The Handsome Man's Deluxe Café

by Alexander McCall Smith

  There had been numerous occasions, Mma Ramotswe now reminded herself, when Mma Potokwane had not only been able to tell but had been able to help as well, though she was not sure whether even Mma Potokwane could do much about the complicated circumstances in which she now found herself.

  Clasping her teacup in both hands, Mma Ramotswe related how Mr. Sengupta had approached her, how Charlie had pointed out Maria’s house, and how Maria had inadvertently provided the key to the whole situation. “That poor woman,” she said. “She must have suffered so much and then she hits back and the police come after her.”

  “In South Africa?” asked Mma Potokwane. “Not our police—the ones over the border?”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded.

  “It is very difficult for them,” said Mma Potokwane. “Some of them are honest—maybe many of them—but there are some who are real skellums.” She used the word that was popular over the border: a skellum was malevolent; there was no reasoning with a skellum.

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I really only know one of them. He is quite senior now, I think. He is a good man.”

  Mma Potokwane was interested. “He is the one who used to be over at Mmbabtho in the old days? The one you told me about?”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “His mother is from here. The father was born over there, but he is Setswana-speaking. He is over in Johannesburg now.”

  Mma Potokwane sipped at her tea. “I know that man’s wife. She’s from Tlokweng. You say he’s senior now?”

  “Yes,” answered Mma Ramotswe. “He’s a police colonel now. But he’s the same old Billy Pilane to me. You never change the way you look at people, you know. Your friend can become president, even, but to you he’ll just be your friend.”

  “As long as your friend doesn’t change,” cautioned Mma Potokwane. “There are some people who change as they become more important. Imagine if …” She paused. She had entertained a possibility that was too horrible to contemplate.

  Mma Ramotswe was interested. “If what, Mma?”

  “Imagine if Violet Sephotho became president.”

  It was a possibility too painful to contemplate. “We should not think about such things,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “No, we should not.”

  Mma Potokwane wiped her lips with a blue handkerchief she had tucked into the sleeve of her blouse. “Your problem, Mma, is that you cannot be dishonest. You have always been like that.”

  Mma Ramotswe said nothing, but Mma Potokwane was right; she could not be dishonest.

  “So here you have a client who is using you, Mma. He is not telling you the truth.”

  “No, he is not.”

  “But you still feel you must tell him that you have found out what he already knows?”

  “Yes, because if I don’t, he will tell the authorities that every step has been taken to find out the identity of this Lakshmi lady.”

  “He will then ask the authorities to exercise their discretion in her favour as an unidentifiable person,” said Mma Potokwane.

  Mma Ramotswe agreed. “I think that is what he wants to do.”

  “While all the time,” went on Mma Potokwane, “he knows exactly who she is.”

  Mma Ramotswe could not think of that as anything but dishonest, and yet, and yet… “It isn’t her fault,” she said. “Lakshmi is only here because of her violent husband.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So,” continued Mma Ramotswe, “is there nothing we can do for her?”

  “We could keep quiet,” suggested Mma Potokwane. “Or rather, you could keep quiet. You could say nothing. You could say that you have found out nothing.”

  “But then I’d be misleading our own government people,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Or at least I’d be part of a plot to mislead them.”

  They both saw the problem, and were both silent for a few minutes. Then Mma Potokwane spoke. “Go and see him,” she said. “Go and speak to them—Mr. Sengupta and Lakshmi. Tell them that you know everything and that you cannot continue to be involved in the case. That way you will not be doing anything illegal. You will not be misleading our own officials.”

  Mma Ramotswe considered this. What Mma Potokwane proposed sounded reasonable enough: she had no duty to report the crimes of others—simply being a citizen did not impose on you a duty to turn in everybody who was up to no good. Certainly, if she were ever to find out about anything really serious—a murder or something of that sort—she would go straight to the police, but this was … what was it? It was a misleading of the authorities by one who was desperate; by one who was faced with persecution by both an abusive husband and corrupt police officers. What chance did an ordinary woman have against such a combination? To whom could such a person turn for justice?

