YOU ARE A VISITOR TO OUR COUNTRY

WITH THE REMOVAL of the threat hanging over Fanwell, Mma Ramotswe found herself with more energy to help Mma Potokwane. Clovis Andersen had at least given a lead in suggesting that the contract for the building of the new hall should be investigated, and she felt that this could now be tackled. The great authority had offered to accompany her to Mma Potokwane’s office to see what could be uncovered, and now they were approaching the gates and the large, shady tree under which Mma Ramotswe habitually parked her van on these visits.

“This is a very fine place,” commented Clovis Andersen, looking about him as the van came to a halt. “We had an orphanage in Muncie, Indiana, back when I was a boy.”

“Your place in America, Rra?”

“Yes. Muncie. The orphans’ home was a place made of a curious yellow brick and its windows were painted red round the edges. It’s odd how you remember these little details years later.”

“We all do that,” said Mma Ramotswe. I remember, she thought.

I remember my late daddy, and how he took me on his shoulders and we walked along the road outside our house and I was proud, so proud that I thought my heart would burst.

“The boys and girls from the orphanage went to school—same as us. We had three or four in my class. There was a boy called Lance. He had freckles and ginger hair. I remember asking him what had happened to his parents, and he told me that they had been Arctic explorers and had drifted off on an ice floe. He said that there had been an article about them in the National Geographic. He said that he used to have the issue the article was in, but another boy in the orphanage had stolen it.”

They were standing outside the van now; standing in the morning sun, which was gentle on them. It seemed to Mma Ramotswe that they were in no particular hurry and that they could talk, if that was what Clovis Andersen wanted. “That is very sad, Rra,” she said. “That is stealing that boy’s past.”

He smiled at the memory. “Of course it wasn’t true. A couple of years later I was told by some other kid that his parents had committed suicide together and that the story of the ice floe was all invention. I asked my own parents about that. They never lied to me, and so they had to admit that it was true: the suicide had taken place in the dry-goods store that the boy’s parents used to run. The father had shot his wife and then himself.”

Mma Ramotswe gasped. “And left that little boy …”

“Yes. But they probably weren’t thinking straight, poor people. They were in debt, I imagine—a lot of those small storekeepers got into terrible debt.”