Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree (16 page)

When Anna saw the cool sitting-room filled with strange people she felt suddenly weak with terror. She noticed every eye scrutinize her critically to see whether she was good enough for their Paco. Paco dropped her hand and was at once swallowed up into the arms of his family who hadn’t seen him for two years. For a brief moment, which seemed to the startled Anna an embarrassingly long time, she felt herself alone, like a small boat cast adrift in the sea. Looking helplessly about her with misted eyes she stood rooted to the spot, feeling awkward and conspicuous. Just when she thought she could take it no longer, Miguel strode up to her and took it upon himself to introduce her to the family. Miguel was kind and smiled at her sympathetically.

This is going to be a nightmare for you. Just take a deep breath and you’ll get through it,’ he said in English spoken with a charmingly thick accent like his brother and placed a rough hand on her arm reassuringly. Nico and Alejandro smiled at her politely, but when she turned her back she felt their eyes still on her and heard them discussing her in Spanish although the words still failed to reach her understanding in spite of all the classes she had attended. They spoke so fast. She winced at the imperious beauty of Valeria, who kissed Anna without smiling and looked at her with steady, confident eyes. She was relieved when Chiquita embraced her affectionately and welcomed her into the family.

‘Paco’s letters said so much of you. I am happy you are here,’ she said in faltering English and then blushed. Anna was so grateful she could have cried.

When Anna saw the forbidding figure of Hector approach her she felt the sweat drip down the backs of her legs and her stomach swim. He was tall and commanding and she shrank under the suffocating weight of his charisma. He bent down to kiss her and he smelt of a spicy cologne that lingered on her skin for some time afterwards. Paco looked very like his father, with the same aquiline features, the same hooked nose, except Paco had inherited the gentle expression of his mother, and her colouring.

‘I would like to welcome you to Santa Catalina. To Argentina. I take it this is

your first time here?’ he said in perfect English. Anna caught her breath and nodded lamely. ‘I would like to talk to my son alone, would you mind if I left you with my wife?’ Anna shook her head.

‘Of course not.' she replied huskily, wishing Paco could take her back to Buenos Aires where they could be alone. But Paco withdrew happily with his father and Anna knew that he expected her to cope.

‘Come, let us sit outside,’ said Maria Elena kindly, watching her husband and son disappear into the hall with an apprehensive look that darkened her pale eyes. Anna had no choice but to allow herself to be swept out onto the terrace with Maria Elena and her family, out into the sunshine where they could see her better.

‘Por
Dios
, Paco!’ began his father in his deep steady voice, shaking his head with impatience. ‘She’s beautiful, there’s no doubt about that, but look at her-she’s like a startled rabbit in there. Is it fair to bring her here?’

Paco’s face flooded crimson and his blue eyes flashed violet. He had been waiting for this confrontation. He had expected his father’s disapproval from the beginning.

‘Papa, are you surprised she’s terrified? She doesn’t speak the language and she’s being scrutinized by every member of my family to see if she’s good enough. Well, I know what’s good enough for me and I will allow no one to persuade me any different.’ He looked at his father defiantly.

‘Son, I know you’re in love and that’s all very well, but marriage isn’t necessarily about love.’

‘Don’t speak about my mother like that,’ snapped Paco. ‘I will marry Anna,’ he added in a quiet, determined voice.

‘Paco, she’s provincial, she’s never been out of Ireland. Is it fair on her to place her in the middle of our world? How do you think she’s going to cope?’ ‘She’ll cope, because I’ll help her cope. Because
you
will help her cope,’ Paco said hotly. ‘Because you’ll tell the rest of the family to make her feel welcome.’ ‘That’s not enough. We live in a rigid society - she’ll be judged by everyone. With all the beautiful girls here in Argentina, why couldn’t you choose one of them?’ Hector raised his hands in exasperation. ‘Your brothers have managed to find suitable matches in this country, why couldn’t you?’

