Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree (23 page)

‘Is it over?' she said after a while. ‘Can we try again?’

‘It’s dead,’ he told her and kissed her forehead with a tenderness she

thought she’d never experience again. ‘I never stopped loving you,
Ana Melodia.
I just lost you, that’s all.’

Maria Elena was buried in the family tomb in town after a sad and stirring service in the church of
Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion.
She had been loved by everyone. In fact, there weren’t enough seats in the church to accommodate the large number of people who wanted to come to pay their respects so the townspeople had to spill out into the square. Fortunately it was warm and the sun shone down brazenly as if no one had told it that Maria Elena had died.

Anna watched Paco’s hands shake as he read the lesson and found herself crying all over again. She thanked God that He had made it possible for them to love each other once more. She traced her eyes over the icons beside the altar and found comfort in them. If I was deeply unhappy, she thought, this church and the good Lord would be where I would go for consolation. When it was Miguel’s turn to read she noticed Chiquita wilt like a flower. It had been a terrible shock for everyone, but no one suffered as much as Hector. He seemed to age in a matter of hours, literally melt away in front of their very eyes. He was inconsolable. The strength was sapped out of him. The grief corroded his life like a waterfall of pain, battering his nerves and the canyon that had become his broken heart. He died a year later.

In the years that followed, Anna and Paco’s lives returned to normal. They watched their children grow and delighted in them as parents should. They talked to each other again, but they never found London in the Argentina they built together. Paco had given up his mistress, Anna tried hard to be a good wife, but the roots of their problems remained even though the tree looked stronger.

Santa Catalina,
1973

It was late when Sofia crept into her grandfather’s room. The winter moonlight dusted the darkness with a pale blue light as she stopped at the end of his bed and looked down at him. He was snoring loudly, but to Sofia there was something comforting about the noise he made. It reminded her of her childhood, making her feel cherished and secure. She could smell the sweet remains of his pipe, embedded in the curtains and furniture after many a puff. The window was open and the wind rattled along to the rhythmic rise and fall of his breathing.

Sofia did not want to wake him, but she wanted him to wake up. She knew she shouldn’t be in his room in the middle of the night; her mother would disapprove if she found out. Anna had been horrid to Sofia that day. She didn’t like it when her father indulged her daughter. She accused Dermot of spoiling the girl and did her best to overrule him. But Grandpa O’Dwyer had promised Sofia a leather belt with a silver buckle carved with her initials. Anna had said he was wasting his money, that Sofia wouldn’t appreciate it. She said that Sofia never looked after her things. Threw them on the floor expecting Soledad to pick them up and tidy them away.

If he
had
to buy her anything at all, it should be something sensible - like literature, or piano music. Paco had inherited his mother’s piano; Sofia barely used it. It was time the girl put her mind to something, finished something. She had no concentration: she started projects and then lost interest. Yes, Anna decided, studying the piano would be better for her than spending all her time up that ridiculous tree. All young ladies of her class should paint and play music, read good English literature and know how to run a household. Girls shouldn’t spend all day riding ponies and climbing trees.

‘Encourage her to do something sensible, Dad,’ she suggested. But Grandpa O’Dwyer wanted to buy Sofia a belt just like he’d promised.

That was why Sofia was in his room. She wanted to tell him that she would love his belt and look after it, because she loved him and it would always remind her of her dear grandfather. Her mother had never understood her fondness for her grandfather, but Sofia and Dermot had a deep affection for one another that united them in an unspoken bond.

She shuffled awkwardly. Coughed. Shuffled again. Finally, Dermot O’Dwyer

rolled his big frame onto his back. He narrowed his eyes, believing Sofia to be a leprechaun or some ghoul and put a hand up in alarm.

‘It’s me, Grandpa - Sofia,’ she whispered.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, girl. What are you doing, standing at the end of my bed? Are you my guardian angel watching over me while I sleep?’

‘I think you’ve scared your guardian angel away with your snoring,’ she laughed quietly.

