They understood one another perfectly. If there is a message, thought Mma Ramotswe, this will be it.

Mma Tafa stared at her. “What words, Mma? Well, here is a message. New captain, Mma. That is the message. And if he says, where can I find a new captain, tell him that there is only one man who can do that job properly, and he is already on the team. Big Man. He should be the captain, Mma. And he cannot wait forever. Soon. He must be the captain soon.” She paused. “And your tea, Mma? Are you ready for another cup?”

Mma Tafa could not have made herself clearer, thought Mma Ramotswe. It was natural for a woman to feel ambition for her husband, but you could not always assume that this ambition was felt by the husband himself. Did Big Man Tafa really want to be captain, or was it a case of Mma Tafa wishing to be a captain's wife? She decided to ask the question directly. “And Big Man?” she said. “Would Big Man like to be in Rops's shoes?”

“I think so,” said Mma Tafa.

“You only think so, Mma? Have you not asked him?”

Mma Tafa sighed. “Not all men know what they want to do, Mma. Many of them say that they are quite happy doing what they are doing, and do not know what they really want to do … underneath. You know what I mean, Mma?”

“I think I do,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“So it is the job of women—and that means you and me, Mma—to find out what our husbands really want to do, and then to tell them about it. That is our job, I think, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe wondered about Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. He was a mild man—famously so—and she had never heard him speak about the things that he wanted to do. Did he have ambitions? He must at some time have wanted to have his own garage, and he must have worked towards the achieving of that goal. Then he had wanted to marry, and had proposed—eventually—which suggested that he must have nursed matrimonial ambitions. But apart from that, she wondered what unfulfilled desires lurked in his breast. Did he want to learn to fly a plane, as the owner of another garage had done? She thought not. He had been terrified on that occasion when Mma Potokwane had lined him up to do a charity parachute jump, and so it was unlikely that he wanted anything to do with aeroplanes. Did he want to learn to cook? Again, she thought not; Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had shown no interest in doing anything in the kitchen. Or did he want to go somewhere, perhaps to Namibia, to the sands and dunes of the coast down there, to the sea itself? He had never spoken of that.

The thought of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nursing secret, unfulfilled ambitions saddened Mma Ramotswe, as did the thought of people wanting something very much indeed and not getting the thing they yearned for. When we dismiss or deny the hopes of others, she thought, we forget that they, like us, have only one chance in this life.