Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree (25 page)

A big kiss,

Sofa.

Santi chuckled as he read her letter. When he folded it away in his drawer with her other letters and those from his parents and Maria he felt a faint twinge of homesickness. But it only lasted a second before it was smothered by the thought Jonathan Sackville’s party.

Jonathan Sackville lived a few blocks away from Bowen Street in Hope Street and was renowned on campus for giving the best parties with the prettiest girls. Santi didn’t really feel like going, his spirits were unusually low, but he knew it was better than sitting around moping over letters from home. So he showered and dressed.

When Santi, Frank and Stanley arrived at the house Jonathan was standing in the doorway with an arm around two simmering redheads, swigging from a bottle of vodka.

‘Welcome, my friends. The party’s only beginning,’ he slurred. ‘Go on in.’

The house was vast and literally throbbing with loud music and the feet of about 150 people. They had to squeeze their way down the corridor to get to where the drinks were, through a crowd of people packed so closely together they resembled a buzzing hive of bees, jostling against each other and shouting above the music.

‘Hey, Joey!’ exclaimed Frank. ‘Santi, you know Joey?’

‘Hi, Joey,’ Santi said flatly.

‘Hey, Joey! What’s up? Where’s the beautiful Caroline?’ Frank asked, looking over Joey’s shoulder for his sister.

‘Dive in if you dare, Frank. She’s in there somewhere.’

‘I’m going in, guys. Don’t wait up!’

Santi watched Frank disappear into the swaying mass of sweaty bodies.

‘This is giving me a headache. I’m going home to Dylan and Bowie,’ Stanley said. He always sounded spaced-out even when he wasn’t. ‘Life’s not meant to be a roller coaster. This is way too noisy - way, way too noisy. You want to come and chill out with me?’

‘Yeah, let’s go.’ Santi was wishing he had never come. It had been a complete waste of time.

Once outside in the cool October air Santi was able to breathe again. The night was clear and starry, and he was reminded of those sultry summer nights gazing up at the sky from under the ombu tree. He hadn’t missed his home once, so why was he suddenly feeling homesick?

‘You leaving too?’ came a thick voice from behind them. They both turned.

‘Yeah, we’re leaving. Want to join us?’ said Stanley, looking her over and liking what he saw.

‘No,’ she replied then grinned at Santi.

‘Do I know you?’ he asked, studying her pale features in the street lights.

‘No, but I know you. I’ve seen you around. You’re new.’

‘Yes, I am.’ He wondered what she wanted. She was wrapped in a short red coat with slim legs half concealed within a pair of shiny leather boots that reached up to her knees. She shivered and stamped her feet.

‘The party’s too noisy for me. I feel like going someplace quiet and warm.’

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Well, I was going home, but I don’t want to be alone. Do you want to come and keep me company?’ she asked, then smiled disarmingly.

‘I gather you’re not inviting me,’ Stanley said resignedly. ‘I’ll see you when I see you, Santi.’ He wandered off up the street.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Georgia Miller. I’m in my second year. I’ve seen you on campus. You’re from Argentina, right?’

‘Right.’

‘You miss it?’

‘A little,’ he replied truthfully.

‘I thought so. You were looking a bit forlorn in there.’ She slipped her hand through his arm. ‘Why don’t you come back to my house? I’ll help you forget your home.’

‘I’d like that, thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me, Santi. You’re also doing me a favour. I wanted to go to bed with you the first time I saw you.’

Once in the warm light of Georgia’s house Santi was able to see her clearly. She wasn’t beautiful, her face was long and her sharp blue eyes set too far apart - and yet she was sexy. Her lips were asymmetrical but sensual and when she grinned she did so with only one half of her mouth. She was blessed with a mass of thick blonde curls, which bounced like a cheerleader when she walked, and when she took off her coat Santi felt his loins stir at the sight of her swollen breasts, slim waist and long shapely legs. She had the body of a porn star and she knew it.

‘This body gets me into a whole lot of trouble,’ she sighed, sensing him watching her. ‘What do you want to drink?’

‘A whisky.’

That bad, eh?’

‘What is?’

‘Your homesickness.’

