To the Land of Long Lost Friends

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “That comes from those Portuguese,” said Queenie-Queenie. “When they were in Mozambique, they liked to eat peri-peri chicken. They said to people: ‘You will eat peri-peri chicken.’ And you did not argue with the Portuguese.”

  “No,” said Charlie. “They were not very nice.”

  “There were some nice Portuguese,” said Queenie-Queenie. “But they have all gone home now. That is African history, you see. People come and take what they want, and then they go home.”

  Charlie shook his head. “That was very bad. But it is finished now.”

  “I don’t know,” said Queenie-Queenie. “There are others. They are always looking for their chance.”

  Now Charlie sat in a booth at The Gaborone Dance Studio, nursing his drink—a small soft drink, mostly ice, served to him by a disdainful waitress who had looked at his trousers with what seemed close to contempt. And there was indeed an old oil stain that he had tried, and failed, to remove; how that had happened, he had no idea, as his work trousers were kept rigorously separate from his social trousers, but there it was—Queenie-Queenie had never said anything about his clothes, and he thought she probably did not notice. Women, thought Charlie, are keen for you to notice what they are wearing but are often not particularly interested in what you are wearing, which was just as well, he thought, because his clothes had a thin, scrappy look to them, like the skin of an undernourished cow, perhaps, or the cheap upholstery of an old car seat. It will be different, he told himself; it will be different in the future when I am somebody to reckon with: a leading private investigator, with offices in Gaborone and Lobatse, and possibly Francistown; with a secretary—no, two secretaries—and a switchboard to put calls in from one line to the other, and a room of his own, not one shared with two younger cousins, one of whom currently had a dry, rasping cough. You could not be angry with a cough, nor with the indignities visited on the other poor little boy, but you could yearn for freedom from such things, for escape from need, from the limitations of a world made small by poverty.

  And he was looking down at his trousers when Queenie-Queenie came in with Hector, her brother, whose hobby was body-building and whose clothes clung to his body, tight and shining, safe from the condescension of any waitress.

  Queenie-Queenie did not kiss him, but reached out briefly and touched his hand before she sat down beside him, all the while watching her brother, Charlie noticed, as if she were anxious that he should approve of her demeanour.

  “Hector drove me here,” she said. “He has been very busy, but he is happy that he can be here.”

  Hector had greeted Charlie formally. Now, still standing, he said, “Come with me to the bar, Charlie. I need a drink.”

  “The waitress will come,” said Charlie. “They have a waitress here.”

  “That woman is no good,” said Hector. “She knows nothing.”

  Queenie-Queenie nudged Charlie. “You should go with Hector,” she whispered. “Then come back and we can talk.”

  Charlie rose obediently, and walked across the dance floor to the bar with the other young man. There was no band yet—just a tired recording from somewhere behind the bar, marred by a faulty lead to the speaker.

  “This place needs a kick in the pants,” said Hector. “They are no good, but this is where everyone comes. Have you been here before, Charlie?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “You should come,” said Hector. “As I said, everyone comes here. This is where all the big deals are done. Right here. This is where people see who’s who, you know.”

  Charlie nodded. He had no idea who was who. I am really just a mechanic, he said to himself. I am not even a proper detective. I am not a big man who can walk about The Gaborone Dance Studio as if he owns it. This is not my place.

  They reached the bar, where Hector offered him a beer while ordering himself a vodka and lime.

  “Vodka goes with anything,” he said. “You can have it with soda, with Coke if you like, with orange juice. Anything. You should try it some time. One vodka and you think: Problems? No problems any more. No problems.”

  “That must be very good,” said Charlie. “Who hasn’t got problems?”

  Hector raised his glass. “Who hasn’t got problems? Too true, Charlie. Too true.” He reached out and poked Charlie gently in the chest. “You’ve got problems, I’d say. Big problems too.”

  Charlie said nothing. Hector was right: he had problems.

  Hector took a sip of his vodka and lime. “Queenie says you’ve asked her to marry you? Is that true?”

