The Colors of All the Cattle is the nineteenth book in The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Mma Ramostwe’s friend will persuade her to stand for election to the City Council. ‘We need women like her in politics,’ Mma Potokwani says, ‘instead of having the same old men every time . . .’ To be elected, […]

In To the Land of Long Lost Friends, the 20th novel in the widely beloved No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe takes on a case for a childhood acquaintance but her inquiries will require an even more delicate touch than usual. As Botswana waits for rain to nourish the land, Precious Ramotswe’s thoughts turn to love […]

Precious Ramotswe, owner and only begetter of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – established to deal with the problems of ladies, and others – looked across her office towards the desk occupied by Grace Makutsi, former secretary and distinguished graduate – with ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations – of the Botswana Secretarial College. The sun was streaming through the high window behind Mma Ramotswe’s desk, sending a narrow butter-yellow beam to illuminate small particles of floating dust, just perceptible, feather-light, moving up and down, sometimes sliding sideways in obedience to the invisible currents in the room. But for the most part the air was still – it being that sort of day, sluggish and non-committal. The sort of day on which something might happen, but was more likely not to.

It was not unusual for Mma Ramotswe to look up and see Mma Makutsi staring back at her; and the same thing might be said for Mma Makutsi, who would suddenly lift her gaze from the papers in front of her and notice Mma Ramotswe watching her thoughtfully. Neither minded this – indeed, both were used to it, and when either of them was out of the office for whatever reason, the other would find that she missed seeing her colleague there at her desk when she looked up. This was particularly true for Mma Makutsi, for whom Mma Ramotswe was a reassuring presence every bit as significant, every bit as reassuring, as the great rock dome of Kgale Hill on the outskirts of town, or the deep waters of the Limpopo River, just a few hours off to the east, or the sandhills of the Kalahari over to the west. These were all geographical facts, just as Mma Ramotswe herself seemed to be a geographical fact. She was simply there – as predictable and as constant as any of these things. And her voice was as familiar and as loved as the voice of the doves inhabiting the acacia tree behind Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors; indeed, she would not have been surprised had Mma Ramotswe suddenly started to coo, just as those doves did. Mma Makutsi could not imagine Botswana without those doves, and she could not imagine it without Mma Ramotswe; if she were not there, then it would be just any other country; with her it was something special – it was Mma Ramotswe’s place, a place bathed in the warmth of her presence as effectively as the sun blesses the land each morning with its warming rays.

  The 22nd instalment in the beloved No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.   Mma Ramotswe knows she is very lucky indeed. She has a loving family, good friends and a thriving business doing what she enjoys most: helping people. But the latest mystery she is called upon to solve is distinctly trickier than it initially appears, […]

A Song of Comfortable Chairs is the 23rd book in The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series Grace Makutsi’s husband, Phuti, is in a bind. An international firm is attempting to undercut his prices in the office furniture market. Phuti has always been concerned with quality and comfort, but this new firm seems interested only in […]

The latest installment in Alexander McCall Smith’s delightfully diverting  No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, in which all of Mma Ramotswe’s tact, affability, and good sense will be required to disentangle a delicate dispute. ‘An escape from life’s woes as well as a suggestion for how to make the whole deal more palatable–fragility, fruit cake, […]

They did their best to be generous to Sister Flora when she left the convent, but the dresses they gave her left something to be desired. A great deal, in fact, according to some.

“Well!” muttered one of the laywomen who helped with the vegetable garden. “Did you see the outfits they gave her? You wouldn’t think it was 1961—more like 1931!”

She was right about the dresses, of which there were two. Both had been donated to the convent by the women’s guild at the local church, and both were irretrievably dull. One was made of beige bombazine, the other of a rough wool fabric of the sort that a rural schoolmistress might have worn decades earlier. Both had been retrieved from somebody’s wardrobe, both had a faint odour of camphor, although neither appeared to have suffered any moth damage.

They also gave her an unbecoming grey cardigan, a plain, full-length coat, and a pair of shoes that was slightly too small. The shoes, at least, were new, although they, too, were far from fashionable. Then there was a small suitcase, a sponge bag of toiletries, and an envelope containing fifteen pounds.

“We might have entertained the possibility of giving you a slightly larger sum,” said the Mother Superior, “but since you are going to be living with your aunt you will have no rent to pay and I imagine your aunt, being the pious woman she is, will provide necessities.”

