To the Land of Long Lost Friends

by Alexander McCall Smith

  And as she stepped out of the van and closed its door behind her, she looked up and drank in the air and the blue and the emptiness that was the sky; a draught more satisfying than the sweetest water; and filled, at that moment, with the song of some bird that she did not know the name of, but that she had heard oh so many times, as a girl, as a young woman, as the person she now was. That bird continued to sing that same song, learned from its mother and father, to be passed on to the next generation of birds, small creatures even now sheltering in a hidden nest somewhere, ready for their moment of launch and the beginning of the dance about the skies of Botswana that would be their brief life. And she thought: Oh, I am so fortunate to be here in this land, to be standing under this sky, ready to see my old friend Mma Potokwane, and to drink tea with her and to talk about the things that we always talk about.

  Unknown to Mma Ramotswe, that same old friend was looking out of her window, having heard the sound of the approaching van. She had watched Mma Ramotswe’s manoeuvres under the habitual tree, and she had remembered how that morning she had told the farm manager, who looked after the vegetable patches and the fields, to move the tractor that he had parked under the shade of that particular acacia. She had explained that Mma Ramotswe would be arriving before too long and that it was important that her parking place be kept free, because she would expect it. The farm manager had readily agreed; the tractor would be moved. “The tractor can go anywhere; it is only a tractor,” he had said. “Mma Ramotswe is a very good woman, and she is also the cousin of my brother’s wife’s sister.”

  Mma Potokwane watched as Mma Ramotswe made her way towards her office. Why had she suddenly stopped, as if she had forgotten something and had now remembered it? Why was she standing there, looking up at the sky? Of course, she did just that, she remembered; Mma Ramotswe would often stop and look at the sky; and this just went to show how wise she was, because looking at the sky was something that we all should do more often. Or so Mma Potokwane had read somewhere. People who looked at the sky, she had learned, are less likely to die than those who do not look at the sky. That was interesting and must have something to do with inner calmness and the way in which that calmness protects you from things that afflict those who are not calm—nervous conditions of one sort or another, and other illnesses too. Nerves were involved with everything, Mma Potokwane believed.

  The water for the tea was already boiling when she welcomed her visitor into her office.

  “It is still hot outside,” said Mma Potokwane, as Mma Ramotswe sank into the chair in which she always sat.

  “The heat will bring the rain,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is what I am hoping, Mma Potokwane.”

  “We are all hoping that, Mma.”

  Tea was served and the cake was wordlessly taken from its tin, given admiring looks by Mma Ramotswe, and served on Mma Potokwane’s best plates, used only on occasions such as this—the visit of particular friends or members of the Orphan Farm Board of Management; or of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, for that matter, when he called in after performing some helpful task of machinery management, coaxing life out of a water pump that had lost the will to go on, or servicing one of the farm vehicles or the ancient minibus—too ancient, he said—that was used to transport the children. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s ultimate reward for such acts of kindness, Mma Potokwane wryly observed, might be in heaven, but on this earth, in the here and now, it would take the form of an excessively generous slice of fruit cake. He would eat it with relish, and would demur, but only briefly, when a second slice was pressed upon him, and even a third. “My wife would not approve,” he would say, through a mouthful of cake. “She says I must have only one slice if my trousers are still to fit. You know how it is, Mma Potokwane.”

  And Mma Potokwane would laugh, and reassure him that eating fruit cake was one of the things that a husband was entitled to keep from his wife when the fruit cake in question was deserved, as this undoubtedly was. “Deserved calories do not count, Rra,” she said. “You can count up all the calories you have had and then take away the ones that were deserved. That is the total that you must look at.”

  He had laughed too, and said, “That is good to know, Mma Potokwane, because they are taking the fun out of everything these days, and there is nothing left for many of us, I think. The government says we must not do any of the things we like to do.”

  Now, Mma Potokwane blew across the top of her tea to cool it down while Mma Ramotswe began to tell her about her latest investigations. This was all done under an understanding of confidentiality: Mma Ramotswe understood the need for confidence in her work—that lay at the heart of the relationship with the client, as Clovis Andersen stressed at so many points in The Principles of Private Detection—but you had to be able to talk to somebody if your work was not to get you down. It was also true that discussing a case with another person served to illuminate certain aspects of it that might otherwise not be spotted. How many times had Mma Potokwane asked a question or made an observation that changed Mma Ramotswe’s view of a situation; that suggested an explanation that had been eluding her simply because she had been looking at things from the wrong angle?

  So she told her first about Nametso and her inexplicable coolness towards her mother. That behaviour was not uncommon, said Mma Potokwane, and it usually arose when a son or daughter was wanting to cut the apron-strings of an over-possessive mother. “People need to be able to breathe,” said Mma Potokwane. “And parents sometimes stand in the way of that.”

  That was possible, said Mma Ramotswe. But what about the Mercedes-Benz?

  “That,” said Mma Potokwane, “sounds like shame. That is not an honest Mercedes-Benz.”

  “No,” agreed Mma Ramotswe, “I do not think it is.”

