The Handsome Man's Deluxe Café

  Mma Ramotswe did not want to talk about tokoloshes. She finished her account of the Sengupta visit and then went on to tell him about Mma Makutsi’s telephone call.

  ‘I knew that there was something going on,’ she said. ‘After Mr Sengupta and his sister had left, she kept looking at her watch. When she went out to fetch some fat cakes for her lunch, she was keen that I should stay and take a message if there was a phone call. She said she was waiting to hear from her lawyer.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni raised an eyebrow. ‘Her lawyer? Is she in trouble?’

  ‘No, it was nothing like that. And there was no phone call while she was out. It came an hour or so later.’

  ‘And?’

  Mma Ramotswe had been looking forward to breaking the news. ‘You won’t believe it, Rra.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni took another sip of his beer. ‘She’s going into parliament?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s being sent into space?’

  Mma Ramotswe laughed, and for a few moments imagined Mma Makutsi in a space suit, her large glasses perched on the outside of her helmet. ‘No, she is not going into space, although I am sure she would be good at doing what people who go into space do. Is there filing to be done up there? If there is, then she would do it very well.’

  ‘The papers would float about,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘It is not easy to file when there is no gravity. Even Mma Makutsi would find it hard, I think.’

  ‘I have every faith in her,’ she said, adding, ‘now that she is a full partner.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He had voiced reservations about the over-promotion of Mma Makutsi, but had not pressed his views on Mma Ramotswe – the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was her business, not his. ‘Sometimes,’ he had said, choosing his words carefully, ‘sometimes you have to be cautious about promoting people. Once you promote them you can’t really demote them.’ He paused. ‘It is easier to go up a hill than to come down again.’

  Mma Ramotswe had looked puzzled. ‘Are you sure of that, Rra? Isn’t it easier to come down a hill, because it’s downhill? Surely going uphill is more effort.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni gave this some thought. ‘What I meant to say is that once you cook meat, you can’t uncook it. That is what I really meant to say, Mma.’

  ‘And that is true, I think,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘There you are, then.’

  It had not been the most satisfactory of discussions, but even taking his warning into account she had still felt that it was the right thing to do to offer Mma Makutsi a partnership. She remembered their discussion now, though, as she told him about Mma Makutsi’s phone call.

  ‘Anyway, Rra, this call of hers came through at last, and it was her lawyer, as she had said it would be. He is a lawyer with a very loud voice…’

  ‘That is the best sort of lawyer,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘A lawyer who speaks so softly that nobody can hear him is no use.’

  ‘Well, his voice was loud enough for me to hear what he said to her. It came over clearly, even though he was talking at the other end of a telephone line.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni looked at her expectantly. ‘And, Mma?’

  ‘And he said: “You’ve got it, Mma.” And she shouted, “I’ve got it? Are you sure I’ve got it?” And he said, “One hundred per cent sure” —’

  ‘Not ninety-seven per cent?’ interrupted Mr J. L. B. Matekoni.

  ‘No, one hundred per cent sure. And all the time I couldn’t help listening – I don’t like to listen to other people’s conversations, but when one of them is in the room with you and the other has a very loud voice…’ She looked at Mr J. L. B. Matekoni for support, and he said, ‘Of course, Mma. You could not help overhearing – you need not feel guilty about that.’

  Mma Ramotswe continued with her story. ‘When she rang off she leaped up from her chair and did a little dance. It was an unusual dance, Rra – not one I have ever seen before – but you could tell that it was the dance of somebody who was very happy about something.’

  ‘About getting this… this whatever it was she got?’

  ‘A restaurant,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘Mma Makutsi told me after she had finished her dance. She has bought a restaurant. She is going to continue to work in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, of course, but in her spare time she will be running a restaurant. It will be her extra business.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni’s eyes opened wide with surprise. ‘Ow!’ he said.

  Mma Ramotswe shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to think, Rra. I’m not sure if I should be thinking “ow” as well, or whether I should be thinking something else altogether.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni started to smile. ‘It will be a strange restaurant, Mma, if Mma Makutsi is running it.’

