Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree (63 page)

Soledad was the perfect distraction.

‘Señorita Sofia, how could you spend so long away? You didn’t even write to me. What were you thinking of? Did you think I wouldn’t miss you? Did you think I wouldn’t mind? Of course I minded. I felt dejected. I thought you had stopped caring. After all I did for you. I cried for years. I should have been furious. I should be furious now. But how can I be? I’m too happy to see you to be cross,’ she said reproachfully, hiding her face in the steaming cauldron of
zapallo
soup. Sofia felt desperately sorry for her. Soledad had loved her like her own child and Sofia had barely given her a thought.

‘Oh Soledad, I never forgot you. It was just impossible to return. I made my life in England instead.’

‘Señor Paco and Senora Anna - they were never the same after you left. Don’t ask me what happened, I don’t like to pry, but things were never the same between them. You left and they fell apart. Everything changed. I didn’t like the change; I didn’t like the atmosphere. I longed for you to come back and you never even wrote. Not a word.
Nada!
¹

‘I’m sorry, that was thoughtless of me. Soledad, if I’m honest, and I’ve always been honest with you, it hurt to think of Santa Catalina. I missed you all

so much, I couldn’t write. I know I should have, but it was somehow easier to try to forget.’

‘How can you forget your roots, Sofia? How can you?’ she asked, shaking her grey head.

‘Believe me, when you’re on the other side of the world, Argentina seems very far away. I just got on with my life as best I could. I left it too late.’

‘You’re as stubborn as your grandfather was.’

‘But I’m here now,’ she said, as if in some way that might console her.

‘Yes, but you won’t stay. There’s nothing for you here now. Senor Santiago is married. I know you, you won’t stay.’

‘I’m married too, Soledad. I have a family to go back to, a husband I adore.’

‘But your heart is here with us,’ she said. ‘I know you. Don’t forget, I raised you.’

‘What is Claudia like?’ she heard herself asking.

‘I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, least of all a Solanas - I’m the Solanas family’s biggest champion. There’s no one loyal like me; otherwise I would have left years ago. But as it’s you I’ll speak my mind. She’s not a Solanas. I don’t think he loves her. I think there’s only one person he’s ever loved. I don’t want to know the details, I’m not one to pry. After you left he wandered around like a ghost.
La Vieja Bruja
said that his aura was dim. She asked to see him, she would have sorted him out but he has never had an interest in the hidden world. After that dreadful business with Senor Fernando, Senor Santiago began to invite Señora Claudia to Santa Catalina for weekends and he smiled again. I didn’t think he’d ever smile again. Then he married her. I think if she hadn’t come along, he would have given up. Thrown the towel in, just like that. But I don’t think he loves her. I watch things - I see things. Of course, it’s none of my business. He respects her; she’s the mother of his children. But she’s not a soulmate.
La Vieja Bruja
says you only have one soulmate.’

Sofia listened to her ramblings. The more she listened, the more eager she was to free him from his desolation. It amused her that Soledad knew so much. She must have heard the gossip from the other maids and
gauchos.
But she knew their gossip only guessed at the truth.

Rafael and his wife Jasmina joined Sofia and her parents for dinner on the terrace. Sofia was thankful for their company. Jasmina was warm and sensual, her full body exuded a ripe fertility that the cool Claudia lacked, and Sofia was

grateful for her earthy humour. She had brought her two-month-old daughter with her in a shawl and proceeded to breastfeed her discreetly at the table. Sofia noticed her mother disapproved but tried hard to conceal her displeasure. Jasmina knew her motherin-law well enough to see the signs, and had the intelligence enough to ignore them.

‘Rafa doesn’t want any more children - he says five is enough. I come from a family of thirteen -
imaginate!'
And she smiled broadly, her pale green eyes twinkling mischievously in the candlelight.

‘Really,
mi amor,
thirteen just isn’t practical these days. I have to educate them all,’ said Rafael, grinning at her lovingly.

