The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith

like being expected to take sides like this, and yet, he told himself, this is what must be expected of people like private detectives, or lawyers, for that matter. People paid them to take their side, and this meant that you had to believe in what the client wanted. The thought made him feel very uncomfortable. What if you were to be hired by somebody whom you could not bear, or if you found out that the person who had engaged you was lying? Would you have to pretend that you believed the lies—which would be impossible, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni—or could you tell them that you would have no truck with their falsehoods?
    And then another thought struck Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni as he made his way down the steps of the President Hotel. He had never met Mma Botumile’s husband and he had no idea what he was like. But it occurred to him, nonetheless, that when he eventually met him—if he eventually met him—he would probably feel sorry for him and end up rather liking him. If he were to be married to Mma Botumile, whom he considered both rude and bossy, then would he not himself seek comfort elsewhere, in the arms of a good, sympathetic woman—somebody like Mma Ramotswe in fact? Of course Mma Ramotswe would never look at another man—Mr J.L.B. Matekoni knew that. He stopped. It had never once crossed his mind that Mma Ramotswe might take up with somebody else, but then many people who were let down in this way by their spouses never thought that this would happen to them, and yet it did. So there were many people who deluded themselves.
    It was a very unwelcome thought, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni felt himself becoming hot and uncomfortable as he stood there in front of the President Hotel, thinking the unthinkable. He saw himself coming home one evening and discovering a man’s tie, perhaps, draped over a chair. He saw himself picking up the tie, examining it, and then dangling it in front of Mma Ramotswe and saying,
How could you, Mma Ramotswe? How could you?
And she would look anywhere but in his eyes and say,
Well, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, it’s not as if you have been a very exciting husband, you know.
It was ridiculous. Mma Ramotswe would never say a thing like that; he had done his best to be a good husband to her. He had never strayed, and he had helped around the house as modern husbands are meant to do. In fact, he had done everything in his power to be modern, even when that had not been particularly easy.
    Suddenly Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni felt unaccountably sad. A man might try to be modern—and succeed, to a degree—but it was very difficult to be exciting. Women these days had magazines which showed them exciting men—bright-eyed men, posed with smiling women, and everyone clearly enjoying themselves greatly. The men would perhaps be holding a car key, or even be leaning against an expensive German vehicle, and the women would be laughing at something that the exciting men had said, something exciting. Surely Mma Ramotswe would not be influenced by such artificiality, and yet she certainly did look at these magazines, which were passed on to her by Mma Makutsi. She affected to laugh at them, but then if she really found them so ridiculous, surely she would not bother to read them in the first place?
    Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni stood at the edge of the square, looking over the traders’ stalls, deep in thought. Then he asked himself a question which, although easily posed, was rather more difficult to answer: How does a husband become more exciting?

CHAPTER EIGHT

    AN ACCOUNT OF A PUZZLING CONVERSATION
    T HAT EVENING, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni made his way to the address which Mma Botumile had given him as they had sat on the verandah of the President Hotel; sat tealess, in his case, because she had so selfishly dismissed the waitress. It was a modest office block, three storeys high, on Kudumatse Drive, flanked on either side by equally undistinguished buildings, a furniture warehouse and