The Double Comfort Safari Club - By Alexander McCall Smith Page 0,51

her what to do. And if that were the case, then it would be no great surprise, perhaps, if Mma Mateleke were to feel a little bit trapped, and to try to do at least some things on her own.

How might one put that tactfully? Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath. “Women need some room for themselves, Rra,” she ventured. “You know how it is.”

He looked at her blankly. “Some room, Mma? She has a great deal of space. Our house is very big. My wife is never crowded.”

“I don’t mean room in that sense,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I mean room to do things by herself. We all want to do that, Rra. It’s natural.”

He stared at her without expression. He has not understood, she thought.

“You don’t like being with other people all the time, do you, Rra? Don’t you sometimes feel like getting away from everybody and taking a walk by yourself? Surely you feel that?”

“But she is my wife,” said Herbert Mateleke. “Why should she not want to be with me all the time?”

He had neither listened nor understood, thought Mma Ramotswe. Of course Mma Mateleke would want to get away from her husband. She simply wanted to breathe, as all women do. And men too. We all needed to breathe. She would like to point this out to Herbert Mateleke, but she was not sure that he would understand. The realisation came to her that this man, for all his success and his following, was actually not very bright. Mma Mateleke was an intelligent woman, and perhaps she had simply grown bored with this rather slow, literal man. But that did not mean she would go out and have an affair; that was surely unlikely. Apart from anything else, Mma Mateleke was simply too busy delivering babies to have an affair.

“Let me tell you what I think, Rra,” she said. She was suddenly businesslike. He was looking for advice; well, she would give it, first to him, and then later to Mma Mateleke. She would bang their heads together and say, “Listen, you are both worrying about something that is not happening. But sort this out before you drift apart and the thing that you worry about really does happen. Listen to one another. Find out how each of you is feeling. And above all, stop worrying.”

Of course, she knew that it was almost always pointless telling somebody to stop worrying. We all did it; we told friends not to worry because their worries seemed small, unimportant things to us, and we knew that such problems were never solved by brooding over them. But people never stopped worrying simply because they were told to. They listened, perhaps, and told you that they would stop, but they carried on nonetheless. That was true, Mma Ramotswe thought, of most advice we gave; people often listened, but only very rarely acted on what was said to them. “Thank you, Mma,” they said. “That is very wise.” And then they went on to do exactly what they had planned to do in the first place. People were very strange. Mma Ramotswe had decided that early in her career, and had seen nothing to disabuse her of that notion. People were very strange.

But this was not a time to question the whole idea of giving advice; this was a time to give it. “This is what I think, Rra,” she said. “I do not think that your wife is having an affair. I think that you are worrying for no reason. And I also think that she might be worrying about you! Yes! So the two of you should sit down and talk together. Then go out to the President Hotel and have dinner together. Pretend that you’re twenty-five again and out on a date. That is what you must do.”

He listened to her carefully, and this time he appeared to be taking in what she was saying. Sometimes reverends did not listen to others, she had observed, because they thought that there was nobody else who could tell them anything. But Mma Ramotswe’s plain talking had had an effect; he was listening, and he was taking it in. Good, she thought. This is a very good result. No affairs. No unhappiness. Nothing. And no fee, of course, as Mma Mateleke had not actually consulted her as a detective, but had prevailed upon her as a friend. No fee.

WHILE MMA RAMOTSWE was sitting in the café with Herbert Mateleke, Mma Makutsi set