  Charlie thought that it was not strictly true. He could not remember actually proposing to her; it seemed to him that she had simply assumed that he was about to do so, and had saved him the effort. But he would not say that now.

  “That’s true. We are hoping to get married.”

  Hector nodded. “Then that’s where your problem lies,” he said.

  Charlie looked down at the floor. Money. Everything was reduced to money. At the end of the day, that was how the important decisions were made. Money.

  Hector continued, “Because I think you have no money at all—correct?”

  Charlie looked up briefly and nodded. “I have no money. I am very poor.”

  Hector made a noise with his tongue that was hard to interpret. It was not an encouraging sound. “You see, Charlie, you’re basically nothing, aren’t you? Mr. Nothing—big-time.”

  Charlie was about to nod again, but stopped himself. He was beginning, though, to feel angry. That was not the way things were meant to be—not here in Botswana, where every person had a right to have their dignity acknowledged and respected. The government said that all the time. And when the government spoke, it spoke with all the authority of the ancestors, way back, all the way back.

  He summoned up his courage. “I am not Mr. Nothing,” he said.

  Hector’s tone was mocking. “No? Then who are you?”

  “Same as you,” said Charlie. “Same as anybody else.”

  This momentarily deflected Hector. But he soon returned. “Okay,” he said. “So you’re not nothing in the sense of…of not being here at all, but…but don’t you see a big problem here? You go to my uncles, my father even, and you say, ‘I want to marry Queenie-Queenie,’ and they say, ‘You want to marry Queenie-Queenie?’ And then they start to think about the money, Charlie, the money. And they say, ‘We were thinking of fifty cattle, maybe one hundred, who knows?’ And then they ask you how many cattle you have, and I don’t know the answer to that, Charlie, but I think I can guess. I think you are Mr. Zero Cattle. Is that correct?”

  “I have no cattle. It is true.”

  “You see,” said Hector. “When I said you were Mr. Nothing, that’s what I meant. And so you can’t marry Queenie unless there’s a big change in your life, Charlie.”

  Charlie looked away. The waitress was staring at him from the end of the counter. She seemed puzzled as to why Charlie was with Hector. Noticing this, Charlie felt some satisfaction; she had written him off, and now here he was, talking to this well-dressed and impressive body-builder—Mr. Something to his Mr. Nothing.

  Hector leaned forward. He lowered his voice. “I can help you, Charlie.”

  Charlie drew in his breath. “Yes?”

  “Yes. I can see my sister thinks a lot of you.” He paused. “I can’t see why. No offence, Charlie, but you know what I mean. Women are funny that way, aren’t they? They go for useless men sometimes.”

  Charlie lowered his gaze. I am not useless. I am an assistant detective. I have almost solved a big case today. The ladies congratulated me. There was so much he could say to this person—if only he had the courage.

  “So they insist on marrying some guy who’s never going to get anywhere,” Hector continued. “You ask them why, and they say—love. Would you believe it? That’s what they say.�
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  “Maybe that’s what they want.”

  Hector ignored this. “And then, after a few years, they wake up one day and they have three children, maybe four, and they can’t see why they married him and they say, ‘Oh dear, look at me now, with all these children and this useless man—what can I do?’ And the answer, of course, is nothing, because they’re stuck with him.” He shook his head. “It’s very sad.”

  “Perhaps—”

  “Let me tell you, Charlie. I have some business interests and I need people to help me. And I think I might have just the job for you.”

  Charlie pointed out that he already had a job. “I am an assistant detective.”

  Hector brushed this aside. “Of course, of course. You work for that fat lady. But this would not be a full-time job—it would be an evening job, for after work. You go to work and do your investigations or whatever, then you come to my place and you do some things for me.”

  Charlie asked what things these were.

  “I am a partner in a money-lending firm,” said Hector. “I used money that the old man gave me—he has this big transport company, you know. Anyway, he advanced me some money and I invested with this guy called Freddy, who has a money-lending company. We make small loans to people who’ve spent all their money and need something to keep them going until payday.” He looked at Charlie. “You’ll know what it’s like to be short of money, won’t you?” He rubbed two fingers together while looking pained.

