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

‘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 arrived 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.’

He looked to Mma Ramotswe for confirmation. She swallowed hard. ‘I’ve given Charlie a job,’ she said quickly. ‘You know how busy we’ve been.’

Mma Makutsi’s mouth opened. She stared at Charlie and then transferred her gaze to Mma Ramotswe. ‘But we haven’t been busy,’ she said. ‘In fact, things have been rather quiet. You said so yourself, Mma, the other day. You said —’

Mma Ramotswe interrupted her. ‘That’s not the point, Mma,’ she said. ‘You have to expand to get bigger. You said that, you know.’

‘I did not, Mma,’ Mma Makutsi protested. ‘It makes no sense to say that you have to expand to get bigger. You expand because you’re getting bigger. You bring in new staff when you start to get bigger. That’s how it works, Mma.’ She paused before addressing Charlie. ‘Sorry, Charlie, I know it’s hard for you to lose your job, but I don’t think Mma Ramotswe has worked all this out.’ There was another pause. ‘Maybe you could go to the post office for me. You can do that at least.’

Charlie was disgruntled. ‘I am not an office boy.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Mma Makutsi, more firmly now. ‘These letters must be posted. They are ready to go.’ She reached into the tray on her desk, picking up three large envelopes and handing them to Charlie. The young man looked at Mma Ramotswe, who nodded her assent.

Once Charlie had left, Mma Makutsi strode across the room to switch on the kettle on top of the filing cabinet. ‘This is a very big surprise for me, Mma,’ she said. ‘I am very shocked.’