To the Land of Long Lost Friends

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mma Ramotswe agreed. “I’m sure that is right, Mma.”

  “And the same goes for other things,” went on Mma Makutsi. “Hooks are the answer.”

  Mma Ramotswe had a momentary vision of Mma Makutsi’s house covered in hooks. Even her baby, Itumelang, would be suspended in a basket from a hook; and Phuti would have a hook too, a large, solid one, from which he would dangle by his collar, awaiting instructions from his wife.

  Unware of this vision, of course, Mma Makutsi continued to expound on the merits of hooks. “It’s a good idea to have hooks for men’s clothes, in my view. You know how untidy they are, Mma. You know how they leave their things lying around on the floor.”

  Mma Ramotswe, in spite of her commitment to fairness, had to agree. Men were very untidy, for the most part. They could not help it, she knew, and one could not blame them for it, as neither could they help being men. It was just the way things were.

  “You’re right about clothes on the floor, Mma Makutsi,” she said, a tinge of resignation in her voice. “I’m always picking up clothes. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni does it, and so does Puso. They just leave them on the floor. And then…” She remembered something with a shudder. “It can be dangerous too. Puso left his trousers on the floor one night and the next morning, when he put them on, a scorpion was hiding in one of the legs.”

  Mma Makutsi winced. “That would have been very sore, Mma.”

  “It was,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Those creatures give a very bad sting. Very bad.”

  Mma Makutsi winced again. “Ow!”

  “He yelled and yelled,” Mma Ramotswe continued. “Poor little boy.”

  “If he had put the trousers up on a hook, then it would not have happened.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. “No, it would not.” She decided to change the subject. Hooks were useful, but there was a limit to what one could say about them. “That was a good wedding, I think, Mma. We enjoyed it.”

  “A very good wedding,” Mma Makutsi agreed. “Unfortunately, Phuti developed a headache and we didn’t stay all that long. It was being out in the sun, you see. He doesn’t like that very much and it gives him a headache sometimes. The sun makes the brain swell and then it presses on the skull, which cannot expand very much, if at all.”

  She looked at Mma Ramotswe while she continued to polish the lenses of her spectacles. “The skull is the same size all the time,” she said. “Once you’re fully grown, your head doesn’t get any bigger. Even if you become quite fat, Mma—even then. Your body gets bigger, but your head stays the same size.”

  “I think I know that, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You don’t hear many people say, ‘Oh, my head is getting so big, I must go on a diet.’ ”

  Mma Makutsi put on her spectacles. “That’s true. And there’s another thing I’ve thought about, Mma, and that is the relationship between the size of the head and intelligence. You’d think there’d be a connection, wouldn’t you?”

  Mma Ramotswe was doubtful. Any such connection would be far too obvious, she thought, and one thing she had learned in her profession was that that which is obvious frequently turns out to be false. Except sometimes, of course, as Clovis Andersen himself pointed out in The Principles of Private Detection. He advised his readers to look at the most likely possibilities first because a cunning malefactor might assume—incorrectly, it was to be hoped—that the obvious solution would be discounted in any search or enquiry. If I were a thief trying to conceal the things I had stolen, he wrote, I would put them behind a door marked “Storeroom for Stolen Items.” That would be the safest place, as everybody would think that was far too obvious. People would look everywhere but behind that door. It is all a question of psychology.

  Mma Makutsi recalled one of the instructors at the Botswana Secretarial College. “I remember one of my professors…,” she began.

  Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. She had heard Mma Makutsi refer to her teachers as professors, but it was completely unjustified. Whatever the merits of the Botswana Secretarial College might be, it was still just that—a secretarial college. It was not a branch of the University of Botswana, as were places like the Botswana College of Agriculture. It did not award degrees, and its staff were definitely not professors.

