The Double Comfort Safari Club - By Alexander McCall Smith Page 0,65

… Was there a No. 3? She could not think of anybody. More minor punishments would do for the rest. And she should not make such a list, she told herself; it was unworthy of her, and she should stop. What if something dreadful were to happen either to Violet or to the aunt? She would be racked with guilt, no doubt, feeling that she had caused the misfortune, in spite of the fact that she knew quite well that one could never be the cause of anything unless you actually did something. And just thinking about something could never be said to be doing anything.

They needed to talk about something different, and so Mma Makutsi asked after the children. How was Puso doing at school, and was Motholeli still talking about becoming a mechanic?

“He is doing well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He is not very good at writing but his arithmetic is good. His head is full of numbers, I think.”

“That is very useful,” said Mma Makutsi. “He can be a bookkeeper or an accountant.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. It was difficult for her to imagine Puso grown up, and she saw for a moment an accountant in short trousers, a catapult sticking out of his pocket, and in his hand a jam sandwich of the sort that Puso loved to eat. But children changed, as adults did, and the image in her mind became one of a young man in a suit, with shiny shoes and a businesslike look to him. How everybody would have changed by then; how the country would have changed too.

“And Motholeli?” prompted Mma Makutsi.

“I think that she still wants to be a mechanic. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni talks to her about cars and she is always asking him about gearboxes and such things. There are not many girls who talk about engines, but she is one.”

“That will also be a very good thing,” said Mma Makutsi. “It means that there will be a Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors even in twenty years’ time, when you and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni are both late.”

Mma Ramotswe did a quick calculation in her head. “I do not think that either of us need be late by then, Mma,” she said. “We are not that old.”

Mma Makutsi looked doubtful. “Maybe not,” she admitted, rather reluctantly, thought Mma Ramotswe.

MANY HOURS and many stories later they reached Maun. It was early evening, and they saw in the distance the first lights of the town in the gathering dusk. There was something deeply reassuring about the sight. It was not simply that they were reaching the end of their long journey; the lights were comforting signs of human settlement in a great emptiness. To the south, under a sky that, as the evening approached, became an expanse of red, were the Makadikadi salt pans, a landscape of improbable whiteness that went on for a hundred miles, forever, it seemed, if one stood on their edge, a tiny human. Mma Ramotswe shivered: to stand on the verge of something so great and so empty seemed to be in danger of being swallowed up; she often felt that when she was in the wild places of her country. It would be so easy to become lost, to disappear, to find yourself alone in a wide slice of Africa, reduced to what you really were, a small and vulnerable creature among many other creatures.

The lights drew nearer. Now they were individual dwellings, dotted here and there amid the acacia scrub. A few had fires outside, small flickering points of orange seen through the trees. A truck, a figure, a set of headlights in the darkness; and then Maun itself, with its streets and lit windows, and its frontier air.

Mma Makutsi looked out of her window. “So this is the place,” she said. “So this is it.”

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We must find Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s cousin’s place now.”

That, as it happened, was not easy. They took directions from a man they saw standing at the side of the street, near one of the hotels. He sent them off into the night in entirely the wrong direction, or so they were told by the next person from whom they obtained guidance. He was more reliable, and they eventually found the house half an hour after they had arrived in the town.

The cousin himself, Mr. H.B.C. Matekoni, was away, but his wife was welcoming. They had young children, who solemnly welcomed the visitors and were then dispatched back to bed. A