PART ONE

PROLOGUE

Brazil, 1849

SUGAR CANE, damp musky earth, saccharine vanilla

journeys in from Eighteen Forty-Nine, scenting Lara.

Disembodied chords pluck the air.

‘Severina

- the scarred one. They took me while my boys slept,

my bones had shivered all day, I could barely think.

When I bent to work I imagined vultures clawing

my back. When his men came I heard my bones jangle

like wooden sticks shaking in a bowl. His chamber,

sunk in the cellars of that great house, kept for us

women, only. There he pierced me with a bayonet

as I lay on a marble slab, bound. My screams

ricocheted the walls, he ejaculated on my ruptured

body but by then I had become the fire of a naked torch,

until he put me out. Then I jumped a spider,

crept deftly through the warren of cellars into daylight

where a bird swooped me up. I became that bird,

circled the fazenda until a baobab seed rooted

from my droppings. When it broke through earth

into life, I lived in that tree, grew quickly, saw one

of my seeds planted by my stronger son over my husband

Antonio’s dead body, and so it continued. I was carried over

the ocean, burst into life, watched over Baba until

he joined us nearly a century after my death.

So you have it.’

CHAPTER 1

Liverpool, England, 1949 –

TAIWO

OH MAMA! Your pride when I boarded the Apapa.

Your son, a man now, riding the whale to paradise.

Remember the man’s voice from Broadcasting House

calling us over the air waves from England?

‘London calling The Empire! Calling The Empire!

Come in Nigeria.’ I’m coming! I’m coming!

I shouted at night into the warm winds on deck.

Mama, my dreams have been my fuel for years,

all those British films for sixpence at the movie house.

See London, then die. I was desperate to get here.

When I finally landed in Liverpool it was Heaven,

I had hoped for snow but it was just very cold.

These people run everywhere and wear mufflers.

Older cousin Sam came to greet me at the docks,

just as well because I thought the fast automobiles

would kill me. I asked Sam if many people are killed

by cars. He laughed, ‘You will get used to life here.’

The Africans have European wives and sailor’s children.

Sam has a house in Princess Park in Toxteth District,

his wife Maureen is Irish and their six-year-old

daughter is Beatrice. I said, ‘Why a white wife, Sam?’

He replied, ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do.’

Mama, I will write a letter soon, I promise you.

SAM SAYS this country is like fisherman’s bait, Mama.

It attracts, you bite, then you are trapped. I told him

I’d be here five years, get my degree and leave.

Tomorrow I head for London. Centre of the Empire!

Sam drinks stout every night complaining that John Bull