The Handsome Man's Deluxe Café

by Alexander McCall Smith

She took his proffered hand and shook it.

  “I am Mma Makutsi,” she said. “I am the …” She hesitated; she was the owner and should not be embarrassed to say it. “I am the managing director, Rra.”

  If only they could hear her up in Bobonong. If only her late aunt, the one who had said all along that she would make something of herself; the same aunt who had sold one of her only three cattle to help with the fees at the Botswana Secretarial College; that aunt, if only she could have heard her now, how proud would she have been, how loudly would she have issued the ululations that expressed joy in Botswana.

  She looked at the chef, a large-framed man with a reassuring paunch—a thin chef, Mma Makutsi reflected, would hardly inspire confidence. She immediately liked what she saw; she liked his broad features and the moustache he had cultivated on his lip; she liked the good humour that seemed to sparkle in his eyes. There was nothing shifty about this chef—quite the opposite, in fact. This was a chef with whom one could settle down for a good meal or a party—an open, cheerful chef who obviously liked his food and wanted others to do so too.

  “I have heard all about you from my … from the lawyer,” said Thomas. “He has told me all about your plans, Mma. He says that he is pretty sure that you will make this one of the best restaurants in Botswana.”

  “The best restaurant,” said Mma Makutsi.

  Thomas laughed. “Yes, I am sure that is what he meant to say.”

  Mma Makutsi indicated that they should sit down at the table. She had heard him say “my” and then correct himself. My what? she wondered. My friend? Or had he been about to say “my lawyer” and had stopped himself because he did not want her to know that he had had some brush with the law? Suddenly she reinstated the guard that any prospective employer must have when assessing whether somebody was right for a job.

  “You know this lawyer well, Rra? Is he a close friend?” she asked as they took their seats.

  The chef shook his head. “He is not, Mma—more of an acquaintance. I would like to be able to say that I am a close friend of an important lawyer like that, but I am not. I am a very ordinary person, Mma—a nothing person, you might say.”

  “Nobody is a nothing,” said Mma Makutsi. She thought of Bobonong, and of the people up there. There were some who might say that they were nothing, that she herself was a nothing Makutsi.

  “I do not mean to say that I am nothing,” he said. “You’re right, Mma. Nobody is a nothing. What I meant to say is that I am not an important lawyer like he is. That is what I meant.”

  “Being a chef is important, is it not?” asked Makutsi.

  “Of course, Mma. Of course it is. A chef can make people very happy.” He paused. “And that is what I like to do. I like to make sure that everybody who eats in any restaurant I work in goes out very full—and very happy.”

  Mma Makutsi nodded. “That is a good way to look at it,” she said. “But tell me, Rra, where were you making all these people happy before now?”

  The chef beamed as he replied, as if the memory of his customers’ happiness still filled him with warmth. “In many places, Mma. In many kitchens.”

  “Such as?”

  He shrugged. “I have cooked in the Sun Hotel. I have cooked in the lodges up in the Okavango. That is where I was last. Up near Maun.”

  “Which lodge, Rra?”

  He waved a hand in the air. “There were many. Sometimes they needed a chef in this one, and then next week they needed a chef in that one. You could never tell. I was a sort of flying chef, Mma. You’ve heard of the flying doctors in Australia?” He smiled, and for a moment Mma Makutsi thought he winked at her. She did not approve of that: she was a married woman, she was Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti no less, and she had no time for these men who went around winking at women, whether or not they were married. Yet she could not be sure that he had winked, and even if he had it had been very much a passing wink, indistinguishable from an involuntary twitch.

  “Well,” he went on, “I was a flying chef. They have these small planes, you see, that fly people into the safari lodges. Well, I went on those.”

