Alexander Mccall Smith - Ladies' Detective Agency 05 by The Full Cupboard of Life

more modest brothers, such as that which
drove the only NSU Prinz which he had ever seen on the roads of Botswana; a
humble car, indeed, which looked the same from the front or the back and which
had an engine very like the motor on Mma Ramotswe’s sewing machine. All
of these engines were like old friends to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni—old friends
with all the individual quirks which old friends inevitably had, but which were
so comfortable and reassuring.
    Mr J.L.B. Matekoni got out of his truck
and stretched his limbs. He had a busy day ahead of him, with four cars booked
in for a routine service, and another which would require the replacement of
the servo system on its brakes. This was a tricky procedure, because it was
difficult to get at in the first place, and then, when one got there, it was
very easy to replace incorrectly. The problem, as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had
explained to the apprentices on numerous occasions, was that the ends of the
brake pipes were flared and one had to put a small nut into these flared ends.
This nut allowed you to connect the servo mechanism to the pipes, but, and this
was the real danger, if you cross-threaded the nuts you would get a leak. And
if you avoided this danger, but if you were too rough, then you could twist a
brake pipe. That was a terrible thing to do, as it meant that you had to
replace the entire brake pipe, and these pipes, as everybody knew, ran through
the body of the car like arteries. The apprentices had caused both of these
disasters in the past, and he had been obliged to spend almost a whole day
sorting things out. Now he no longer trusted them to do it. They could watch if
they wished, but they would not be allowed to touch. This was the main problem
with the apprentices; they had the necessary theoretical knowledge, or some of
it, but so often they were slipshod in the way they finished a job—as if
they had become bored with it—and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew that you could
never be slipshod when it came to brake pipes.
    He went into the garage
and, hearing voices from the detective agency, he knocked on the door and
looked in to see Mma Makutsi handing Charlie a folded-up newspaper. They turned
and stared at him.
    “Here’s the Boss,” said the
apprentice. “Here’s the brave man himself.”
    “The hero,” echoed Mma Makutsi, smiling.
    Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni frowned. “What is this?” he asked. “Why are you
calling me a brave man?”
    “Not just us,” said the
apprentice, handing him the newspaper. “The whole town will be calling
you brave now.”
    Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took the newspaper. It can
only be one thing, he thought, and as his eye fell upon the article his fears
were confirmed. He stood there, his hands shaking slightly as he held the
offending newspaper, the dismay mounting within him. This was Mma
Potokwane’s doing. Nobody else could have told the newspaper about the
parachute jump, as he had spoken to nobody about it. She had no right to do
this, he thought. She had no right at all.
    “Is it true?”
asked Mma Makutsi. “Did you really say that you would jump out of an
aeroplane?”
    “Of course he did,” exclaimed the
apprentice. “The Boss is a brave man.”
    “Well,”
began Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, “Mma Potokwane said to me that I should and
then …”
    “Oh!” said Mma Makutsi, clapping her
hands with delight. “So it is true then! This is very exciting. I will
sponsor you, Rra. Yes, I will sponsor you up to thirty pula!”
    “Why do you say ‘up to’?” asked the
apprentice.
    “Because that’s what these sponsorship forms
normally say,” said Mma Makutsi. “You put down a maximum
amount.”
    “But that’s only because when a person is
doing something like a sponsored walk they may not reach the end,” said
the apprentice. “In the case of a parachute jump, the person you have
sponsored usually reaches the end—one way or the other.” He laughed
at his observation, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni merely stared at him.
    Mma
Makutsi