The Handsome Man's De Luxe Café (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘No, there wasn’t anyone,’ said Mma Makutsi.

  There was, came a small, almost inaudible voice from below.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tiny Points of Light

  Households do not run themselves, Mma Ramotswe had often observed: there is shopping, cleaning, repairing and organising to do – and all of these, for some reason, seemed to be the responsibility of women, or almost always.

  She thought that only one of these functions could not be described as a chore. No matter how much one tried to take a positive view of cleaning – no matter how frequently one told oneself that sweeping and dusting had their moments, it was difficult to see the whole business as anything but a use of time that could be more profitably and enjoyably spent doing something more satisfying. Even organising, which sounded as if it could be interesting, was really all about telling other members of the household what to do, checking up to see that they had done it, and asking them to do it when it transpired – as it usually did – that they had not got round to doing it yet. No, shopping really was the sole item in the positive column of these household accounts.

  Mma Ramotswe liked to do her shopping weekly, usually on a Friday afternoon. She knew that this was far from being the best day to pay a visit to the supermarket, as it was inevitably full of people buying provisions for the weekend. When a Friday coincided with the end of the month, and therefore with payday, the supermarket was even more crowded – this time with people whose kitchen cupboards had grown empty as money ran out. It was not hard to spot these people as they tended to help themselves to snacks from the contents of their trollies as they went around, to compensate for the short rations of the previous few days. That was perfectly all right, she felt, as long as the food from which they took these advance helpings was already measured and priced for the cashier. All that was happening there was that people were eating food that they were going to pay for anyway.

  But this was not always so, and there were those who ate without paying. Mma Ramotswe had witnessed one particularly bad case only a few weeks earlier. She had been in the fruit and vegetable section of the supermarket when a woman – traditionally built, as Mma Ramotswe herself was – had come into sight, pushing a trolley and surrounded by five young children. This woman had stopped, looked over her shoulder, and then whispered instructions to her charges. The children waited for a moment or two and then fanned out across the supermarket floor, grabbing pieces of fruit from the counters and stuffing them into their mouths. They were, Mma Ramotswe thought, rather like a swarm of locusts descending on the land, picking the best of what they saw, munching hungrily as they marched across the landscape.

  Almost too shocked to speak, she had stood there with her mouth agape at the sheer effrontery of the behaviour on display. When she eventually recovered, she called out to the woman, now only a few yards away from her, ‘Excuse me, Mma. Excuse me.’

  The woman looked up, as if surprised to be addressed. ‘Yes, Mma? What is your problem?’

  ‘Problem? I have no problem,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘You have a problem, Mma.’

  The woman had stared at her with undisguised irritation. ‘Why do you say I have a problem, Mma? I have no problem that I can see. If there are any problems, they must be your problems, not mine.’

  Mma Ramotswe pointed at two of the youngsters, one of whom was halfway through a banana while the other gnawed at a large apple. ‘Your children, Mma, are eating the fruit.’

  ‘So,’ said the woman. ‘So, they are eating fruit. That is good for them, is it not? Does the government not say, Eat lots of fruit and you will be very healthy? Do they not say that, Mma?’

  Mma Ramotswe marvelled at the woman’s brazenness. ‘But the government doesn’t tell you to eat other people’s fruit.’

  The woman’s irritation increased. ‘This fruit does not belong to anybody yet. It has not been bought. We are not taking fruit from anybody.’ She paused before delivering her final shot. ‘So please mind your own business, Mma.’

  With that, the woman had marshalled her brood of children – some still with their mouths full – and drifted away in the direction of the bread counter. Mma Ramotswe had stood quite still, hardly able to believe what she had seen. Mind her own business? But it was her business. When other people behaved dishonestly it was the business of others, because if we did not react to the bad behaviour of others, then we weakened the whole of society, and that was definitely part of everybody’s business.

  She hesitated. There is an inbuilt human reluctance to inform on other people; nobody likes to be thought of as a sneak, as somebody who runs to the authorities. And yet it was her duty, she felt, to warn the store that this woman and her little band of locusts were eating food that did not belong to them. So she went to one of the desks and told the young woman there what was happening. ‘Now they have gone to the bread counter,’ she said. ‘They will be helping themselves there, too, unless you stop them.’

  The young woman shrugged. ‘We know that woman. She is always bringing her children in here.’

  Mma Ramotswe waited for something further to be said, but the young woman simply shrugged again.

  ‘You should stop them, Mma,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  ‘Can’t prove anything,’ said the young woman. ‘They never do it when we’re watching. They are very clever.’

  Mma Ramotswe stared at her in disbelief, but this merely elicited another shrug. And with that, the incident, it seemed, was closed. But she thought about it – both there, in the supermarket, as she did her own shopping, and afterwards, as she drove home in the white van. She thought of what her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, or even Seretse Khama himself would have said about this. They would have said: This is not what Botswana needs. And they were right, she felt, although she was relieved that, being late, they had been spared the sight of what she had witnessed.

