Before taxis serviced the link road that connected up the south coast’s seaside villages, Raleigh being one of them, Dolly St. George hardly set foot beyond the walking distance between her house and Tante Eugenie’s. Raleigh people seldom traveled beyond the village. When they did, it was to obtain one kind of license or another from a government office in the capital city of Gloria, a birth certificate or death certificate, or to go to the hospital in Marion to visit an ailing relative or friend or to see a doctor themselves. If they’d had cause to travel, they would have gone the old way: hired horse cart, mule cart, or donkey cart. After the service became regular in the area, the Indian man from the village farther south, who used to give rides in his donkey cart for a few pence, painted a sign on the wood frame of his cart: NARINE DONKEY SERVICE. FOR HIRE. COMBATIVE RATES, FRENLY DRIVER. FRESH AIR & SEENIC ROUTE. GARANTEED. He and his donkey used to be regularly spotted transporting someone or something in the cart, but he had become scarce these days.
Dolly St. George was among the first to take the opportunity to travel the hour and half—on a good day, that is, twice that and more when the swamp flooded Link Road—into Marion to look for work. On the day she first took a taxi, she was one of three passengers in the car licensed to carry five. People from the area preferred to wait to hear if the vehicle really was able to make it all the way into the town and back safely. That trip was an investment: a shilling, which was a shilling more than she truly could spare. But thankfully, on that first day looking, she found the washing and ironing job to which she was traveling now.
The driver, Mr. Walter, didn’t grip the steering wheel as tightly as he had the first few times she rode in his car. The first day he picked her up, he was as hesitant as she. When she saw him, a black man driving, a man whose ancestors were brought from Africa, she had a moment of uncertainty, and it was only the prospect of work in Marion that made her, a lone Indian woman from the predominantly Negro village of Raleigh, get into the motor car with three black men. Let them run their mouths, she thought. She had a baby to mind; had any of them offered to clothe and feed him?
Mr. Walter, for his part, was surprised to find a woman waiting for him, flagging him down, as he approached Timbano Trace. She was alone that first time, having left the baby with Tante Eugenie. Walter got out of the driver’s seat, came around to her, and said, “Mornin’, madam.” She didn’t like him calling her madam. She wondered what he meant by that. She wasn’t any madam. She set her face sternly and waited for him to open the door. He stood looking down Timbano Trace. He turned back to the car, took out a handkerchief from his pants pocket, and wiped the rear window. She still waited for him to open the door. The other two passengers, the two men who were also black-skinned, like Mr. Walter, had stayed in the car, but they were also curiously looking down Timbano Trace. Finally the driver stopped polishing his vehicle, looked all around, and said, “It have somebody else coming?” She shook her head. He raised his eyes and said, “You alone?” She said nothing and looked at the door handle. He said, “Marion?” She nodded. He said, “One shilling, return. If you have it. But you could owe me.” She turned her back to him and discreetly withdrew from her bodice a handkerchief that had been tucked in the crease of her bosom. She unwrapped it and, turning again to face him, held out a shilling. He took it from her, yet he laughed and said, “I trust you, you know.” Her face burned with shame for traveling in this new manner: by herself, with strangers, with men, ones of African descent at that. She wondered if, in so doing, she had encouraged him to be fresh with her. He opened the door. She backed herself onto the hardwood seat and sat down, reluctant to draw her sandy shoes into the clean interior. Mr. Walter mumbled to her not to worry, but he waited happily as she dusted off the sole of each shoe. Once she was safely in, he shut the door. Dolly stayed close to the door so as not to end up too near the other passengers. Mr. Walter said nothing more to her until he left her at the petrol station just outside Marion, but she had caught him watching her in the rearview mirror. When she got out, he addressed her, “Return trip from here, two o’clock. Sharp.” For a good while, on subsequent trips, he said little more to her than “Mornin’” and “Afternoon.”