  That last question remained with her as she drove home from her trip to the supermarket and her meeting with Mma Potokwane. She imagined what it must feel like to be falsely accused of a crime. She imagined what it must be like to be terrified of going home. The world was a hard enough place as it was—how much harder it must be to have nobody to turn to, no friends, no allies, and only a cousin who was prepared to take you in and do the things that sometimes needed to be done if the weak were to be given shelter, if some semblance of fairness was to be achieved in a world that often paid no more than lip service to the idea of justice. The world was not perfect—it never had been and never would be; it was full of pitfalls and problems, of fear, of regrets and of bitter tears. Here and there, though, there were tiny points of light, hard to see at times, but there nonetheless, like the welcoming lights of home in the darkness. The flames that made these lights were hard to ignite, but occasionally, very occasionally, we found that we had in our hands the match that could be struck to start one of these little fires.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HE MAY SELL STATIONERY, BUT HE IS REALLY A HERO

  AT FIRST Charlie did not take his change of duties well.

  “A secretary?” he asked. “Me, Mma? A secretary?”

  Mma Ramotswe had urged Mma Makutsi to be gentle in her approach. They had discussed the matter and decided that since there really was so little for Charlie to do it made sense for him to take some of the secretarial burden off Mma Makutsi. Now, as they explained to him the basis of his future employment in the agency, Mma Ramotswe could not help but notice that Mma Makutsi was showing every sign of satisfaction.

  “Not a real secretary, of course,” Mma Makutsi said pedantically. “The profession of secretary normally calls for attendance at the Botswana Secretarial College. It also requires examinations. So you’ll be a sort of para-secretary, Charlie.”

  Charlie’s mouth dropped open. “A para-secretary?”

  Mma Makutsi warmed to her theme. “Yes, you’ll have heard about paramedics, Charlie. They’re the people who give first aid before you get to hospital. Then a real doctor takes over.” She smiled. “Or a real secretary—in the case of a para-secretary.”

  Charlie glowered. “Mma Ramotswe,” he muttered, “you said that I could be a detective … You promised—”

  Mma Makutsi interrupted him. “No, she did not promise. She said that she would try to find things to keep you busy, Charlie. Try to. And she did try, and now there are no more things for you to do as a detective.” She paused. “But when one door closes, another opens. That other door, as it happens, is marked Secretary, or Para-secretary perhaps.”

  Charlie took a deep breath, seeming to puff up in indignation. “She did—”

  “No, she did not,” said Mma Makutsi. “I was here—remember?”

  Mma Ramotswe glanced discouragingly at Mma Makutsi. The other woman had many talents, but an ability to deal tactfully with young men like Charlie was certainly not one of them. “I think you should give it a try, Charlie. We can call you a clerk rather than a secretary, if you like.”

  Charlie considered this. “Clerk?”

  “Under-clerk?” suggested Mma Makutsi.

  Again Mma Ramotswe looked across the ro
om sharply. “No, clerk, I think.”

  “A clerk is junior to a secretary,” said Mma Makutsi. “A good secretary normally gets paid more than a clerk.”

  Charlie frowned. “Is that true, Mma?” he asked Mma Ramotswe. “Is a clerk really junior to a secretary?”

  “I’m not sure about these things,” answered Mma Ramotswe. “And I’m not sure whether it matters all that much, Charlie.”

  Mma Makutsi intervened. “I can answer that, Charlie. A clerk is definitely junior to a secretary. I have a friend who works in a bank and when they take on school leavers—these are sixteen-year-olds, remember—they call them clerks (fourth class). They have tea in a separate room from the secretaries and they do not get the same annual leave entitlement. They get less.”

  “Less tea?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “No, less leave. They all get the same amount of tea, I think.”

  “I am glad to hear that,” said Mma Ramotswe. She had known, of course, that the reference was to leave rather than to tea, but any diversion to defuse the tension between Mma Makutsi and Charlie was worth making.

