Precious and Grace

by Alexander McCall Smith

She reached for the envelope into which she had slipped Susan’s photograph. “There is this,” she said, laying it on the desk between them. “This is the photo of Mma Susan as a small girl. This lady is her nursemaid.”

  Charlie leaned over to examine the picture. “Then we can find her,” he said quickly. “We will show people this photo and say: ‘Who is this lady?’ ”

  He sat back, looking at Mma Ramotswe with the satisfaction of one who has made a brilliant suggestion. From behind him, though, came Mma Makutsi’s voice.

  “Done. Already done.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Mma Makutsi arranged an interview with her friend at the Botswana Daily News.”

  “And it will be in today’s edition,” said Mma Makutsi. “Phuti is going to buy a copy a bit later and drop it round.”

  Charlie looked crestfallen. Mma Ramotswe gave him a glance that conveyed a complicated message, the gist of which was that for all sorts of reasons he should congratulate Mma Makutsi on her fast footwork. Charlie, for all his young man’s impetuosity, was good at interpreting looks, and he complied.

  “That is very good, Mma Makutsi,” he said. “That will bring very good results—I’m sure of it.”

  Mma Makutsi basked in the compliment. “Thank you, Charlie. I hope so.” She paused, before adding, “And I am sure that you’ll be able to find that house. You’re good at those things, I think.”

  There, thought Mma Ramotswe. There. A kind word, a word of encouragement or admiration, could shift the heaviest, most recalcitrant baggage.

  “That photograph,” she continued, “shows a bit of the house, as you’ll see. There is its verandah, with its fly gauze, you see, and there are the drainpipes round the side leading to a water tank.”

  Charlie looked at the photo again. “That is one of those BHC houses,” he said.

  “It was built in the late nineteen-sixties or the early nineteen-seventies, then,” said Mma Ramotswe. The Botswana Housing Commission had done much of the building of Gaborone after independence in 1966, using designs that were common in early post-colonial Africa. These houses were for the new class of senior civil servants, local or expatriate, who guided the new state through its early years. They were also for the engineers and doctors, and others who brought their skills to the task of making a country out of a large slice of land that had, for the most part, lain relatively untouched.

  “So it would have been over near the old Mall,” said Charlie. “Or the Village.”

  The Village was the area that lay just across the Tlokweng Road from the agency’s office. Mma Ramotswe drove through it every day on her way to Zebra Drive and if the house were there, then she would expect to find it quickly. The problem, though, was that many of those earlier houses had been knocked down to make way for newer buildings—for blocks of flats in some cases, or for more prosperous homes. A number of the BHC houses remained, though, and with luck this would be one of them.

  “If it’s further in,” said Charlie, “then there’s less chance of it still being there. Those new parts of the hospital have taken up lots of land and those new flats too, the ones on Nyerere Drive, must have been built over places like that.”

  “That’s right.”

  He looked puzzled. “Doesn’t she remember roughly where it was? She would have known where the airstrip was in those days. She would have seen the planes. Was it near there?”

  “She thinks it was not far from the university,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But she can’t be sure which side of the university. She says that when she drove round the other day everything seemed to have shifted.”

  “There are many new roads,” said Charlie. “New roads can make a place look very different.”

  “So we start from scratch,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We go down every road. Unless…” She looked at the photograph once more. “Unless there’s something here that we’re missing.”

  “You mean some clue, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe picked up the photograph and scrutinised it. “What have we got? The lady herself? There’s nothing in her clothing that tells us anything.”

  Charlie, who had now left his chair to peer over her shoulder, agreed. “Nothing. Just ordinary clothes.”

  “And the verandah,” continued Mma Ramotswe. “Nothing there either. Just those fly screens.”

  Mma Ramotswe transferred her attention to the small area of yard that appeared in the photograph. There were aloes round the side of the verandah and then, in the background, the spreading branches of a large tree. Such trees were common in gardens in the older parts of town; where new building had been erected, they were sparser.

  “What sort of tree is that?” asked Charlie, touching the photograph with a forefinger.

  Mma Ramotswe saw that the leaves were just distinguishable. “Jacaranda,” she said.

  “There are lots of those,” said Charlie.

  Mma Ramotswe sighed. “I’m afraid so,” she said. “So we shall have to start driving round and round.”

  “I am very good at that, Mma. I can drive your van for you, if you like.”

  Mma Ramotswe hesitated. She normally drove herself, but she knew how much Charlie liked driving. He had no car of his own, of course, and so his only opportunities to drive had come with his work in the garage—now brought to an end for financial reasons—or his work with the agency.

  “Will you drive slowly?” she asked. “I know what you young men like to do.”

  “I will drive at walking pace, Mma. Slow, slow. We will be overtaken by bicycles.”

  Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Perhaps not that slowly,” she said. “All I ask is that you stick to the speed limits.”

  “I always do, Mma.”

  She looked at him incredulously, but he held her gaze.

  “Right, Charlie,” she said, rising from her chair. “Off we go. The investigation begins.”

  “And I think it will be over very soon,” said Charlie. “We will find this place, Mma. I have a feeling.”