‘I love Anna because she’s different from all of them. So she’s unsophisticated, she’s provincial, and she’s not from our class. So what? I love her the

way she is and so will you when you get to know her. Let her relax a little. When she forgets her fear you’ll understand why I love her like I do.’

Paco fixed his father with unwavering eyes that softened when he talked about Anna. Hector’s jaw was rigid and his chin jutted out stubbornly. He shook his head slowly and breathed in through flared nostrils, without taking his eyes off the face of his son.

‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘I can’t stop you marrying her. But I hope you know what you’re doing, because I sure as hell don’t.’

‘Give her time, Papa,’ said Paco, grateful that his father had backed down. In the lifetime that Paco had known his father he had never once remembered him backing down.

‘You’re a man now and old enough to make your own decisions,’ Hector said, brusquely. ‘It’s your life. I hope I’m not proved right.’

‘You won’t be. I know what I want,’ Paco told him. Hector nodded before embracing his son firmly and kissing him on his damp cheek, as was their custom once an argument was over.

‘Let’s go and join the others,’ Hector said, and they both made for the door.

Anna warmed immediately to Chiquita and Miguel, who embraced her into the family with unconditional affection.

‘Don’t worry about Valeria,’ said Chiquita as she showed Anna around the
estancia.
‘She will like you when she knows you. Everyone was hoping that Paco would marry an Argentine. It is a shock, you see. Paco announces that he is getting married and no one has met you. You will be happy here once you are settled.’

Chiquita showed Anna the
ranchos -
the tight cluster of squat white houses where the
gauchos
lived - and the polo field which came alive in the summer months when the boys did nothing but play, and if they weren’t playing they were talking about it. She took her to the tennis court that sat nestled amidst the heavy, damp plane trees and eucalyptus, and the limpid pool placed on a man-made hill from where one could see a large grassy field full of pale brown cows chewing the cud.

With Chiquita Anna soon began to practise speaking Spanish. Chiquita explained to her the grammatical differences between the Spanish from Spain, which Anna had learnt in London, and the Spanish spoken in Argentina, and she listened with patience as Anna nervously stumbled through her sentences.

During the week, Anna and Paco lived in Buenos Aires with his parents and although at first the mealtimes were tense, as Anna’s Spanish progressed so did her somewhat overwrought relationship with Hector and Maria Elena. Anna voiced little of her fears during these few months of their engagement, sensing that Paco wanted her to cope and fit in. He began to work in his father’s business leaving Anna to spend her days studying Spanish and taking a course in Art History. She dreaded the weekends when the whole family gathered together on the farm, primarily because of the hostility she felt in Valeria.

Valeria made her feel unworthy. In her immaculate summer dresses, with her long dark hair and aristocratic features, Valeria made Anna’s stomach churn with feelings of inadequacy. She would sit with her friends in a whispering huddle around the pool and Anna knew they were talking about her. They would smoke their cigarettes and watch her like a pack of beautiful, glossy panthers lazily observing a timorous doe and enjoying it when she stumbled. Anna recalled with bitterness her cousins back in Ireland and wondered who were worse. At least in Glengariff she had been able to escape to the hills; here she had nowhere to hide. She couldn’t confide in Paco as she wanted him to feel she was fitting in and she didn’t want to whinge to Chiquita who had become a real friend and ally. It had always been her way to hide her feelings and her father had once told her to hide her weaknesses from people who might take advantage of them. In this case he was sure to be right and she didn’t want to give any of them the satisfaction of watching her fail.

‘She’s no better than Eva Peron!’ Valeria said crossly when Nico confronted her about being so unfriendly. ‘An upstart trying to climb up the social ladder by marrying into your family. Can’t you see it?’

‘She loves Paco, I can see that,’ he replied gruffly, in defence of his brother’s choice.

‘Men are so dopey when it comes to understanding women. Hector and Maria Elena see it, I can tell,’ she persisted.