  Charlie, though, had reached a decision. “If a clerk is junior to a secretary, then I want to be a secretary rather than a clerk. I am fed up with being junior all the time. Apprentice. Assistant detective, and so on. I would prefer to be a secretary, even if it is a job just for women.”

  “Para-secretary,” chipped in Mma Makutsi. “And what do you mean just for women? Where have you been for the last twenty years, Charlie? Have you not heard that women will no longer put up with that sort of sexist talk?”

  “Sex, Mma?” shouted Charlie. “You’re talking about sex now? Is that what you want to talk about?”

  “Sexist, Charlie. Can’t you tell the difference? A sexist is somebody like you—who thinks that women are nothing.”

  Charlie turned to appeal to Mma Ramotswe. “I never said that, Mma Ramotswe. You see how she accuses me of saying things I never said. I can’t help being a man—it is just what I am. I can’t help thinking like a man …”

  “I think that para-secretary is too long a description,” said Mma Ramotswe, eager to avoid further escalation of the discussion.

  Mma Makutsi offered a compromise. “Assistant secretary, then.”

  “Why assistant?” protested Charlie. “If we do not have any secretaries here any more …” He looked at Mma Makutsi and then back at Mma Ramotswe. “If we do not have any secretaries because certain people who used to be secretaries are now something much more important—managing directors, or whatever—then how can I be an assistant secretary? Where is the secretary I’ll be assisting, Mma? Where is she?”

  Mma Makutsi sighed. “You do not have to have an actual secretary to be assistant to. You are not assistant to a secretary—you are an assistant secretary. There is a difference. In the army you have assistant generals even if you don’t have a general.”

  Charlie was not about to let this pass. “I have never heard of that rank. I know somebody who is in the Botswana Defence Force and he has never spoken of assistant generals. You get sergeants and majors and then you get generals. You don’t have assistant generals—never!”

  Mma Makutsi hooted with laughter. “Sergeants, majors, then generals? Is that how you think it goes, Charlie? One, two, three: three rungs to the ladder. What about captains? Yes, what about captains? And what about colonels? Where are they in your army, Charlie?”

  “We do not need to talk about the army,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The army has got nothing to do with detective agencies.” She gave Mma Makutsi a particularly intense look before continuing. “I think that this is settled, now. You could start showing Charlie how the filing cabinet works, Mma.”

  For some reason, the prospect of teaching Charlie rather appealed to Mma Makutsi, and she took the young man over to the double filing cabinet on the other side of the room.

  “This is the memory of the business, Charlie,” she said. “This is where you will find all the correspondence, all the bills, all the everything. It is all filed away. Any questions?”

  “Why?” asked Charlie.

  “We file it so that we can retrieve it if we want to find out who wrote what and when,” said Mma Makutsi.

  Charlie opened a drawer and peered in. In spite of himself, he was intrigued, and they were soon immersed in a discussion of the filing system that Mma Makutsi had created for the office. From her desk, Mma Ramotswe watched them fondly. At heart, Mma Makutsi and Charlie were probably rather more alike than either would care to admit: they both had the same sort of personality for which there must be a special name in a book somewhere. Makutsian, perhaps: marked by a tendency to be a bit prickly and wear fancy shoes … The sight of them working together, rather than arguing, pleased her. Why can’t we all be like that? she thought. Not just this office, these two people, but everyone, everywhere—the whole world? She gazed out of the window. One day, she hoped, peace would break out, and friendship too. It would break out and ripple across the world, ending corrosive enmities and hatreds, bringing men and women together across the globe. Muslims and Christians and Hindus and people who said that there was no God at all. And they would hold hands and hug one another and realise how small we were and how little time we had, and how silly it was to spend that time fighting and arguing and destroying the trust that otherwise exists between people. Oh, let that happen one day, she thought; let that happen. And perhaps it might even start here in Botswana, where there had always been so strong a desire for peace, since the days of that great and generous-spirited man, Seretse Khama, whose example to the world had been such a good one, and even before him. It could start here, in Gaborone itself, rippling out across the acacia-studded bush like one of those warm winds that seem to come from somewhere you cannot see but are strong and insistent. Then it would fan out to all those distant and busy places that might never even have heard of Botswana but would stop and listen and marvel that such a loud message could come from so quiet a country.