‘What are you doing, Sofia Melody?’

‘I want to talk to you,’ she said and shuffled her feet again.

‘Well, don’t stand there, girl. You know the floor is full o’ crocodiles waiting to eat yer feet. Get into bed.’

So Sofia climbed into bed with her grandfather - another thing her mother would strongly disapprove of. At seventeen years old she shouldn’t be getting into bed with an old man. They lay side by side ‘like a pair o’ statues on a tomb’. She felt his body next to hers and was suddenly overcome with affection for him.

‘What d’you want to talk about, Sofia Melody?’ he asked.

‘Why do you always call me that?’

‘Well, yer grandmother was called Emer Melody. When yer mother was born I wanted to call her Melody but yer grandmother wouldn’t hear of it. She could be right stubborn when she wanted to be. So we called her Anna Melody O’Dwyer. Melody being like a middle name.’

‘Like Maria Elena Solanas.’

‘Exactly like Maria Elena Solanas, God rest her soul.’

‘But my middle name is Emer, not Melody.’

‘You’ll always be Sofia Melody to me.’

‘I like it.’

‘You have to like it. That’s the way it is.’

‘Grandpa?’

‘Yes?’

‘You know the belt?’

‘I do.’

‘Well, Mama says I won’t look after it. But I will. I promise I will.’

‘Yer mother’s not always right about everything. I know you’ll look after it.’

‘So can I have it?’

He squeezed her hand and let out a wheezy laugh. ‘You can have it, Sofia

Melody.’

They lay there staring up at the shadows that danced on the ceiling as the cold winter wind blew in through the curtains and skipped across their hot faces with icy feet.

‘Grandpa?’

‘What now?’

‘I want the belt for sentimental reasons,’ she said shyly.

‘For sentimental reasons, eh?’

‘Because I love you, Grandpa.’ She had never said that to anyone before. He lay in silence a moment, moved. She blinked into the darkness wondering how he would respond to this sudden outburst.

‘I love you too, Sofia Melody. I love the bones of you. You better go off to sleep now,’ he said quietly, his voice faltering mid-sentence. Sofia was the only person who had the power to rock his sentimental old heart.

‘Can I stay?’

‘As long as yer mother doesn’t find you,’ he whispered.

‘Oh, I’m up long before her.’

Sofia awoke feeling cold. A shiver ran right the way down from her head to the end of her big toe. She wriggled closer to her grandfather for warmth. It took a moment before she realized that it was he who was making her cold. He was as cold and stiff as a dead fish. She sat up and looked down at his bristly face. His expression was one of joy. If he hadn’t been cold and stiff she’d have thought he was about to burst into one of his wheezy chuckles. But his face was like a mask; there was nothing behind it and his eyes were open, staring vacantly up into nowhere.

She pressed her hot face next to his and pulled it against her. Fat tears tumbled down her cheeks, bouncing off her nose onto his, until her whole body shook with violent sobs. She had never felt such misery. He was gone. But where? Was there a heaven? Was he now with Emer Melody in some beautiful place? Why did he die? He was healthy and full of life. No one had been more alive than her grandfather. She rocked back and forth, cradling his big frame in her arms, until her jaw ached and her stomach hurt from crying. Panic seized her as she tried to recall the last words he had said to her. The belt, they had talked about the belt. Then she had told him she loved him. She wailed at the recollection of that tender moment. Once she had started to wail she was

unable to stop herself, until her wailing woke everyone in the house. At first Paco thought it was an animal being killed outside his window by a vicious prairie dog. But then he recognized the voice of his own daughter as she choked on her breath before letting out another loud cry.

As her brothers, Rafael and Agustin, and her mother and father ran to her aid she remembered his last words. ‘As long as yer mother doesn’t find you.’ He had always been her accomplice.