At that time Peron was at the height of his power. He had reduced the population to total subjection. Backed by the military, he controlled the press, the radio, and the universities. No one dared deviate from the party line. Although he had the popularity to implement a democracy he preferred to rule with military precision and total control. Admittedly, there were no concentration camps for those who dissented and the foreign press were permitted to visit the country with complete freedom, yet an undercurrent of fear simmered below the

surface of Peron’s Argentina. Eva, named Evita by her millions of supporters, used her status and power to act like a modern-day Robin Hood and the waiting room of her office literally vibrated with the queues of people requesting favours - a new house, a pension, a job - to which Eva would respond with a wave of her magic wand. She saw it as her personal mission to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, of which she had first-hand experience, and took great pleasure in quite simply taking from the rich in order to give to her
descamisa-dos -
a name coined by Peron himself which literally means ‘shirtless ones’. Many of the wealthy, worried that Peron’s dictatorship would lead to Communism, left the country altogether during that time.

‘Yes,’ Valeria said spitefully, ‘Anna is just like Eva Peron. Socially ambitious, and you and your family are going to let her get away with it.
¹
Nico scratched his head and decided her argument was so ridiculous he wouldn’t dignify it by discussing it.

‘Give the girl a chance,’ he said. ‘Put yourself in her shoes and then I think you’ll be a little kinder.’

Valeria bit her lower lip and wondered why men were so hopeless at seeing beneath the surface of a beautiful woman. Just like Juan Peron.

The decisive moment arose one afternoon when the whole family draped themselves over the hot paving stones around the pool, basking in the glorious sunshine and drinking the abundant fruit juices brought up from Hector’s house by maids in pale blue uniforms. Anna was sitting with Chiquita and Maria Elena in the shade when one of Miguel’s friends, Diego Braun, finding himself dazed by the Celtic beauty of Paco’s fiancee, couldn’t resist but flirt with her in front of everyone.

‘Anna, por qu no te bands?
¹
he asked from the pool, hoping that she might jump in and join him for a while. Anna understood the question perfectly. ‘Anna, why don’t you come for a swim?’ But she was so nervous, sensing everyone was listening for her response that she muddled up her grammar and translated directly from the English.

‘Porque estoy caliente,'
she replied, wanting to communicate that she didn’t want to swim in the cold water because she was comfortably hot. To her surprise everyone disintegrated into laughter. They were laughing so hard they had to hold their bellies to ease the pain. Anna looked helplessly at Chiquita who, between infectious giggles, told her what she had said.

¹
“I’m lustful” I think is the correct translation.’ Then Chiquita began to laugh

again with the rest of her family and friends.

Anna reflected on what she had said and suddenly Chiquita’s laughter ignited a tickle in her own belly and she too began to howl with mirth. They all laughed together and for the first time Anna felt part of the clan. Standing up she said in her strong Irish accent, not caring if the grammar was right or wrong, that she had perhaps better take a swim to cool off

From that moment on she learnt to laugh at herself and realised that a sense of humour was the only way she was going to endear herself to them. The men stopped admiring her quietly from afar and teased her about her poor Spanish and the girls took it upon themselves to help her not only cope with the language but the men as well. They taught her that Latin men have a confidence and shamelessness with women that meant that she would have to take care; she wasn’t safe even as a married woman. They’d try it on all the same. As a European and beautiful, she would have to be doubly careful. European women were like red rags to bulls, they said, with a reputation for being ‘easy’. But saying ‘no’ had never been a problem for Anna and, gaining confidence, her strength of character and that familiar capriciousness began to assert themselves again.

As Anna’s character emerged out of the fog that had been her fear and the limitations that the language barrier had imposed upon it, Valeria realized that Anna wasn’t weak and hopeless, as at first she had suspected. In fact, she had a steely strength of character and the tongue of a viper, even in faltering Spanish. She answered people back and even disagreed openly with Hector one lunchtime in front of the whole family and won her argument, while Paco looked on triumphantly. By the time of the wedding if Anna hadn’t won the affections of each member of her new family, at least she had won their respect.