  MMA RAMOTSWE had intended to take Mma Makutsi with her on her next visit to the Sengupta house, but Mma Makutsi had excused herself from the office and was unable to come.

  “I have to go to the café,” she said. “I have had a telephone call.”

  Mma Ramotswe had heard her answer her telephone but had not been able to work out what the call was about—Mma Makutsi had lowered her voice and cupped her hand round the receiver.

  “I hope everything is all right, Mma.”

  Mma Makutsi, gathering her things and stuffing them into the shoulder bag she liked to carry, was non-committal. “There are always things happening in a business,” she said.

  “Not bad things, I hope,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Makutsi half turned round, but obviously thought better of pursuing the conversation. “I shall see,” she said. “I’m sure that everything will be fine.”

  Mma Ramotswe lowered her eyes. She had decided that she would tell Mma Makutsi what she had heard from Mma Potokwane, but wanted to wait a while before she did so. It was possible that things might work out, and she did not want to sound negative; she was only too aware of Mma Makutsi’s sensitive nature. To that list of institutions in the Makutsi pantheon of which seemingly innocuous discussion could cause a slight, there now had to be added the Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café.

  “If you need anything,” muttered Mma Ramotswe, “never hesitate to ask, Mma.”

  Mma Makutsi was tight-lipped. “I’m sure that everything will be perfectly all right, Mma,” she said. “But thank you, anyway.”

  Mma Ramotswe judged the moment right for a further remark. “If I had a business that was getting into trouble, then I would go straight to my friends and discuss it with them. I would not suffer in silence, Mma.”

  Mma Makutsi hesitated again, but then nodded politely and left the office.

  Now, turning into the Senguptas’ road in the newly repaired tiny white van, Mma Ramotswe thought of the encounter ahead. It would not be eas
y, she felt, and it would have been good to have Mma Makutsi there to support her, but that was not to be. She would take a deep breath and say what she had to say: she could do nothing but that.

  Miss Rose answered the intercom and bade the electric gate slide open for her. Mma Ramotswe was careful; it would not do to sustain yet another dent in the bodywork of the van. Sooner or later, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had hinted, vehicles just fell to bits if you bumped into too many things in them.

  Miss Rose greeted her warmly. “I am very pleased that you came, Mma,” she said. “We have been wondering about how things were going. You have news for us, is it?”

  Is it? It was what people said—a general question mark that they added at the end of any enquiry.

  “I have some news and then I … then I have no news.”

  Miss Rose raised an eyebrow. “That is very good, Mma … or maybe not?” She ushered Mma Ramotswe into the formal sitting room. Mma Ramotswe sat down gingerly on one of the large ornate armchairs, almost reluctant to lower herself onto the gold-coloured upholstery. Miss Rose seemed to pick up on her hesitation and was quick to reassure her. “Make yourself comfortable, Mma. Do not worry about the chairs. They are meant to be sat upon.”

  Mma Ramotswe managed an embarrassed smile. “These chairs would not be out of place in Buckingham Palace,” she said. “They will have many chairs like this at the Queen’s place. She will always be sitting on chairs like this.”

  Miss Rose was pleased with the compliment. “It is good to think that the Queen would feel at home if she dropped in.”

  “Yes, she would like these chairs.”

  There was a short silence that was broken by the sound of somebody approaching along a corridor.

  “That will be Mrs.,” said Miss Rose. “She must have heard you arrive.”

  Mrs. came into the room. Her eyes went straight to Mma Ramotswe, and for a moment anxiety passed across her face. It was soon replaced, though, by a guarded smile of welcome.

  Mma Ramotswe looked at Mrs. “How are you, Lakshmi?”