Flora smiled. “I don’t really deserve anything,” she said. “I brought nothing with me when I came ten years ago, and I don’t think I should leave with anything.”

“That’s a very good attitude,” the Mother Superior continued. “Mind you, I gather that money is not going to be a problem. This sum is purely to tide you over until such time as your … your arrangements are in place.”

“I have been most fortunate,” she said. “I am not intending to forget that, Mother.”

“No,” said the Mother Superior. “I don’t imagine you will. You always had a very good disposition, you know. I’m sorry that one or two people have been passing … well, what can only be described as uncharitable remarks.” She looked away, her lips pursed in disapproval. “I heard somebody say they thought that money had interfered with God’s plan for you.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely fair,” said Flora.

“Neither do I,” said the Mother Superior. “And indeed I imagine there are circumstances that suggest that God’s plan for certain people is that they should have money. After all, if nobody had any money, then who would give to the Holy Church?”

“Precisely,” said Flora.

The Mother Superior looked out of the window. “I was very reassured to hear that you hadn’t lost your faith. That was a great comfort to me, you know.”

“I haven’t lost it,” said Flora. “It’s just that … oh, I suppose it’s just that I decided that I’m not cut out for the religious life. I’ve enjoyed it well enough, but I feel that somehow life is passing me by.”

“Quite understandable, my child,” said the Mother Superior.

“And I thought that I really had to make a decision one way or the other. So I decided that I would go out into the world. It just seemed the right thing for me to do.”

“We all understand,” said the Mother Superior. “I understand; poor Sister Frances understands—just; and Father Sullivan understands. You’ll be happy doing God’s work for you in the wider world—whatever that happens to be.”

“I hope so.”

“And, of course,” continued the Mother Superior, “you will be a wealthy woman.”

Sister Flora lowered her eyes. “I didn’t reach the decision because of that,” she said. “I had already decided.”

“Oh, I know that,” said the Mother Superior. “I wasn’t for a moment suggesting post hoc, propter hoc. But being wealthy will be … well, rather nice, don’t you think?”

A Note from the Author:

Everybody likes Jane Austen—or almost everybody, even those who have yet to read her. Film versions of the Austen novels abound, with new interpretations coming out virtually every year. There is also a steady stream of prequels and sequels, and forays into the world of even the most subsidiary of characters in these extraordinarily beautiful examples of the English novel. Then there are the fridge magnets, the writing sets, the biscuit tins. Jane, it seems, is all about us, and in many different forms.

The purists can get a bit sniffy about some aspects of this. Memorabilia are one thing, they say, but the stories themselves should be left well alone. There is some justification for this approach: there is no point in trying to improve on perfection, and it is presumptuous to imagine that anybody could do so. There is also a more general argument against the reusing of characters and themes that have already been thoroughly explored. Again, one can see the point in such criticism, but this is to ignore the fact that the revisiting of familiar and much-appreciated characters can give pleasure to those who like the originals so much that they yearn for more. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels were continued by two highly-skilled successors who seamlessly prolonged the delights of the world he created. Similarly Ian Fleming’s James Bond has had a number of successful outings since Fleming’s death. And now Agatha Christie’s estate has given the green light to the return of Poirot under the care of a new writer.

Jane Austen has no literary executors to control what anybody does with her, but in my view there are still restraints on how we should treat her characters and plots. First and foremost, I felt that if I were to tackle Emma I should do so with proper respect. That means that a novel of that importance should not be subverted, but should be approached in a spirit of celebration, and indeed admiration. When I sat down to write a modern Emma I decided at the outset that the plot of my book should follow the general direction of the original’s plot and that the moral point of the book—and there is a moral point to Emma—should be retained. Emma in my mind is all about the growth of moral vision and the conquering of selfishness. So it would be wrong to make of it a triumph of self-interest.

The modernisation itself was more problematic. It would be easy enough to rewrite Jane Austen in such a way as to make the novel reflect the crude face of our age. You could put in strong language; you could introduce overt sexual activity; you could give everybody a mobile phone and a set of ear-buds; you could make them as rude and as abrupt as we tend to be today. I chose not to do any of that because I think we read Austen precisely because bwe don’t want any of that. What people want from a contemporary version of a Jane Austen novel is, I suspect, more Austen humour; more Austen romantic speculation.

