The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe (12 page)

Mma Potokwane's eyes opened wide with surprise. “Charlie? Employ Charlie?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “There will always be some small piece of work to do in the agency.”

Mma Potokwane was incredulous. “For clients? But what will they think when they see you've put a young man like that onto their case?”

Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “He will be in the background.”

Mma Potokwane answered her own question. “I can tell you what they'll think, Mma. They'll say to themselves: we could get somebody like him just by going into some bar and picking the first young man we see. That's what they'll say, Mma Ramotswe. And then your business will become a joke.”

“But—”

Mma Potokwane ignored her friend's attempt to defend herself. “I think you're making a big mistake, Mma. Your own business barely makes any profit—you've told me that yourself. What if it has another mouth to feed? You'll go bankrupt, Mma. You and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and then where will you be?”

Mma Ramotswe said nothing for a few moments, and Mma Potokwane might well have concluded that her point had been taken to
heart. But then she came up with her plan. “I know that we have very little money in my business account,” she said. She paused. Somewhere outside, a go-away bird uttered its plaintive cry. “But you are forgetting, Mma, that I have many cattle.”

It was now Mma Potokwane's turn to lapse into silence. This was dangerous territory; in Botswana, cattle mattered above all things: one did not talk lightly about disposing of a herd one had inherited, and even if Mma Ramotswe had sold a number of cows in order to set up her business, those that had been sold had soon been replaced by calves. Now, with good management and prudence, her herd was considerably larger than it had been. That did not mean, though, that cattle should be sold for so risky a venture as employing Charlie; nobody would see the merits in that.

Mma Ramotswe decided to anticipate Mma Potokwane's objections. She knew these would come—and would be forcibly expressed unless she dealt with them in advance. “I know you disapprove,” she said. “And I understand why.”

Mma Potokwane struggled with conflicting views. Mma Ramotswe was her friend and could not be allowed to do anything unwise without at least being warned in advance. On the other hand, her cattle were her affair, and if she chose to use them to help somebody—even Charlie—then she should be allowed to do that. She closed her eyes. “They are your cattle, Mma. They are not mine. So you should do what you think is the right thing.”

Mma Ramotswe was staring at her friend. “I wondered…,” she began.

“Yes, Mma?”

“I wondered whether you might like to buy some of my cattle,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Maybe five.”

The offer was met with a frown. “Me, Mma?”

“You have some cattle, don't you?”

“Yes,” said Mma Potokwane hesitantly. “I do not have many. But there are some that my brother gave me.”

“You could expand your herd,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But only temporarily.”

“Temporarily? I don't think I understand, Mma.”

She explained her plan. “I would sell you these cows, and then, later on, I would buy them back. Two of them will have had calves by then. You keep the calves and I pay you back the money you paid for the cows in the first place.”

Mma Potokwane looked puzzled. “But why, Mma? This sounds like … almost like a loan.”

“You could call it that.”

Mma Potokwane pressed for an explanation.

“There isn't enough money in the business to pay Charlie,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And I think we have to do something for him.” She paused. “Of course, you may not have the money to do this …”

She knew that this was unlikely. Mma Potokwane may not have been wealthy, but Mma Ramotswe knew that in the background there was a rural store of which she owned a half share, inherited from her mother. Those stores were profitable.

“I do have a little spare cash,” said Mma Potokwane. “And the way you put it, I can't really lose, can I?”

“I do not think so, Mma.”

“But I will not take both calves,” went on Mma Potokwane. “That would not be the right thing to do. You are my friend, Mma Ramotswe.”

“And you are mine, Mma.”

“Yes, and that is the reason why I cannot take both calves. I shall take one to pay for the grazing. You will get the other one back, with all the others—after you have paid me back the money, of course.”

“Of course. You will get the money. And if I do not have it, then you keep the cattle.”

They shook hands on the arrangement and Mma Ramotswe prepared herself to leave.

“You know, Mma,” said Mma Potokwane as they walked back to the tiny white van. “There are two ways of looking at our problems in
this life. One is with our head …” And here she tapped her forehead. “And the other is with our heart.” Her hand went to her bosom.

“I know that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And I know that I am making this decision with my heart. I know it is the wrong thing to do.”

