Govind and Chinta ignored the whispers and silence. W. C. Tuttle replied to them by scowling and exercising with his dumbbells. His wife looked offended. The nine little Tuttles refused to speak to the other children.
The villagers at last banded against the Tulsis. Many of the Tulsi children were going to schools in Port of Spain and they filled the seven o”clock bus at the terminus near the graveyard. The villagers, who had hitherto found the hourly bus service to Port of Spain quite adequate, began to board the bus just before it reached the graveyard, paying the extra penny to be sure of their seat to Port of Spain. And the children found that the seven o”clock bus came in nearly full, and no one got out. There was no great competition for the vacant seats, and for many days most of the children did not go to school, until W. C. Tuttle, frowningly forgiving, offered, for no more than the bus fare, to take the children to school on his lorry.
The lorry had to be at the American base at six in the morning. Therefore the children could not be deposited at school much after half past five. To do this they had to leave Shorthills at a quarter to five. So they had to be up at four. It was still night when, sitting close together on planks fixed to the tray of the lorry, their teeth chattering, they drove through the chilly hills below the low dripping trees; and the street lamps were still on when they got to Port of Spain. They were put down outside their schools before newsboys delivered papers, before servants were up, before the school gates opened. They remained on the pavement and played hopscotch in the pre-dawn light. The caretaker of the girls’ school rose at six and dressed hurriedly and let them in, asking them not to make too much noise and disturb his wife, who was still asleep. The caretaker’s house was small, with only two rooms and a tiny, partly-exposed kitchen; and the caretaker had a numerous family. They had been used to wandering about the school yard in the early mornings dressed as they pleased; they brushed their teeth and spat in the sandy yard; they quarrelled; they slipped naked from house to outdoor bathroom and towelled themselves in the open; they cooked and ate under the tamarind tree; they hung up intimate washing. Now correctness was imposed on them from dawn. While the caretaker and his family breakfasted, in silence, the children became hungry again and ate the lunches which had been prepared from them three hours before. It was the best time to eat the lunches, for by midday the curry was beginning to go red and smell. The children who kept their food till lunchtime often gave it away then in exchange for things like bread and cheese; and, the reputation of Indian food surviving even Tulsi cooking, both sides thought they were getting the better bargain.
The return to Shortfalls had its own problems. The children left school at three. The lorry left the American base at six. It was therefore out of the question if the children were to get home before eight. And the bus service from Port of Spain became more difficult from week to week. Because of wartime shortages and restrictions there were fewer city buses, and the Shorthills bus was used by people who didn’t go all the way. To get the bus the children had to walk nearly three miles to the terminus at the railway station. The last uncrowded bus was the two-thirty; to get this meant leaving school shortly after lunch. The child who hoped to get the three-thirty left school at half past two, walked to the terminus and joined the waiting crowd. There was no queue and the bus on its arrival became the object of an immediate scrimmage. People scrambled through the open windows, climbing up on tyres and the cap of the petrol tank, and burst through the emergency exit at the back; so that even if a child managed to squeeze in first through the door he found the seats taken. So the children walked until they could be taken on by the bus when it was less full, or by the lorry returning from the American base. Mrs. Tulsi sent word from her room that the children could lessen the fatigue of walking in the afternoon if they all sang; if the girls were molested they were to take off their shoes (they wore crepe soles) and strike the molester on the head.
Eventually, however, a car was bought, and one of the sons-in-law drove it to Port of Spain with the children and the oranges. It was a Ford V-8 of the early nineteen-thirties, not inelegant, and it might have performed less erratically if it carried a lighter load. Under the weight of children and oranges it sank low on the rear springs, the bonnet was slightly uptilted, and for the steeper climbs the children had to get off. Often the car broke down and then the driver, who knew nothing about cars, asked the children to push. Like ants around a dead cockroach the children surrounded the car (the girls in their dark blue uniforms) and pushed and pulled. Sometimes they pushed for more than a mile. Sometimes they pushed the car to the top of a hill, jumped aside as it rolled down, heard it start, raced after it, the driver urging them to hurry, sprang inside three at a time. Then the engine stalled; and they sat, crouched or half-stood, suffocated and silent, waiting for the fruitless, scraping whine of the starter. Sometimes the car got into Port of Spain with one side of the bonnet up and a child on the wing, operating a pump of some sort. Sometimes the car didn’t get to Port of Spain at all. This pleased the children more than the driver; he had no packed lunch. Sometimes the car was laid up for days. Then the children went to Port of Spain by lorry; or they surprised the villagers, who had relaxed their precautions, by taking the seven o”clock bus.
The Ford V-8 was finally abandoned when some of the lesser sons-in-law, not profiting by the experience of the children, went in it one evening to a film-show in Port of Spain. The house blazed with lights all night; and the sisters concerned, armed with sticks to daunt molesters, made frequent sallies along the Port of Spain road. The men returned just before dawn, pushing. The children went to school by lorry. The car was pushed from the road into the gully and up to the clump of wild tannia under the saman tree, where, being presently stripped by an unknown person of its saleable parts, it remained, a plaything for the children.
Another car was bought, another Ford V-8, but a sports model with a dicky seat. And into this, miraculously, all the children were squeezed, standing in the dicky seat like stemmed flowers in a vase. A second trip was made for the oranges. While they were in the country the children could pretend to be on the top of a stagecoach, but when they got to Port of Spain they attracted derisive attention and missed the shelter of the saloon.
So for the children Shorthills became a nightmare. Daylight was nearly always gone when they returned, and there was little to return to. The food grew rougher and rougher and was eaten more casually, in the kitchen itself, where the brick floor had been topped with mud, or in the covered space between the kitchen and the house. No child knew from one night to the next where he was going to sleep; beds were made anywhere and at any time. On Saturdays the children pulled up weeds; on Sundays they collected oranges or other fruit.
At week-ends the children submitted to the laws of the family. But during the week, when they spent so much time away from the house, they formed a community of their own, outside family laws. No one ruled; there were only the weak and the strong. Affection between brother and sister was despised. No alliance was stable. Only enmities were lasting, and the hot afternoon walks which Mrs. Tulsi had seen lightened by song were often broken by bitter fights of pure hate.