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

Saturdays one might see a very interesting car
parked under the shade of a thorn tree. The car belonged to the brother of a
man who lived in one of the houses on Boteli Road. He was a butcher from
Lobatse, who came up to Gaborone for the week-ends, which started, for him, on
Friday morning. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had seen his butchery store down in Lobatse.
It was large and modern, with a picture of a cow painted on the side. In
addition, this man owned a plastering business, and so Mr J.L.B. Matekoni
imagined that he was a fairly wealthy man, at least by the standards of
Lobatse, if not the standards of Gaborone. But it was not his prosperity which
singled him out in the eyes of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; it was the fact that he had
such a fine car and had clearly taken such good care of it.
    This car
was a Rover 90, made in 1955, and therefore very old. It was painted blue, and
on the front there was a silver badge showing a boat with a high prow. The
first time he had driven past it, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had stopped to examine it
and had noted the fine red leather seats and the gleaming silver of the gear
lever. These external matters had not impressed him; it was the knowledge of
what lay within: the knowledge of the 2.6-litre engine with its manual
transmission
and its famous free wheel option
. That was something one
would not see these days, and indeed Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had once brought his
apprentices to look at the car, from the outside, so that they could get some
sense of fine engineering. He knew of course that there was very little chance
of that, but he tried anyway. The apprentices had whistled, and the older one,
Charlie, had said, “That is a very fine car, Rra! Ow!” But no
sooner had Mr J.L.B. Matekoni turned his back for a moment than that very same
apprentice had leant forward to admire himself in the car’s wing
mirror.
    Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had realised then that it was hopeless.
Between these young men and himself there was a gulf that simply could not be
crossed. The apprentice had recognised that it was a fine car, but had he
really understood what it was that made it fine? He doubted that. They were
impressed with the spoilers and flashy aluminium wheels that car manufacturers
added these days; things which meant nothing, just nothing, to a real mechanic
like Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. These were the externals, the outside trim designed,
as often as not, to impress those who had no knowledge of cars. For the real
mechanic, mechanical beauty lay in the accuracy and intricacy of the thousand
moving pieces within the breast of the car: the rods, the cogs, the pistons.
These were the things that mattered, not the inanimate parts that did nothing
but reflect the sun.
    Mr J.L.B. Matekoni slowed down and gazed at the
fine car under the thorn tree. As he did so, he noticed, to his alarm, that
there was something under the car—something that a casual observer might
not notice but which he would never miss. Drawing up at the side of the road,
he switched off the engine of his truck and got out of the cab. Then, walking
over to the blue Rover, he went down on his hands and knees and peered at the
dark underbelly of the car. Yes, it was as he thought; and now he went down on
his stomach and crawled under the car to get a better view. It took him only a
moment to realise what was wrong, of course, but the sight made him draw in his
breath sharply. A pool of oil had leaked out onto the ground below the car and
had stained the sand black.
    “What are you doing, Rra?”
    The sound surprised Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, but he knew better than to lift his
head up sharply; that was the sort of thing that the apprentices kept doing.
They often bumped their heads on the bottom of cars when the telephone rang or
when something else disturbed them. It was a normal human reaction to look up
when disturbed, but a mechanic learned quickly to control it. Or a mechanic
should learn that quickly; the apprentices had not done so, and he suspected
that