  When she first heard mention of these so-called professors, she had felt inclined to stop Mma Makutsi and say, “But who are these professors, Mma? I didn’t know that the Botswana Secretarial College was part of the University of Botswana, where all the professors work. This is very interesting news, Mma.” She had not said this, though; kindness prevented her, as it always did. If Mma Makutsi wanted to promote her teachers in this way, then there was no real reason why she should not do so. It evidently gave her pleasure to think of her instructors in these terms, and it was a harmless enough promotion. The real professors, those erudite men and women at the University of Botswana who knew so much about such a wide range of subjects, might perhaps object if they heard of it, but even they would turn a blind eye, she imagined, to this innocent piece of wishful thinking.

  “This professor,” Mma Makutsi continued, “taught us book-keeping. He was not very tall—normal height, I think, for a man—but he was very well built. In fact, Mma, he was a bit round in shape, a bit like a pumpkin, you know.”

  Mma Ramotswe listened. Mma Makutsi had a habit of referring to fruit and vegetables when describing people. She had recently referred to a man as being “banana-shaped,” and indeed, when Mma Ramotswe saw the person in question, she could see what she meant. The man in question did have a curve to his back, with the result that the tip of his nose lined up with his toes; but the front of his stomach was some inches behind both of those points. And then there had been a man she referred to as having a face “a bit like a cauliflower,” a description that, once again, seemed strikingly accurate, even if it was, Mma Ramotswe felt, somewhat unkind. Of course, such terms could not be used publicly, for fear of giving offence: the police, for example, could not issue them in their descriptions of wanted persons—We are looking for a tall, string-bean-shaped man—helpful though such descriptions might be.

  “So, he looked like a pumpkin?” Mma Ramotswe prompted.

  “Yes, he did,” came the reply. But then Mma Makutsi frowned. “I don’t want to sound disrespectful, Mma. I would never be rude about my professors.”

  “Of course not.” And Mma Ramotswe knew that Mma Makutsi meant that. That college, for all she went on about it, and for all Mma Ramotswe was fed up with hearing of it, had given Mma Makutsi everything. It meant the world to her, and there was nothing wrong with that. A good teacher could mean the world.

  Mma Makutsi gazed out of the window. “I’m not saying that he was altogether like a pumpkin, Mma. If you saw him standing next to a pumpkin, you’d be able to tell the difference, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You wouldn’t make that mistake easily.”

  “Anyway, that was his general shape, but when it came to his head…” Mma Makutsi brought her gaze back into the room. “Oh, Mma, it was very, very small. You really had to strain to see it at all.”

  “Surely not. Surely…”

  “No, Mma Ramotswe, I am not exaggerating. It was that small—it really was. The ears were quite big, though. You saw those easily enough. But the head…ow, it was tiny. Yet—and this is the amazing thing, Mma—and yet he knew just about everything. That tiny head was full of information about everything you wanted to know. It was all there. And not just book-keeping—there was a lot of book-keeping in his head, but other things too. History of Botswana—it was there. Geography—names of rivers, foreign places, North Pole, height of Kilimanjaro—it was all there. He could tell you.”

  “Kilimanjaro,” mused Mma Ramotswe. “When I was a young girl I saw a picture of Kilimanjaro in a book. I wanted to go there. I said to my auntie who was looking after me at the time, I want to go to a very hi
gh hill called Kilimanjaro, and she said, We cannot go today, I am too busy. I remember my disappointment, because when you are a child you want to do everything immediately, don’t you? Now-now. You don’t want to wait because at that age you think that even tomorrow is a very long time away.”

  “That is true, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “So if you asked this professor how high Kilimanjaro was, he’d say…” She trailed off.

  “What would he say, Mma?”

  “He would give you the height,” Mma Makutsi said quickly.

  She doesn’t know, thought Mma Ramotswe. But then she thought, Neither do I.

  Mma Makutsi returned to headaches. “That is why Phuti got a headache.” She paused. “The heat must have made his brain expand until it hit the side of his head. We didn’t have an awning, Mma. We were outside people, you see.”

