Александр Макколл Смит - The Handsome Man's De Luxe Café

‘You cannot let this happen, Mma Ramotswe,’ Charlie shouted. ‘Please, Mma. Please don’t let him fire me.’

Charlie looked imploringly first at Mma Ramotswe, and then at Mma Makutsi.

‘Mma Makutsi,’ he began, the words pouring out in an anguished torrent, ‘I’m sorry. I promise you, Mma, I promise. I will do my best now. That’s all over, all that nonsense. Over. I am not rude any more – that was another person speaking, not me, Mma – not me. I will try to take the exams again. Please tell the boss I’ve changed, he will have no trouble now. No trouble. I’ll work all the time. Six o’clock in the morning, first thing, I’ll be here and then…’ He faltered. He was choking on his words, and now they were replaced by sobs.

Mma Makutsi looked across the room at Mma Ramotswe. ‘Mma…’ she began.

‘No,’ sobbed Charlie. ‘It is true. I am different now. There’s a new Charlie, and he’s begging you to speak to the boss. Tell him I’m different now. He’ll believe you. If you say it, then he’ll believe it.’

Mma Ramotswe could not sit still. Everything within her went out to Charlie; she could not sit and watch a grown man cry as he now was crying; no woman could. But as she stood up and tried to put an arm around the distraught young man, he evaded her embrace and fell to the floor. For a few moments he was motionless, and Mma Ramotswe feared that he might have hit his head on the concrete and knocked himself out; but then he writhed, and began to scrape at the floor with his fingernails as if to dig himself in.

‘Don’t do that, Charlie,’ shouted Mma Makutsi. ‘You’ll break your nails.’

Charlie’s eyes had been shut, but now he opened them and stared at his hands. The interruption to his agonised display was the signal for Mma Makutsi to get up from her desk and cross to the young man’s side. ‘Here,’ she said, reaching down to pull him to his feet. ‘Take my hand.’

Charlie complied somewhat sheepishly and was soon standing at Mma Makutsi’s side. He brushed at the dust on his overalls.

‘Now you can sit down and get your breath back,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘Then we can talk about the future calmly.’

‘There is no future,’ muttered Charlie. ‘I’m finished.’

Mma Makutsi led him to her chair. He hesitated; he had once been found sitting in her chair while she was out of the office, and there had been a terrible row: grease from his overalls, she had said, would ruin the upholstery. But now that was not mentioned: it was not a time for concern about grease and the stains that grease brought. ‘You sit down right there,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘I’ll make you a mug of tea.’

This was another first.

Charlie sunk his head in misery. ‘I have to go home now,’ he muttered. ‘There’s nothing for me to do here.’

Mma Makutsi shook her head. ‘Losing your job is not the end,’ she said. ‘They taught us that at Botswana Secretarial College. Losing your job is a challenge. That’s what they said. It’s a challenge to go and get something better.’

Charlie said nothing.

‘Mma Makutsi’s right,’ said Mma Ramotswe gently. ‘There is always something else. It may take a little time, but somebody who wants to work will always find something.’

‘Such as?’ grunted Charlie.

‘There are jobs in the paper,’ said Mma Makutsi brightly. ‘There are jobs at the labour exchange. There are always people looking for intelligent young men like you.’

Charlie looked up. ‘But you said I was stupid – remember?’

Mma Makutsi drew back. ‘When did I say that?’ she snapped. ‘When did I call you stupid?’

Charlie shrugged. ‘Many times, Mma. All the time, in fact.’ He paused. ‘Three days ago, for instance. You said I was stupid when I asked you whether Itumelang was talking yet. Remember? You told me that babies of six months cannot talk and then you laughed and called me stupid.’

Mma Makutsi made light of the accusation. ‘But I was only joking, Charlie. Don’t be so stu —’ She stopped herself, but not in time.

‘There,’ said Charlie. ‘You see. You still think I’m stupid.’

Mma Ramotswe decided that it was time to intervene. ‘I don’t think there’s much point in talking like this,’ she said. ‘Sometimes people say things they don’t really mean. It’s the way they talk, Charlie, surely you should know that by now.’

‘And you too, Mma Ramotswe,’ said Charlie. ‘You think I’m stupid, too.’

‘I do not, Charlie,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘You’re not stupid. You have a very good brain in your head – if only you’d use it…’

‘There you go,’ said Charlie. ‘You think I’ve got no brain.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ protested Mma Ramotswe. ‘All I said was, I wish you’d use your brain. That’s all.’

‘Yes,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘We’re on your side, Charlie. So is Mr J. L. B. Matekoni.’

‘Then why did he fire me?’ asked Charlie. ‘If he’s on my side, why did he get rid of me?’

‘There’s no money,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘A business can’t keep people on if there’s not enough money coming in. It’s hard, but that’s the way it is.’

Charlie listened in silence. He had not touched the tea that Mma Makutsi had made him, and Mma Ramotswe reminded him of it. ‘Don’t let your tea get cold, Charlie. You should drink it. It will make you feel better.’

Charlie looked down at the mug that Mma Makutsi had placed on the table beside him. For a moment or two he did nothing, but then, quite suddenly, he swept the mug off the table with a sharp sideways motion of his arm. The tea sprayed out, some of it splashing his overalls.

Mma Makutsi shrieked.

‘I don’t need tea if I’m going to die,’ muttered Charlie as he rose to his feet and began to leave the room.

Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. ‘Charlie!’

‘I’m going to die,’ repeated Charlie. ‘Soon soon. You’ll see.’

Chapter Seven

Pilates with Cake

Mma Potokwani, matron of the Orphan Farm, and substitute mother, over the years, to almost eight hundred children, each of whose young life had had such a bad beginning, took most things in her stride. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni had once remarked that she was the only woman in Botswana who could be struck by lightning and make the lightning blow a fuse. ‘And I wouldn’t want to be the lion who tried to eat her,’ he had added. ‘That lion would learn a lesson, I think.’ An exaggeration, of course, but Mma Potokwani had certainly never let the world put obstacles in her path. She had survived the intrusions of bureaucrats, and the indifference and selfishness of those who, having made their money, refused to share it. She had begged and borrowed and scraped in order to provide for the orphans in her care, and prided herself on the fact that none of them, none at all, had gone out into the world without knowing that they were loved and that there was at least one person who wanted them to make something of their lives – one person who believed in them.

‘Maybe I can’t give them everything they need,’ she once said to Mma Ramotswe, ‘but at least they know that I have tried.’

And Mma Ramotswe, who was well aware of the heroic efforts that Mma Potokwani made, had replied, ‘They know that, Mma. They definitely know that.’

As did many others. Everybody now was aware of the scheme that Mma Potokwani had cooked up with Mr Taylor at Maru-a-Pula School to give orphans what amounted to the best education available in Botswana. The children chosen for that scheme had done every bit as well as the pupils who came from backgrounds of comfort and privilege, and had gone on to train for jobs that would otherwise have been way beyond their wildest dreams. A child who had nothing, who had been passed from pillar to post among struggling relatives, or who had not even had such relatives and had been completely abandoned because there was no grandmother to shoulder the burden – something that went against every fibre of Botswana traditions – such a child might find himself or herself training as a scientist, a doctor, an agronomist. And in the audience at such a graduation would be sitting Mma Potokwani in pride of place, in a sense – even if she were not physically there.