Precious and Grace

by Alexander McCall Smith

  But how could she say “when we set up the agency…”? I set up the agency, Mma Ramotswe thought, and although I don’t expect credit, nor would I ever fish for compliments, the simple historical truth was that Mma Makutsi had come to ask for her job after the agency had been established. And she was in those days a secretary in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Secretaries had promoted themselves to something different these days and it seemed as if there were no secretaries any more. Mma Ramotswe was not one of those people who believed in holding people back—anything but—yet she felt that there was a role for secretaries, and it was a good and honourable one, and she did not see why people should be so keen to stop being a secretary and become something else.

  “We’ve expanded,” went on Mma Makutsi. “To begin with it was just me and the other lady, but we were so busy that I thought we needed a bit of help. So we have a very charming man—a Mr. Polopetsi—who is a very scientific man, Mma, and he brought all those skills. And we have an office boy, Charlie, who is off on some errand at present…”

  Office boy! Mma Ramotswe bit her lip. Charlie would be incensed by that description. He was, of course, very junior, but he still regarded himself as being a sort of apprentice detective, and to hear Mma Makutsi refer to him as an office boy would cause him immense distress. And as for describing her as “the other lady,” that was going just a little bit too far.

  Mma Ramotswe reached for the door handle once more but again was stopped by what she heard.

  “So you see, Mma,” Mma Makutsi was saying, “I am just the person to take on this enquiry of yours.”

  She pushed the door open to see Mma Makutsi seated at her desk, with the client, a tall woman with long blonde hair, seated in the client’s chair in front of her. Each had a cup of tea in front of her.

  “Ah,” said Mma Ramotswe, as briskly as she could. “You are already here. And I see that Mma Makutsi has been—”

  Mma Makutsi did not let her finish. “This is Mma Ramotswe, Mma,” she said. “She is back now.”

  The woman turned in her seat to greet Mma Ramotswe. Mma Ramotswe lowered her gaze in politeness; it was rude to stare, something that people from other cultures simply did not understand. They told their young children to look at old people when they spoke to them, but they did not do this in order to be rude—they simply did not know that a young person should not stare at a more senior person as if to issue a challenge.

  Her initial glance had enabled her to form an impression of their client, who now introduced herself as Susan Peters. She noticed the pleasant, open expression—a face devoid of guile or suspicion; she noticed the carefully ironed blouse and the thin-banded gold watch on her wrist; she noticed the small lines around the eyes, which were lines, she thought, of sadness, of sorrow.

  Mma Makutsi was getting up from Mma Ramotswe’s desk. “You sit down at your desk, Mma,” Mma Makutsi said. “I will get you some tea.”

  It was a peace offering, an apology for the unlawful occupation of the desk, and Mma Ramotswe smiled graciously as she took her rightful place. Perhaps she had been hard on Mma Makutsi; perhaps she should not resent her assistant claiming a bit of glory in her account of the agency’s history. After all, every one of us wanted to feel important in some sense, and if we occasionally overstated the significance of the role we played in this life, then that, surely, was understandable and should not be held too much against us.

  Mma Ramotswe decided to make everything clear. “I am the manager,” she told the blonde lady. “But Mma Makutsi and I work very closely together.”

  Susan looked at her hands. “I see.”

  “So perhaps you might tell me what it is that brings you to Botswana, Miss Peters.”

  Susan looked up. “Please call me Susan.”

  “If you wish, Mma. It is a fine name, that one.”

  Susan smiled. “It started a long time ago, Mma.”

  “Most problems start a long time ago,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There are hardly any that began yesterday.”

  “I’m not saying I have a problem,” said Susan. “It’s more of…”

  They waited.

  “A doubt?” suggested Mma Ramotswe.

  “It is a doubt, or an…an area of ignorance. It’s to do with piecing together bits of the past.”

  “So that you know what happened?” suggested Mma Makutsi.

  “Maybe,” said Susan.

  “You should tell us, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Starting at the beginning.”

  “The beginning,” said Susan, “was thirty-five years ago. That, Bomma, was when I was born.”

  Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi exchanged a glance. The use of the correct Setswana plural, bomma, for two women was a sign that this was a woman with more than a passing knowledge of Botswana. Few outsiders spoke the language, and even those who spent years in the country might never progress much beyond the basic greetings.

  “You see, I was born here.”

  Mma Ramotswe smiled. “You are a Motswana, then, Mma.”

  It was a compliment, and Susan responded warmly. “You’re very kind, Mma.” She knew, though, that it was impossible; one might be a paper Motswana—there were plenty of people who were eligible for various African nationalities, but one could never become the real thing. It simply did not work that way. Citizenship and membership were different things, whatever the law might say. Mma Ramotswe understood that; she did not like it, but she understood it.

  Susan continued. “I was never a citizen, though, Mma. I didn’t have the right, as my parents were foreigners—working in the country when I was born. They were Canadians, you see. My father was a doctor and my mother was a teacher. He worked out at Molepolole for five years and then they came into Gaborone. He worked for the people who run those medical planes—you know the ones, Mma, the ones that go out to the very remote clinics—that set-up.”