  On this occasion there was no such shocking incident at the supermarket, but there was nonetheless a meeting. This was with Mma Potokwani, whom Mma Ramotswe encountered in the supermarket’s sauce and condiment section. Mma Potokwani was examining a jar of extra-strong pickle with the expression of one who is doubtful as to whether her palate will be able to bear the heat.

  ‘Ah, Mma Ramotswe,’ she said. ‘Do you know whether this sauce is as hot as the jar claims? The label has a picture of a man with fire coming out of his mouth. Look.’

  She handed her friend the jar for scrutiny. ‘I believe this is very hot,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘But the picture is an exaggeration, I think. I do not think it will set you on fire.’ For a moment she pictured Mma Potokwani with flames coming out of her mouth. She imagined herself reaching for a fire extinguisher and covering her friend in white foam, or pushing her down to the ground and covering her head with a fire blanket. It would be an undignified end to a meal.

  The jar of sauce found its way into Mma Potokwani’s trolley, and the conversation moved on from sauce to the possibility of a chat after they had both finished their shopping. An arrangement was made: they would meet in forty minutes at the café near the outside stairs. ‘There is something I need to talk about, Mma,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘It is quite a serious matter, I’m afraid.’

  Mma Ramotswe did not relish spending the next forty minutes worrying, and so she asked Mma Potokwani what it was about.

  ‘It is rather hard to explain,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘It is to do with Mma Makutsi. I shall tell you once we sit down and can chat.’

  To do with Mma Makutsi? This hardly helped, and by the time she found herself with Mma Potokwani at the Equatorial Café she was feeling thoroughly anxious. But even then, the conversation did not go straight to the subject of Mma Makutsi, but meandered gently in that direction, by way of a discussion of orphans, cake and guilt, and one or two other subjects of equal importance.

  The subject of orphans was triggered by Mma Ramotswe’s enquiry as to whether any new children had arrived at the Orphan Farm.

  ‘There is
a young boy,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘He has recently come in. It is very sad. He lost his parents in a mining accident up at Selebi-Phikwe.’

  ‘Both parents?’ asked Mma Ramotswe. ‘The mother as well as the father? Did they both go down the mine together? At the same time, Mma?’

  Mma Potokwani waved the question aside. ‘There are many women who go down mines,’ she said. ‘Women are always going down mines these days.’

  Mma Ramotswe looked dubious. ‘Are you sure, Mma?’

  Mma Potokwani was sure. ‘I could tell you some very sad stories,’ she said. ‘But what is the point? The fact of the matter is that the poor child has no parents. That is what we have to deal with. It does not matter how the parents were lost.’

  ‘But it’s unusual for two parents to be lost in the same mining disaster, don’t you think?’

  ‘The Lord works in strange ways,’ said Mma Potokwani, closing down the discussion. ‘That is all I have to say on the subject.’

  They had moved on to cake, having ordered a slice each to eat with their tea. Mma Potokwani had told the waitress that she wanted a large piece, and she was sure that Mma Ramotswe felt the same. ‘None of your thin slices,’ she warned. ‘I have seen you serve some very thin slices here. We do not want any of those, if you please.’

  Mma Ramotswe had nodded her agreement. ‘I see no reason why we should not have a large slice,’ she said. ‘Or even two. I do not feel guilty about eating cake any more. I used to, but no longer.’

  ‘You are very wise,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘How did you do it, Mma? Did you stop thinking about the things that made you feel guilty?’

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. ‘I read an article in a magazine. I was at the dentist and there was a magazine for the patients to read. I read an article under a headline that said: Why you shouldn’t feel guilty any more. I started to read it but then the dentist called me in and I had to leave it in the waiting room.’

  ‘It’s always very annoying when that happens,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘Sometimes I’m listening to something on the radio – something interesting – and one of the housemothers calls me for one emergency or another. It is always the same – you miss the ending.’

  Mma Ramotswe was silent. ‘I have a confession to make, Mma.’

  Mma Potokwani raised an eyebrow. Had Mma Ramotswe been eating too much cake? Was that weighing on her? Cake can weigh on people… She smiled at the thought: it certainly could, and it weighed heavily on her, perhaps, as on other traditionally built people.

  ‘After the dentist had finished,’ Mma Ramotswe went on, ‘I went back into the waiting room… and took the magazine.’ She paused. ‘It was very old, and I was just going to borrow it.’