‘We’ll see. I don’t see any reason to stop,’ she laughed, opening her shirt a moment to check on her feeding child. ‘When they are this small I lose my heart to them. When they get older they don’t need you so much.’

‘I disagree,’ said Paco, placing his large, rough hand on Sofia’s. ‘I think if as a parent you build a loving home, your children will always come back to it.’

‘You have children, don’t you, Sofia?’

‘Yes, two daughters,’ she replied, leaving her hand under her father’s but unlike the old days she was very conscious that it was there.

^l
Qu pena
that you didn’t bring them with you. Clara and Elena would have so enjoyed meeting them. They’d all be about the same age, wouldn’t they,
mi amor
? And I would be thrilled for them to practise their English.’

They should practise more with me, Jasmina,’ said Anna.

‘Yes, but you know children, you can’t force them to do anything they don’t want to do.’

‘Perhaps you should be a little tougher,’ she insisted. ‘Children don’t know what’s best for them.’

‘Oh no, I couldn’t bear to upset them. After school hours they are at home, and home is for playing.’

Sofia could see that this was one conflict her mother was not going to win and she admired the sweet way Jasmina dealt with her. There was leather beneath the sugar.

Soledad took every opportunity to come out onto the terrace, to serve the food, to take plates away, to bring in the mustard, to fill the water jug, she even popped her head around the door twice under the pretence that she had heard Señora Anna ring the bell. Each time she grinned a wide, incomplete smile. After a while Sofia couldn’t conceal her laughter and had to muffle it into her

napkin. Soledad was obviously curious to watch her with her parents. She would later go and discuss their reactions with all the other maids on the farm.

At eleven o’clock Jasmina wandered home with her daughter, disappearing into the park like an angel. Paco and Rafael sat chatting among the flies and moths that had collected around the hurricane lamps. Anna retired to bed protesting that she was old when Paco tried to encourage her to stay. Sofia was happy for her to go as she didn’t know what to talk to her about. She resented her too much to talk about the past and didn’t want to involve her in the present out of spite. Once Anna had gone she felt surprisingly uplifted and found herself slipping into conversation with her brother and father just like the old days. With them she was happy to reminisce. At eleven-thirty she crept away to her room.

The following day Sofia awoke early due to the time difference. She had slept through the night, a dreamless sleep that even Santi had been powerless to interrupt. She was grateful for that. She’d been exhausted, not only by the flight, but by the emotion. But once she was up she was unable to lie still. She crept into the kitchen, where the white light of dawn illuminated the table and tiled floor. It took her back to those days when she would grab something to eat from the well-stocked fridge before skipping out to practise polo with Jose. Rafael had told her that Jose had passed away ten years before. He had gone and she had never said goodbye. Without Jose Santa Catalina was like a smile with a front tooth missing.

Taking an apple from the fridge she dipped her finger in the pot of
dulce de leche.
Nothing tasted as good as Soledad’s
dulce de leche.
She made it from milk and sugar that she boiled on the stove. As much as Sofia had tried to make it in England for her children, it had never tasted the same. She put a spoonful on her apple and ambled out through the sitting room onto the terrace. It lay still and ghostly in the shadow of the tall trees, awaiting the sun to rise up and discover it. She bit into her apple and savoured the sweet toffee taste. Gazing out at the early morning mist that lingered above the distant plains she suddenly felt a strong desire to take a pony out and gallop through it. She marched across the park towards the
puesto
, the little cluster of shacks where Jose had always tended the ponies.

Pablo greeted her as she approached, wiping his hands on a dirty rag. He smiled, baring his crooked, black teeth. She shook his hand and told him how

sorry she was that his father had died. He nodded gravely and thanked her shyly. ‘My father was very fond of you, Señora Sofia,’ he said and grinned bashfully. She noticed that he now called her ‘Señora’ instead of ‘Señorita’. The name placed a distance between them that hadn’t existed all those years ago when they had practised polo together.

‘I was enormously fond of him. It’s just not the same here without him,’ she replied truthfully, looking around at the strange brown faces that stared at her through the windows.