“No,” said Mma Potokwane. “It is never the wrong thing to do. Never.” She reached out and stopped her friend. “You know something, Mma Ramotswe? Every decision I've made in this job—every single one—has been made with the heart rather than with the head.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled, and touched the matron's hand gently. “I think I knew that, Mma,” she said.

SHE WENT ROUND
to Charlie's house that evening. The young man lived with an uncle and the uncle's girlfriend in a two-room house in Naledi, the shabbiest part of town. The local council had done its best to provide basic services for the people of this straggling suburb: there was some lighting on the streets and stand pipes had been set up to give everyone water, but some of the houses were barely better than shanties, with tin roofs patched up here and there with tarpaulin or bits of salvaged timber. The uncle's house was one of the better ones, being constructed of unpainted breeze blocks, but it was a world away from Mma Ramotswe's home on Zebra Drive, and even further away from the spanking new establishment built by Mma Makutsi and Phuti Radiphuti.

Charlie shared the room at the back with two male cousins, slightly younger than he was, and a ten-year-old boy who was the son, by another man, of the uncle's girlfriend. The room was just big enough for the two narrow beds and two sleeping mats, but when the sleeping mats were unrolled there was no space left to negotiate one's way round the room. Clothing was hung on four pegs knocked into the wall and what few belongings the young men and the boy possessed were stored on a rough-timber shelf that ran the length of the room. There was one window, high up at the back, which
afforded a small amount of natural light, and additional lighting was provided by a single naked bulb dangling from the ceiling. From the cable that she saw coming into the house and then leading off into a bush, Mma Ramotswe could tell when she arrived that the electricity supply was stolen. This happened: people found the wires that the electricity board tried to bury and cut their way into the supply with crudely rigged arrangements. This theft of electricity had its dangers, and occasionally people were electrocuted or badly burned in the process; houses could be destroyed, too, by amateur wiring unequal to the load imposed on it.

When Mma Ramotswe announced her presence with the usual
Ko, ko!
, the uncle and his girlfriend were sitting in the front room, along with Charlie's two cousins. She had met the uncle before—he worked in the supermarket patronised by Mma Ramotswe—but she had not met his girlfriend. Now he introduced her and the two cousins; the polite enquiries that form dictated were made
—You are keeping well, Rra? Yes, and you, Mma?
There were no surprises in the answers such questions elicited—there never were—but these conversations still had to take place: it was not what was said that counted, but the fact that it was said.

“I am looking for Charlie,” said Mma Ramotswe.

The uncle smiled. “He is not far away, Mma.” He made a movement of his head towards the second room. “But then in another sense he is far away.”

The girlfriend laughed. “Drowned his sorrows,” she said. “He lost his job today.”

“I know that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And I am sorry. That's why I've come to see him.”

The girlfriend smirked. “To tell him you're sorry for what your husband has done? There are many women who have to say sorry about what men have done.”

The uncle clearly did not approve of this tone. You were not rude to visitors in Botswana; he would tell her that later, in private. “I'm
sorry, Mma,” he said, rising to his feet and making towards the connecting door that led to the other room. “Charlie has drunk too much beer. Look for yourself.”

He pushed the door open to reveal the pitiful surroundings of the second room. The woman's young son was on his sleeping mat, naked but for a pair of briefs, his skinny arms folded back to make a pillow for his head. On the larger of the two narrow beds lay Charlie, fully clothed, but with his shirt half opened. The air was fetid with exhaled beer fumes.

The uncle closed the door again. “You see, Mma? I don't think you'd get much sense out of him until tomorrow morning.”

Mma Ramotswe lowered her eyes. “I'm sorry, Rra. He has been very upset.”

“Yes,” said the uncle. “Charlie doesn't normally drink much. Today was unusual.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “I'm not blaming him. It is a hard thing for a young man to lose his job. Charlie is a good young man—at heart.”

“Yes,” said the uncle, hesitating slightly. “At heart.”

Mma Ramotswe reached into her handbag. “May I leave him a note, Rra?”

“Of course.”

“He can read it in the morning, when he can think straight again.”

The uncle laughed. “His head may be a bit sore then, but I'm sure he will understand it.”

Mma Ramotswe tore a page out of the notebook she always carried with her. She accepted the uncle's invitation to sit down at the table and she began to write.

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

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.

T
WO 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.