  “I know the people,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They were like Dr. Merriweather’s mission, but different.”

  “That’s right, Mma. He worked with them and my mother taught at a small school near the old prison.”

  Mma Ramotswe waited for her to continue. She was remembering what Gaborone had been like in those days of greater intimacy. She thought of it as the quiet time; the time before the world suddenly became busier and noisier. The time of cattle; the time of bicycles rather than cars; the time when the arrival of the day’s single plane was an event; the time of politeness and courtesy.

  It was as if Susan had heard her thoughts. “Gaborone was a different place then,” she said wistfully.

  This was the signal for Mma Makutsi to join in; she had said very little since Mma Ramotswe had returned. “The whole world was different in those days, Mma. Up in Bobonong it was different. Down here it was different. None of this rush, rush, rush.”

  Mma Ramotswe saw the flashing light from Mma Makutsi’s spectacles. “No, people walked more slowly in those days.”

  “They certainly did,” said Mma Makutsi. “If you look at people today, their legs go fast, fast—just like a pair of scissors. We did not walk like that in the old days.”

  Susan nodded. “I’m not sure why people are in such a hurry. I live in Toronto now and—”

  “Oh, they must walk very fast in Toronto,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “That will be one of the worst places for walking fast. That and Johannesburg, where they are always running to get from one place to another.” She paused, and then shook her head. “But Toronto…”

  She did not finish, and Susan looked at her with some puzzlement. “Toronto is a nice place in other respects, of course…”

  “I am not saying it is not a nice place,” said Mma Makutsi. “I am just saying that they walk very fast there. I have seen a film of that. They were walking very fast in the film.”

  “I think you should continue,” said Mma Ramotswe. “So you were born out in Molepolole, Mma?”

  “Yes. I actually don’t remember Molepolole very well because I was only four when we
left and came into town. I think I have a memory or two of the place; I remember a garden with a tall rubber hedge—you know those hedges with the white sap that comes out if you break off a piece? I think I remember that. And I remember sitting on a verandah, which must have been at my parents’ house out there. Apart from that, my early memories are of this place—of Gaborone.”

  Mma Ramotswe made a note on the pad of paper before her. Early life, she wrote. Gaborone.

  “We stayed here until I was eight. Then we left.”

  “Why was that, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “My father was paid by the Canadian government,” said Susan. “It was a funded project and the money was given to something else. Aid people are always doing that—they support something for a while, and then it’s somebody else’s turn. It’s fair enough, I suppose. And anyway, his work was to do with tuberculosis, and they had made such good progress with treating TB that they probably wanted to spend their funds on something else. So it was time for us to go back to Canada—except in my case I hardly knew Canada. I had been there twice, I think—just for holidays on my grandmother’s farm in Ontario. I didn’t know the place otherwise. It was meant to be home, but it wasn’t really.

  “So leaving Botswana was like leaving my real home—the place I’d grown up in, the first place I knew, the place that was so familiar to me.” She paused. “I remember it very well—the day we left. We had to drive over the border to get the plane from Johannesburg. I remember being in floods of tears because I was leaving my friends. It’s like that for children, isn’t it? Leaving friends is a very big wrench for them. It seems that you’re losing everything. You don’t believe your parents when they say you’ll make new friends—you will never make any more friends, you think. It’s like saying goodbye to the whole world.”

  Mma Makutsi made a sympathetic noise. “Oh, I know what that’s like, Mma. I know that very well.”

  “I’m sure you do,” said Susan.

  “I remember when I left Bobonong,” Mma Makutsi went on. “I came down here to go to the Botswana Secretarial College, you know, Mma—I graduated from that place, you see.”

  Mma Makutsi’s eyes went to the wall where her framed certificate from the Botswana Secretarial College hung in pride of place.

  Susan followed her gaze. “That’s your certificate up there, Mma?” she asked politely.

  “As a matter of fact, it is,” said Mma Makutsi, her voice dropping in modesty.

  “Ninety-seven per cent,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Mma Makutsi was their most distinguished graduate, you see. Ninety-seven per cent. That grade has never been…” She stopped. There had been that talk of somebody since then getting ninety-eight per cent, but now was not the time to mention that.

  Mma Ramotswe decided to steer the conversation back to the client. Mma Makutsi, she had noticed, had a tendency to introduce her own agenda into a discussion, and although this was sometimes interesting, it could make it difficult for the business in hand to be transacted.

  “So, Mma,” she said. “You went off to live in Canada?”

  Susan nodded. “Yes, we went to a place called Saskatoon. My father had trained with a person who ran a hospital there, and she offered him a job. My mother was not too keen, as she did not know that part of Canada and thought that it was too far away from anywhere else. It’s a very big country, Canada, and the distances can be—”

  “Very big,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “Canada is a very big place.”

  “That’s what the lady has just said,” observed Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Makutsi seemed indifferent to the censure. “I’ve looked at maps,” she went on, “and, oh my, there is so much space there. It goes on and on, just like the Kalahari, but even bigger. No lions, of course.”

  Susan laughed. “No lions. At least not the sort of lions you have here.”

  Mma Makutsi looked interested. “You have other lions in Canada, Mma?”