‘Oh, no it’s not really. I’m fine about it.’

‘But it gets you sometimes when you least expect it, doesn’t it?’

‘It does.’

‘A letter perhaps, or sometimes a smell or music,’ she said wistfully.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because, Santi, I’m from the South. Can’t you tell?’

The South?’ he asked blankly.

‘Georgia,’ she said.

‘Of course. I’m afraid your accent just sounds like everyone else’s to me.’ ‘That’s okay, handsome. Your accent doesn’t sound like anyone else’s to me. In fact, it’s the nicest accent I ever heard. So you can talk as long as you wish and I’ll just listen and swoon.’ She laughed throatily. ‘I just want you to know that I understand what it feels like, you don’t have to pretend with me. I’m right there with you. Now, here’s your whisky, let’s light a fire, put some

music on and we’ll both forget about our homesickness. Is that a deal?’

‘That’s a deal,’ said Santi, watching her bend down to arrange the logs.

‘Forget the fire, Georgia from Georgia, let’s go upstairs,’ he said suddenly, noticing the lace tops of her stockings and a flash of black panties momentarily revealed beneath her miniskirt. ‘There’s only one way to forget about home and that is to lose ourselves in each other,’ he added huskily, draining his whisky glass.

‘Well, come on up then. I’m aching to get lost in you,’ she replied and taking his hand she led him up the stairs to her bedroom.

Santa Catalina, December 1973

Chiquita had hardly slept at all. It had been a humid night. She had tossed and turned restlessly in her airless room, listening to the regular snoring of her husband, Miguel, who lay large and hairy by her side. It wasn’t due to the humidity, however, that she had found sleep an unattainable luxury that night, nor due to the nightmare that woke little Panchito and sent him crying to her bedside. It was due to the fact that her son Santi was returning home the following day after two years away, studying in America.

He had written often. She had awaited his weekly letters with excitement and read them with joy mixed with sadness for she missed him terribly. She had seen him only once for the spring break back in March. He had proudly shown his parents the campus, his house on Bowen Street where he lived with his two friends and they had driven out to the coast at Newport for a few days to stay with his friend Frank Stanford and his charming family. Miguel was delighted that he even managed to play polo and seemed to play most weekends. He was now nineteen, almost twenty, and seemed to be more of a man than the boy

she had waved goodbye to that sultry March evening.

Chiquita and Anna spent many long evenings sitting out on the terrace, looking into the faraway distance, discussing their children in detail. Anna suffered so much from her daughter’s outrageous behaviour. She had hoped that with time Sofia would calm down; in fact she felt she had only got worse. She was insolent and rebellious. She answered back and even called her mother names in flashes of temper that seemed to come from nowhere.

At seventeen she was more independent and obnoxious than ever. She was doing badly in her schoolwork, failing everything, coming bottom of the class, except in essays in which she excelled because she could indulge the imaginary world of her dreams. Her teachers lamented her lack of concentration and her deliberate efforts to disrupt the class for everyone else. They didn’t know what to do with her either. On weekends at Santa Catalina she’d disappear on horseback and not return for hours. She didn’t think to tell her mother where she was going. Often she’d return home after dark, missing her dinner on purpose.

The last straw had been when Anna had found out that Sofia had bribed the chauffeur to take her to San Telmo, the old part of the city, instead of school, where she had spent the best part of a week taking tango lessons with an ancient Spanish sailor called Jesus. Anna wouldn’t have found out had the schoolmistress not telephoned to wish Sofia a speedy recovery from glandular fever.

When she confronted Sofia she had simply stated that she had grown out of school and wanted to be a dancer. Paco had laughed and praised her for her initiative. Anna had been furious. But Sofia had become so used to her mother’s anger it no longer touched her. She would have to think of another way of controlling her daughter. It didn’t help that she was both beautiful and charming; it was due to those qualities that she was allowed to get away with everything. Chiquita tried to explain gently to her sister-in-law that she was very much like her mother. But Anna would shake her red head in despair and hear none of it.

‘She’s too charming for her own good. She wraps everyone around her little finger - her father especially. He does nothing to back me up. I feel like a monster. I’m the only one who tells her off. She’ll end up hating me if I’m not careful,’ she said, sighing heavily.

