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Back In the Company of Cheerful Ladies Save as PDF
Chapters (27)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. TITLE PAGE
  3. DEDICATION
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  15. CHAPTER TWELVE
  16. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  17. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  19. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  21. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  22. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  25. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  26. ALSO BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
  27. COPYRIGHT PAGE

She looked at him and smiled. “You are very kind to me,” she said. “You are very kind.”

Phuti Radiphuti looked at the steering wheel. He could not speak.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

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DOING THE DONKEY WORK

MR POLOPETSI stood under the empty sky, beside the track and a half-dead acacia tree. His excitement was making itself felt physically: a pulse that was becoming more rapid and a prickling in his skin at the back of his neck. He had watched Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck make its bumpy way up the track in the direction of the main road, a small cloud of dust being thrown up behind it as the heavily treaded tyres engaged with the surface dirt. Now it had disappeared and he was alone in the middle of the bush, looking down at the stain on the ground where Mma Ramotswe’s van had bled its final drops of oil. He smiled. If his father could see him now, how proud he would be. He would never have dreamed, of course, that the skills which he had taught his son would be put to this use, nor would he have dreamed that his son would end up in prison, nor work as a mechanic at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, nor be, if he dared to think of it, an assistant private detective at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. He could not really claim that last title, of course, but if only they gave him the chance to prove himself then there was surely no reason why he should not be every bit as good as Mma Makutsi. He would not aspire to become another Mma Ramotswe—nobody could do that—but at least he might be able to do the things that Mma Makutsi did, ninety-seven per cent or no ninety-seven per cent.

Mr Polopetsi’s father, Ernest Polopetsi, had been a small-scale farmer who had enjoyed hunting in his spare time. He had rarely shot any game, as he had no rifle and relied on others for that, but he had been adept at following animal spoor and had taught his son how to do it too. He had shown him the prints made by the different animals—by civet cats, by duiker, by rock rabbits—and he had shown him how to tell how long ago an animal had passed by. There was the wind, which blew small grains of sand into the indentations made by the animal hoof or pads; there was rain, which washed everything away; there was the sun which dried out freshly turned soil. Then there was the bending of the grass, which could spring back, but slowly and in a time that could be read as a person might read the hands of a clock. This knowledge had been passed on to Mr Polopetsi as a boy and now, so unexpectedly, he was presented with the chance to use it.