  Mma Ramotswe was about to warn him about trusting feelings, but then she remembered two things. The first was that Clovis Andersen said that there were circumstances in which feelings were a useful pointer to certain information that could not be obtained through proper investigation, and the second, perhaps more persuasive, thing was that she herself trusted her feelings all the time. So instead of challenging Charlie’s hunch, she simply said, “Well, we’ll see,” which was incontrovertibly true, whichever way one looked at things.

  They set off in the white van, with Charlie driving in an exaggeratedly careful manner, slowing down at intersections to allow for thorough assessment of any approaching vehicles, frequently looking into the driver’s mirror to check for overtaking cars, and every so often glancing at Mma Ramotswe beside him to satisfy himself that she had noticed his caution.

  Mma Ramotswe suppressed a smile. “There’s such a thing as being overcautious, Charlie,” she said after a while. “A driver who goes too slowly can cause as many accidents as a driver who goes too fast, you know.”

  “I’m doing my best, Mma,” he muttered.

  “So you are, Charlie,” she said, reaching out to touch him lightly on the shoulder. “You’re a very thoughtful person, Rra.”

  Charlie beamed with delight. “You know, Mma Ramotswe, I’m not sure that I’ve said thank you to you—or said thank you enough. You are my mother, Mma. You are the lady who has saved everything for me. I will be your number one, big-time fan for my whole life, Mma—right up to the time that you become late.”

  “That is very reassuring, Charlie. I hope that I do not become late too soon.”

  He gasped. “Oh, I would not want that, Mma. I hope that you live to just over one hundred years. Maybe one hundred and one—something like that.”

  She had known several centenarians, and they had struck her as markedly content. One lived just outside Mochudi, and could be seen every morning, sitting in front of her daughter’s house, enjoying the sun, still exchanging good-natured ba
nter with passers-by. Another was a man who had served in the Second World War with the troops who had gone from the Bechuanaland Protectorate, as Botswana then was, to serve alongside the British in Italy, who had done so without question and without complaint, out of loyalty that today some might find naïve or misplaced, but had been for them something not to be questioned. People forgot about them, the African troops who had contributed to the defeat of evil, and that seemed to her to be so unjust, but then where would one end if one started to compose a list of the wrongs that this world had seen? Better perhaps, thought Mma Ramotswe, to make a list of those things that were right with the world, of people who had made life better for other people, or who had done what they had been called to do with honour and without complaint. Her list would start with the late Seretse Khama and would include Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu and Queen Elizabeth and President Carter, whom Mma Ramotswe had always admired. Then there was David Livingstone, and Moffat, his father-in-law, who had been such a friend of the Batswana and their language, and Mr. Gandhi…There were so many of these people, and one day she would update her list and see what new names should be added to it.

  “I’m not sure that I’ll live to one hundred,” she said. “But if I do, you’ll be over eighty, Charlie.”

  Charlie whistled. “I can’t see myself being that old, Mma.”

  “Neither can I, Charlie.” But for a moment she saw him in her mind’s eye, an eighty-year-old, relying on a walking stick, chasing an elderly woman along a road, amorous to the last.

  “Why are you smiling, Mma?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh, no reason, Charlie.” She pointed to a turning in the road ahead. “We should start there, Charlie. There are some old houses down there. We could look at them.”

  —

  IN THE OFFICE of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mma Makutsi had just received a copy of that day’s Botswana Daily News, delivered by Phuti’s driver from the Double Comfort Furniture Store. Pinned to the front was a note in Phuti’s handwriting drawing her attention to page six. A very good photograph, Grace! Phuti had written. And a first-class article.

  Fanwell looked over her shoulder as she opened the paper. Then, as she reached page six, he emitted a cry of delight. It was utterly unforced—a shout of joy.

  “There you are, Mma! The whole page, or almost.” They had both noticed the small news item beneath the main article, but now was not the time to bother with that.

  “What do you think of the photograph, Fanwell?” asked Mma Makutsi.

  “I think it is A1 excellent, Mma,” enthused Fanwell. “And look, your certificate comes out very well. You can see the ninety-seven per cent very clearly. See, you can read it without looking up close. Ninety-seven per cent.”

  “I’m very glad,” said Mma Makutsi. “For the college’s sake, of course—not for mine.”

  “And you look very beautiful, Mma. Any man reading the paper will be saying to himself, ‘This is a very beautiful lady, this detective lady.’ That’s what they’ll be saying, Mma—I’m not making it up.”

  Mma Makutsi giggled modestly. “Oh, I don’t think so, Fanwell.”

  She read out the entire article to Fanwell, who listened gravely. At the end, as she put the paper down on her desk, he said, “That will bring results, Mma.”

  “I hope so,” said Mma Makutsi. “I think that Mma Susan is rather a sad lady, you know. I think that it is very important for her to find what she is looking for.”

  Fanwell picked up the paper again. For a moment he was silent, and then he let out another cry.

  “Mma! Mma! Look at this other article. Same page as you. Oh, Mma…”

  He passed the newspaper to Mma Makutsi, who adjusted her glasses to read the smaller article at the bottom of the page. She read it out to Fanwell, who listened open-mouthed.