Writing Emma was for me one of the most enjoyable experiences of my literary life. I wrote it in two months, and at the end I felt bereft. I had enjoyed myself so much in the company of Emma and her friends and family, that I laid aside my pen with a sigh of regret. For two months I had lived, I thought, in a better place. Escapism? Unrealistic? Of course it was—but it was such unmitigated pleasure, such unforgettable fun.

Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld’s birthday fell on the first of May. He would not always have remembered it had the anniversary not occurred on May Day itself; as a small boy he had been convinced that the newspaper photographs of parades in Red Square, those intimidating displays of missiles, and the grim-faced line-up of Politburo officials, all had something to do with the fact that he was turning six or seven, or whatever birthday it was. Such is the complete confidence of childhood that we are each of us at the centre of the world—a conviction out of which not all of us grow, and those who do grow out of it sometimes do so only with some difficulty. And this is so very understandable; as Auden remarked, how fascinating is that class of which I am the only member.

Nobody observed von Igelfeld’s birthday now. It was true that he was not entirely alone in the world—there were cousins in Graz, but they were on the Austrian side of the family and the two branches of von Igelfelds, separated by both distance and nationality, had drifted apart. There was an elderly aunt in Munich, and another aged female relative in Baden Baden, but they had both forgotten more or less everything and it had been many years since they had sent him a birthday card. If he had married, as he had firmly intended to do, then he undoubtedly would now have been surrounded by a loving wife and children, who would have made much of his birthday; but his resolution to propose to a charming dentist, Dr Lisbetta von Brautheim, had been thwarted by his colleague, Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer. That was a humiliation which von Igelfeld had found hard to bear. That Unterholzer of all people—a man whose work on the orthography of Romance languages was barely mentioned these days; a man whose idea of art was coloured reproductions of views of the Rhine; a man whose nose was so large and obtrusive—vulgar even—the sort of nose one saw on head-waiters; that Unterholzer should succeed in marrying Dr von Brautheim when he himself had planned to do so, was quite unacceptable. But the fact remained that there was nothing one could do about it; Unterholzer’s birthday never went unmarked. Indeed, there were always cakes at coffee time in the Institute on Unterholzer’s birthday, made by Frau Dr Unterholzer herself; as Unterholzer pointed out, she might be a dentist but she had a sweet tooth nonetheless and made wonderful, quite wonderful cakes and pastries. And then there were the cards prominently displayed on his desk, not only from Unterholzer’s wife but from the receptionist and dental nurse in her practice. What did they care about Unterholzer? von Igelfeld asked himself. They could hardly like him, and so they must have sent the cards out of deference to their employer. That was not only wrong—a form of exploitation indeed—but it was also sickeningly sentimental, and if that was what happened on birthdays then he was best off without one, or at least best off without one to which anybody paid any attention.

On the first of May in question, von Igelfeld was in the Institute coffee room before anybody else. They normally all arrived at the same time, with a degree of punctuality which would have been admired by Immanuel Kant himself, but on that particular morning von Igelfeld would treat himself to an extra ten minutes’ break. Besides, if he arrived early, he could sit in the chair which Unterholzer normally contrived to occupy, and which von Igelfeld believed was more comfortable than any other in the room. As the best chair in the room it should by rights have gone to him, as he was, after all, the senior scholar, but these things were difficult to articulate in a formal way and he had been obliged to tolerate Unterholzer’s occupation of the chair. It would have been different, of course, if Professor Dr Dr Florianus Prinzel had taken that chair; von Igelfeld would have been delighted to let Prinzel have it, as he undoubtedly deserved it. He and Prinzel had been friends together at Heidelberg, in their youth, and he still thought of Prinzel as the scholar athlete, the noble youth, deserving of every consideration. Yes, there was little he would not have done for Prinzel, and it was a matter of secret regret to von Igelfeld that he had never actually been called upon to save Prinzel’s life. That would have secured Prinzel’s undying admiration and indebtedness, which von Igelfeld would have worn lightly. “It was nothing,” he imagined himself saying. “One’s own personal safety is irrelevant in such circumstances. Believe me, I know that you would have done the same for me.”