  She looked reproachfully at Mma Ramotswe, as if the lack of an awning had been her fault. Mma Ramotswe, impervious to this, rose to her feet. “I have made tea, Mma,” she said. “Let me pour you a cup.”

  While they drank their tea, Mma Ramotswe told Mma Makutsi about the meeting with Calviniah, and the shock of recognition that had preceded it. Mma Makutsi listened intently. “Newspapers,” she muttered at the end, shaking her head. “They should be more careful.”

  * * *

  —

  CHARLIE ARRIVED TEN MINUTES LATER, while they were still drinking their tea and Mma Ramotswe was reminiscing about her early friendship with Calviniah. Charlie was now dividing his time between the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s business, which adjoined the agency office. Neither was in a position to pay him a full wage, but, put together, the two jobs came up with just enough. On Mma Ramotswe’s side of the arrangement, Charlie probably did not generate sufficient fee income to justify his being employed at all, but she had nonetheless taken him on out of sympathy when Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had been obliged to retrench. Nothing specific had been said about his status: in her eyes, he was a general assistant, not quite an office helper, but close to it, one whose responsibilities included anything that needed doing at the time, from collecting the mail to taking part in the less skilled parts of an investigation. For all his impetuosity, Charlie was an observer, and noticed details that others might miss. On several occasions, too, he had shown a talent for surveillance, standing on street corners without being noticed, or following a suspected errant husband into a bar without attracting suspicion. That he would eventually make a competent detective she was in no doubt, although she was not sure when that would be. If Charlie was lacking anything, she felt, it was judgement, and that was something that only came with time.

  Mma Makutsi had a different view of the situation. Her relationship with Charlie had not been easy, at least to begin with, although it had improved greatly in recent times. The two were fond of one another—in an odd sort of way, observed Mma Ramotswe; Charlie had recently come across the word chutzpah, and had decided that Mma Makutsi was the embodiment of that particular quality. If only she would stop boasting about her ninety-seven per cent, he thought. That was achieved ages ago, and you’d think she would have something else to talk about. And if only she would stop challenging the views he expressed on just about any subject. If that happened, then there would be nothing to take exception to in her. Indeed, he would go further, and say that he could imagine rather enjoying her feisty company.

  Mma Makutsi was happy enough to have Charlie working in the office—provided he remembered that he was not to describe himself as an assistant detective. She had heard him doing that over the telephone one day, and she had shouted out from the other side of the room, “Excuse me, not assistant detective, if you don’t mind. Office assistant, please.” She accepted that he might one day be able to shoulder wider responsibilities, but that day, she emphasised, was yet to come.

  “Charlie is still just a boy,” she said to Mma Ramotswe. “He may be twenty-whatever, but there are many men who are still boys until they are in the early thirties, and beyond. In some cases, they remain boys until they are very old. They become old boys. I’m not saying that Charlie is that sort of man, all I am saying is that he has a bit more growing up to do.”

  Now, coming into the office on a day that would see him working with Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi rather than with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and Fanwell, the junior mechanic, Charlie poured himself a mug of tea and perched on one of Mma Makutsi’s filing cabinets while he drank it.

  “So, you ladies went to a wedding on Saturday. How did it go?”

  “Very well, thank you, Charlie,” Mma Ramotswe replied. “There were many people there.”

  “There always are at weddings,” said Charlie. “Not that I go to many myself.”

  “Are your friends not settling down yet?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Maybe you should set them an example. Maybe you should marry that girlfriend of yours. What’s she called? Queenie-Queenie?”

  Charlie nodded. “That’s her name, Mma.”

  “Strange name,” mused Mma Makutsi. “Why would anybody want to be called Queenie-Queenie?, I ask myself. Still, there’s no accounting for taste.”

  “It’s a very nice name,” said Charlie loyally.

  “There is nothing wrong with it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The important thing about a name is that the person who has that name should like it.”

  “Well, she does like it, Mma,” said Charlie. “And so do I.” He paused. “And you say I should marry her, Mma Makutsi. Well, maybe I will. What if I told you we are unofficially engaged.”