  Mma Ramotswe suppressed a grin. He was right, of course, but there were issues of loyalty here. For all her quirks, Mma Makutsi was her colleague and friend; more than that, she was a woman, and there were still those men who looked with condescension on the business aspirations of women. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni was not like that, naturally, but Mma Ramotswe felt that she should not be too quick to call into doubt the business ambitions of another woman. Even to think ‘ow’ might be going too far, and so she did not grin, but instead said, ‘I’m sure that Mma Makutsi knows what’s she’s doing, Rra. After all, if you get ninety-seven per cent, then you must have a good head on your shoulders.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni picked up the warning. ‘Oh, I’m not doubting Mma Makutsi’s general abilities. She is a very clever lady, as we all know. It’s just that she’s a bit…’ He struggled to find the word, and Mma Ramotswe immediately felt sorry for him. Yes, Mma Makutsi was a bit… a bit… She, too, found it difficult to describe exactly what she wanted to say. There were plenty of people who were a bit… whatever it was.

  ‘Bossy?’ she suggested. ‘Is that what you’re trying to say, Rra?’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni frowned. He was not sure if that was exactly what he meant. Mma Potokwani was bossy – the word was exactly right for her, but she, of course, had no option but to be bossy. If you were the matron of an orphan farm, with all those children running around, then you had to be bossy. And presumably any advertisement for that job would have to specify the need for bossiness. If Mma Potokwani were to retire and a successor needed to be found, then the wording of the advertisement would have to spell things out quite clearly. Wanted: an experienced lady for the job of Matron. Only very bossy ladies need apply.

  He smiled at the thought.

  ‘Something funny, Rra?’ asked Mma Ramotswe.

  He put out of his mind the picture that had been forming of a line of bossy ladies queuing up for an interview for Mma Potokwani’s job. There would be a great deal of pushing and shoving and using of elbows, until eventually the bossiest, pushiest lady reached the head of the queue and was straight away appointed.

  He returned to the subject of Mma Makutsi’s restaurant. ‘No, it’s not exactly bossiness I’m talking about, Mma. It’s more a question of strictness. Yes, maybe that’s it.’

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. Strictness. That was it. Mma Makutsi could be strict.

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni now found the words. ‘You will get into trouble if you don’t eat everything on your plate, you see. She will be watching through one of those kitchen hatches – you’ll just see her spectacles peering out – and she will notice if you do not finish off her food. Then she will come out from the kitchen and ask for your excuse. It will be a very strange restaurant, that one.’

  As one might expect, a different conversation took place in the Radiphuti house that evening. Dinner there was always eaten a bit later, as Phuti Radiphuti’s day ran on a rather different timetable from everybody else’s. Most people were at work by eight, but Phuti had decided some years previously that he would not arrive at the Double Comfort Furniture Store until nine o’clock, and sometimes even half an hour later
than that. There were several reasons for this: one was his impatience with the stop-and-start driving that was necessary in the heavier traffic of the rush hour. He had discovered that if you left the house early, you would inevitably get caught up in a long line of cars driven by people who, like you, were eager to make the journey before eight. It was, he thought, rather like trying to get through a door when hundreds of people had exactly the same idea. At least if you were on foot trying to get through a door, people would behave reasonably courteously rather than trample one another or snarl in irritation if anybody were to be too slow, or be indecisive as to whether to turn left or right. How different it was when people were behind the wheel of a car; protected by the metal and glass surrounding them, they showed all sorts of impatience with other drivers, and rarely hesitated to secure some tiny advantage by slipping through a red light or ignoring the unambiguous message of a stop or give way sign. And this was in Botswana, he thought, where everybody – or at least nearly everybody – was so polite! How much worse was it in other countries not too far away where people drove as if they were being pursued by a swarm of bees; or where they paid no attention to the twists and bends in the road.

  The consequences of having such roads were worse, he reminded himself, if you had mountains as well. Botswana at least had flat roads, since there were no real mountains, but it was different in Lesotho, which was not very far away and where all there was, really, was mountain after mountain. As he thought about this he remembered what had happened some years ago to the king of that country, who had been driven to his death off the side of a mountain. Everybody knew that the roads in Lesotho were not in good condition and somebody, surely, should have been more careful with the King in the back seat. Of course you could not tell, thought Phuti. It may not have been the driver’s fault, as all sorts of things could happen on a road at night. Cattle strayed onto the tarmac, standing there practically invisible in the darkness until their eyes were suddenly caught in the headlights and it was too late; boulders tumbled down hillsides and came to rest at blind corners; rain washed away whole sections of the road, leaving great gaps into which anybody, even a king, might easily fall. No, you should never blame a driver unless you knew all the facts, and since that poor driver was late, just as the King himself was, you would never know exactly what happened. Some things were accidents, pure and simple, in the same way as had been that incident in which he himself was injured – where the delivery driver did not see him standing there. You should not go around sprinkling blame on other people, thought Phuti Radiphuti.

