He watched in astonishment as the waitress walked off. “I thought that I…,” he began.
“No time,” said Mma Botumile. “This is business, remember. I am paying for your time, I take it. Two hundred pula an hour, or something like that?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni did not know what to say. There would be a fee, of course, but he had not thought about what it would be. He was accustomed to charging for mechanical work and he imagined that each case would have its mechanical equivalent. Finding out about an errant husband would be the equivalent perhaps of a full service, with oil change and attention to brakes. A more complex enquiry might be charged at the same rate as the replacement of a timing chain. He had not worked any of this out, but he would certainly not be charging two hundred pula an hour to sit and talk on the verandah of the President Hotel.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was a tolerant man, not given to animosity of any sort, but as he gazed at Mma Botumile he found himself developing a strong dislike for her. But he knew too that this was dangerous; he knew that as a professional person he should keep personal feelings strictly out of the picture. He had heard Mma Ramotswe talk about this before, and he had agreed with her. One simply could not allow one’s feelings to get in the way of one’s judgement. It was exactly the same with cars: emotion should not come into decisions about a car’s future, no matter what the bonds between the car and the owner. But then there was Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van; if ever there were a case for not allowing emotion to cloud one’s view of a vehicle, then that was it. He had nursed and cajoled that vehicle when good sense suggested that it should be replaced by something more modern, but Mma Ramotswe would have none of that. “I cannot see myself in a new car,” she said. “I am a tiny white van person. That is what I want.”
He lowered his gaze; Mma Botumile was staring back at him and he felt uncomfortable. “You must tell me about your husband,” he said. “I must know the sort of things that he likes to do.”
Mma Botumile settled back in her chair. “My husband is not a very strong man,” she said. “He is one of those men who does not really know what he wants. I can tell, of course, what he wants, but he cannot.” She looked at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni as if expecting a challenge to this, but when none came she continued. “We have been married for twenty years now, which is a long time. We met when we were both students at the University of Botswana. I am a B.Com., you see. He is an accountant with a mining company.
“We built a house out over near the Western by-pass, near where the Grand Palm Hotel is. It is a very fine house—you may have seen it from the road, Rra. It has gates which go like this—large gates. You know the place?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni did, and he had often wondered who would build gates like those; now he knew.
He nodded and waited for her to continue, but she was silent, watching him over the rim of her coffee cup.
“And was this marriage a happy one?” he asked finally. He found that the question came out in those words without his really having to think very much about it. Where had it come from? He suddenly remembered: years before, he had been in the High Court in Lobatse, waiting to give evidence in a case involving a road accident, and he had slipped into one of the courts to watch a case. He remembered the lawyer standing at his table, facing a woman who was sitting in the witness box, crying. And the lawyer suddenly spoke and said to her: “And was this marriage a happy one?” and the woman had started to cry all the more. What a ridiculous question, he had thought; what a ridiculous question to ask of a woman who was in floods of tears. Of course the marriage was not a happy one. But the question itself had sounded so impressive, that he had remembered it, little thinking that years later he would be able to use those precise words.
Unlike the witness, Mma Botumile did not burst into tears. “Of course it was happy,” she said. “And still is. Or rather, could be, if he stopped seeing that other woman.”
“Have you spoken to him about her?” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni asked.
Mma Botumile was dismissive. “Of course not! And, anyway, what could I say? I know nothing about this woman, whoever she is. That is for you to find out.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni pondered this for a moment. “But you do know that he’s seeing a woman, do you?” he asked.
“Oh, I know that all right,” said Mma Botumile. “Women know these things.”
Intuition, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. That’s what women claimed they had and men did not, or did not have enough of: intuition. He had often wondered, though, how one could know something without actually hearing it, or seeing it, or even smelling it. If one did not acquire knowledge from one’s senses, then where would one acquire it? That’s what he would have liked to ask Mma Botumile, but felt that he could not. She was not a woman, he felt, who would take well to being challenged.
“I see,” he said mildly. “But, do you mind telling me how women know these things? I’m sure they do know them, but how come?”
For the first time in the course of their meeting, Mma Botumile smiled. “It’s easier to talk to another woman about these matters,” she said. “But since your Mma Ramotswe is so busy, I suppose that I shall have to talk to you, Rra.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni waited.
Mma Botumile lowered her voice. “Men make certain demands of ladies,” she said. “And if they stop, then it’s a very good sign. Any woman knows that.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni caught his breath.
There was a glint of amusement in Mma Botumile’s eye. “Yes,” she said. “That is always a sign that the man has another friend.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni did not know what to say. He looked down at the table, and then at the floor. Somebody had spilled some sugar from the table, a small line of white grains, and he noticed that a troop of ants, marshalled with military precision, had arrived to carry them off, minuscule porters staggering under the weight of their trophies.
“So that is what you need to find out, Rra,” said Mma Botumile, signalling to the waitress to bring her bill. “You will have to follow him and find out who this lady is. I can give you no help about that—that is why I have asked you. That is why you are being paid two hundred pula an hour.”
“I’m not,” muttered Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
HE LEFT THE PRESIDENT HOTEL uncertain what to do and unsure, he now realised, whether he wanted to carry out this investigation at all. The meeting with Mma Botumile had not been a satisfactory one. She had given him no guidance as to where he might start looking for her husband’s girlfriend, and the only suggestion that she had made was that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni might follow him after work one day and see where he went. “He certainly doesn’t come home straightaway,” she said. “He says that he’s seeing clients, but I don’t believe that, do you?” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni muttered something which could have been yes or equally could have been no. He did not like being expected to take sides like this, and yet, he told himself, this is what must be expected of people like private detectives, or lawyers, for that matter. People paid them to take their side, and this meant that you had to believe in what the client wanted. The thought made him feel very uncomfortable. What if you were to be hired by somebody whom you could not bear, or if you found out that the person who had engaged you was lying? Would you have to pretend that you believed the lies—which would be impossible, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni—or could you tell them that you would have no truck with their falsehoods?
And then another thought struck Mr J.L.B. Matekoni as he made his way down the steps of the President Hotel. He had never met Mma Botumile’s husband and he had no idea what he was like. But it occurred to him, nonetheless, that when he eventually met him—if he eventually met him—he would probably feel sorry for him and end up rather liking him. If he were to be married to Mma Botumile, whom he considered both rude and bossy, then would he not himself seek comfort elsewhere, in the arms of a good, sympathetic woman—somebody like Mma Ramotswe in fact? Of course Mma Ramotswe would never look at another man—Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew that. He stopped. It had never once crossed his mind that Mma Ramotswe might take up with somebody else, but then many people who were let down in this way by their spouses never thought that this would happen to them, and yet it did. So there were many people who deluded themselves.