The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

relatives—ow!—they make sick people even sicker.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, Mma, I’m telling you! I have looked after a patient who I am sure died because he could not face going back to his wife. She came in here and nagged and nagged him. It was his fault he was ill. It was his fault there was no money. She should never have married a man like him when she could have done much better. And so on, and so on. He said to me,
I am going to go now. I cannot face that woman any more
. And he did, Mma. Would you believe it? He went the next day.”
    “And was she sorry? That wife? Was she sorry that he was late?”
    “Not at all, Mma. She wailed—all right, she wailed a bit—but then, ten minutes later, she said,
That lazy man. Look what he has done now! He has gone and died, and who is going to look after everything? Me! It is always me. Always. Oh, he is a selfish man to die.”
    Mma Makutsi had been shocked by this story, but flattered by the nurse’s tribute. She had seen how cheerful Phuti looked when she came to see him; she had seen his expression when he talked about what they would do when he was discharged from hospital; how they would start to furnish his house afresh, ready for the wedding. And the wedding? When would that be? She hardly dared ask the question, but asked it anyway, and he said, “I shall have to learn to walk again before I can get married. I have to be able to walk on this new leg of mine before I can have a wedding.”
    She discreetly interrogated the nurse about artificial limbs. “Six months?” said the nurse. “It will probably hurt him at first, but then the stump will toughen up and he will be all right. I have seen patients running after a minibus one year after they have lost a leg.” The nurse paused. “Don’t worry, Mma, he will still be a man. I know about these things. You must not worry about that.”
    Mma Makutsi had glared at her disapprovingly. That was none of her business, and she should not be making comments about private matters of that sort. But she was glad nonetheless to know that Phuti had not had any other injuries that she had not heard about.
    WITHOUT MMA MAKUTSI , the office seemed very quiet. The garage was busy, though, and the mechanical noises that came through the shared wall were reassuring and companionable. Every so often she heard the apprentices raising their voices over something or other—those young men loved to shout, she thought—it is always those with the fewest sensible things to say who make the loudest noise in saying them. But they were just young men, and no worse, she felt, than any other young men. Or perhaps they were—certainly Charlie was, even if Fanwell had shown some better qualities. But we were all young once, she said to herself, and foolish, and eager to show the world how much we knew, when we knew so little; she could not blame Charlie and Fanwell for that.
    The business, of course, had to continue, even in the absence of Mma Makutsi. There were several outstanding matters needing attention, including the case of Mrs. Grant; Mma Makutsi had been doing the preliminary work on that, and the investigation would have to wait until she got back to the office. But now there was a new client, a Mr. Robert Kereleng, who had telephoned to make an appointment for that morning. She would have preferred to have had Mma Makutsi with her for this meeting, as she valued her assistant’s comments on new clients—provided, of course, that these comments were delivered after the client had gone.
    At ten o’clock, shortly before Mr. Kereleng was due to arrive,she made herself a cup of red bush tea, using, out of deference to the absent Mma Makutsi, the smaller of the two teapots. Then she sat at her desk and waited until Mr. Polopetsi put his head round the door and announced that there was somebody to see her.
    “I am free to help you,” he whispered. “There is nothing for me to do in the garage—or nothing urgent—and since