In fact, the only time that Prinzel had been in danger von Igelfeld had either been responsible for creating the peril in the first place, or Prinzel had been able to handle the situation quite well without any assistance from him. In their student days in Heidelberg, von Igelfeld had unwisely persuaded Prinzel to engage in a duel with a shady member of some student Korps, and this, of course, had been disastrous. The very tip of Prinzel’s nose had been sliced off by his opponent’s sword, and although it had been sewn back on in hospital, the doctor, who had been slightly drunk, had sewn it on upside down. Prinzel had never said anything about this, being too gentlemanly to complain about such an affair (no true gentleman ever notices it if the tip of his nose is sliced off), and indeed it had occurred to von Igelfeld that he had not even been aware of what had happened. But it remained a reminder of an unfortunate incident, and von Igelfeld preferred not to think about it.

That was one incident. The other occasion on which Prinzel had been in danger was when von Igelfeld had accompanied him and his wife to Venice, at a time when the city was threatened by an insidious corruption. The corruption turned out not to be cholera, as so graphically portrayed by Thomas Mann, but radioactivity in the water, and Prinzel had become mildly radioactive as a result of swimming off the Lido. Again von Igelfeld was unable to come to the rescue, and Prinzel, quite calmly, had taken the situation in hand and returned to Germany for iodine treatment at the University of Mainz. There he had been decontaminated and pronounced safe, or as safe as one could be after ingesting small quantities of strontium-90.

Thoughts of radioactivity, however, were far from von Igelfeld’s mind as he enjoyed his first cup of coffee in the Institute coffee room and glanced at the headlines in the Frankfurter Allgemeine. There was nothing of note, of course. Industrialists were sounding off about interest rates, as they always did, and there was a picture of an earnest finance minister pointing a finger at a chart. The chart could have been upside down, like Prinzel’s nose, for all that von Igelfeld cared; matters of this sort left him unmoved. It was the job of politicians and bankers to run the economy and he could not understand why they often failed to do so in a competent way. It was, he assumed, something to do with their general venality and with the fact that quite the wrong type went into politics and finance. But it seemed as if there would never be any change in that, and so they would have to put up with these insolent people and with their persistent mismanagement. Far more interesting was the front-page item about a row which was developing over the appointment of a new director to a museum in Wiesbaden.

The new director, a man of modern tastes, had thrown out the old cases of fossils and rocks and had replaced them with installations by contemporary artists. This had the effect of confusing those people who came to the museum hoping to see items of interest and found only empty galleries with a small pile of wooden boxes in a corner or a heap of old clothing, artistically arranged under a skylight and labelled: The Garments of Identity. These visitors peered into the wooden boxes, hoping to see fossils or rocks within, and found that they were empty, and that the boxes themselves were the exhibit. And as for the piles of clothing, what was the difference between them and the museum cloakroom, where people hung their overcoats? Were both not Garments of Identity, or would it be confusing to label the cloakroom Garments of Identity? Would people know that it was a cloakroom, or would they search in vain for a room labelled Cloakroom? Von Igelfeld frowned. This sort of thing was becoming far too common in Germany, and he had every sympathy with the friends of the fossils and rocks who were attempting to secure the new director’s resignation. This was far more interesting than news of interest rates, and far more significant, too, von Igelfeld thought. What if the levers of power at universities were to fall into similar hands to the hands of this new director? Would he himself be considered a fossil or a rock, and thrown out, to be replaced, perhaps, by a wooden box? How would Romance philology survive in a world that honoured the works of Joseph Beuys and the like?

It was while von Igelfeld was thinking of these dire possibilities that he heard the door of the coffee room open. He looked up, to see his colleagues entering, deep in what appeared to be animated conversation. There was sudden silence when they saw von Igelfeld.

“Good morning,” said von Igelfeld, laying the newspaper to one side. “It seems that I am here first today.”

For a moment nothing was said. Then the Librarian cleared his throat and spoke. “That would appear to be so, Herr von Igelfeld. And seeing you here solves the mystery which I was discussing with Professor Dr Prinzel outside, in the corridor. ‘Where is Professor Dr von Igelfeld?’ I asked. And Professor Dr Prinzel said that he did not know. Well, now we all know. You are here, in the coffee room, sitting in … ” He tailed off, and moved quickly to the table where the coffee pot and cups stood in readiness.

They served themselves coffee in silence, and then came to join von Igelfeld around his table.

“How is your aunt?” von Igelfeld asked the Librarian. “This spring weather will be cheering her up, no doubt.”

