The Slice of No.1 Celebration Storybook: Fifteen years with Mma Ramotswe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) Read online

  Alexander McCall Smith is the author of over eighty books on a wide array of subjects. For many years he was Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh University and served on national and international bioethics bodies. Then in 1999 he achieved global recognition for his award-winning series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and thereafter has devoted his time to the writing of fiction, including the 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie series. His books have been translated into forty-six languages. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Elizabeth, a doctor.

  By Alexander McCall Smith

  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series

  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

  Tears of the Giraffe

  Morality for Beautiful Girls

  The Kalahari Typing School for Men

  The Full Cupboard of Life

  In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

  Blue Shoes and Happiness

  The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

  The Miracle at Speedy Motors

  Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

  The Double Comfort Safari Club

  The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

  The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

  The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

  The Isabel Dalhousie Novels

  The Sunday Philosophy Club

  Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

  The Right Attitude to Rain

  The Careful Use of Compliments

  The Comfort of Saturdays

  The Lost Art of Gratitude

  The Charming Quirks of Others

  The Forgotten Affairs of Youth

  The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds

  The 44 Scotland Street Series

  44 Scotland Street

  Espresso Tales

  Love Over Scotland

  The World According to Bertie

  The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

  The Importance of Being Seven

  Bertie Plays the Blues

  Sunshine on Scotland Street

  Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers

  The Corduroy Mansions Series

  Corduroy Mansions

  The Dog Who Came in from the Cold

  A Conspiracy of Friends

  The von Igelfeld Entertainments

  The 2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom

  Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

  La’s Orchestra Saves the World

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Abacus

  ISBN: 9781405530712

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Alexander McCall Smith

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Abacus

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  About the Author

  By Alexander McCall Smith

  Copyright

  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: How It All Began

  The Problem of Men

  The Shape of Ladies

  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: How It All Began

  When I wrote the final line of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency some fifteen years ago, I thought that I was saying goodbye to Mma Ramotswe and her friends. I remember the circumstances in which I wrote that final line: in a house in a small village outside Montpelier in France. It was a summer’s afternoon, and the Mediterranean sun streaming in through the window had made the surface of my desk uncomfortably warm. I stood up and went downstairs to report to my wife and daughters that my work was over. It was not, of course: it was just beginning. A decade and a half later, I have just written the fourteenth volume in the series. My conversation with Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi and Mr J. L. B. Matekoni has been a long one indeed.

  Many projects have their origin in some entirely accidental event. In the case of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, it was a lunch in Edinburgh with Professor Tom Tlou. Tom, Botswana’s most distinguished historian, and a man with a great talent for friendship, invited me to Botswana to help the university there set up a new law programme. Although I had spent a large part of the previous year working at the University of Swaziland, I was released by my own university to undertake this task. So I went to live in Botswana for a short time, unaware that this decision would eventually lead to my life’s taking a very different course from the one I had imagined. But then that is the case with so many of our decisions; we make them with no idea of how significant they may prove to be.

  Over the years that followed, though I had returned to Scotland, I continued to be closely associated with the University of Botswana and I spent a great deal of time in the country. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I became increasingly attached both to the land and to the people I met there. Botswana is a remarkable country – a good place. It is a country with a good record; a country that has been consistently democratic since independence; a country that has, by and large, avoided the corruption that has had such a tragic effect on so many sub-Saharan countries. It has been fortunate, of course, in that its natural resources have provided it with a healthy economy, but its achievement is still admirable. And that is what I felt for Botswana and its people: frank admiration.

  When I sat down to write The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency I did not have any particular agenda in mind other than the desire to tell the story of a woman who lived in Gaborone and had a small business. Mma Ramotswe came to me quite naturally: I had met many just like her – resourceful, intelligent women with a kind disposition, who often had to make do with comparatively little but who made the most of it. There are many such people in Botswana, and I suppose that first book and the ones that followed it are a tribute to them.

  The stories in the Mma Ramotswe books are not complex mysteries. They are relatively simple tales of the difficulties encountered by very ordinary folk. They are, in a sense, fables, but they are fables set in an identifiable place that is populated by recognisable people. I am not writing social realism – I understand that there are issues in Botswana that I do not deal with in these books – but that is not what the Mma Ramotswe story is meant to be about. Her story is about how kindness and forgiveness may be placed at the centre of a life, lode stars by which we navigate our way through a world that can at times be hard and cruel. Mma Ramotswe represents generosity of spirit – and why should we not occasionally entertain ourselves with tales of how that can set to work in our daily lives? Such stories need not be heavy or didactic; they can be light and amusing, and manifest a moral complexity of their own.