  She looked at him. He was not giving her the details she felt she should have, but it was difficult not to warm to this good-spirited man. She could check up, of course: she could write to Mma Ramotswe’s relative up there and ask her to make enquiries; it would be easy enough to do that, but somehow she felt that this was not what she wanted. It would be easy enough, she thought, to find out whether a chef was any good. And yet part of her was unwilling to seek out information that might force her to turn him away. Even if it transpired that he was not the chef he claimed to be—that he was no more than a lowly assistant chef, or even an assistant to an assistant—that did not mean that he might not benefit from a chance to be in charge of his own kitchen. She knew what it was like to be at the bottom of the heap, as she had been there herself in those days when she had been searching for a job and all the available positions went to glamorous, fifty-per-cent girls from the Botswana Secretarial College—girls like Violet Sephotho, of all people, who had breezed into job after job on the strength of her looks and her shameless, coquettish flirting. The sheer injustice of this still rankled, and had made Mma Makutsi a firm believer in giving everybody a chance, which is what she would do with this man. She had intended to get him to cook a meal—as a test—as she had discussed with Mr. Disang, but now she made up her mind. She would not have time to find another chef. No, she would take him untried, although he could still be invited to cook a meal for her and Phuti, as a taster of things to come.

  “Would you mind cooking a meal for me and my husband?” she asked.

  He did not hesitate. “I will do that, Mma. You tell me what you want and—”

  She interrupted him. “Of course I will provide all the ingredients. All you’ll have to do is cook.”

  He beamed with pleasure. “No, I’ll do the whole thing myself. You leave everything to me.”

  From his lack of hesitation, from the smile that he gave her, from his confident That’s what I do best, she made up her mind. She now had a restaurant, a builder, and a chef.

  AND IT WAS WITH a decided spring in her step that Mma Makutsi arrived at the office, eager to tell Mma Ramotswe about the progress she had made that morning.

  “I have been very busy already, Mma,” she said, as she opened the door that led from the premises of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors into the headquarters of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. “Busy as a guinea fowl …” It was an unusual metaphor, but one that Mma Makutsi used from time to time, and Mma Ramotswe knew exactly what she meant.

  She stopped; she had seen Charlie. For a few moments she stared at him before recovering her composure. “Charlie,” she began, “I thought that …”

  Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. “Charlie is no longer working in the garage.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Mma Makutsi.

  “And so he’s working here instead.”

  Mma Makutsi looked uncomprehending. “Fixing cars in here?”

  Charlie’s face broke into a smile. “Not fixing cars, Mma. You couldn’t fix cars in here with all your papers, all this stuff … No, I’m a detective now.”

  He looked to Mma Ramotswe for confirmation. She swallowed hard. “I’ve given Charlie a job,” she said quickly. “You know how busy we’ve been.”

  Mma Makutsi’s mouth opened. She stared at Charlie and then transferred her gaze to Mma Ramotswe. “But we haven’t been busy,” she said. “In fact, things have been rather quiet. You said so yourself, Mma, the other day. You said—”

  Mma Ramotswe interrupted her. “That’s not the point, Mma,” she said. “You have to expand to get bigger. You said that, you know.”

  “I did not, Mma,” Mma Makutsi protested. “It makes no sense to say that you have to expand to get bigger. You expand because you’re getting bigger. You bring in new staff when you start to get bigger. That’s how it works, Mma.” She paused before addressing Charlie
. “Sorry, Charlie, I know it’s hard for you to lose your job, but I don’t think Mma Ramotswe has worked all this out.” There was another pause. “Maybe you could go to the post office for me. You can do that at least.”

  Charlie was disgruntled. “I am not an office boy.”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Mma Makutsi, more firmly now. “These letters must be posted. They are ready to go.” She reached into the tray on her desk, picking up three large envelopes and handing them to Charlie. The young man looked at Mma Ramotswe, who nodded her assent.

  Once Charlie had left, Mma Makutsi strode across the room to switch on the kettle on top of the filing cabinet. “This is a very big surprise for me, Mma,” she said. “I am very shocked.”