  Charlie nodded. “It’s not easy.”

  “Yes,” said Hector. “We make small loans, and then they pay us back when they get their pay. That’s the theory.”

  “It doesn’t work?”

  “It works most of the time, but not always. Out of one hundred loans, you get paid back no problem in eighty of them. Then there are ten that are late, and then there are ten who don’t pay back at all. Those are the ones you have to go and see—to remind them.”

  Charlie waited.

  “And that’s where you come in, Charlie,” said Hector. “We need a new reminder. The last one…well, he had an accident. We need people who will go to visit these people and persuade them to pay us back.”

  “How?” asked Charlie.

  Hector laughed. “Lots of people have cars these days. And if their car is grounded for a while, it’s very inconvenient for them—very. That’s where you come in. You are a mechanic, aren’t you?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Then it’ll be simple,” said Hector. “You go and take something out of the car—some important piece. You immobilise them. That’s why I’m giving you this great opportunity, Charlie. I know you’re a mechanic, and so you can do this sort of thing.”

  Charlie’s eyes widened.

  “You remove the distributor or something,” Hector continued. “Maybe one or two of its wheels. Or you make sure the car won’t start. And then they realise that we mean business, and you won’t see them for dust—running around to make sure they pay us back and get their cars going again. Simple. Everybody’s happy—or, at least, we’re happy; they may not be.”

  Charlie stared at Hector open-mouthed. “You want me to sabotage their cars?” he asked. “Is that what you want?”

  “You could put it that way, Charlie,” said Hector. “But remember: You’re the one who needs the money. You’re the one who wants to get married to my sister. All that I’m doing is making it possible for you. You work for me, and I’ll give you the money to give to the old man.” He smiled. “Simple, you see. You should say, ‘Thank you, Hector.’ That’s what you should say, Charlie, my friend!”

  Charlie mumbled something. It was possibly thank you, possibly not.

  CHAPTER TEN

  AND WHAT WAS THERE TO REGRET?

  IT WAS HIGH TIME, thought Mma Ramotswe, to visit her old friend, Mma Potokwane, matron, stalwart defender of orphans and other poor children, and maker of fruit cake—from a famous and unfathomable recipe. It was not that fruit cake was topmost in Mma Ramotswe’s mind when she made the decision to travel out to Tlokweng—any friendship based on considerations of appetite would be a shallow friendship indeed—but one could not ignore the role that mutual enjoyment of food played in the enjoyment of human company. Mma Ramotswe was a stout defender of the idea that a family should eat together, and insisted on this in her own home, even if she and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni often had to have dinner later than the two foster children because he was late back from the garage. On such occasions, she would feed Motholeli and Puso first, yet would always sit down with them at the table, even if she would be having her own dinner a bit later. And if she treated herself to a small helping of what was being served to them, then that was done out of respect for her own rule about eating together. And there was another rule at play here—the rule that stated that food prepared for children was almost always tastier than the food cooked for oneself. It simply was. How many parents, then, found themselves hovering over their children’s plates, ready to swoop on any surplus or rejected morsel or, worse still, ready to sneak something off the plate while the child was looking in the other direction, or arguing with a brother or sister, or possibly having a tantrum. The closing of eyes that went with a tantrum could be especially useful in this respect; when the child came to his or her senses, the quantity on the plate may have been significantly reduced, thus providing the child who noticed it with a sharp lesson in the consequences of bad behaviour. Make a fuss, and your food will be eaten by somebody else: a sound proposition that Mma Ramotswe believed could be applied with equal force to many other situations.

  She had not seen Mma Potokwane for some time, and as she drove along the corrugated dirt road that led to the Orphan Farm, a cloud of dust thrown up behind her white van like the vapour trail of a high-flying aircraft, she thought of the last occasion on which she and her friend had sat down together and had one of their wide-ranging conversations. They had talked about so much that a great deal of it was now forgotten, although a few topics remained in her mind.