‘Perhaps,’ Chiquita suggested helpfully, ‘if you gave her more rein, more

freedom, she wouldn’t pull so hard at the bit.’

‘Oh Chiquita, you sound just like my father.’ Why, she thought, does this family have to bring everything back to horses!

‘He was very wise.’

‘Sometimes. Most of the time just plain irritating.’

‘You miss him, don’t you?’ ventured Chiquita. She never really spoke to her sister-in-law about her parents. Anna wasn’t comfortable talking about Ireland.

‘In a way I do. What I miss is not the father who came out to Argentina, but the father I grew up with in Glengariff Somehow our relationship changed. Maybe I changed, I don’t know.’ She lowered her eyes. Chiquita watched her face in the warm evening light and thought how incredibly beautiful she was, but how bitter she had become.

‘I miss him too,’ she said.

‘It’s partly thanks to him that Sofia is so spoilt. I never spoiled her. Neither Paco nor my father could ever see beyond the charm.’

‘That Solanas charm!’

‘That cursed Solanas charm!’ repeated Anna, then laughed. ‘My mother had charm too. Everyone loved her. Poor old Aunt Dorothy was fat and ugly - my mother took all the looks. Aunt Dorothy never married.’

‘Whatever happened to her?’ asked Chiquita.

‘I don’t know. I’m ashamed to say we lost touch.’

‘Oh.’

‘I know it was mean of me, but she was so far away . . .’ Her voice trailed off. She felt guilty. She didn’t even know if her aunt was dead or alive. She should have tried to find her when Grandpa O’Dwyer died, but she couldn’t face it. Better she didn’t know. What you don’t know doesn’t hurt, she thought, brushing the matter aside.

Chiquita longed to ask her about her other aunts and uncles, for she knew she had come from a big family from Grandpa O’Dwyer’s stories, but she didn’t dare. Instead she brought the subject back to Sofia.

‘I’m sure Sofia will grow out of this behaviour. It is just an adolescent phase.’

‘I’m not so sure.’ Anna couldn’t admit it to anyone but she saw more of herself in her daughter than she cared to let on. ‘You know, Chiquita, what worries me most about Sofia is that if I do give her more rein as you suggest, she may run completely wild. I don’t want the rest of the family to say I have bred a

savage.’

Chiquita laughed sympathetically; she wasn’t capable of thinking ill of anyone.

‘Anna, everyone loves Sofia, she is a free spirit. My Santi and Maria adore her, everyone forgives her everything. It is only in your eyes that she does wrong; in everyone else’s she can do no wrong at all. Anyway, what does it matter what other people think?’

‘It matters terribly to me. You know what they’re like. There’s nothing people like more than to gossip.’

‘Some people, yes, but they don’t matter,’ said Chiquita, watching her sister-in-law. After so many years Anna still felt she didn’t fit in, she still felt inferior, that’s why she worried so much about what other people thought of her children. She so desperately wanted to be proud of them. Their successes reflected on her, as did their failures. She felt compelled to prove her worthiness all the time. She could never relax.

Chiquita wanted to tell her that it simply didn’t matter. Class didn’t matter. Everyone loved Anna; she was part of the family. They loved her the way she was; her insecurities were part of her, part of the reason they all loved her. At first when she had arrived at Santa Catalina all those years ago they saw her as a gold digger who wanted to marry Paco for his wealth and status. She didn’t fit in. But once she had gained her confidence the shy deer turned into a proud tiger who won the respect of everyone.

Chiquita longed to tell Anna that Sofia was rebellious because Anna doted on her sons. She so obviously lived for Rafael and Agustin. If they had behaved as outrageously as Sofia did, Anna would have taken pride in the flamboyance of their characters instead of trying to subdue them with discipline. She would have been delighted to see her own defiance reflected in them and have encouraged them with love. Instead she was jealous of her daughter’s place in the family. Jealous that Sofia was such a large presence. Whether she was hated or loved no one could claim indifference. But Chiquita had tried before and her comments served only to draw attention to Anna’s feelings of inadequacy. She had learnt not to refer to it.