The health of his demanding aunt was the Librarian’s main topic of conversation, and it was rare for anybody to raise it, as they had all heard everything there was to be said about this aunt.

“That is very kind of you to ask,” said the Librarian. “Very thoughtful. I shall tell my aunt that you asked after her. That will make her very happy. So few people care about people like her these days. It’s good that at least somebody remembers.” He paused, throwing a sideways glance at Unterholzer and Prinzel. “She will be very pleased indeed, I can assure you. And she does need some cheering up, now that they have changed her medicine and the new one takes some getting used to. It’s Dutch, you know. I wasn’t aware that the Dutch made medicines at all, but this one is said to be very good. The only problem is that it irritates her stomach and that makes her querulous at times. Not that she is always like that; it seems to be at its worst about twenty minutes after taking the pill in question. They come in peculiar yellow and white capsules, which are actually quite difficult to swallow. The last ones were white, and had the manufacturers’ initials stamped into every capsule. Quite remarkable … ”

It was Unterholzer who interrupted him. “So,” he said. “So this is a special day, is it not?”

Prinzel glanced nervously at Unterholzer. He had been hoping that he would not make an issue of the chair, but it seemed that he might. Really, this was most unwise. Everybody knew that von Igelfeld could be difficult, and Unterholzer really had no legal claim on that chair. He might have a moral claim, as people undoubtedly did develop moral claims to chairs, but this was quite different from a claim which could be defended in the face of a direct challenge. It would be far better to pass over the whole incident and for Unterholzer simply to arrive slightly early the following morning and secure the chair for himself. He could surely count on their moral support in any such manoeuvre.

“Today, you see,” Unterholzer went on, “today is special because it is the birthday of our dear colleague, Professor Dr von Igelfeld.”

“My!” exclaimed the Librarian. “The same month as my aunt! Hers is on the twelfth. What a coincidence!”

“May Day,” said Prinzel. “A distress signal at sea, but for you quite the opposite!”

They all laughed at the witticism. Prinzel was so amusing and could be counted upon to bring a welcome note of levity, particularly to a potentially difficult situation.

Von Igelfeld smiled. “It is very kind of you to remember, Herr Unterholzer,” he said. “I had not intended to celebrate it.”

Unterholzer looked thoughtful. “I suppose not,” he said. “A birthday can’t be much fun when one has to celebrate it all by oneself. There’s no point, really.”

Von Igelfeld stared at him. Unterholzer often took the opportunity to condescend to him, if he thought he could get away with it, and this was quite intolerable. If anybody deserved to be pitied, it was Unterholzer himself, with his wretched, out-of-date book on Portuguese subjunctives, and that nose. Who was he even to hint that von Igelfeld’s life might be incomplete in some way? It defied belief; it really did. He would tell Zimmermann himself about it, and Zimmermann, he knew, would laugh. He always laughed when Unterholzer’s name was mentioned, even before anything else was said.

Prinzel intervened rapidly. “I remember, Moritz-Maria, how we used to celebrate our birthdays, back in Heidelberg, when we were students. Do you remember when we went to that inn where the innkeeper gave us free steins of beer when he heard it was your birthday. He always used to call you the Baron! ‘Free beer for the Baron’s birthday,’ he said. Those were his very words, were they not?”

Unterholzer listened closely, but with increasing impatience. This Heidelberg story had irritated him, and he was beginning to regret his act of generosity—supererogatory in the provocative circumstances—in drawing attention to von Igelfeld’s birthday. He had not anticipated that Prinzel would launch into this embarrassing tribute to von Igelfeld. “So why did he call Professor Dr von Igelfeld a baron, when he isn’t one?” he asked. “Why would anyone do that?”

Prinzel smiled. “Because some people, even if they aren’t barons in the technical sense have—how shall I put it?; this really is a bit embarrassing—some of the qualities that one normally associates with that position in life. That is why, for example, that my friend Charles von Klain is often addressed as Capitano by the proprietors of Italian restaurants. He has the appropriate bearing. He has no military rank, but he could have. Do you see what I mean?”

Unterholzer shook his head. “I do not see why people should be called Baron or Count, or even Capitano for that matter, when they are not entitled to these titles.”

“It is not an important thing,” said von Igelfeld. “It is really nothing.”

