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

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She looked down at what she had written. There was something that needed to be added.

  There is one condition, Charlie, and it is an important one. You will be working with me and with Mma Makutsi. That means that you will have to be polite to Mma Makutsi, and you must not be rude to her, as you sometimes have been. She is now your boss – along with me, of course – and that means that you must do as she says, with no backchat. I am sure you will be able to agree to this as I have always thought that you were a sensible young man, even if not everybody has agreed with me about that. And she thought: Mma Makutsi, first and foremost, but naturally she did not write that down.

  She stopped, and then signed her name: Mma Ramotswe. She read through the letter once again, pausing over the final sentence. What she had written was undoubtedly true, but there were situations, she felt, in which it was perhaps best not to tell the whole truth. This, she decided, was one of those, and so she crossed out the final words about the views of others. She hoped that her crossing-out was sufficient to obscure what she had written, but the thought occurred to her that it would not be too hard to work out what words lay beneath – and if Charlie were to be a detective, even for eight months, then he should be able to do that without much difficulty.

  Chapter Eight

  Where Fashionable People Go

  Two things of note happened the next day. Both of these developments involved Mma Makutsi, and one was positive, while the other was negative. The positive thing concerned the Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café; the negative involved a disagreement between Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi. It was not the first disagreement they had had, but it was certainly one of the most serious, and although Mma Ramotswe disliked confrontations of any sort, this dispute turned on something that would have had to be settled sooner or later. As the late Obed Ramotswe had said, in one of his observations that so neatly encapsulated some truth about the world, ‘When you don’t talk about something, then something will talk about itself for you.’ When, as a girl, she had first heard him say this, Mma Ramotswe had had no idea of what he meant; at the time, it seemed to her that this was one of those nonsensical things that people sometimes said because they liked the sound of the words, even if they had no inkling what the words meant.

  Mma Makutsi did not get into the agency before half past twelve that day – in time to take her lunch break, which started fifteen minutes after her arrival. Her day had begun much earlier than that, though, with a series of meetings at the premises of the Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café. There was still very little furniture there – no more than the table and four chairs Phuti had delivered from the Double Comfort Furniture Store – but this was enough to allow Mma Makutsi to conduct both her important meetings of the day, the first of which was with the builder who was to fit the new kitchen and decorate the whole building according to the scheme that Mma Makutsi had alighted upon. This involved the liberal use of greens and browns – the greens representing the trees of Botswana and the browns the colour of the Kalahari. ‘This will make people feel at home,’ she said. ‘It will be very calming.’

  The builder nodded, but did not pay much attention to issues of decoration. ‘The painter will do whatever you ask him,’ he said. ‘He will not argue with you, Mma.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘You don’t argue with the people who are paying you, do you?’

  The builder looked at her guardedly. ‘Not in general,’ he said. ‘But there are some cases, Mma, where people ask you to do things that simply aren’t possible. If you did what they asked you, the building would fall down.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to do anything like that, Rra.’

  The builder glanced at the plan that Mma Makutsi had sketched out on a piece of paper. ‘There’s one thing, Mma,’ he said hesitantly. ‘If we lay things out like this, there will be no wall between the kitchen and the dining area. I’m concerned about that, Mma – just a little concerned.’

  Mma Makutsi looked down at her sketch. ‘That is so, Rra. And there is a reason for that.’

  The builder raised an eyebrow. ‘Really, Mma?’

  ‘Yes. I have read all about this in a South African magazine. It had pictures of very important restaurants down in Cape Town. These are restaurants where very fashionable people go. There are many fashionable people who go to Cape Town, you know.’

  ‘I’ve heard that,’ said the builder.

  ‘They go to drink wine and show off their clothes,’ said Mma Makutsi.

  The builder shook his head in wonderment at the ways of the world. ‘There is no end to what people will do,’ he said. ‘They are always thinking of new things to get up to.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mma Makutsi forcefully. ‘They are.’ She paused. ‘Of course I’m not expecting to get the same people here who go to those places in Cape Town. They are very busy going out for meals and to fashion shows and such things. They will not have time to come up to Botswana.’

  ‘No,’ agreed the builder. ‘They are all down there.’

  ‘But we have our own fashionable people,’ continued Mma Makutsi. ‘They are here too.’

  The builder frowned. He was not sure that he had met them, but he did not move in such circles, and it was possible that they were there. Certainly there were enough Mercedes-Benzes in town to cope with the transport needs of fashionable people. ‘They will come to your restaurant, Mma – I’m sure of it. All those people – they’ll be there.’

  Mma Makutsi spoke in the tone of one explaining something extremely obvious. ‘And that is why I do not want to have a wall to hide the kitchen,’ she said. ‘These people are very interested in food. They like to watch what is going on in the kitchen. They can see the chef working. They like that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the builder. ‘So they like to see what the chef is putting into the pot? Is that it, Mma?’

