then.”
“Learn about what, boss?” asked the older apprentice, smiling conspiratorially at his friend.
“About the working world,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “About what it’s like to be kept really hard at it.”
The older apprentice rolled his eyes in mock horror. “But you’ll keep us on here, won’t you, boss? You couldn’t do without us, could you?”
The arrival of Mma Makutsi as acting manager of the garage had brought about a change, even if the long tea breaks survived. She had quickly shown that she would take no nonsense from the two apprentices, and they had rapidly abandoned their slovenly ways. Mma Ramotswe had been unable to work out what lay behind the change, so dramatic was it; she had assumed that it was something to do with working for a woman, which may have encouraged them to show what they could do, but she had eventually thought that it was something deeper than that. Certainly the two boys had wanted to impress her, but it seemed, too, that she had instilled in them a real pride in their work. Now, with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni back in the garage, both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi were anxious to see whether the change would prove to be permanent.
“Those two boys are much better,” remarked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shortly after his return. “They’re still a bit lazy, which is probably just their nature, and they still talk endlessly about girls, which may also be their nature, come to think of it. But I think that their work is much neater… much less… less…”
“Greasy?” prompted Mma Ramotswe.
“Yes,” agreed Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “That’s it. They used to be so messy, as you know, but now that’s all changed. And they’re also not so brutal with the engines. They seem to have learned something while I was away.”
And there were further changes-changes of which Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni as yet had no inkling. It was Mma Ramotswe, in fact, who first became aware that something had happened, and she sought confirmation from Mma Makutsi before she made any remark to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Mma Makutsi was astonished; she had been too busy to have noticed, she remarked in her defence, otherwise she would surely have picked up something like that. Now, after she had spoken discreetly to Charlie, the elder of the two apprentices, she was able to confirm Mma Ramotswe’s suspicions.
“You’re right,” she said. “The younger one has heard about the Lord. And he was the one who was by far the worst with the girls-always going on about them, remember-and now there he is, joined up to one of those marching churches. The Lord told him to do it, Charlie said. He’s surprised, too. He’s very disappointed that he doesn’t seem to be too keen to talk about girls anymore. Charlie doesn’t like that.”
The news was passed on to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who sighed. These apprentices were a mystery to him, and he looked forward to the day when they would be off his hands, if that day were ever to come. Life had become much more complicated for him, and he was not sure whether he liked it that way. In the past it had been simple: he had been alone at the garage and had only himself to worry about. Now there were Mma Makutsi, the two apprentices, and Mma Ramotswe, and that was even before one took into account the two orphans whose fostering he had arranged. That had been a very rash act on his part, although it was not one which he really regretted. The children were so happy staying in Mma Ramotswe’s house on Zebra Drive that it would have been churlish beyond measure to begrudge them that. But, even then, to go from being responsible for one person, himself, to being responsible for seven was a step which might daunt any man, no matter how broad his shoulders.