‘You want to ride, Señora Sofia?’ Pablo asked.

‘I won’t play, I’ll just gallop around a bit. Get the wind in my hair. It’s been a long time.’

‘Javier!’ he shouted. A younger man ran out of the house in a pair of
bombachas,
the coins on his belt glistening in the pale light.
‘Una yegua para Señora Sofia, ya’
When Javier made towards a dark mare Pablo shouted at him, ‘Not Azteca, Javier. La Pura! For Señora Sofia the best. La Pura
is
the best,’ he said, grinning at her again.

Javier brought round a pale chestnut pony and Sofia stroked her velvet nose while he silently saddled her up. Once mounted she thanked him before cantering off into the field. It felt good. She could breathe again. The pressure that had been gathering in her chest and throat slowly receded and she felt her body relax with the gentle motion of the gallop. She looked over to Chiquita’s house and thought of Santi asleep with his wife. She didn’t know it at the time, he told her later, but he was there at the window, watching her as she rode across the plain, wondering how he was going to get through the day. With her arrival everything had changed.

Sofia didn’t see Santi all day. When she arrived at his house to visit Maria, he had gone into town with his children only to return after she had left. Every car that drove down the track she hoped would be him. She tried not to care, but she couldn’t help worrying that the time would crumble in her grasp and soon she’d be back in England again. She was desperate to see him on her own. She wanted to talk about the past - their past. She wanted to bury the ghosts for good.

Chiquita had asked Sofia to stay for dinner. Although Maria was unable to eat with them, she wanted Sofia to be close. ‘I don’t want to miss out on a second of your stay. Soon you’ll be gone and who knows when I’ll see you again,’ Chiquita had said. As Sofia had dined with her parents the night before, she didn’t think they’d mind.

Dinner was outside among the crickets and predatory dogs. Eduardo looked pale in the eerie glow of the candle lamps. He spoke very little and hid behind his fine round glasses. His grief was etched into the lines around his eyes, grief that even his glasses failed to disguise. Santi and Sofia reminisced with Chiquita and Miguel - once again Claudia listened with a small smile that ill-fitted her solemn face. She obviously didn’t want to look too interested but neither did she want to be accused of being rude. So she sat demurely, eating the pasta with a fork, occasionally dabbing the corners of her mouth with a white napkin.

Sofia rarely used a napkin. Anna had always tried to encourage her daughter to ‘behave more like a lady’. But Grandpa O’Dwyer had always defended her.

‘What’s in a napkin, Anna Melody? Personally I find my sleeve more reliable -at least I always know where it is,’ he’d say. He complained that napkins spent most of their lives falling off knees onto floors. Sofia looked down at her lap -Grandpa O’Dwyer was right once again. Her napkin had disappeared under the table. She bent down to retrieve it. Panchito, who was sitting on her right, grinned at her before flicking it up with his foot.

Chiquita and Miguel were deeply proud of Panchito. He was tall and handsome with Santi’s charm. His smile was very much like his brother’s, in the way the lines creased around his mouth. It was easy to see how his brothers’ turbulent lives had affected his. He had grown up the perfect child to compensate for his brothers. Having watched his mother literally shrink in the wake of Santi’s scandalous affair and Fernando’s hasty departure to Uruguay he had made every effort to make her happy. He was very close to Chiquita - they all were. She doted on them and they could count on her to put them above everything else. She allowed her children’s lives to quite literally shape hers. They
were
her life and she lived for them.

Panchito played a nine-goal handicap on the polo field, and as much as it wasn’t considered the proper thing to do professionally, his parents had

allowed him to pursue it. They could hardly deny him a career in polo when his talent cried out for him to play. His mother was way too involved in his life. It was clear from their conversations that Chiquita didn’t want her ‘Panchito’ to grow up. Most of the family now called him Pancho instead of Panchito (‘little Pancho’). But to his mother he would always remain Panchito. He was the baby and she was still clinging onto his childhood; if she had opened her grasp she would have found that she had been clinging on to nothing but air. Her Panchito had flown her nest years ago.