Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

water can get in the distributor—you know what a distributor is, do you, Mma? It is the part that sends the electricity to the—”
    “Yes, yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Women know about distributors these days. But why has everybody gone off like this? What if a client were to come here?”
    The apprentice shook his head. “There have been no clients, Mma. I have not seen any, and I have been here all the time except when I went off to the shops for some meat.”
    Mma Ramotswe sighed. She had spoken to people about the importance of not leaving the business unattended, but nobody, it seemed, listened. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni heard what she had to say, perhaps, but was such a kind man that he would often disappear at the drop of a hat if one of the customers of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors was in any sort of trouble. Mma Potokwane, of course, knew this full well, and would not hesitate to impose upon him to fix anything that went wrong at the orphan farm, but there were others as well, presumably including this person who had summoned him in the middle of the thunderstorm purely because his car would not start.
    She sighed again. It was no use thinking about it and getting hot under the collar because whatever she said she would never be able to change the way people were. Of course she believed in the
possibility
of change; she had seen many who had become better people from a single experience or from the example of another, but that change was in the big matters, change in the outlook of the heart. It was not change in the little things of life, such as leaving the business unattended—those were things which never changed.
    The rain had now eased off and the sky in the east, which had been dark purple with the storm, was now light again, although there was still cloud, great banks of it, white now, touched gold by the sun, and a rainbow too, arched over the land and dipping down like a pointer to the horizon somewhere beyond Mochudi.
    The apprentice, standing beside her, suddenly tugged excitedly at the sleeve of her dress. “Look, Mma Ramotswe! Look!”
    She looked in the direction in which he was pointing and immediately saw what he had seen. Flying ants. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the air was filling with flying ants, rising up from their secret burrows in the rain-softened ground, gaining altitude on beating wings, dipping down again. It was a familiar sight following the rains, one of those sights that took one back to childhood no matter what age one was, and brought to mind memories of chasing these ants, grabbing them from the air, and then eating them, for their peanut-butter taste and crunchiness.
    “Go and catch some,” she said to the apprentice.
    He handed her the spanner he was holding and rushed out in the last few drops of rain to snatch at the termites, a boy again. He caught some easily, and de-winged them before stuffing them into his mouth. Above him there were other, hungrier dangers for the ants; a flock of swifts, materialising from nowhere, had swept in and were dipping and swooping over their aerial feast. The apprentice looked up at the birds and watched them, and smiled; and she smiled back. What does it matter, she thought, if businesses are left unattended, if people are not always as we want them to be; we need the time just to be human, to enjoy something like this: a boy chasing ants, a dry land drinking at last, birds in the sky, a rainbow.
    She stayed at the office for half an hour or so, enough time to brew herself a pot of red bush tea and to set her thoughts in order. The accidental discovery of the letter in the van had shocked and disturbed her. Mr. Polopetsi’s explanation of having found the letter in the garage was feasible enough, but there had been something about the manner in which he had made these protestations that did not ring true. He had hesitated, and when people hesitated it meant that either they were lying or they were thinking about your reaction to what they were