“But it is!” said the Librarian. “These things are important. One of the doctors who visits my aunt’s nursing home is a Polish count. Of course he doesn’t use the title, but do you know, one of the other patients there, a charming lady from Berlin, could spot it. She said to my aunt: ‘That Dr Wlavoski is an aristocrat. I can tell.’ And do you know, when they asked the Director of the nursing home, he confirmed it! He explained that the Wlavoskis had been an important family of landowners in the East and they had been dispossessed—first by our own authorities when they invaded—and that was most unfortunate and regrettable—and then again by the Russians when they came in. They were a very scientifically distinguished family and they all became physicians or astronomers or the like, but the fact that they had been counts somehow shone through.”

They all looked at the Librarian. The conversation was intensely embarrassing to von Igelfeld. The von Igelfelds were certainly not from that extensive and ubiquitous class of people, the “vegetable nobles” (for whom von was nothing more than an address). Of course he could be addressed as Baron by only the very smallest extension of the rules of entitlement; after all, his father’s cousin had been the Freiherr von Igelfeld, the title having been granted to the family by the Emperor Francis II, and on his mother’s side there were barons and baronesses aplenty, but this was not something that people like him liked to discuss.

“Perhaps we should change the subject,” said Prinzel, who could sense Unterholzer’s hostility. The problem there was that Unterholzer would have liked to have been mistaken for a baron, but never could be. It was out of the question. And it was not just a question of physical appearance – which alone would have precluded it—it was something to do with manner. Unterholzer was just too … too clumsy to pass for anything but what he was, which was a man of very obscure origins from some dim and undistinguished town in a potato-growing area somewhere.
“Yes,” said Unterholzer. “A good idea. We are, after all, meant to be serious people. Talk about barons and all such nonsense is suitable only for those silly magazines that you see at the railway station. Such silliness. It’s surprising that it survives. So let us talk about your birthday, Herr von Igelfeld! How are you going to celebrate it?”

“I am not proposing to do anything in particular,” said von Igelfeld. “I shall possibly go out for dinner somewhere. I don’t know. I have not thought about it.”

“A birthday is a good time to review the past year,” said Prinzel. “I always think over what I’ve done. It’s useful to do that.”

“Or indeed to review one’s entire life,” suggested Unterholzer. “You might think with some satisfaction of all your achievements, Herr von Igelfeld.” This remark was quite sincere. In spite of his envy, Unterholzer admired von Igelfeld, and would have liked to have been more like him. He would have loved to have written Portuguese Irregular Verbs himself and to have enjoyed von Igelfeld’s undoubted distinction. But of course he had not, and, in moments of real honesty, he acknowledged that he never would.

“Yes,” said Prinzel. “You have done so much. You could even write your autobiography. And when you wrote it, the final chapter would be: Things still left to be done. That would allow it to end on a positive note.”

“Such as?” interjected Unterholzer. “What has Professor Dr von Igelfeld still to do?”

“I have no idea,” said Prinzel. “He has done so much. We had better ask him.” He turned to von Igelfeld, who was taking a sip of his coffee. “What would you really like to do, Herr von Igelfeld?”

Von Igelfeld put down his coffee cup and thought for a moment. They were right. He had done so much; he had been to so many conferences; he had delivered so many lectures; he had written so many learned papers. And yet, there were things undone, that he would like to do. He would like, for example, to have gone to Cambridge, as Zimmermann had done only a few years before. They had given Zimmermann a lodge for a year when he had been a visiting professor and von Igelfeld had visited him there. The day of his visit had been a perfect summer day, and after taking tea on the lawns of the lodge they had driven out to Grantchester in Zimmermann’s car and had drunk more tea possibly under the very chestnut trees which Rupert Brooke had referred to in his poem. And von Igelfeld had felt so content, and so pleased with the scholarly atmosphere, that he had decided that one day he too would like to follow in Zimmermann’s footsteps and visit this curious English city with its colleges and its lanes and its feeling of gentleness.

“I should like to go to Cambridge,” he announced. “And indeed one day I shall go there.”

Unterholzer listened with interest. If von Igelfeld were to go to Cambridge for an appreciable length of time, then he might be able to get his office for the duration of his time away. It was a far better office than his own, and if he simply moved in while von Igelfeld was away nobody would wish to make a fuss. After all, what was the point of having empty space? He could give his own office over to one of the research assistants, who currently had to share with another. It was the logical thing to do. And so he decided, there and then, to contact his friend at the German Scholarly Exchange Programme and see whether he could fix an invitation for von Igelfeld to go to Cambridge for a period of six months or so. A year would be acceptable, of course, but one would not want to be too greedy.