  This was greeted with complete silence. Mma Makutsi and Mma Ramotswe glanced at one another. Then Mma Ramotswe said, “And if you did tell us that, Charlie, would it be true?”

  Charlie, sipping on his tea, seemed to bask in their attention. “You could say so, Mma.”

  For a moment the two women were silent. Charlie smiled with all the satisfaction of one who has dropped a bombshell. Then Mma Ramotswe clapped her hands together. “That is very good news, Charlie,” she said. “You will both be very happy, I’m sure.”

  Charlie acknowledged the sentiments with a small bow. He looked across the room at Mma Makutsi, clearly waiting for her to follow Mma Ramotswe’s lead.

  “Yes,” said Mma Makutsi, a note of reluctance in her voice. “This is very good news.” She paused before continuing, “But what is the difference between being officially engaged and being unofficially engaged? Can you tell me, Rra?”

  Charlie finished his tea and placed his mug down on the filing cabinet. “There are many differences,” he began. “If you are unofficially engaged—”

  Mma Makutsi interrupted him. “There is no ring?”

  “That is one difference,” said Charlie. “If you have a ring, then everybody will know. Most people don’t know if it’s unofficial.”

  “Does she know?” asked Mma Makutsi. “Does Queenie-Queenie know?”

  Charlie looked hurt. “Of course she knows, Mma. She is my fiancée. How could a fiancée not know that she was engaged?”

  Mma Makutsi laughed. “Oh, I can think of many cases of that. I can think of cases where a man thinks that the woman has said that she will marry him, but she hasn’t agreed at all. Maybe she said yes when he asked her to go to the cinema with him or something like that. And then he thinks, She’s said yes! She’s going to marry me. Such a man can be very stupid.”

  Charlie looked defiant. “And women too, Mma Makutsi? What about women? You’re always going on about men being stupid and thinking all sorts of things, but what about women? There are many stupid women too, you know—not just stupid men. There are stupid men and stupid women. Lots of them, if you ask me, all over the place, even Bobonong…”

  Mma Ramotswe knew at once that sensitive territory was being entered. Mma Makutsi came from Bobonong, and would not hear a word against it. She gave Charli
e a look of discouragement, hoping that he would not say anything more about Bobonong, or indeed about anything very much.

  But it was too late. “Bobonong?” Mma Makutsi challenged. “Are you saying that people from Bobonong are stupid? Is that what you’re saying, Charlie?”

  Charlie was a picture of injured innocence. “Certainly not, Mma. I would never say that. I am just saying that there are stupid people everywhere. That’s all. But I was also saying that people shouldn’t pick just on men. There are many ladies who do that, Mma Makutsi. They think that they can be rude about men, but when a man is rude about women, then big trouble for him. Big, big trouble these days. Too much. Bang! That man’s finished. End of story. Gone. Big-time.”

  Mma Ramotswe decided to steer the conversation away from these difficult waters. “I am very happy for you, Charlie. It is very good news that you and Queenie-Queenie will be getting married. You will be a very good husband, I think.”

  She looked pointedly at Mma Makutsi, who knew what the look meant. Yet it took a few moments before Mma Makutsi said, “Yes, congratulations, Charlie. This is a very good bit of news—just as Mma Ramotswe has said.”

  “Thank you,” said Charlie, beaming with pleasure.

  “When will you get married?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  Charlie’s face fell. “Not very soon. I’d like to get married tomorrow, if I could. But Queenie-Queenie’s uncle…”

  Mma Ramotswe gave an involuntary groan. Uncles. This was the bride-price negotiations, often carried out by an uncle or other relative. Queenie-Queenie came from a well-off family—Mma Ramotswe had already heard about her father’s fleet of trucks—and that meant Charlie would be expected to come up with a considerable sum for the bogadi, the bridal payment. Sometimes, in modern circles, that was unnecessary, but when it was necessary, then, as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sometimes said of a crucial engine part, it was three hundred per cent necessary.