He did not see the traffic lights, which were red, against him; nor the truck that was approaching and that had no time to apply its brakes. Charlie, gazing in his rear-view mirror, saw nothing that lay ahead; not the frantic movements of the truck driver as he realised that impact was inevitable; not the crumpling of metal as the front of the car folded in; not the shattering of the windscreen as it fragmented into little pieces, like diamonds or droplets of water in the sun. But he heard the screaming of the woman in the seat behind him and a slow ticking sound from the engine of his car; he heard the slamming of the door of the truck as the driver, shaking, let himself out of his relatively unharmed cabin. He heard the protests of metal as his own door was prised open.
Another motorist had stopped and had put his arm around Charlie’s passenger. She was standing beside the car, weeping with shock. There was no blood.
“Everybody is all right,” said the other motorist. “I saw it happen. I saw it.”
“I was coming that way,” stuttered the truck driver. “The light was green.”
“Yes,” said the motorist. “I saw that. The light was green.”
They looked at Charlie. “Are you all right, Rra? You are not injured?”
Charlie could not speak. He shook his head. He had escaped injury, thanks to the solidity of German engineering.
“God must be watching,” said a passer-by, who had seen all three step unharmed from the wreckage. “But look at that car! I’m sorry, Rra. Your poor car.”
Charlie had now sat down on the side of the road. He too was shaking. He was staring at his shoes; now he looked up and saw the ruins of his Mercedes-Benz, with its crumpled front, stained green by spurting coolant; at the metal rubbed bare where the truck had ground across it; at the buckled door with its newly painted sign. The ruptured metal had shortened the sign. The No. 1 Ladies’ Tax it now read; a curious legend which caused the policeman who shortly afterwards arrived at the scene to scratch his head. Tax?
Charlie reached home four hours later. His aunt was there, and she could tell immediately that there was something wrong.
“I have had an accident,” he said.
The aunt let out a wail. “Your beautiful new car?”
“It is finished, Aunty. That car is finished now.”
The aunt looked fixedly at the ground; she had known, of course, that this, or something like this, would happen. Charlie, silent now that he had pronounced the requiem on his car, sat down. I am twenty, he thought. Twenty, and it is all finished for me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MMA POTOKWANE ON THE SUBJECT OF TRUST, AMONGST OTHER THINGS
ON THE DAY following Charlie’s accident—an accident of which nobody at the garage or the agency was yet aware—Mma Ramotswe decided not to work in her office but instead to go for a picnic. It was not a decision that was made on the spur of the moment; she had been invited almost two weeks previously by Mma Potokwane, had accepted, and then forgotten about it until a few hours before the gathering was due to take place. In some respects she would have preferred not to have remembered at all, as that would have given her a perfect excuse, even if a retrospective one, for not attending. But now it was too late: Mma Potokwane, the redoubtable matron of the orphan farm, would be expecting her and she had to go.
Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane were old friends. Mma Makutsi, who had her difficulties with Mma Potokwane, the two having crossed swords on more than one occasion, had once asked Mma Ramotswe how they had first met. Mma Ramotswe had been unable to provide an answer. Some friends, she explained, seemed always to have been part of one’s life. Obviously there was a first meeting, but in the case of old friends that was usually so long ago, and so mundane at the time, that all memory of it had faded. Such friends were like favoured possessions—a cherished book, a favourite picture—how one acquired them was long forgotten, they were just there.
It had not always been the smoothest of friendships and there were some aspects of Mma Potokwane’s behaviour of which Mma Ramotswe frankly disapproved. Her bossiness was one such thing, particularly when it was directed at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who had long been incapable of refusing Mma Potokwane’s requests to fix various antiquated pieces of equipment at the orphan farm. It was all very well for her to order the orphans about—that was what one expected of the matron of an orphanage, since it was undoubtedly good for the children to lead ordered lives—but it was another thing altogether for her to adopt a similar manner when it came to adults.
“I feel sorry for that woman’s husband,” Mma Makutsi had once remarked, following upon a call that Mma Potokwane had made to the office. “No wonder he doesn’t ever say anything. Have you watched him? He just stands there. The poor man must be afraid to open his mouth.”
Out of loyalty to her friend, Mma Ramotswe refrained from saying anything about this, but when she gave some thought to Mma Makutsi’s less-than-charitable remark she had to acknowledge that it was probably true. Mma Potokwane’s husband was a small man, neither as tall nor as well built as his wife, and he gave every appearance of being both physically and emotionally floundering in the wake created by his wife.
“I wonder why he married her,” Mma Makutsi went on. “Do you think that he asked her, or did she ask him?” She paused as she mulled over the possibilities. “Maybe she even ordered him to marry her. Do you think that happened, Mma?”
Mma Ramotswe pursed her lips. It was difficult not to smile when Mma Makutsi got going on remarks like this, but she knew that she should not. It was none of Mma Makutsi’s business how Rra Potokwane had proposed to Mma Potokwane; such things were the private business of man and wife and people had no right to pry into such areas. Mind you, Mma Makutsi might not be far wrong; she could just imagine Mma Potokwane instructing her mild, rather timid husband to marry her or face some unnamed unpleasant consequences.
“I wonder what their bed is like,” went on Mma Makutsi. “I can just see their bedroom, can’t you?—with her taking up most of the space on the bed and leaving only a few inches at the edge for him. Maybe he sleeps on the floor next to the bed. And then she wakes up and thinks: Where on earth did I put my husband? Do you think that is what happens, Mma Ramotswe?”
This was overstepping the mark. Mma Ramotswe did not like to speculate on the bedrooms, or beds, of others. That was private. “You mustn’t talk like that,” she said. “It is not funny.”
“But you are smiling,” Mma Makutsi said. “I can see that you are trying not to smile, but you are.”
Mma Ramotswe had changed the subject at this point, but at home that evening she had narrated the conversation to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and he had laughed. “Those two just can’t get on,” he said. “They are really the same, under the skin. In ten years’ time, Mma Makutsi will be just like her. She has been ordering the apprentices around—for practice. Soon she will move on to Mr Phuti Radiphuti. Once they are married, then the ordering about will begin.” He looked at Mma Ramotswe. “Not all men are fools, you know, Mma. We know the plans that you women have for us.”
Oh, thought Mma Ramotswe, although she did not say oh. If Mr J.L.B. Matekoni thought that she had plans for him, then what exactly were they? There were undoubtedly women who had plans for their husbands; they were often ambitious for them in their jobs, and urged them to apply for promotion above the husbands of other women. Then there were women who liked their men to have expensive cars, to be wealthy, to dress in flashy clothes. But she had no plans of that nature for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. She did not want Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors to get any bigger or to make more money. Nor did she want Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to change in any way; she liked him exactly as he was, with his old, stained veldschoen, his overalls, his kind face, his gentle manner. No, if she had any plan for him it was that they would continue to live together in the house on Zebra Drive, that they would grow old in one another’s company, and maybe one day go back to Mochudi and sit in the sun there, watching other people do things, but doing nothing themselves. Those were plans of a sort, she supposed, but surely they were plans that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would himself endorse.