Mma Ramotswe listened in some discomfort. She glanced at Mma Makutsi, who had returned to her desk with her cup of tea and was tracing an imaginary pattern on her desk with a finger.
“Yes,” Mr Polopetsi went on. “A system is a very good idea. Did they teach you about systems at the Botswana Secretarial College, Mma Makutsi?”
It was a moment of electric tension, thrilling in retrospect, but at the time it was dangerous to a degree. Mma Ramotswe hardly dared look at Mma Makutsi, but found her eyes drawn inexorably to the other side of the room, where the gaze of the two women met. Then Mma Ramotswe smiled, out of nervousness perhaps, but a smile nonetheless, and to her immense relief Mma Makutsi returned the smile. This was a moment of conspiracy between women, and it drew all the tension from the situation.
“We shall have to put you in charge of tea, then, Rra,” said Mma Makutsi evenly. “Since you know all about systems.”
Mr Polopetsi, flustered, mumbled a non-committal reply and left the room.
“Well, that sorts that out,” said Mma Ramotswe.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE
ON THE MORNING that the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency ran out of bush tea, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni left Mr Polopetsi and the younger apprentice in charge of the garage. There was not a great deal of work—only two cars were in that morning, one, a straightforward family saloon, had been delivered for a regular service, which Mr Polopetsi was now quite capable of doing unaided, and the other required attention to a faulty fuel-injection system. That was trickier, but was probably just within the competence of the apprentice, provided his work could be checked later.
“I am going out to do some enquiries for Mma Ramotswe,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni announced to Mr Polopetsi. “You will be in charge now, Rra.”
Mr Polopetsi nodded. There was a certain envy on his part of the fact that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been given this assignment which should, in his view, have been given to him. He had been led to understand that he was principally an employee of the agency, an assistant detective or whatever it was, and that his garage duties would be secondary. Now it seemed that he was expected to be more of a mechanic than a detective. But he would not complain; he was grateful for the fact that he had been given a job, whatever it was, after he had found such difficulty in getting anything.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni drove his truck to the chemist’s shop where he had left the photographs for developing. The assistant there, a young man in a red tee-shirt, greeted him jauntily. “Your photographs, Rra? They’re ready. I did them myself. Money back if not satisfied!” He reached behind him into a small cardboard box and extracted a brightly coloured folder. “Here they are.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni began to take a fifty-pula note from his wallet.
“I won’t charge you the full cost,” the young man said. “You only had two exposures on the roll of film. Is there something wrong with your camera?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni wondered what the other photograph was. “Two photographs?”
“Yes. Here we are. Look. This one.” The young man opened the folder and took out two large glossy prints. “That one is of a house. Down there, round the corner. And this one here…this one is of a lady with a man. He must be her boyfriend, I think. That is all. The rest—blank. Nothing.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni glanced at the photograph of the house—it had come out very well and he could make out the figure of a woman standing on the verandah although the man on the steps, his head turned away from the camera and obscured by the low branch of a tree, could not be identified. But it was not Mr Botumile who was the object of interest here—it was the woman, and she was shown very clearly. He looked at the other photograph—it must have been on the roll of film already, taken some time ago and forgotten. He took it from the young man and stared at it.
Mma Ramotswe was standing in front of a tree somewhere. There were a couple of chairs behind her, in the shade, and there, standing next to Mma Ramotswe, was a man. The man was wearing a white shirt and a thin red tie. He had highly polished brown shoes and a gleaming buckle on his belt. And his arm was around Mma Ramotswe’s waist.
For a few moments Mr J.L.B. Matekoni simply stared at the photograph. His thoughts were muddled. Who is this man? I do not know. Why is his arm around Mma Ramotswe? There can be only one reason. How long has she been seeing him? When has she been seeing him? The questions were jumbled and painful.
The young man was watching; he had guessed that the photograph of Mma Ramotswe was a shock. Some of the photographs he handled were like that, he was sure; but he did not normally hand them to the husband. “This photograph of the house,” he said, pushing it into Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s hand. “I know that place. It is off the Tlokweng Road, isn’t it? It is the Baleseng house. I know those people. That’s Mma Baleseng there. Mr Baleseng helped to teach soccer at the boys’ club. He is good at soccer, that man. Did you ever play soccer, Rra?”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni did not respond.
“Rra?” The young man’s voice was solicitous. I’m right, he thought: that photograph has ended something for him.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked up from the photograph. He seemed dazed, thought the young man; on the point of tears.
“I won’t charge you, Rra,” said the young man, looking over his shoulder. “When there are only one or two photographs on a roll, we don’t charge. It seems a pity to make people pay for failure.”
Pay for failure. The words cut deep, each a little knife. I am paying for my failure as a husband, he thought. I have not been a good husband, and now this is my reward. I am losing Mma Ramotswe.
He turned away, only just remembering to thank the young man, and went back to his truck. It was so bright outside, with the winter sun beating down remorselessly, and the air thin and brittle, and everything in such clear relief. Under such light our human failures, our frailty, seemed so pitilessly illuminated. Here he was, a mechanic, not a man who was good with words, not a man of great substance, just an ordinary man, who had loved an exceptional woman and thought that he might be good enough for her; such a thought, when there were men with smooth words and sophisticated ways, men who knew how to charm women, to lure them away from the dull men who sought, so unrealistically, to possess them.
He slipped the ignition key into the truck. No, he said to himself; you are jumping to conclusions. You have no evidence of the unfaithfulness of Mma Ramotswe; all you have is a photograph, a single photograph. And everything you know about Mma Ramotswe and her character, everything you know of her loyalty and her honesty, suggests that these conclusions are simply unfair. It was inconceivable that Mma Ramotswe would have an affair; quite inconceivable, and he should not entertain even the merest suspicion along those lines.
He laughed out loud. He sat alone in his truck and laughed at his stupidity. He remembered what Dr Moffat had told him about his illness—how a person suffering from depression could get strange ideas—delusions—about what he had done, or what others were doing. Although he was better now, and was no longer required to take his pills, he had been warned that there could be a recurrence of such thinking, of irrational feelings, and he should be on the look-out for them. Perhaps that was what had happened—he had merely had a passing idea of that nature and had allowed it to flower. I must be rational, he told himself. I am married to a loyal, good woman, who would never take a lover, who would never let me down. I am safe; safe in the security of her affection.
And yet, and yet…who was in that photograph?
WITH A SUPREME EFFORT, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni put out of his mind all thoughts of that troubling photograph and concentrated on the photograph of Mma Baleseng and the house. He had been to see Mma Botumile at her own house, a large old bungalow just off Nyerere Drive. It was an expensive part of town, one in which the houses had been built shortly after Gaborone had been identified as the capital of the newly independent country of Botswana. The plots of land here were of a generous size, and the houses had the rambling comfort of the period, with their large rectangular rooms, and their wide eaves to keep the sun away from the windows. It was only later, when architects began to impose their ideas of clean-cut building lines, that windows had been left exposed to the sun, a bad mistake in a country like Botswana. In the Botumile house there was shade, and there were whirring fans, even now at the tail end of winter, and red-polished stone floors that were cool underfoot.