  They moved on to Poppy, and to the loss of her money. Mma Potokwane rolled her eyes at the mention of the Reverend Flat Ponto. “I have heard of that man,” she said. “One of the housemothers went to a meeting he held and she came back all fired up. She was gabbling away about this man and how he could change sinners into saints. She was so excited she was hardly making any sense.”

  “So what did you do?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Potokwane answered in a matter-of-fact way. “I pushed her.”

  Mma Ramotswe’s eyes widened. “But you can’t push people, Mma—not these days.”

  Mma Potokwane shrugged. “So people tell me. But how else do you get somebody who is hysterical to see sense? I don’t see any other way. So I pushed her and then I persuaded her to stand under a cold shower for ten minutes, maybe a bit longer. And at the end I said to her, ‘Mma, what is all this nonsense?’ and she looked very embarrassed and admitted that she had been a bit excited. So I told her that if she saw that reverend again she would lose her job.” She waited for a moment, aware that Mma Ramotswe was taken aback. “He is not a real reverend, you see. Those people who invent their own churches are not proper reverends at all. That one is a mechanic, I think.”

  But still Mma Ramotswe expressed surprise. People could not be fired on arbitrary grounds, she reminded Mma Potokwane. But Mma Potokwane was having none of that: “If you are a housemother, you have to be responsible and keep your head all the time. There are many little children relying on you, and we cannot have a housemother who goes off and becomes hysterical because she has been listening to some windbag of a preacher—bogus preacher, should I say—can we, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe did not argue the point. There was perhaps something to be said for Mma Potokwane’s approach, she felt, even if she herself would find it hard to be so high-handed. “I suppose it was for her own good,” she conceded.

  “Yes,” said Mma Potokwane. “It was.” She paused. “And this poor woman who has had all her money taken away from her—what can you do for her? Will you be able to get it back?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mma Ramotswe. “She is an adult. She controls her o
wn money and where it goes. I do not have any authority to act, you see.”

  Mma Potokwane looked thoughtful. Eventually she said, “Mma Ramotswe, do you think I could do something here? I know I have never interfered in these things that you do, but I think I might be able to help this poor lady.”

  “You would do that, Mma?”

  “Yes. Why not?”

  Mma Ramotswe bit her lip. “I don’t like to be rude, Mma, but I must ask this: Would you respect the limits of what you can do? And by that, I mean: You wouldn’t do anything illegal?”

  Mma Potokwane was the picture of innocence. “Certainly not, Mma.”

  “It isn’t really a fully fledged case,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am not acting for anybody. Nobody has come to me and asked me to help that woman.”

  “No, of course not,” said Mma Potokwane hurriedly. “I can see that you’re acting out of the goodness of your heart.”

  “In that case, Mma, it’s up to you,” Mma Ramotswe said. “You may wish to help her.”

  “Good,” announced Mma Potokwane. “We’ll sort out that reverend double quick. Bang. Like that. Bang.”

  Mma Ramotswe sipped at her tea. What did bang mean? It was the sort of thing that Charlie would say, but this was not Charlie—this was a respectable matron, a pillar (not in the civil engineering sense, of course) of the community. Mma Potokwane was a force to be reckoned with, and the Reverend Flat Ponto might be in for an unpleasant surprise. But if he preyed on vulnerable women, then he could hardly complain. Although he probably would—and vociferously too. The more that people are in the wrong, she thought, the louder their protestations on being brought to book. Clovis Andersen said something about that—possibly—but she could not remember chapter and verse.

  * * *

  —

  THEY FINISHED THEIR TEA and the second slice of fruit cake. Then Mma Potokwane rose to her feet and suggested that Mma Ramotswe might care to visit one of the housemothers, Mma Tsepole, who had been asking after her. “She has been down in Lobatse visiting a sick relative, and I think she might like to be cheered up,” she said.

  They walked past the meeting hall and the children’s kgotla. The older children had not yet returned from school, but there were groups of younger ones playing at various games. A small cluster of girls was drawing a hopscotch grid in the sand, watched by a couple of boys who had not been asked to join in but were awaiting an invitation. They stopped what they were doing when they saw Mma Potokwane, and waited for her to encourage them to continue.

  “They’ll spend hours on that,” said Mma Potokwane. “Do you remember, Mma? Do you remember doing that yourself?”

  Mma Ramotswe did. And there were songs, too, that went with skipping, but she could remember only a few snatches of them, a smattering of words: something about counting goats. It was so long ago, in the playground of the school on the hill at Mochudi, that place where she had started.

  Mma Tsepole presided over one of the self-contained houses that lay at the heart of the Orphan Farm’s structure. Each housemother looked after up to ten children, who would form the “family” of that house. She cooked for them, looked after their clothes, and allocated small domestic tasks to each child. If a child had no family in the outside world, then this was the substitute, the housemother being the main anchor in what was in most cases a grossly disrupted young life.

  She greeted Mma Ramotswe warmly. “I am glad you have come to see me, Mma,” she said. “And you too, Mma Potokwane.”