  Mma Ramotswe sighed. “I’m sorry, Mma. Sometimes we have to act quickly. I was worried about Charlie. He was very upset. He went out and drank too much.”

  Mma Makutsi listened impatiently. “Young men often drink too much, Mma,” she snapped. “It goes with being a young man. That is what they are like.”

  “And you heard what he said about not wanting to live.”

  Mma Makutsi shook her head. “They are always saying that. Young people lie in bed in the mornings because they are too lazy to get up. Then they say that they don’t want to go on living. Then they get up and go to parties. That is how they behave, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe pursed her lips. “I decided to give him a job,” she said. “It was a decision I took. I shall be paying him out of my own account.” She wondered whether to tell Mma Makutsi about the arrangement with Mma Potokwane, but deemed any mention of that would be inflammatory. Mma Potokwane and Mma Makutsi had never got on particularly well, and to bring the matron into this conversation would not help.

  Mma Makutsi tapped the kettle. This was a bad sign: Mma Ramotswe had seen her tap the kettle before, and on each occasion it had preceded an uncomfortable flare-up.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Mma Makutsi began, “to take people on when there is nothing for them to do. I know that sometimes we might feel that we should give some unfortunate person a job—if they don’t have one. I know that, Mma. But if we did that all the time, then where would we be? There are many people who do not have a job. I am sorry for these people, Mma, but if we went out and said to them, ‘If you have no job, then come quickly and we’ll give you one,’ then we would be crushed in the rush, Mma. There would be very big crowds of people, all of them wanting a job, and there would be no room for us after a while.” She shook her head in apparent disbelief. “There is a lot of suffering in the world, Mma, but we cannot put an end to all of it.”

  After she had finished speaking there was silence. Mma Ramotswe stared down at her desk. A shaft of midday sun was shining in upon it; there were tiny specks of dust floating in the light. “I haven’t given a job to the whole world,” she muttered. “I have simply helped a young man who is … who is one of us.”

  “You should have asked me,” said Mma Makutsi. “What is the point of my being co-managing director if I am not consulted on something as important as staffing? What is the point, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe looked up in surprise. Co-managing director? “I do not think we used those titles, Mma,” she said mildly. “I have made you a partner in the business—that is true—but I think that I am still the managing partner.”

  Mma Makutsi tapped the kettle again. “Managing partner? We have never discussed that, Mma. I do not remember ever talking about managing partners.” Her fingernails drummed on the kettle. “I do not remember seeing any signs around here saying Managing Partner. Maybe I have not been looking in the right place.”

  Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath. She sensed that this was the moment when something important needed to be established. “Mma Makutsi,” she began, “I am the person who started this business. It is therefore my business. I am grateful to you for all that you do for the business and very happy to have you as a partner in it. But I am the one who has the final say in all matters. I shall always consult you—”

  “But you did not,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “You did not ask me whether we should take Charlie on. You just did it.”

  “That was an emergency decision. Sometimes I shall have to decide things without asking you. That is the way it is: it simply is. That is it, Mma.”

  The kettle had now boiled, and Mma Makutsi busied herself with pouring the water into the teapot. Mma Ramotswe watched her. “You know something, Mma Makutsi?” she said quietly. “When I took you on right at the beginning, I did so even though I could not really afford it.”

  Mma Makutsi replaced the kettle in its cradle; she said nothing.

  “I did it because I could not turn you away,” continued Mma Ramotswe. “I could have said that there was no work—and there really was not much, Mma. But I did not want to do that—and I am grateful that I did not.”

  The silence continued.

  “So,” concluded Mma Ramotswe, “that is why I have done what I have done with Charlie. And I did it because it is my business when all is said and done. You are my partner in that business, but every business has junior partners and senior partners. That is just the way it is, Mma. I am the senior partner because I am older than you. I am also the founder of the business.”

  Mma Makutsi poured out the tea. Her anger, quite visible before, now seemed to have evaporated. “Don’t think I am ungrateful, Mma—I am not.”