  Is that all? thought Mma Potokwani. If that was all that troubled Mma Ramotswe, then hers must be an unburdened conscience indeed; although small things could always exert an undue influence on those whose lives were otherwise largely spotless. She had known a man, a cousin of her husband, who had been tormented by an ancient act of minor dishonesty and had dwelt on what he had done until he had made himself sick with guilt and worry. And it was such a small thing: a matter of a neighbour’s chicken that had wandered into his hen-coop and, rather than being sent back, had been allowed to stay. That was all, and yet he had dwelt on the incident for years and the neighbour could not understand why he kept being given chickens as a present on every conceivable occasion – Christmas, Botswana Day, Seretse Khama’s birthday, and so on. ‘What have I done to deserve such a kind neighbour?’ the recipient of this continued largesse had asked – a question that only made it worse for the donor, who thought: If only he knew that I am not kind – I am a stealer of chickens. Eventually he had confessed his torment to Mma Potokwani’s husband, who had simply laughed and told him to forget the whole matter as he had more than made up for his wrongdoing. Rra Potokwani told the neighbour, in fact, who went round to see the cousin and told him that he should give the matter no further thought, as he himself had done exactly the same thing with one of his chickens that had wandered across the boundary between their properties. And this, it seemed, had been the absolution that the cousin had wanted all along, and he was released from self-reproach, although he distrusted his neighbour thereafter on the grounds that he seemed so unmoved by his own wrongdoing. If he could so easily overlook something like that, what else could he overlook?

  ‘People are always taking magazines from waiting rooms,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘Dentists don’t mind about it – they know that it happens all the time.’

  ‘I intended to take it back.’

  Mma Potokwani was sure that Mma Ramotswe had done exactly that, but no, it appeared that she had not. ‘I lost it,’ she said. ‘I read the article about guilt and it made me feel so guilty that I decided to take the magazine back the next day. But then I lost it, Mma. I don’t know what happened to it.’

  Mma Potokwani laughed. ‘I thought it told you not to feel guilty.’

  ‘But I did.’

  ‘So what happened next?’ asked Mma Potokwani.

  ‘I bought a new magazine and took it to the waiting room. I told the receptionist that I had bought a present for the waiting room. It was so that other people could enjoy the magazine while they waited to have their teeth looked at. I said that it would take their minds off what lay ahead.’

  Mma Potokwani thought that this would have been a great comfort for those facing the dentist’s drill. Mma Ramotswe, though, had more to tell.

  ‘The receptionist laughed,’ she continued. ‘She said: you must be another of those people who take our magazines and then regret it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mma Potokwani. Then she added, ‘That lady is not very sympathetic, Mma. That was not a kind thing to say to somebody who had stolen a… borrowed a magazine and then felt bad about it.’

  With orphans, cake and guilt all disposed of, it was time for Mma Potokwani to broach the subject of Mma Makutsi. ‘Mma Makutsi,’ she said simply, ‘has, I believe, some café or other.’

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. ‘She is very proud of it,’ she said. ‘We went there for a meal the other day. She has a chef —’

  Mma Potokwani interrupted her. ‘A chef called Disang.’

  Mma Ramotswe was cautious. ‘I think he’s called Thomas.’

  ‘Yes, Thomas Disang.’

  Mma Ramotswe looked down at her cup. She feared where this was going. ‘Isn’t Mma Makutsi’s lawyer called Disang?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mma Potokwani. ‘That is his name. But it’s also the name of the chef. And of the waiter. And the waitress, for that matter.’

  A fresh pot of tea arrived, and Mma Potokwani raised her cup to take a deep draught. She was a quick drinker of tea, and always managed two or three cups to Mma Ramotswe’s one. ‘Yes. They are all Disangs – and they are all relatives of that lawyer of hers.’

  ‘It is a common name,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘There are hundreds of Disangs.’

  ‘It is certainly a common name,’ agreed Mma Potokwani. ‘But I can tell you this, Mma – those Disangs in that restaurant are all one family. The chef is the lawyer’s brother. The waiter is the chef’s son, and the waitress is the son’s wife.’

  Mma Ramotswe reflected on this. It was not uncommon for people to look after their relatives – it was a very African thing. If your cousin was in need, for instance, why not help him? Surely it was wrong, according to the old traditions, to let somebody close to you suffer need. Yes, but… and that but was a very big one. That desire to help was one of the roots of the vine of corruption that had smothered so much of Africa.

  ‘Does Mma Makutsi know all this?’ asked Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Potokwani shook her head. ‘I do not think she knows. And there is another thing she doesn’t know: that Disang man cannot cook.’

  Mma Ramotswe remembered their dinner. ‘But he can cook, Mma. He’s very good. He cooked for us the other night.’

  Mma Potokwani shook her head slowly. ‘He did not cook, Mma. That meal was
cooked by somebody else.’

  ‘But he was there in the kitchen,’ protested Mma Ramotswe. ‘They served it to us directly from the kitchen. He was there. I saw him.’

  Mma Potokwani poured herself another cup of tea. ‘It was cooked by one of my housemothers,’ she said. ‘She told me.’

  Mma Ramotswe stared at her friend. She remembered what Fanwell had said about seeing a woman in the kitchen. She groaned inwardly. ‘You may as well tell me everything, Mma,’ she said.

  Mma Potokwani put down her cup. ‘She mentioned it to me casually,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t trying to hide anything. I had gone to inspect her kitchen and had complimented her on her cooking. Then she said that she had recently cooked a meal for some people in a restaurant. She is the aunt of that chef. She said that she was very surprised that he had found a job in a restaurant as he is one of the worst cooks she knows. She also said that he is a good-for-nothing who never sticks at any job.’