  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books appear to have struck a chord with a rather large number of readers throughout the world. These readers come from every conceivable background; my mailbag includes letters about her from professors of literature, farmers, nurses, children, centenarians, soldiers, prisoners and prelates. I hear from those who have shared her story with dying relatives or who have had
her as their companion during chemotherapy. I have heard from several psychiatrists who have prescribed her for their troubled patients; I have had more than one letter from readers who tell me that she saved them from suicide. So if Mma Ramotswe imagines that her influence is restricted to that small circle of people who wander into the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, then she is wrong indeed.

  I am immensely grateful that I have been given the opportunity to tell the story of this great woman. Each year when I sit down for my annual meeting with her, I find that I do not have to ponder too long what she is going to do or say. She is simply there – seated at her desk opposite her assistant Mma Makutsi (ninety-seven per cent, remember, in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College). They are about to have tea – something they do rather a lot. And next door, in the adjoining premises of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, the love of her life, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, that great garagiste and most gracious of men, is instructing his apprentices in the proper use of spanners. Outside, the branches of an acacia tree are stirring gently in a warm wind from the Kalahari. On one of the branches there sit two Cape doves, gentle birds, watching with those tiny points of dark light that are their eyes. The doves represent love; the wind represents the movement of love; the wide African sky is the canopy under which love lies.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  2013

  The Problem of Men

  Precious Ramotswe, more generally known as Mma Ramotswe, was the founder and owner of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Botswana’s only detective agency for the solution of the problems of ladies – and of others. It was a Friday morning, and she was sitting in her office with her assistant Mma Makutsi, reflecting on a particularly challenging case in which she had been involved. Outside, the sun was high in the sky, beating down on the green canopy of the acacia trees, and the air was still. It was not a day to do very much, other than to think.

  It was not that the case in question had involved any difficult enquiries; it had really been quite a simple matter. It was the emotional aspect of it all that had proved to be demanding. It was hard to break the news to a client that her husband had been unfaithful, and yet that was the result of so many investigations. And there had been that poor, nervous woman, sitting in the client’s chair, watching Mma Ramotswe with her wide eyes and receiving the tawdry details of what they had discovered. Each sentence had seemed to fall upon her like a hammer blow, and at one point Mma Ramotswe had stopped and wondered whether she shouldn’t just say: ‘Of course, we could be wrong about all this. Maybe the young woman we saw him with was a cousin or somebody like that.’ But she knew that she could not, and so she had persisted and as a result had been forced to watch the woman’s world collapse about her.

  ‘That was a very hard thing to do, Mma Makutsi,’ said Mma Ramotswe as they sat and drank their morning cup of redbush tea.

  ‘It is never easy to give that sort of news,’ agreed Mma Makutsi. ‘But then she probably knew all along that her husband was behaving badly. That was why she came to see us in the first place.’

  ‘She was hoping that we would set her mind at rest,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘And we have just made her unhappy.’

  For a few moments nothing was said. Then Mma Ramotswe broke the silence. ‘But it is never easy for women,’ she said. ‘If you are a man, then you can behave as you like. If you are tired of one lady, you can find another. That just isn’t fair, is it, Mma?’

  Mma Makutsi nodded in agreement. ‘Men think that this is the way the world should be,’ she said. ‘They think that it is right that everything should be suited to them.’

  ‘It is very bad,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘And women let them get away with it.’

  ‘But what can we do?’ asked Mma Makutsi. ‘It is not easy to change things. There is not very much we can do.’

  Mma Ramotswe had to agree. Mma Makutsi was right – things were not easily changed. And yet she was not sure she shared her view that nothing could be done. She would have to think of something, because that same evening she was invited to speak to the Ladies Club of Gaborone on the subject of ‘The Problem of Men’, and she could hardly talk about a problem without offering a solution. And yet, what was one to do about men? Mma Makutsi apparently had no suggestions, and she herself was far from certain.

  At home later that day, as she prepared the evening meal for Mr J. L. B. Matekoni and their two foster children Motholeli and Puso, Mma Ramotswe’s mind was on the talk that she was due to give. She now rather regretted having accepted the invitation; it would have been easy to say no, it would have been easy to claim to be too busy – and she was, was she not? There was a lot to do in the office and she had a house to run and her family to look after. It would have been perfectly proper to claim to have too much to do.