  “I know that,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “And I know that you are the senior partner. I know that, Mma.”

  “Good. I thought you knew it, Mma. Now you have told me and I don’t think we need to talk about that matter again.”

  Mma Makutsi passed Mma Ramotswe her cup of tea. “What is Charlie going to do?”

  Mma Ramotswe smiled with relief; disagreements with Mma Makutsi tended to end as abruptly as they started.

  “We shall use him on the Sengupta case,” she said. “I have had an idea.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  BOTSWANA WAS A GOOD PLACE

  IT WAS RARE for Mma Ramotswe to be without any idea of how to proceed, but it did happen, and this was one such occasion. Her philosophy of detection had always been simple; moulded, in part, by the sage and level-headed advice of Clovis Andersen—whom she and Mma Makutsi now considered a friend—and in part by common sense. To that mixture might have been added a pinch of the old Botswana morality, which could be used to good effect when appealing for help; if people were sheltering others, or were reluctant to talk, the invocation of the old Botswana morality could be just the thing to shift the log-jam. You have to help, Rra, because that is what is expected of you. What would your father/​grandfather/​great-​grandfather have said if they saw you staying silent while some worthless person got away with his bad behaviour …?

  That sort of appeal, made directly and in all sincerity, could work wonders, as it had in the case of the hotel manager who had frightened his staff into concealing his wrongful removal of guests’ lost property. That had been a difficult case until one of the maids, shamed by the reference to the old Botswana morality, blurted out the manager’s secret. She revealed that guests were always leaving their watches and earrings and such things in the bathroom of their rooms, and then phoning, in panic, from the airport or from their homes to enquire as to whether their property had been found. It had usually been dutifully handed in by the maids, but the hotel staff were instructed to deny it. This they did, although they knew full well that the missing items would soon appear on the shelves of the manager’s own second-hand goods store near the bus station.

  With the maid’s statement in hand, Mma Ramotswe had confronted the manager, whose response had been to run away immediately, leaving his own property behind. This was an odd collection—a radio, a couple of pens, and a rather smart briefcase made out of zebra skin—but all of this had been handed over to the maid who had ended the manager’s lucrative scheme.

  “I hear that he has left the country,” said
Mma Ramotswe. “And so he will not be needing these things.” She paused. “I suppose he has gone off to be bad somewhere else.”

  “There are many places for bad men,” said the maid, shaking her head.

  Mma Ramotswe had thought about this. There are many places for bad men … yes, the maid was right; there were many such places. But there were also good places, and if we tried hard enough we could make more of these good places, or make the places that were already good a bit larger. Botswana was a good place—it always had been—and Mma Ramotswe knew that she would fight to keep it that way. She would fight against the people who wanted to make it exactly the same as everywhere else—which meant to make it as corrupt as the rest of the world. No, she would not allow that—or, rather, she would do her utmost to prevent it happening. There was not all that much that one person could do; it was not possible for one woman to hold back the tide of greed and self-centredness that seemed to be sweeping across the world, but she would do whatever lay within her powers to do. And Mma Makutsi, she knew, felt the same and would do whatever she could—which was a bit more now that she was married to Mr. Phuti Radiphuti and had the Radiphuti name and means to help her in their crusade.

  Grace Radiphuti! That was the most extraordinary development, Mma Ramotswe reflected. That a person from Bobonong—a person with very little in this life—could come down to Gaborone, take the Botswana Secretarial College by storm, climb up the ranks of a business (even if the business only had one employee), and then, to top it all, marry into a furniture-selling and cattle-owning family; that was surely a miracle that defied all those who said that it was impossible to make something of one’s life if one started poor. Nonsense! she thought. One might start with nothing and end up with everything, if one had the right attitude and was prepared to work hard. It was also true, of course, that one might start off with nothing and end up with nothing; or start off with very little and end up with even less; but these were not possibilities that one should dwell on before one started. There was no point in thinking of the bottom when one wanted to get to the top.