  Mma Makutsi smiled. Builders were practical people, she thought; they were not the sort to have a great deal of imagination. Which was just as well, she decided, as they were concerned with the construction of pillars and walls and one did not want too many imaginative questions if one were erecting pillars and walls. ‘I do not think they will be paying too much attention to that, Rra,’ she said. ‘It will help to create atmosphere if people can see the chef and his helpers in the kitchen.’ She dwelt for a moment on what she had said; yes, atmosphere was what people wanted when they went out for a meal. ‘It’s all about creating a buzz, Rra.’

  The builder stared at her. ‘A buzz?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A noise, Mma? The noise that a power saw makes?’

  Mma Makutsi laughed. ‘Not that sort of buzz, Rra – a feeling that something is about to happen, or is even already happening.’

  ‘What will be happening?’ said the builder, puzzled.

  Mma Makutsi closed her eyes briefly. Really, it was impossible to discuss anything with a man like this. The problem was that he was uneducated, or not educated enough, and she, with her ninety-seven per cent from the Botswana Secretarial College was just… well, there was no point in thinking about all of that. Some people understood, and some people did not. It was not the fault of those who did not understand; they could not help their limitations, but it could be very frustrating for those who had the benefit of great understanding to try to explain things to them.

  ‘Let’s not think about it any more, Rra,’ she said finally, pointing at her sketch. ‘This is what I want.’

  ‘You’re the customer,’ said the builder. ‘But before we get a draftsman to do the drawings, I’m going to have to run this past an engineer, Mma. They can tell whether something will stand up or fall down.’ He looked at her earnestly; none of the buildings he had built had fallen down – not one – and he did not want that to happen now. ‘The problem with having no walls is that the roof can fall down. And if there are people eating in your restaurant at the time, they will find the roof coming down on their heads. They will not like that, Mma, how
ever much atmosphere there is. In fact, I think that sort of thing can definitely spoil the atmosphere.’ He jabbed at the air for emphasis. ‘This is not an idle warning, Mma. This is very serious.’

  Mma Makutsi nodded. ‘You ask an engineer, Rra. He will tell us.’

  The builder left, and Mma Makutsi watched his truck trundle down the short driveway in front of the restaurant. She was pleased with the result of their meeting; in her mind’s eye she could see how her restaurant would look, and she liked what she saw. She was pleased, too, by the builder’s assurance that the work would be completed in the extraordinarily short time of two weeks – as he would have several crews working on the project at the same time. The most substantial work would be the removal of the current partition wall between what would become the dining area and what would become the new kitchen; that, he said, would take a week to do, but could be done at the same time that the electrician was rewiring and putting in the new lighting. Once all that was done, and the kitchen units installed, it would be a question of completing a bit of plastering and painting. ‘Nothing much,’ said the builder. ‘And then, Mma, all will be ready for these hungry people who will be coming in the door.’

  She was thinking about this when the chef arrived for his interview. Two weeks was impossible – anybody with any experience of builders knew that – but even if she multiplied the estimate by two, the premises would still be ready much earlier than she had anticipated. And if she were looking for an omen for the success of the new business, then surely that would be a positive one; just as it was a good omen, she felt, that the chef recommended by her lawyer should arrive, as he did, ten minutes early.

  ‘I am called Thomas,’ he announced as he greeted her. ‘I think you’re expecting me, Mma.’

  She took his proffered hand and shook it.

  ‘I am Mma Makutsi,’ she said. ‘I am the…’ She hesitated; she was the owner and should not be embarrassed to say it. ‘I am the managing director, Rra.’

  If only they could hear her up in Bobonong. If only her late aunt, the one who had said all along that she would make something of herself; the same aunt who had sold one of her only three cattle to help with the fees at the Botswana Secretarial College; that aunt, if only she could have heard her now, how proud would she have been, how loudly would she have issued the ululations that expressed joy in Botswana.

  She looked at the chef, a large-framed man with a reassuring paunch – a thin chef, Mma Makutsi reflected, would hardly inspire confidence. She immediately liked what she saw; she liked his broad features and the moustache he had cultivated on his lip; she liked the good humour that seemed to sparkle in his eyes. There was nothing shifty about this chef – quite the opposite, in fact. This was a chef with whom one could settle down for a good meal or a party – an open, cheerful chef who obviously liked his food and wanted others to do so too.

  ‘I have heard all about you from my… from the lawyer,’ said Thomas. ‘He has told me all about your plans, Mma. He says that he is pretty sure that you will make this one of the best restaurants in Botswana.’

  ‘The best restaurant,’ said Mma Makutsi.

  Thomas laughed. ‘Yes, I am sure that is what he meant to say.’

  Mma Makutsi indicated that they should sit down at the table. She had heard him say ‘my’ and then correct himself. My what? she wondered. My friend? Or had he been about to say ‘my lawyer’ and had stopped himself because he did not want her to know that he had had some brush with the law. Suddenly she reinstated the guard that any prospective employer must have when assessing whether somebody was right for a job.

