Queenie-Queenie sagged. “Maybe he didn’t mean it, Daddy. Maybe—”
“Maybe, maybe,” snapped Isaiah. “Everything is maybe this, maybe that.” He turned to Charlie. “I am very pleased that you said you would not do it. That shows me that you are your own man. That is very good. You have stood up to him.”
Charlie acknowledged the compliment with a nod of his head, and Isaiah seemed reassured. The anger in his voice abated.
“You do not need to worry about money,” he said. “We do not want any bogadi. If you are going to look after my daughter and make her happy, then that will be enough.”
Queenie-Queenie’s reaction was immediate. Rising from her seat, she rushed over to her father and threw her arms around him. “Now I’m happy, Daddy. I’m happy, happy, happy. And we don’t want a big wedding—next week, maybe. Just you and us and maybe the aunties.”
“You cannot get married without aunties,” said Isaiah.
“Of course not. But we do not need all those big parties and feasts and things. Just a reverend. That’s all.”
“It’s your life,” said Isaiah.
Charlie looked at him. “Thank you, Rra. Thank you.”
At his feet, Meat stirred. Charlie reached down to pat him on the head. He let out a yelp of pain and surprise. The dog had turned and nipped him. It was not a serious bite, but the skin was broken.
“He is a very bad dog, that one,” Isaiah observed, adding, “And you know something, Charlie? If a bad dog tells you he has become a good dog, don’t believe him.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A MAN WHO SAVES LADIES
IT WAS NOT UNTIL the telephone call from Mma Potokwane that Saturday that Mma Ramotswe remembered the offer her friend had made. It had been mentioned on her last visit to the Orphan Farm, when, after Mma Ramotswe had mentioned her old friend Poppy, and her plight, Mma Potokwane had suggested that she should deal with the preacher who appeared to have taken advantage of his convert. Now, over the telephone, after a few words about other issues of the day, Mma Potokwane had suggested that the two of them pay a visit to the preacher’s Sunday meeting the following day.
“I have made some enquiries,” said Mma Potokwane. “I have found out that he has a meeting every Sunday near the dam. They have some sort of braai there at lunch time and they sing a lot. Apparently, it’s quite a show.”
Mma Ramotswe had agreed to go. She was keen to see Poppy, whom she had not seen for years, and there was a degree of fascination about charismatic preachers, of which the Reverend Flat Ponto seemed to be a prime example. She believed herself to be impervious to their appeal, but she knew that many people fell for them—as Poppy was said to have done. Mma Ramotswe was a regular churchgoer, attending the Anglican Cathedral opposite the hospital, but that was different. The clergy there were real clergy, who had studied for years and knew what they were talking about, rather than somebody who had just decided to become a preacher—just like that. Poor women, she thought: To divest yourself of your financial security to benefit a…well, what was he? She thought of the expression her father had used to describe those who hoodwinked others into supporting their dubious schemes: hot-air merchant. Yes, the Reverend Flat Ponto, with his strangely named Church of Christ, Mechanic, would undoubtedly be the worst sort of charlatan—one who preyed on vulnerable women and tricked them out of their money. Such people deserved to be stopped, and if Mma Potokwane could do that—using her justly celebrated ability to cut through nonsense of every sort—then Mma Ramotswe would be pleased to see that happen. And it might even take place, she thought, that Sunday, in the midst of whatever trickery the preacher had lined up for his gullible followers.
Mma Ramotswe arranged to collect Mma Potokwane in her white van on Sunday morning. She would arrive in time for her to give a report to Mma Tsepole on Daisy’s progress before they set off for the picnic grounds near the dam. Mma Potokwane had been pleased to hear that Daisy had settled in so well, and that the young woman who was looking after her had met with Mma Ramotswe’s approval. If all went according to plan, Daisy’s more permanent arrangements with her long-term foster parents would be in place in a couple of months. “In the meantime, Mma, I am sure she will be very happy with you.”
When she met Mma Tsepole, Mma Ramotswe reassured her that Daisy was eating well, had put on a bit of weight, and seemed to be happy in her new surroundings. “I am sure she’s thinking of you, Mma,” she said.
Mma Tsepole had given Mma Ramotswe some cake to take back to Daisy. It was carefully wrapped in an old tea-towel, and labelled For Daisy, from your Old House Mummy, who is thinking of you all the time.
Mma Ramotswe had looked at this—at the wording that seemed to be so odd, but that was somehow just right. “She will be very happy,” she said.
They arrived at the dam at the same time as a number of others. People had travelled out in their cars, although some came in a line of overcrowded minibuses belching diesel fumes. Once they had parked their cars or disembarked from the minibuses, people drifted over towards an area of cleared ground below an outcrop of granite rocks—a small kopje of the sort favoured by baboons and dassies, the scurrying rock rabbits that inhabited such terrain. Tables had been set out in this clearing, some under the shade of the one or two acacia trees that had been left standing, others out in the sun. Several fires had been built in the middle of small stone circles and over these there were placed iron grids for the barbecue, the braai. Emanating from these fires there was already that smell of roasting that was so characteristic of just about every social gathering in Botswana. Meat was what people expected, and what any attentive host would provide.
There was no sign yet of the Reverend Flat Ponto, although a small group of stewards, wearing white armbands, was gathered at the edge of the parking area, evidently awaiting the arrival of an official party.
“The reception committee,” said Mma Ramotswe, pointing this group out to Mma Potokwane.
Mma Potokwane snorted. “I know the smell of this sort of thing,” she muttered. “This is all showmanship, Mma. This is not real religion.”
Mma Ramotswe looked about her. How did one tell the difference between the two?, she wondered. She was inclined to agree with Mma Potokwane, in that she felt that there really was a difference between those preachers who had love in their heart and those who had money in the same place. Or power, perhaps, because there were certainly people who wanted only to hold people in thrall, to dominate them and tell them what to do, even if they were not all that interested in separating them from their hard-earned savings. From what she had heard, the Reverend Flat Ponto fell into the latter camp, but then she remembered what Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had said about him—that he was a mechanic who had been caught up with the enthusiasm of a marching church and had only then founded his own church. That sounded as if it might have been a real seeing of the light—whatever the light might be—rather than part of a cynical plan to take advantage of others. She would see; Clovis Andersen stressed time and time again that one should have an open mind and should not jump to conclusions. It was all right for Mma Potokwane, as matron of an Orphan Farm, to make up her mind on the basis of—of what? Her sense of smell? But she did not have that professional interest in detachment and openness to alternative possibilities that you had if you were the proprietor of a well-known, if small, detective agency.