Then the girl left.
Mr Titus Hoyt looked at me and said, ‘He look like a intelligent little boy.’
My mother said in a sarcastic way, ‘Like his father.’
Titus Hoyt said, ‘Now, young man, if a herring and a half cost a penny and a half, what’s the cost of three herrings?’
Even in the country, in Chaguanas, we had heard about that.
Without waiting, I said, ‘Three pennies.’
Titus Hoyt regarded me with wonder.
He told my mother, ‘This boy bright like anything, ma’am. You must take care of him and send him to a good school and feed him good food so he could study well.’
My mother didn’t say anything.
When Titus Hoyt left, he said, ‘Cheerio!’
That was the second interesting thing about him.
My mother beat me for getting my shoes wet in the gutter but she said she wouldn’t beat me for getting lost.
For the rest of that day I ran about the yard saying, ‘Cheerio! Cheerio!’ to a tune of my own.
That evening Titus Hoyt came again.
My mother didn’t seem to mind.
To me Titus Hoyt said, ‘You can read?’
I said yes.
‘And write?’
I said yes.
‘Well, look,’ he said, ‘get some paper and a pencil and write what I tell you.’
I said, ‘Taper and pencil?’
He nodded.
I ran to the kitchen and said, ‘Ma, you got any paper and pencil?’
My mother said, ‘What you think I is? A shopkeeper?’
Titus Hoyt shouted, ‘Is for me, ma’am.’
My mother said, ‘Oh.’ in a disappointed way.
She said, ‘In the bottom drawer of the bureau you go find my purse. It have a pencil in it.’
And she gave me a copy-book from the kitchen shelf.
Mr Titus Hoyt said, ‘Now, young man, write. Write the address of this house in the top right-hand corner, and below that, the date.’ Then he asked, ‘You know who we writing this letter to, boy?’
I shook my head.
He said, ‘Ha, boy! Ha! We writing to the Guardian, boy.’
I said, ‘The Trinidad Guardian? The paper? What, me writing to the Guardian! But only big big man does write to the Guardian?’
Titus Hoyt smiled. ‘That’s why you writing. It go surprise them.’
I said, ‘What I go write to them about?’
He said, ‘You go write it now. Write. To the Editor, Trinidad Guardian. Dear Sir, I am but a child of eight (How old you is? Well, it don’t matter anyway) and yesterday my mother sent me to make a purchase in the city. This, dear Mr Editor, was my first peregrination (p-e-r-e-g-r-i-n-a-t-i-o-n) in this metropolis, and I had the misfortune to wander from the path my mother had indicated ’
I said, ‘Oh God, Mr Titus Hoyt, where you learn all these big words and them? You sure you spelling them right?’
Titus Hoyt smiled. ‘I spend all afternoon making up this letter,’ he said.
I wrote: ‘… and in this state of despair I was rescued by a Mr Titus Hoyt, of Miguel Street. This only goes to show, dear Mr Editor, that human kindness is a quality not yet extinct in this world.’
The Guardian never printed the letter.
When I next saw Titus Hoyt he said, ‘Well, never mind. One day, boy, one day, I go make them sit up and take notice of every word I say. Just wait and see.’
And before he left he said, ‘Drinking your milk? ’
He had persuaded my mother to give me half a pint of milk every day. Milk was good for the brains.
It is one of the sadnesses of my life that I never fulfilled Titus Hoyt’s hopes for my academic success.
I still remember with tenderness the interest he took in me. Sometimes his views clashed with my mother’s. There was the business of the cobwebs, for instance.
Boyee, with whom I had become friendly very quickly, was teaching me to ride. I had fallen and cut myself nastily on the shin.
My mother was attempting to cure this with sooty cobwebs soaked in rum.
Titus Hoyt was horrified. ‘You ain’t know what you doing,’ he shouted.
My mother said, ‘Mr Titus Hoyt, I will kindly ask you to mind your own business. The day you make a baby yourself I go listen to what you have to say.’
Titus Hoyt refused to be ridiculed. He said, ‘Take the boy to the doctor, man.’
I was watching them argue, not caring greatly either way.
In the end I went to the doctor.
Titus Hoyt reappeared in a new role.
He told my mother, ‘For the last two three months I been taking the first-aid course with the Red Cross. I go dress the boy foot for you.’
That really terrified me.
For about a month or so afterwards, people in Miguel Street could tell when it was nine o’clock in the morning. By my shrieks. Titus Hoyt loved his work.
All this gives some clue to the real nature of the man.
The next step followed naturally.
Titus Hoyt began to teach.
It began in a small way, after the fashion of all great enterprises.
He had decided to sit for the external arts degree of London University. He began to learn Latin, teaching himself, and as fast as he learned, he taught us.
He rounded up three or four of us and taught us in the verandah of his house. He kept chickens in his yard and the place stank.
That Latin stage didn’t last very long. We got as far as the fourth declension, and then Boyee and Errol and myself began asking questions. They were not the sort of questions Titus Hoyt liked.
Boyee said, ‘Mr Titus Hoyt, I think you making up all this, you know, making it up as you go on.’
Titus Hoyt said, ‘But I telling you, I not making it up. Look, here it is in black and white.’
Errol said, ‘I feel, Mr Titus Hoyt, that one man sit down one day and make all this up and have everybody else learning it.’
Titus Hoyt asked me, ‘What is the accusative singular of bellum?’
Feeling wicked, because I was betraying him, I said to Titus Hoyt, ‘Mr Titus Hoyt, when you was my age, how you woulda feel if somebody did ask you that question?’
And then Boyee asked, ‘Mr Titus Hoyt, what is the meaning of the ablative case?’
So the Latin lessons ended.
But however much we laughed at him, we couldn’t deny that Titus Hoyt was a deep man.
Hat used to say, ‘He is a thinker, that man.’
Titus Hoyt thought about all sorts of things, and he thought dangerous things sometimes.
Hat said, ‘I don’t think Titus Hoyt like God, you know.’
Titus Hoyt would say, ‘The thing that really matter is faith. Look, I believe that if I pull out this bicycle-lamp from my pocket here, and set it up somewhere, and really really believe in it and pray to it, what I pray for go come. That is what I believe.’
And so saying he would rise and leave, not forgetting to say, ‘Cheerio!’
He had the habit of rushing up to us and saying, ‘Silence, everybody. I just been thinking. Listen to what I just been thinking.’
One day he rushed up and said, ‘I been thinking how this war could end. If Europe could just sink for five minutes all the Germans go drown ’
Eddoes said, ‘But England go drown too.’
Titus Hoyt agreed and looked sad. ‘I lose my head, man,’ he said. ‘I lose my head.’
And he wandered away, muttering to himself and shaking his head.
One day he cycled right up to us when we talking about the Barbados-Trinidad cricket match. Things were not going well for Trinidad and we were worried.
Titus Hoyt rushed up and said, ‘Silence. I just been thinking. Look, boys, it ever strike you that the world not real at all? It ever strike you that we have the only mind in the world and you just thinking up everything else? Like me here, having the only mind in the world, and thinking up you people here, thinking up the war and all the houses and the ships and them in the harbour. That ever cross your mind?’