  Woman of the Year Nominations ran the headline. Five nominations have been received with the necessary number of signatures for the Woman of the Year Award. The two top-runners are both from Gaborone and both have successful business careers behind—and before—them. They are Ms. Gloria Poeteng, a senior client manager with the Standard Bank, a lady going places in the banking world, and Ms. Violet Sephotho, a business consultant, who has featured widely on radio and television and who is well known in Gaborone business and social circles. Don’t forget to cast your votes in this popular contest for the lady who will be chosen to represent the best in Botswana and southern Africa.

  Mma Makutsi dropped the paper. “Violet Sephotho!” she exclaimed.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Fanwell. “What will Mma Ramotswe say?”

  “She will have a heart attack,” said Mma Makutsi.

  “Oh, Mma, that will be very serious…”

  “Not a real one, Fanwell. There are heart attacks that are real and make you late, and heart attacks that are not real heart attacks but are big, big shocks. She’ll have that sort of heart attack, I think.”

  For Mma Makutsi, it was a blow on more than one level. It was bad enough hearing of Violet’s shortlisting, but what made it particularly hard to bear was the fact that it was on her page, right underneath her photograph. It spoiled everything and made it hard to imagine how she could show her article, as she had planned to do, to her friends.

  Fanwell sensed the problem. “Cut the other article out,” he said. “That way you won’t have to look at it.”

  Mma Makutsi approved of this suggestion, and reached for the scissors she kept in her top drawer. As she did so, the telephone rang, and she looked at it with annoyance. Abandoning her task, she picked up the receiver and answered, her irritation showing in her tone of voice. But that soon changed: it was Rosie—the first of the three Rosies who were to call the agency over the next hour.

  —

  THEIR PROGRESS WAS SLOW. As they drove down the roads that divided the Village into its fenced plots, scrutinising each for possible investigation, Mma Ramotswe realised just how much must have changed over the past few decades. Older houses were still there—shady bungalows tucked away among now well-established growths of shrubs and trees—but in many cases the generous yards that had surrounded these houses had been sub-divided, and newer houses been erected cheek by jowl with the older. The process had been a discreet one, like that of a river moving stones and mud banks, placing one here and one there, and then, with the next high water, moving a larger rock to rest among the smaller ones. You would not notice this going on if you saw it every day, but, after a while, the shape of things could be quite different from what it had been when you first walked by. That, thought Mma Ramotswe, was why Susan had been unable to find the place where she had lived. The house might still be there, exactly where it had been all those years ago, but the things around it could all be these new things, shifted about by the river of human activity.

  Charlie was impatient. “Maybe around this corner, Mma,” he said. “There are some old houses there. I have been past that way—I remember them.”

  She had explained to him about the patience required for investigative work, but she was not sure that he had understood.

  “You know what a painting is like, Charlie? You look at a painting and you see there are many strokes of the brush—tiny strokes. These little things make up the whole picture, but you need every one of those little strokes.”

  He had looked at her blankly, and she realised that he might never have looked at a picture. He saw photographs, of course—he understood those, but had he ever looked at a picture that some human hand had painstakingly painted?

  “A building, Charlie,” she had said. “Think of bricks. You need lots and lots of bricks to make a building.”

  Charlie’s blank expression turned into a wry smile. “Oh, I know that, Mma. You need a lot of bricks to make a building. But what’s that got to do with investigations?”

  “It’s the same thing, Charlie. You have to make the whole thing with lots of small things. So when you want to know the whole story of whatever it is yo
u want to know about…”

  “The whole story? What happened in the beginning?”

  “Yes. And why it happened, and what happened next—then you need to know all the facts. And these facts might be very small. And they might seem to have nothing to do with the main question, but they can be very important.” She paused. “And all of that, Charlie, requires patience.”

  “I know that, Mma. You don’t need to tell me.”

  And now, sitting in the van with Charlie, who was looking ahead of them and not really paying much attention to where they currently were, she reflected on the possibility that young men were a completely alien breed, and that however much you tried to get them to see things the way you saw them, you were destined to fail. And that perhaps part of the secret of leading a life in which you would not always be worrying about things, or complaining about them, was to accept that there were people who just saw things differently from you and always would. Once you understood that, then you could accept the people themselves as they were and not try to change them. What was even more important, perhaps, was that you could love those people who looked at things so differently, because you realised that they were not trying to make life hard for you by being what they were, but were simply doing their best. Then, when you started to love them, love would do the work that it always did and it would begin to transform them and then they would end up seeing things in the same way that you did.

  She told Charlie to stop.

  “Where, Mma?” he asked as he pulled over. “That place over there?”

  She pointed to a gate off the road a few yards ahead of them. “Look at that house, Charlie. See it?”

  The short driveway behind the gate was largely obscured by trees that had been allowed to grow unrestrained. There were a couple of acacia trees, a bottlebrush tree with its red, feathery flowers, and a number of flame trees, with their elongated seed pods like desiccated flat loaves. Beyond that, only its roof visible from the road, was a house. From the style of the roof, which was of corrugated tin, it was clear that the house was an older one.

  “Do you see the big tree?” asked Mma Ramotswe.