Mma Ramotswe steered the conversation back to the woman in the flat. “She does not like Nametso. Maybe it was the Mercedes-Benz—”
“Not only that,” Mma Makutsi interjected. “And I really can’t blame her, Mma—and you won’t either, once you hear what I have to tell you.”
Mma Ramotswe waited.
“Nametso is seeing two men. The divorced lady says she hasn’t seen much of them, but she is certain that there are two different men.”
Mma Ramotswe frowned. This complicated matters. “And that was all she said about her?”
Mma Makutsi shrugged. “Yes. She did not know who they were.” She turned to Mma Ramotswe. “What did you find out?” she asked.
Mma Ramotswe hesitated. Then she replied, “Same as you, Mma. I found out she has a male friend—a sugar daddy, it seems.”
Charlie let out a whistle. It was a whistle of admiration, Mma Ramotswe thought, under the disguise of a whistle of surprise. “She’s a naughty girl, this Nametso,” he said. “Wow! Bad, bad!”
Mma Makutsi looked at him indignantly. “And what about the men?” she asked. “What about the men, Charlie? Aren’t they naughty too?”
“It’s different for men,” muttered Charlie.
Mma Makutsi rounded on him. “Did you say ‘It’s different for men,’ Charlie? Did my ears deceive me?” She quivered with rage. “Is that how you think, after all this…” She floundered, but only briefly. “After all this progress we have made? After all the lessons that men have been telling us they have learned—nodding their heads and saying, ‘Yes, yes, we understand and we shall try to behave better in the future’—after all that, and secretly they are thinking, We can still have a good time, though, and women will always be there to cook for us and make us feel better.”
Charlie pursed his lips.
“Did you hear that, Mma Ramotswe?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Charlie said it’s different for men. It seems that men can run around with all sorts of ladies and nobody will criticise them for it. One girlfriend, two girlfriends, even three—it’s all the same. It’s the way men are.”
Mma Ramotswe looked reproachfully at Charlie. “I’m sure you didn’t mean that, Charlie,” she said gently.
Charlie looked abashed. “No, maybe not, Mma. It’s just sometimes words slip out. Many men have that problem, Mma—words slip out when men forget what they’re not meant to say.”
“Well, let’s not argue about it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The important thing is this: we have learned something about Nametso. The question now is, does this explain why she has suddenly dropped her mother? That’s the question, I think.”
“What do you think, Mma Ramotswe?” Charlie asked.
“I think it is guilt,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I think she is ashamed of herself and does not want to see her mother because of that. She doesn’t want her mother to find out where she is living—how the flat is being paid for by a married man. She does not want her mother to see her driving around in her silver Mercedes-Benz because the mother will then ask, ‘Where did you get that car from?’ That is what mothers think when they see their children in Mercedes-Benzes. It is only natural.”
“What do we do, then?” asked Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe did not answer immediately. A minute or two later, though, she said, “I have no idea, Mma. No idea at all. Do you?”
“No,” said Mma Makutsi.
“Charlie?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
“I think we tell the mother the truth,” he answered. “We tell her and then she will know why her daughter is behaving as she is.”
Mma Makutsi was worried. “I don’t feel that will help that poor lady,” she said. “Perhaps we should think about things before we do anything.”
“That won’t change anything, Mma,” said Charlie.
“Perhaps not,” Mma Ramotswe said. “But then there is never any harm in thinking, Charlie. You never know what will come from thinking.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A BIG THING OR A SMALL THING
MR. J.L.B. MATEKONI was late home that evening. Mr. Lefa Matabane, a regular client, had kept him in the garage, complaining that the engine of his car, a dispirited blue saloon that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had nursed for more than five years, was making strange sounds when it went above a certain speed.
“This car has its sneaky side,” said Mr. Matabane. “You know that sort of car, Rra? A good car at heart, but with what these days they call issues.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. “Many cars have issues, Rra. That is why I am in business here. If cars didn’t have issues, then there would be no Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.”
“And you would be doing something else, J.L.B.?”
He did not like the abbreviation. There were one or two people who called him J.L.B.—uninvited—and it grated. He was tempted to say, “I have issues with being called J.L.B.,” but was too mild to do so. Instead he said, “I have never thought of doing anything else. I think I could only work with cars.”
Mr. Matabane nodded. “That is what a true artist says. My dentist says that too. He says he would be very unhappy if there were no teeth. Teeth are everything to him. It is always teeth, teeth, teeth.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked at his watch. “Your car, Rra? This noise?”
“It is a sort of groan, I think. Everything is going normally, and then there is this groan when we get up to eighty kilometres. Groan. All the time, as if it has a sore stomach. Just like that. And it stays until the speed drops right back.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni stared at the car. There came a time with vehicles, and a mechanic usually knew when that time was. The problem, though, was that the owner of the vehicle often did not. There had been that old people carrier that Mma Potokwane had used to transport children—that had reached its time well before it was eventually scrapped; closer to home, indeed at home, there was Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van; and now there was Mr. Lefa Matabane’s blue saloon with its bald tyres, its cracked upholstery, and its flaking paint that he had jokingly referred to as car dandruff—a comment that had not gone down well with Mr. Lefa Matabane, who had sighed and looked at him reproachfully.
All of these cars, he thought, had simply reached their time and should be allowed to go. We did that with people. A person who was very old and very tired, who did not want to linger too long, would be allowed to sit outside the house in the morning sun and dream about the past and would not be made to run about and do things that nobody of that age would want to do. Why would people not do the same with cars?