Free In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

drive me to an early grave,” he said, shaking his head. “Tlokweng Road Late Motors, that will be it: proprietor the late Mr J.L.B. Matekoni”).
    No less a person than the British High Commissioner, who was driven around in a handsome Range Rover, was amongst those who recognised the merits of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He, and his predecessor in office, had entrusted their cars to the care of
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    Mr J.L.B. Matekoni when other diplomats took theirs to large garages with glittering forecourts. But the first British High Commissioner
    to use Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors had been a good judge of men and had immediately known that he had made a great discovery when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, quite unasked, had adjusted something in the vehicle’s engine when he had merely stopped to fill the tank. A change in the engine note had alerted Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to the fact that a problem was developing and he had dealt with it on the spot, and without charge. That was the beginning of a long relationship, in which the spotless diplomatic vehicle was routinely serviced by Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.
    And just as Mma Ramotswe was tactful in the breaking of difficult news, so too could Mr J.L.B. Matekoni convey bad news about a car in such a way as to soften the blow to the owner. He had seen some mechanics shake their heads when looking at an engine—even if the car’s owner was standing right next to them. Indeed, when he had been an apprentice himself, he had served alongside a German-trained mechanic who would simply point at an engine and shout Kaput! This was no way of letting a customer know that all was not well, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni wondered whether German doctors did the same with their patients and just shook their heads and said Kaput! Perhaps they did.
    His ways were gentler. If a repair was going to be very expensive,
    he would sometimes offer the customer a chair before he told them what it would cost. And if there was nothing he could do, he would start off by telling them that there was a limit to the life of everything and this applied to shoes, cars, and even man himself. In this way the passing of a car might be seen by the customer
    as something inevitable. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni could understand,
    though, how people might be strongly attached to their cars, as he had found out in his dealings with both Mma Poto6
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    kwane, the matron at the orphan farm, and with Mma Ramotswe herself. The orphan farm had an old minibus which Mma Potokwane
    had persuaded him to maintain (free of charge). This van should have been replaced some time ago, just as the water pump at the orphan farm should have been replaced well before it actually
    was. Mma Potokwane had no particular emotional attachment
    to the minibus, but was reluctant to spend money if she could possibly avoid it. He had pointed out to her that one day the suspension on the bus would have to be replaced, along with the braking system, the electric wiring, and several of the panels in the floor. He had pointed out the danger if those panels gave way through rust; an orphan could fall out onto the road, he said, and what would people say if that happened? It will not happen, she had replied. You will not let that happen.
    In Mma Ramotswe’s case, her attachment to the tiny white van was more emotional than financial in origin. She had bought the tiny white van when she first came to live in Gaborone, and it had served her loyally since that day. It was not a fast vehicle, nor a particularly comfortable one; the suspension had been in a bad way for some time, especially on the driver’s side, in view of Mma Ramotswe’s traditional build, which posed some degree of strain on the system. And the engine had a tendency to go out of tune very shortly after Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had attended to it, which meant that the tiny white van would splutter and jerk from time to time. In Mma Ramotswe’s view, though, these were small matters:
    as long as the tiny white van was capable of getting her