  But it was not simply because of bad driving and traffic jams that Phuti had decided to avoid going into work early – there were good business reasons for his coming into the office slightly later than everybody else. Phuti believed that if there were any problems to be dealt with, they would make themselves known early in the day. Usually these were staff issues, with somebody not coming into work because he or she was ill, or discovering something wrong with some item of furniture, or a difficult letter arriving in the mail that one of his assistants picked up on the way to work. All of these things could very easily be dealt with by one of the three assistant managers, and letting them deal with problems rather than sorting it out himself was not only less stressful for Phuti, but was also a way of encouraging staff. If you were an assistant manager then what you really wanted was the chance to manage, and if the real manager was around you might feel inhibited from managing. By arriving late, he felt, the assistant managers would have an hour or so during which they could manage. Of course there were limits to this approach: if it were left to assistant managers, they would suggest that you arrived late in the afternoon, or even not at all, thus giving them all day to give orders and make decisions, leaving nothing for you to manage or decide yourself.

  So it was because of all this that Phuti’s day ran rather later than everybody else’s. And that meant that Mma Makutsi had more time to attend to the needs of their son, Itumelang Clovis Radiphuti, who was now six months old and not inclined to go to sleep until at least eight in the evening. The three or four hours that Mma Makutsi now spent with him after she returned from work in the late afternoon was, she felt, the most valuable time in her day – and his too. The woman whom they had engaged as nurse to Itumelang was completely trustworthy and had exceeded their expectations in every respect, but Mma Makutsi believed, as did most people, that there was no substitute for the attention of a mother. And Itumelang himself seemed to share this view, as his expression always became one of complete delight when he saw his mother come home at the end of the working day. And when she picked him up and held him to her he would make a strange, gurgling sound – a sound of unconcealed pleasure that Mma Ramotswe, when she witnessed it one day, had described as being like the purring of a cat.

  ‘You can tell that he is happy,’ she said to Mma Makutsi. ‘Listen. That is the noise that a cat makes when it has been fed and is happy with the world. He is purring, Mma. You have the only purring baby in Botswana.’

  ‘I am very happy that he purrs,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘Maybe that means he’s a little lion. When he grows up he will be brave and strong – like a lion.’

  Mma Ramotswe had laughed, but the comment had triggered a memory that came back to her now, none the less vivid for not having been thought about for years – since childhood, in fact. She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to fix the recollection in her mind before it vanished, as old thoughts can so easily do. For a few moments she was back in Mochudi, still a girl, sitting with her father’s cousin, who had helped bring her up, and the cousin had told her a story that she herself must have learned from her grandmother or an aunt or somebody of the generation that still stored all these traditional stories in some corner of their minds.

  ‘A lion,’ muttered Mma Ramotswe. ‘There was a story about that.’

  Mma Makutsi planted a kiss on Itumelang’s brow. ‘About a boy who was as brave as a lion? Like my Itumelang?’

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. ‘I was told it a long time ago by my daddy’s cousin. She was the one who helped him when I was a girl.’

  Mma Makutsi inclined her head respectfully. She knew about Mma Ramotswe’s early years. ‘After your mother became late?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘The cousin was older than my late daddy. She was like a grandmother to me.’

  ‘They are the ones for stories,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘They know all those stories about things that happened a long time ago – or did not happen.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if they did not happen,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘There are many stories about things that did not happen.’ She paused. ‘This one was about a girl who married a lion. She did not know it when she married him, but the young man she had chosen was really a lion. He looked like an ordinary man, but there was something about him…’

  ‘It would be the eyes,’ said Mma Makutsi, glancing anxiously at Itumelang’s eyes to reassure herself. ‘You can tell if somebody is really a lion by examining the eyes. Lions have eyes that are a bit yellow, Mma. They are like the colour of grass when there has been no rain for a while. Or sometimes they are the colour of the sand out in the Kalahari, which is also a sort of yellow colour.’

  ‘I think that what makes a lion’s eyes different from other eyes is their fierceness,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘There are other animals that have eyes that colour, but they are different. They are not fierce, like a lion’s eyes. They do not look at you in the same way – they do not make you wish you were somewhere else.’

  Mma Makutsi agreed. ‘But what about this girl?’ she asked. ‘How did she know he was a lion? Was it the eyes, do you think?’

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. ‘No, it was not the eyes. She did not say anything about his eyes; in fact, it was her brothers who noticed. It was the girl’s brothers.’