  But she had agreed, and that was all there was to it. One of the things that she believed very strongly in was keeping one’s word. Her late father, that great man Mr Obed Ramotswe, had stressed to her that if you made a promise, then you had to keep it, no matter what. He had never let her down – not once – and she had never known him to let anybody else down either. That was because he believed in the old Botswana values, for which there was no substitute, no matter what modern people said.

  Around the dinner table, though the children were talkative enough and though Mr J. L. B. Matekoni had something to say on the subject of a tricky car repair he had been attempting that day, Mma Ramotswe was largely silent.

  ‘Are you worried about something?’ asked Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘You are not saying much.’

  ‘I have nothing much to say,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘Perhaps I shall have more to say tomorrow, but tonight I have very little to say.’

  She realised that she had not really answered his question, but she did not want to talk about her speaking engagement, even with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni.

  After they had finished the meal, he stood up and announced that he and the children would wash up the dishes. Then he saw her to her tiny white van, which was parked outside, and opened the door for her.

  ‘You must not be nervous about speaking to these ladies,’ he said confidentially. ‘I am sure that you will speak very well. I am sure of that.’

  She looked at him. ‘I do not know what to say,’ she confessed. ‘That is my problem. I do not know what to say.’

  ‘What is the subject of your talk?’ asked Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘Perhaps I can give you some ideas.’

  She thought quickly. How could she tell him that she was talking about the problem of men? No man would understand what that was about; indeed Mr J. L. B. Matekoni might feel that he was part of the problem.

  ‘It is about women’s business,’ said Mma Ramotswe lightly. ‘This Ladies Club likes to discuss all sorts of things that concern ladies.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni nodded. ‘So they have invited you because you are a lady detective?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  ‘So that is what you are going to talk about,’ concluded Mr J.L.B Matekoni. ‘You are going to talk about how a lady goes about being a detective.’

  Mma Ramotswe was silent. That was not true, but perhaps she did not need to say anything more.

  ‘Well,’ went on Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, ‘you will have a lot to talk about. You have a lot of experience now. You can tell them about some of your cases.’

  Yes, thought Mma Ramotswe. That’s exactly what I can do. I can tell them about some of my cases and the men I have encountered. I can tell them about the bad behaviour of men. The ladies will be interested in that.

  She drove the tiny white van down Zebra Drive and out onto the road that led to the technical college. The Ladies Club was meeting in a room in the college, as they were expecting a large turn-out and needed a venue larger than their usual small church hall.

  ‘Many of the ladies have strong views on this subject,’ the organiser had said to her. ‘There will be many ladies at your talk, Mma.’ />
  And indeed by the time Mma Ramotswe arrived at the college, it was clear that the organiser had been right. As she stood outside the lecture room talking to the other woman, guests were still arriving. And from inside the room there emanated that hum of conversation that suggests a large crowd.

  ‘There are many, many people here,’ said the organiser. ‘You are our most popular speaker this year. We are very pleased that you have come to talk to us.’

  ‘How long would you like me to talk for?’ asked Mma Ramotswe. She had imagined that twenty minutes might be about right. That would enable her to say something and yet leave time for questions.

  ‘About two hours,’ said the organiser. ‘We will start at eight o’clock and you should finish by ten.’

  Mma Ramotswe gasped. ‘I cannot do that,’ she said. ‘I have never spoken for two hours before. I cannot speak that long.’

  ‘Well, one hour then,’ said the organiser. ‘One hour will be enough.’

  ‘No,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘I cannot talk for one hour. I am far too busy to talk for one hour. I shall talk for half an hour.’

  The organiser opened her mouth to speak but thought better of it and nodded her assent. ‘We should go in now,’ she said. ‘The ladies are waiting.’

  Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath and followed her into the room. Inside, seated on folding wooden chairs, were ten rows of ladies. Many of them were engaged in conversation with those around them, but when Mma Ramotswe entered the room the hubbub died down. They looked expectantly at Mma Ramotswe. So this was the famous lady detective! So this was the founder of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency!

  The organiser clapped her hands together. ‘Ladies! You are welcome to the meeting, which is going to begin right now. And we are very lucky, are we not, to have a very important speaker tonight, Precious Ramotswe. This lady is the only lady detective in Botswana, and so we are all waiting very eagerly to hear what she has to say.’

  At this, several members of the audience uttered sounds of general agreement which the organiser acknowledged with a nod of her head.