  There had been a discussion about Mma Makutsi and her latest doings. Mma Potokwane and Mma Makutsi had not always had the easiest of relationships in the past, both being women of strong personality and confirmed views. That had changed for the better, and now they enjoyed civil relations, even if they did not always see eye to eye in quite the same way as did Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane.

  “Mma Makutsi has many merits,” said Mma Potokwane. “But nobody is perfect, is she, Mma?”

  It was impossible to refute that. There were no perfect people, said Mma Ramotswe, even if there were one or two who were almost perfect. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, for instance, was almost without fault, but not quite. He was the kindest man in Botswana, Mma Ramotswe asserted, and one of the gentlest too, but he suffered from indecisiveness that he would undoubtedly be better off without. That had led to their long engagement and to her difficulty in pinning him down to a wedding date, an impasse eventually satisfactorily resolved by Mma Ramotswe’s taking the matter in hand. Many men needed that firm treatment, she thought: they meant well; they had plans that sounded plausible in theory, but when it came to actually doing something, then women were far more effective. One should not be too hard on the weaker brethren, though, Mma Ramotswe told herself, because they also served—in their way.

  “Mma Makutsi,” she said, in response to Mma Potokwane, “is an unusual lady. She is very good at her job, and of course she did very well at the Botswana Secretarial College…”

  “Oh that,” said Mma Potokwane. “We have all heard about her ninety-seven per cent. I am not one to decry that, Mma, but nonetheless there must come a point at which you forget about your marks in exams all those years ago. I do not talk about my prize for being most improved girl in Standard Three. You have never heard me mention that, have you, Mma?”

  “You were most improved girl, Mma? I should not be surprised by that
. You must have had many prizes in your career, Mma.”

  Mma Potokwane shook her head. “Only one, Mma. That one. Since then there have been no prizes.”

  “Oh well…”

  “I am not criticising Mma Makutsi,” Mma Potokwane went on. “But sometimes I wonder about her shoes.”

  Mma Ramotswe had heard Mma Potokwane express such reservations before. “Shoes are very important to her, Mma. She gets great pleasure from having those fashionable shoes of hers. She loves them.”

  “I say that shoes are for walking in,” said Mma Potokwane. “That is what I say, Mma. Or standing about in. They should be comfortable.”

  Mma Ramotswe glanced down at her friend’s feet. They were on the large side, and they reminded her at that moment of the bottom sections of the concrete pillars of that new bridge on the outskirts of town; but she did not say anything about that, of course, as it is rude to make civil engineering comparisons when talking about a friend’s personal features. “I have always thought your shoes looked very comfortable. They seem to have a lot of room in them. And they have very low heels too, which must help. And that wide shape too, Mma. We traditionally built ladies need to have wide feet for stability, Mma. That is very important, I think.”

  “My feet are a bit big,” said Mma Potokwane. “My husband has small feet, but mine are generously proportioned. His shoes are too small for me.”

  And so the conversation had wandered on, touching briefly on politics—but leaving that subject quickly enough, to the relief of both of them—and then moving to the difficult issue of stopping children from eating too many sweet things. That last topic had been aired at the same time as second slices of fruit cake were embarked upon, and Mma Ramotswe had been briefly aware of that irony, but had reminded herself that they were talking about children, not adults, and that was clearly very different.

  That afternoon, she parked her van in its accustomed position, under the tree that she liked to think somebody had planted many years ago with her in mind, as if that person knew—although of course he could not have known—that she, Mma Ramotswe, would in the fullness of time arrive and find it the ideal place for her. The world was not like that, she knew; we had to fit in with the world rather than the world fit in with us, but every so often it was nice to imagine that it was the other way round. And there was no doubt, she thought, that Botswana fitted her to perfection. It was the right size; it was the right shape on the map; the people who lived in it and the cattle they kept were just as she would want them to be; it was so perfect that she imagined that God himself had thought: I shall invent a country that is just right for Mma Ramotswe when she comes along, and I shall call it Botswana, and it will be a good place.