They had to prise him from her. She then clung to her father. The shock of finding her grandfather dead suddenly hit her like the slap of a cold hand and she shivered uncontrollably. Anna allowed the tears to flow freely. She sat on the edge of the bed and ran her thin hand over his brow. Taking off the gold cross that hung about her neck she pressed it to his lips.

‘God keep you, Father, and bless you. May He grant you entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Then looking up at her family she asked to be given time alone with him. Rafael and Agustin shuffled out. Paco kissed his daughter’s forehead before leading her gently away.

Anna Melody O’Dwyer drew her father’s lifeless hand to her face and kissed it sadly. Pressing her lips into his rubber palm she cried not for the corpse that lay inert before her, but for the father she had known growing up in Glengariff There had been a time when she had shared his heart with her mother, before Sofia had crept in there like a cuckoo and squeezed her out. He had probably never forgiven her for leaving Ireland to marry Paco all those years ago, or at least for never returning - not even once.

Having lost her he had replaced her in his affections with his granddaughter who seemed to combine all that he had loved in Anna with all that was lovable in Sofia as a unique human being. She had seen it; first in Paco and then in her father. Sofia had stolen them both. But she didn’t ask herself why because she was afraid of the answer. Afraid to admit that maybe Paco had been right. Perhaps she
had
changed. How else was it that she had managed to alienate the two men she loved more than anyone else in the whole world?

But instead of reflecting on herself, Anna gazed down at all that was left of a cantankerous old man and searched his features for the father she had lost somewhere over the years. And now it was too late to reclaim him. Too late. She remembered her mother telling her once that the two saddest words in the dictionary were ‘too late’. Now she understood. If he would only breathe again she would show him how much she loved him. In spite of the years that had

corroded the ties that had bound them, in spite of life that had somehow forced a wedge between them, she really had loved him with all her heart, and yet she had never told him. He had been more of a nuisance to her, like an untrainable, mangy dog that she had found herself constantly apologizing for. Yet he had been a tormented soul, happier descending into madness than facing the reality of a life without the warm love of his wife. His madness had been an anaesthetic to numb him against his growing desolation. If only she had taken the time to understand him. To understand his pain. ‘Oh God,’ she prayed, squeezing her eyes closed, releasing a glistening tear that caught on her long pale eyelashes, ‘just let me tell him that I loved him.’

To show how much she had loved him, Anna organized for him to be buried on the plain, among the ponies and birds, in the long wild grass under a crooked eucalyptus tree. Antonio and the boys from the stables helped dig the hole and Padre Julio stammered a few prayers and gave an agonizing address beneath the bleak winter sky. But his stammer had always amused Grandpa O’Dwyer, so in a way it was fitting.

The whole family had come to pay their respects. With bowed heads they

mumbled the prayers and with downcast faces watched as the coffin was lowered unsteadily into the ground. As the last of the earth was patted down, the clouds suddenly parted and a bright ray of sunshine burst forth, flooding the early winter plains with a strange warmth. They all looked up in surprise and delight. Anna crossed herself and thanked God for delivering her father to Heaven. Sofia watched the light with a heavy heart and thought how dark the world had suddenly become. Without Grandpa O’Dwyer even the sunshine seemed muted.

Brown University, 1973

Santi ran a hand up the inside of Georgia’s dress to discover she was wearing stockings. He felt the rough lace with his fingers and then the smooth, silky skin of her thigh. His heartbeat quickened with anticipation. He pressed his mouth to hers and tasted the sweet peppermint of the packet of gum they had shared when they had left the dance together. He had been impressed by her forwardness. She lacked the inhibition of well-bred Argentine girls and there was a coarseness about her which he found appealing.

Her kiss was eager. She seemed to relish his strong young body, clawing his skin with her long red nails, licking the salt that mingled with his own scent. She smelt of expensive perfume and he could taste the powder on her skin when he ran his tongue down her body. Her belly was round and plump. When he fiddled with her suspender belt she coolly pushed him away saying in her deep, chocolate voice that she preferred to make love with her stockings on, and proceeded to slip out of her black panties.