  ‘You know this lawyer well, Rra? Is he a close friend?’ she asked as they took their seats.

  The chef shook his head. ‘He is not, Mma – more of an acquaintance. I would like to be able to say that I am a close friend of an important lawyer like that, but I am not. I am a very ordinary person, Mma – a nothing person, you might say.’

  ‘Nobody is a nothing,’ said Mma Makutsi. She thought of Bobonong, and of the people up there. There were some who might say that they were nothing, that she herself was a nothing Makutsi.

  ‘I do not mean to say that I am nothing,’ he said. ‘You’re right, Mma. Nobody is a nothing. What I meant to say is that I am not an important lawyer like he is. That is what I meant.’

  ‘Being a chef is important, is it not?’ asked Makutsi.

  ‘Of course, Mma. Of course it is. A chef can make people very happy.’ He paused. ‘And that is what I like to do. I like to make sure that everybody who eats in any restaurant I work in goes out very full – and very happy.’

  Mma Makutsi nodded. ‘That is a good way to look at it,’ she said. ‘But tell me, Rra, where were you making all these people happy before now?’

  The chef beamed as he replied, as if the memory of his customers’ happiness still filled him with warmth. ‘In many places, Mma. In many kitchens.’

  ‘Such as?’

  He shrugged. ‘I have cooked in the Sun Hotel. I have cooked in the lodges up in the Okavango. That is where I was last. Up near Maun.’

  ‘Which lodge, Rra?’

  He waved a hand in the air. ‘There were many. Sometimes they needed a chef in this one, and then next week they needed a chef in that one. You could never tell. I was a sort of flying chef, Mma. You’ve heard of the flying doctors in Australia?’ He smiled, and for a moment Mma Makutsi thought he winked at her. She did not approve of that: she was a married woman, she was Mrs Phuti Radiphuti no less, and she had no time for these men who went around winking at women, whether or not they were married. Yet she could not be sure that he had winked, and even if he had it had been very much a passing wink, indistinguishable from an involuntary twitch.

  ‘Well,’ he went on, ‘I was a flying chef. They have these small planes, you see, that fly people into the safari lodges. Well, I went on those.’

  She looked at him. He was not giving her the details she felt she should have, but it was difficult not to warm to this good-spirited man. She could check up, of course: she could write to Mma Ramotswe’s relative up there and ask her to make enquiries; it would be easy enough to do that, but somehow she felt that this was not what she wanted. It would be easy enough, she thought, to find out whether a chef was any good. And yet part of her was unwilling to seek out information that might force her to turn him away. Even if it transpired that he was not the chef he claimed to be – that he was no more than a lowly assistant chef – or even an assistant to an assistant – that did not mean that he might not benefit from a chance to be in charge of his own kitchen. She knew what it was like to be at the bottom of the heap, as she had been there herself in those days when she had been searching for a job and all the available positions went to glamorous, fifty-per-cent girls from the Botswana Secretarial College – girls like Violet Sephotho, of all people, who had breezed into job after job on the strength of her looks and her shameless, coquettish flirting. The sheer injustice of this still rankled, and had made Mma Makutsi a firm believer in giving everybody a chance, which is what she would do with this man. She had intended to get him to cook a meal – as a test – as she had discussed with Mr Disang, but now she made up her mind. She would not have time to find another chef. No, she would take him untried, although he could still be invited to cook a meal for her and Phuti, as a taster of things to come.

  ‘Would you mind cooking a meal for me and my husband?’ she asked.

  He did not hesitate. ‘I will do that, Mma. You tell me what you want and —’

  She interrupted him. ‘Of course I will provide all the ingredients. All you’ll have to do is cook.’

  He beamed with pleasure. ‘No, I’ll do the whole thing myself. You leave everything to me.’

  From his lack of hesitation, from the smile that he gave her, from his confident That’s what I do best she made up her mind. She now had a restaurant, a builder and a chef.

  And it was with a decided spring in her step that Mma Makutsi arri
ved at the office, eager to tell Mma Ramotswe about the progress she had made that morning.

  ‘I have been very busy already, Mma,’ she said, as she opened the door that led from the premises of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors into the headquarters of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. ‘Busy as a guinea fowl…’ It was an unusual metaphor, but one that Mma Makutsi used from time to time, and Mma Ramotswe knew exactly what she meant.

  She stopped; she had seen Charlie. For a few moments she stared at him before recovering her composure. ‘Charlie,’ she began, ‘I thought that…’

  Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. ‘Charlie is no longer working in the garage.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Mma Makutsi.

  ‘And so he’s working here instead.’

  Mma Makutsi looked uncomprehending. ‘Fixing cars in here?’

  Charlie’s face broke into a smile. ‘Not fixing cars, Mma. You couldn’t fix cars in here with all your papers, all this stuff… No, I’m a detective now.’