Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online

talking about. She told me that it was Mma Tsau’s husband and that there was a storeroom in the college where he came for a meal from time to time and was given all the best meat by his wife. On other days, she said, Mma Tsau would take home packets of the best meat to cook for her husband at their house. This food belonged to the college, she said, but it went straight into the mouth of Mma Tsau’s husband, who was getting fatter and fatter as a result of all these good meals he was having.
    â€œI did not believe this at first. I had noticed that he was a very fat man, but I had thought that this must be because he was married to a good cook. The husbands of good cooks are often fatter than other men—and that is natural, I suppose.
    â€œI decided one day to see whether what the cleaning lady had told me was true. I had noticed that at lunchtimes Mma Tsau used to leave the kitchen from time to time, but I was always so busy that I hardly paid any attention to it. There is always something happening in a busy kitchen, and there are many reasons why the head cook may need to leave the stoves for a short time. There are supplies to be checked up on. There are telephones to answer. There are assistants to chase up.
    â€œOn that day I kept an eye on Mma Tsau. She went outside at one point to call one of the helpers, who was standing outside in the sun and not doing enough work. I looked out of the window and saw her shaking a finger at this woman and shouting at her, but I did not hear what she said. I had a good idea of it, though.
    â€œThen, a few minutes later, I noticed that she went to the door of one of the warming ovens and took out a covered dish. It was an oven that we never used, as we had too much capacity in that kitchen. She took this dish, which was covered by a metal plate, and went out of the kitchen. I moved over to a window and saw her walking towards a small block near the kitchen. There was an old office there, which was not used any more, and a storeroom. She went in, was inside for a few moments, and then came out again, without the dish, but wiping her hands on her apron.
    â€œI waited a few minutes. Mma Tsau was now busy supervising the assistants who were dishing out the stew to the students. She was telling them that they should not give helpings that were too generous, or there would not be enough for the students who came in for their lunch a bit later. I overheard her telling one of them that they should not give more food to those students whom they liked, who smiled at them when they reached the head of the line, or who were related to them. I could not believe that I was hearing that, if what I thought I had just seen was true. I think that you should not say one thing and then do exactly the opposite yourself, should you, Mma Ramotswe? No. That is what I thought too.
    â€œThis was now the best time for me to leave the kitchen, while Mma Tsau was lecturing the assistant. I went outside and ran across to the block which I had seen her enter. I had decided that the best thing to do would be to pretend to be looking for something, and so I did not knock on the door, but just pushed it open. There was a man inside, that fat man, the husband of Mma Tsau. He was sitting at a small table with a large plate of steak in front of him. There were vegetables too—some potatoes with gravy on them and a pile of carrots. He had a bottle of tomato sauce on the table in front of him and a copy of
The Daily News
, which he was reading as he ate.
    â€œI pretended to be surprised, although what I saw was exactly what I had expected to see. So I greeted him and said that I was sorry to have disturbed his lunch. He smiled and said that it did not matter, and that I should look for whatever it was that I was searching for. Then he went back to eating his steak, which smelled very good in the small space of that room.”
    As the story progressed, Mma Ramotswe’s mouth opened wider and