“I hope your wish comes true,” said Unterholzer, raising his coffee cup in a toast to von Igelfeld. “To Cambridge!”

They all raised their coffee cups and von Igelfeld smiled modestly. “It would be most agreeable,” he said. “But perhaps it will never happen.”

The fourth book in the Von Igelfeld / Portuguese Irregular Verbs series   Life is so unfair, and sends many things to try Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. There is the undeserved rise of his rival (and owner of a one-legged dachshund), Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer; the perpetual ramblings of the librarian, Herr Huber; and the […]

The eleventh book in the 44 Scotland Street series Our beloved cast of characters are back in The Bertie Project, as are the joys and trials of life at 44 Scotland Street. Bertie’s mother, Irene, returns from the Middle East to discover that, in her absence, her son has been exposed to the worst of evils—television […]

Cornelius Patrick O’Leary had been known as Fatty O’Leary from the time he was twelve, which was in the early 1950s. People were less sensitive then to the feelings of people around them, and many of the nicknames they gave to others were thoughtlessly unkind. Yet in those more robust, not to say careless days, those to whom disparaging nicknames were given sometimes appeared to accept the situation. Or so it seemed on the surface: people suffered in silence then, enduring things that today people simply would not bear, while all the time they smarted under the casual cruelty of a derogatory nickname. Cornelius O’Leary, though, was not like this: he never objected to being called Fatty, and even signed himself as such.

He was a good man, and a kind one. If those who first called him Fatty—those childhood friends, the boys in the boy scouts, the slightly simple man who served sodas in the drug store who delighted in inventing a nickname for every customer—had done so with the intent to belittle or provoke him, then he forgave them; forgiveness came easily to Fatty—it was easier, he thought, to like people than to dislike them, however they behaved towards you. Dislike required energy and a good memory for slights; geniality was so much less demanding, and at the end of the day felt better too.

He was indifferent to the embarrassed surprise that people sometimes showed when he used the name of himself. “It’s simpler than signing Cornelius,” he said with a disarming smile. “Two syllables rather than four. It saves time.” And then he added, “And I could do to lose a bit round the middle, I suppose—but who couldn’t?”

Fatty lived in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a pleasant college town on the edge of the Ozarks. He was the son of a comfortably-off local businessman who owned a small furniture factory, a warehouse, a motel, and a bar that was popular with students from the university. Those were the profitable parts of the family business, but not the interesting bit. That was an antique store that Fatty ran personally, leaving the other concerns in the hands of a manager. Fatty knew a great deal about antique furniture; he had a good eye for it and had even written the occasional article in a furniture magazine published in Boston. He was particularly proud of those articles, which were framed and hung in prominent places round the house.

Fatty’s wife was called Betty; she was the former Miss Elizabeth Shaugnessy, of Mobile, Alabama. They had met when they were both at the University of Notre Dame. Betty had fallen in love with Fatty the first time she saw him—and he with her. They were ideally suited, and while most married couples cannot say with complete honesty that they had never fought with one another over anything, Fatty and Betty could do just that.

Fatty’s two closest old friends in Fayetteville were Tubby O’Rourke and Porky Flanagan. Tubby was an accountant with an interest in model railways; Porky was a dentist who ran a dental practice set up by his father and his uncle. He did not really enjoy dentistry and had complained to Fatty on more than one occasion that it was his uncle, in particular, who had leant on him to go to dental school.

“All he thinks about is teeth, Fatty. Mention a name and he says, I know that guy’s teeth. He went to Washington once and came back and complained that there were no statues of dentists.”

“He’s got a point,” said Fatty. “Dentists deserve a few statues. Maybe a few statues to dentists who fell in foreign wars.”

Tubby looked thoughtful. “They probably weren’t right up there on the front line,” he said. “They were fixing teeth back in the field hospitals.”

“Yes,” said Fatty. “Maybe they were. But we still need dentists.”

“We sure do,” said Tubby. “Thank God for dentists.”

“Okay,” said Porky. “We need dentists, but not everyone has to be a dentist, right?”

