For a moment Mma Ramotswe was undecided. Do I really want to change the way I am? she asked herself. Or should I just be myself, which is a traditionally built lady who likes bush tea and who likes to sit on her verandah and think?
She sighed. There were many good intentions which would never be seen to their implementation. This, she decided, was one of them.
“I think my diet is over now,” she said to Mma Potokwane.
They sat there for some time, talking in the way of old friends, licking the crumbs of cake off their fingers. Mma Ramotswe told Mma Potokwane about her stressful week, and Mma Potokwane sympathised with her. “You must take more care of yourself,” she said. “We are not born to work, work, work all the time.”
“You’re right,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is important just to be able to sit and think.”
Mma Potokwane agreed with that. “I often tell the orphans not to spend all their time working,” she said. “It is quite unnatural to work like that. There should be some time for work and some for play.”
“And some for sitting and watching the sun go up and down,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And some time for listening to the cattle bells in the bush.”
Mma Potokwane thought that this was a fine sentiment. She too, she said, would like to retire one day and go and live out in her village, where people knew one another and cared for one another.
“Will you go back to your village one day?” she asked Mma Ramotswe. And Mma Ramotswe replied, “I shall go back. Yes, one of these days I shall go back.”
And in her mind’s eye she saw the winding paths of Mochudi, and the cattle pens, and the small walled-off plot of ground where a modest stone bore the inscription Obed Ramotswe. And beside the stone there were wild flowers growing, small flowers of such beauty and perfection that they broke the heart. They broke the heart.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the huge international phenomemon The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, and of The Sunday Philosophy Club and 44 Scotland Street series. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and was a law professor at the University of Botswana and at Edinburgh University. He lives in Scotland.
BOOKS BY
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
IN 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
IN THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB SERIES
The Sunday Philosophy Club
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
IN THE PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS SERIES
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
IN THE 44 SCOTLAND STREET SERIES
44 Scotland Street
The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Alexander McCall Smith
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn, Ltd., Edinburgh.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCall Smith, Alexander, [date]
Blue shoes and happiness / Alexander McCall Smith.
p. cm.—(The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series)
1. Ramotswe, Precious (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (Imaginary organization)—Fiction. 3. Women private investigators—Botswana—Fiction. 4. Botswana—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6063.C326B58 2006 823'.914—dc22 2005052122
www.pantheonbooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-375-42426-7
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