  “I am not really here,” said Mma Potokwane with a smile. “It is Mma Ramotswe you want to see.”

  The housemother invited them in, dusting her hands on her skirt as she led them into the kitchen. This was dominated by a large table, its surface scrubbed bare and laid with a row of white enamel plates. Against the wall on one side was a large range cooker, on the top of which two blackened and capacious cooking-pots sat. A thin layer of white ash from the wood used as fuel coated the floor at the bottom of the cooker; in the air there hung the smell of a bubbling stew and a faint trace of wood-smoke. For Mma Ramotswe it was a richly evocative combination, taking her back to the kitchen of her father’s house in Mochudi, all those years ago, where there had been a wood-burning stove of much the same vintage. There, of course, was where the women who looked after her after her mother died, that succession of cousins on her father’s side, would cook stews from which wafted an invitation as delicious and tempting as the one that Mma Tsepole was conjuring up for the children in her charge. Mma Ramotswe sniffed at the air and smiled. The children who lived in this place had no mother of their own, but they had what was undoubtedly the next best thing—somebody who watched over them and would make the stews that a loving hand produces for those who are loved.

  There was more tea. This time it was not the red bush tea that she usually drank, but ordinary tea, which Mma Ramotswe would drink out of politeness, but with no great enthusiasm for the caffeine that she found made her feel a bit too enthusiastic, almost impulsive. But no harm would come from sharing one cup with Mma Tsepole, as they chatted about the housemother’s relative in Lobatse—the one who had been ill—and about how she feared that this relative might not see out the year.

  “There is nothing wrong with her,” said Mma Tsepole, “other than the fact that she is very old, Mma, and her heart is saying, ‘I am very tired with all this beating.’ That is what happens, you know, Mma Ramotswe: your heart eventually says, ‘Oh, my goodness, do I have to go on and on like this?’ ”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded in agreement. “That is what happens, Mma. And I think that when it does, you should just say, ‘It is time to go now,’ and then you should become late without making too much fuss about it.”

  “Oh, that is very true, Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Tsepole. “That is what I always say. And that is what my auntie—the one down in Lobatse—says as well. She is ready to go, but there is a cousin down there who is always taking her to the doctor. And the doctor says, ‘You are very old now, Auntie,’ and my auntie says, ‘Yes, I am very old and I do not want to trouble you.’ And then the cousin says, ‘But what about some more pills, please? Auntie needs pills.’ And so it goes on.”

  “That is very sad,” said Mma Ramotswe, taking a sip of the strong brown tea Mma Tsepole had given her.

  “I will miss her,” said Mma Tsepole. “She has seen so many things in her life, and all those old things, the things that happened a long time ago, she remembers. Every detail is there, Mma. She remembers Protectorate days, when we were still Bechuanaland. She remembers the old steam trains that came down from Bulawayo, and how the police band used to play at the railway station when the train came in. A band, Mma, playing for a train coming in. Can you imagine that?”

  The question was rhetorical, but Mma Ramotswe could remember it. Life had been like that in those days, when there was not very much going on and the arrival of a train was something of an event. We had lost that sense of excitement, she felt, because now there was so much happening all the time and nobody paid attention to anything because they had seen it all before. In the days that Mma Tsepole was talking about, people waved to one another on the road. You did not need to know the other person, you just waved, because that was what people did. Now, of course, people just ignored strangers; they took no interest in the story of the other person because they had no time for such things.

  Mma Tsepole enquired about various people known to Mma Ramotswe, and Mma Ramotswe assured her that as far as she knew, they were well. Then there was a lengthy discussion about the merits of macaroni cheese. Was this, in Mma Ramotswe’s opinion, a good food to serve to children twice a week, say, or should it be kept as a special treat? Some people said one thing, Mma Tsepole complained, and others said the opposite. Whom was one to believe, especially nowadays, when everybody considered themselves experts on everything? Mma Ramotswe had no idea, and nor did Mma Potokwane.
“Perhaps we should believe nobody any longer,” said the housemother, somewhat sadly, and then added, by way of a tactful afterthought, “Except Mma Potokwane, of course.” And Mma Potokwane had laughed and said, “Do not believe me, Mma, except some of the time, perhaps.”

  Mma Ramotswe became aware that a child had entered the kitchen. She and Mma Potokwane had seated themselves at the table, their mugs of tea before them, and suddenly she was just there; quiet and unannounced, a little girl still unsteady on her legs, but with that rootedness to the ground that comes with a low centre of gravity. She was barely three, Mma Ramotswe thought, although it was sometimes difficult with children who had been undernourished: a five-year-old might have the frame of a three-year-old if there had not been enough food. That was relatively rare in Botswana, but it still happened; there were still many poor people whose eked-out living was too small to give their children the start they needed. Poverty in Africa lurked on the edges of plenty, waiting for its chance to nip at the heels of those who did not get their fair share, and these children, every one of them, had fallen through the net of the traditional family and village systems of support. They were the children who had no grandmother to look after them on the death of their mother, or whose grandmother had simply too many children around her skirts to manage. The most burdened shoulders in Africa might also be the oldest.