  “There are mountain lions in the Rockies,” said Susan. “They’re big cats, all right. They’re called cougars.”

  “That is very interesting, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “Are they smaller than the lions we get here? More like leopards?”

  “They’re certainly smaller,” said Susan. “I’ve never actually seen one, as it happens. I believe they’re rather secretive creatures.”

  “And would they attack a person?” asked Mma Makutsi.

  “They might. There certainly have been cases of people being killed by mountain lions. Mauled, I suppose.”

  “That is very bad,” said Mma Makutsi.

  “Yes,” said Susan. “It’s very sad.”

  Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. “I think perhaps we should—”

  “Of course there are many bears in Canada, aren’t there?” said Mma Makutsi. “You have that very big sort of bear…”

  “The grizzly. Yes, we have those. Once again, those tend to be up in the mountains. You won’t get those down where most people live.”

  Mma Makutsi had more to say. “They say that most of these cases where people are attacked by bears—and other animals—happen when the person has surprised the animal, when they have given it a shock.” She paused, but not long enough for Mma Ramotswe to get the conversation back on track. “That is often the case with snakes, you know, Mma Susan.”

  “I can well believe it,” said Susan. “We used to get snakes coming into the house sometimes when we lived here in Gaborone. I distinctly remember it.”

  “Oh, that is very common, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “But when you meet a snake in the bush—when you’re walking, for instance—it’s often because you are walking too softly. You have to take firm footsteps so that the snake feels the vibration in the ground. That way it has a warning and it gets out of your way.”

  Mma Ramotswe tried again. “I think we should talk about snakes some other time, Mma Makutsi. Mma Susan was telling us—”

  “I was not the one who raised this subject,” protested Mma Makutsi.

  Mma Ramotswe was placatory. “It’s not a question of who started what,” she said. “It’s just that we need to hear what Mma Susan has to tell us.”

  Mma Makutsi sniffed. “I am listening, Mma Ramotswe. I have been listening all along.”

  Susan made light of it. “I’m happy to talk about snakes,” she said. “I love talking about anything to do with Botswana—even snakes.”

  “There,” said Mma Makutsi, glancing at Mma Ramotswe.

  There was a brief silence before Susan continued. “You can imagine what a shock it was for me,” she said. “We went straight up to Saskatoon after we came back to Canada—and it was the beginning of winter. My visits to Canada before that had all been in the summer and I had never seen snow before. I couldn’t believe that such cold could exist—that unremitting, merciless cold of the Canadian winter. My parents told me that I would get used to it and that there were all sorts of things you could do in the winter—skating, snow-shoeing, and so on. But I think I must have been in a state of shock—I just sat at the window and gazed out on the white landscape, wondering how it could ever be warm again.

  “And it wasn’t just the cold. I felt that all the colour had been drained from my world: I felt surrounded by people who were somehow lonely—quiet people who were frightened to smile and laugh. I felt as if I was in the presence of ghosts. Botswana—Africa—had been full of life; now my life seemed to be full of silence. A silent sky; silent people; a sense of emptiness. You do know, Bomma, that people in Canada talk about feeling solitude? They sometimes call it a country of solitudes.”

  Mma Makutsi removed her glasses and polished them. “People in Botswana can be lonely too,” she said. “And quiet as well. We aren’t noisy people like some of those people over the border. Those Zulu people, for instance…”

  “I know that,” said Susan. “Canada is not really like the way I felt it was. The problem was inside me, not in Canada. The Canadians are good people; in fact, I think there are many similaritie
s between Batswana and Canadians…but there are many differences too, and it was the differences that I felt when I went to live there as a young girl.”

  “Your heart had been left behind,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not uncommon—many people who leave Africa feel that way.”

  “Yes,” said Susan simply. “My heart stayed here. I went off with my parents, but my heart stayed here.”

  “But it would not have lasted forever, surely,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  Susan looked up; she held Mma Ramotswe’s gaze. “It did last,” she said slowly. “I never got over it. Never.”

  “You felt homesick for Africa?” asked Mma Makutsi.

  Susan nodded. “I did. I expected to forget it, but I didn’t. Even when…”

  She broke off. Mma Ramotswe waited.

  “Yes, Mma? Even when?”

  Susan did not answer directly. “I had something happen to me, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. She had been in this exact place before—and on more than one occasion. She had sat with a client, with Mma Makutsi at her desk behind her, and been told about some dark thing that had happened, and that could ruin the life of the one to whom it had happened. It was horribly, painfully familiar.

  “I am very sorry, my sister,” she whispered. “You do not need to talk about it. Not now. You can tell me later, if you wish.”

  Susan looked up, seemingly surprised by the gravity of Mma Ramotswe’s words. “But it happens to most people, Mma,” she said. “Most people fall in love, don’t they?”

  Mma Ramotswe stared at Susan uncomprehendingly. “But, Mma, I don’t see…”

  Susan smiled. “I’m sorry, Mma, I’ve confused matters. You see, all I meant was that my…well, I call it my Africa sickness, was very strong, and lasted even when something very important took over my life. That was all.”

  “I see…and that other thing was falling in love with somebody?”