The three friends used to meet every other week to play poker. Fatty had also taught them Mah Jong, and they occasionally played that, although Tubby did not enjoy it as much as poker, which he almost always won. This was, in fact, a potential source of tension, as Tubby won so often that Porky began to suspect him of cheating. Fortunately he never made a direct accusation to this effect, as Tubby would never have done anything dishonest.
Betty thought Tubby the most handsome man she had ever met. She said that if Tubby had gone to Hollywood, he would almost certainly have been snapped up by the movie people. She once told Tubby this, at a party, and he laughed and said, “You’ve had too much to drink, Betty. I’d never have got far in the movies: those guys in the movies carry a bit less weight than I do.”

Joan O’Rourke, Tubby’s wife, said, “Tubby can’t act, anyway.”

This is the story of the events that took place round Fatty’s fortieth birthday in the summer of 1979 when Fatty paid his first visit to Ireland. This trip was Betty’s fortieth birthday present to her husband, who had long talked about an Irish holiday but who had never seemed to find the time to organise one. Like Betty, Fatty considered himself every bit as Irish as he was American. His credentials for this identity were impeccable: not only was there his name, which was quintessentially Irish, but he could also point to the exact identity of the Irish forebear who had decided that enough was enough. This was his grandfather, also called Cornelius Patrick O’Leary – or Corny P. O’Leary, as he became known—who had emigrated from an obscure corner of County Tipperary to establish the family home in Fayetteville four years before the outbreak of the First World War. Arkansas, with its abundant supplies of timber, was an ideal place for the furniture factory that Corny set up. He had gone to America to get away from everything that he regarded as being wrong with Ireland—persistent rain, congenitally arrogant Anglo-Irish gentry, and a legion of squabbling relatives. Freed of Ireland, he became enthusiastically more Irish than ever before, and set to the establishing of a modest dynasty of O’Learys, centred upon the rambling double-storey house, Tipperary View, that he built in the centre of Fayetteville. It was not at all clear why he should have called the house this. It never had much of a view, and certainly not one of Tipperary, from which it was separated by three thousand miles of ocean and a considerable slice of the American continent; but, as Fatty once remarked to Betty, we see what see want to see in this life, and it was undoubtedly true that if his grandfather had dreamed of seeing anything, it would have been those soft and distant Irish hills.

As Fatty’s birthday approached, a visit to Ireland had not been the first possibility Betty explored. She had looked into the feasibility of a week or two in Honolulu, but had decided that Fatty would probably dislike this. Neither of them particularly took to crowds and busy hotels, and she was sure that they would find both of these in Hawaii. Besides, she knew that a trip to Ireland would enable Fatty to seek out the ancestral farm from which the original Cornelius O’Leary had set forth on the fateful day in July, 1910. It is possible that were still O’Learys there, and to locate some distant relatives would be an additional bonus. Fatty was proud of the O’Leary family, and would be delighted to make contact with any Irish cousins who might still be lurking in Tipperary. Betty was more cautious: she wondered what sort of un-enterprising people would choose to remain in Ireland when they could easily have left the country, even if only to take the ferry to Liverpool. Well, they would soon find out, and if the Irish relatives proved to be at all … at all embarrassing they could be left right there. If, on the other hand they were promising, they might be persuaded to emigrate, as Betty assumed that all sensible Irish people had either already emigrated to America or were at least actively contemplating doing so. Indeed, it was quite surprising that anybody remained there at all, other than those few needed to act as curators.
Fatty was enthusiastic when he heard that Betty had booked the flights. They were to fly to Dallas and from there they would continue their journey to Shannon. There they could hire a car and drive the short distance to Tipperary.

“How do you picture Ireland, Fatty?” Betty asked dreamily. “Do you have a clear image of it?”

“I certainly do,” replied Fatty. “A lush green landscape, dotted with tiny white-washed cottages. And a patchwork of fields.”

“And rain?” prompted Betty.

“Oh yes,” said Fatty. “Lots of rain.”

“Marvellous!” said Betty. “Except perhaps for the rain.”

“Gentle rain,” went on Fatty, “barely noticeable, Irish rain—quite different from the rain we get out here. A little bit like whiskey, I think. Very weak, but still with the taste of the barley on it.”

Betty laughed.

Fatty shook his head fondly. “Oh, Betty,” he said, “you’re a genius to have thought of all this!”