‘Okay, lads,’ McDuff shout. ‘You lazy sods been laying about moaning and complaining. This will set you right. Fresh air, hard work and sunshine. Scrubbing brushes, soap over there. Buckets over ’ere. Fill ’em up with seawater. Then on your knees. Start at the stern, and scrub your way towards the bow.’

A fiddler strike up a working tune and we all get to scrubbing. While we scrubbing the decks, I notice a hazy outline in the distance.

‘Africa,’ Richard Peachy tell me. ‘All along this coast is famous fer the slave trade. Captain Bol’on work on ’em slave ships. Is where ’im learn ’im cruel ways.’

Is a shock to discover where we is. How far and long you have to travel to reach the country the Ancestors come from. One time we sail so close to the shoreline I think I can smell the land. Hear the drums drifting on the breeze. A lamentation for the mothers and fathers and sons and daughters that been lost. A shadow, a rift, that never going heal. And in the passing, me mind hold fast to Calla. She was our Mother Country. The keeper of all the old-time business, all the learning she bring with her from cross these very seas.

And it bring back the memory of when I went to visit her, just before we left Rock Pleasant. Walked up the rocky path to her hut on the hill, bringing food, worried because nobody seen her for many a day. When I got there, thankful to see a candle burning in the window. Knocked quiet like, waited till she told me to come in.

Was a long time since I seen the inside of Calla hut, but the sights and smells, them was all the same. Every shelf full up with her tonics, potions and creams. Candles burning beside incense. Clay pots with bird claws, feathers stuffed inside.

And there was Calla in a ratty old dress sitting all hunched up on her bed. One of the shawls she make wrapped tight round her shoulders even though was a mild evening. And no comb pass through her hair for many a morning, it was dirty, sticking up all over the place. I was shocked to see the state she in. From the time I was a pickney, Calla always dressed in a long, spotless white dress, a head-tie round her head. Everything clean and neat as was proper to her station.

I pulled up a box, sat beside her. Said nothing. Only reached for a big spoon, started to feed her. She ate, slow at first, then she grabbed the spoon, started to shovel the food into her mouth. When the food all gone, she licked the bowl like a mad woman.

‘Thank you, little Will,’ she said.

‘What wrong with you, Granny Callie? Must be some big sickness catch you.’