“You did!” shouted Mma Makutsi. “When you signed your apprenticeship contract, you said that you wanted to be a mechanic. That’s what those contracts say, you know.”
Mma Ramotswe raised a hand in a calming gesture. “You needn’t shout at him, Mma,” she said quietly. “He is going to explain, aren’t you, Charlie?”
“I’m not deaf, you know,” said Charlie over his shoulder. “And I wasn’t talking to you anyway. There are two ladies in this room—Mma Ramotswe and…and another one. I was talking to Mma Ramotswe.” He turned back to face Mma Ramotswe. “I’m going to do another job, Mma. I am going into business.”
“Business!” chuckled Mma Makutsi. “You’ll be needing a secretary soon, I suppose.”
“And don’t bother to apply for that job, Mma,” Charlie snapped. “Seventy-nine per cent or not, I would never give you a job. I’m not mad, you see.”
“Ninety-seven per cent!” shouted Mma Makutsi. “See! You can’t even get your figures right. Some profit you’ll make!”
“Please do not shout at each other,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Shouting achieves nothing. It just makes the person doing the shouting hoarse and the person being shouted at cross. That is all it does.”
“I was not shouting,” said Charlie. “Somebody else was doing the shouting. Somebody with big round glasses. Not me.”
Mma Ramotswe sighed. It was Mma Makutsi’s fault, this feeling between the two of them. She was older than Charlie and might have turned a blind eye to the young man’s faults; she might have encouraged him to be a bit better than he was; she might have understood that young men are like this and that one has to be tolerant.
“Tell me about this business, Charlie,” she said gently. “What is it?”
Charlie sat down on the chair in front of Mma Ramotswe. Then he leaned forward, his arms resting on the surface of her desk. “Mr J.L.B. Matekoni has sold me a car,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, so that Mma Makutsi might not hear. “It is an old Mercedes-Benz. An E220. The owner has a new one, a C-Class, and since this one has such a large mileage on it he sold it to the boss for very little. Twenty thousand pula. Now the boss has sold it to me.”
“And?” coaxed Mma Ramotswe. She had seen the Mercedes in the garage and had noticed that it had been parked at the side of the building for over two weeks. She assumed that they were waiting for some part that had been ordered from South Africa. Now she knew that there were other plans for the car.
“And I am going to start a taxi service,” said Charlie. “I am going to start a business called the No. 1 Ladies’ Taxi Service.”
There was a gasp from the other side of the room. “You can’t do that! That name belongs to Mma Ramotswe.”
Mma Ramotswe, taken aback, simply stared at Charlie. Then she gathered her thoughts. The name that he had chosen was certainly derivative, but was there anything wrong with that? In one view, it was a compliment to have a name one had invented being used by somebody else. The only difficulty would be if the name were to be used by a similar business—by a detective agency that wanted to take clients away from them. A taxi company and a detective agency were two very different things, and there would be no prospect of competition between them.
“I don’t mind,” she said to Charlie. “But tell me: Why have you chosen that name? You’ll be driving the car—where do the ladies come into it?”
Charlie, who had been tense under Mma Makutsi’s onslaught, now visibly relaxed. “The ladies will be in the back of the car.”
Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“And I will be in the front, driving,” he said. “The selling point will be that this is a taxi that is safe for ladies. Ladies will be able to get in without any fear that they will find some bad man in the driver’s seat—a man who might not be safe with ladies. There are such taxi drivers, Mma.”
For a minute or so nobody spoke. Mma Ramotswe was aware of the sound of Charlie’s breathing, which was shallow, from excitement. We must remember, she thought, what it is like to be young and enthusiastic, to have a plan, a dream. There was always a danger that as we went on in life we forgot about that; caution—even fear—replaced optimism and courage. When you were young, like Charlie, you believed that you could do anything, and, in some circumstances at least, you could.
Why should Charlie’s taxi firm not succeed? She remembered a conversation with her friend Bernard Ditau, who had been a bank manager. “There are so many people who could run their own businesses,” he had said, “but they let people tell them it won’t work. So they give up before they start.”
Bernard had encouraged her to start the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency when others had merely laughed and said that it would be the quickest way of losing the money that Obed Ramotswe had left her. “He worked all those years, your Daddy, and now you’re going to lose everything he got in two or three months,” somebody had said. That remark had almost persuaded her to drop the idea, but Bernard had urged her on. “What if he hadn’t bought all those good fat cattle?” he asked. “What if he had been too timid to do that and had left the money to sit gathering dust?”
Now she was sitting, in a sense, in Bernard’s place. There was little doubt but that Mma Makutsi would be only too ready to throw cold water over Charlie’s plan, but she decided that she would not do this.
“I will tell all my friends to use your taxi,” she said. “I am sure you will be very busy.”
Charlie beamed with pleasure. “I will give them a discount,” he said. “Ten per cent off for anybody who knows Mma Ramotswe.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “That is very kind of you,” she said. “But that is not the way to run a business. You will need every pula you can make.”
“If you make any, that is,” muttered Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe threw a disapproving glance in Mma Makutsi’s direction. “I am sure he will,” she said. “I am sure of that.”
After Charlie had left the office, Mma Ramotswe fiddled for a moment with a small pile of papers on her desk. She looked across the room at Mma Makutsi, who was studiously avoiding looking at her, and was paging through her shorthand notebook as if it contained some important hidden secret. “Mma Makutsi,” she said, “I really need to talk to you.”
Mma Makutsi continued to leaf through the notebook. “I am here,” she said. “I am listening, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe felt her heart beating within her. I am not very good at this sort of thing, she told herself. “That young man,” she said, “is just the same as any young man. He has his dreams, as we all did when we were his age. Even you, Mma Makutsi. Even you. You went to the Botswana Secretarial College—you sacrificed so much for that—your people up in Bobonong sacrificed too. You wanted to make something of yourself, and you did.” She paused. Mma Makutsi was sitting quite still, no longer looking through the notebook, which she had laid down on the desk.
“Now everything has turned out well for you,” Mma Ramotswe went on. “You have your house. You have that fiancé of yours. You will have money when you marry him. But don’t forget that there are many others who still don’t have what you now have. Don’t forget that.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” Mma Makutsi interjected. “I was merely pointing out what is very clear, Mma. That boy’s business will fail because he is no good. Anybody can see that he is no good.”
“No!” said Mma Ramotswe firmly. “You cannot say that he is no good! You cannot say that.”
“Yes, I can,” said Mma Makutsi. “I can say that because it’s the truth, Mma. Your trouble…” She paused. “Your trouble, Mma, is that you’re too kind. You let those boys get away with all sorts of things just because you’re too kind. Well, I’m a realist. I see things as they really are.”
“Oh,” said Mma Ramotswe. And then she said again, “Oh.”
“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “And now, Mma, I shall resign. I do not have to work here and I have decided that it is time to resign. Thank you for everything you have done for me. I hope that you find the filing system is easy to use. You will find everything in the right place when I am gone.”