Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree (58 page)

no idea that the man she had loved and lost lived at Santa Catalina. Had he known, she doubted he would have been so happy to send her back. She wondered whether her decision not to tell him about Santi might have been influenced by a subconscious desire to keep the door open. For that very reason she decided not to tell Dominique she was going.

David insisted she pack at once. There was no time to waste deliberating on what it would be like once she got there. He told her to be practical. She was going back to see Maria, she shouldn’t think any further than that. He accompanied her to the airport with Honor and India to whom airports suggested holidays and sunny climes, and bought her far too many magazines to read during the long flight. Sofia could tell he was feeling emotional. He always adopted a brisk tone when he was anxious, talked too fast, dwelt on unnecessary details.

‘Darling, do you want a novel as well?’ he said, picking up one by Jilly Cooper and turning it over to read the back.

‘No. These magazines are quite enough,' said Sofia, thanking India who skipped up with a bumper packet of Snickers. ‘Sweetie, I couldn’t possibly eat all these. If you ask Daddy nicely he might let you choose something for yourselves,’ she added, watching Honor making her way through a bag of chocolate raisins, which hadn’t been paid for.

Leaving them was difficult. She lingered too long saying goodbye, which reduced India to tears with the stress of it all. At almost eleven years of age, she was still dependent on her mother and had never been separated from her for more than a couple of days at a time. Honor, who was fiercely independent and confident, put her arm around her little sister and promised to cheer her up in the car.

‘I’m not going for long, sweetheart. I’ll be back before you miss me,’ said Sofia, pulling the tearful child into her arms. ‘Oh, I love you so much,’ she breathed, kissing her wet cheek.

‘I love you too, Mummy,’ sobbed India, hanging around Sofia’s neck like a koala bear. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘Daddy will look after you and it’s the holidays soon. Lots to look forward to,’ she replied, wiping the child’s face with her thumbs. India nodded and tried to be brave.

Honor grinned as she kissed her mother and wished her a safe flight, drawing herself up like a grown-up and patting India on her quivering shoulder.

David embraced his wife and wished her luck.

‘Call me when you arrive, won’t you,’ he said, placing his lips on Sofia’s for a long moment during which he silently prayed that she would be returned to him safely. Sofia waved at her small family before disappearing through passport control. India had managed to force a smile, but once her mother had gone, she disintegrated once more into tears. David took her by the hand and the farewell-party left the airport for home.

It was only when Sofia’s plane was near landing in Buenos Aires that the reality of her situation began to sink in. It had been twenty-three years since she had last stood on Argentine soil. She hadn’t seen any of her family for all that time, although she had heard through Dominique that her parents had desperately tried to track her down at the beginning. But Sofia had cut them all off completely. Having deeply resented them for sending her away she had, in a perverse way, enjoyed making them suffer. Dominique had protected her. But as time wore on she had found the longing for her homeland increasingly difficult to bear until she had had to admit to herself that pride was the only thing standing in the way of her return.

David had tried on countless occasions to encourage her to make a visit. ‘I’ll come with you, I’ll be there by your side. We’ll go together. You must let go of this bitterness,’ he had said. But Sofia hadn’t been able to do it. She hadn’t been able to let go of her pride. She wondered now how her family were going to react when they saw her.

In her mind’s eye she could still see and smell Argentina as she had left it all those years ago; she wasn’t prepared for the change. But as the plane descended into the Eseisa Airport, at least the skyline of the city, bathed in the flamingo-pink light of morning, was still very much as she had last seen it. She was overwhelmed with emotion. She was coming home.

There was no one to meet her at the airport, but why should there have been? She hadn’t told anyone she was coming. She knew she should have called, but whom? She had chosen to dispense with them all; there was no one she could have turned to — no one. In the old days she would have contacted Santi. Those days were gone.

The moment she stepped out into Eseisa Airport she drew into her nostrils that intoxicatingly familiar smell of caramelized, humid air. Her skin immediately felt damp and her senses swam in the stirring sea of her memories. She

looked about her at the dark-skinned officials who stalked around the airport with great importance, bristling with authority beneath their starched uniforms. While she waited for her luggage she glanced at the other travellers, listened to their conversations in Spanish, with the bubbling Argentine accent, and felt that she was truly home. Shedding her English skin like a snake she slunk through customs like the
Porteha
she used to be.

On the other side bustled and jostled an ocean of brown faces, some with placards inscribed with the names of the people they were meeting, others with their children and even their dogs screaming and barking into the stifling air, awaiting relatives and friends returning from lands afar. Their dark eyes watched Sofia as she pushed her trolley through the crowd that parted like the Red Sea to allow her to pass.

‘Taxi, Senora?’
asked a black-haired
mestizo
, twisting the corners of his moustache with lazy fingers. Sofia nodded.

‘A! Hospital Aleman
she replied.

¹
De donde es Listed?’
asked the man as he pushed her trolley out into the dazzling light. Sofia didn’t know whether she recoiled because of the intensity of the sunshine or because her taxi driver had just asked her where she was from.

‘Londres,’
she replied hesitantly. She obviously spoke Spanish with a foreign accent.

Once in the back of the black and yellow taxi, she sat next to the open window, which she wound down as far as it could go. Her driver lit a cigarette and turned on the radio. His dry brown hands ran roughly down the cool figure of the Madonna that hung from the mirror before he started the engine.

‘Do you follow football?’ he shouted into the back. ‘Argentina beat England in the World Cup of 1986. You must have heard of Diego Maradona?’

‘Listen, I’m Argentine, but I’ve lived in England for the past twenty-three years,’ she replied in exasperation.

‘No!’ he gasped, dragging the sound of the ‘O’ out of his throat in a long hiss.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly.

‘No!’ he gasped again in disbelief that anyone would want to leave Argentina. ‘How did you feel during the war of Las Malvinas?’ he asked, watching her face in the mirror. She would have preferred him to look where he was going, but the years of being British had refined her manners. If she had been a real Argentine she would have shouted at him rudely. He hooted loudly at a stalling

car in front of him and overtook on the wrong side, showing his fist to the equally irate driver by sticking it out of the window and waving it furiously.

‘Boludo!’
He sighed, shaking his head and inhaling the cigarette that hung limply out of the side of his mouth. ‘So, how did you feel?’

‘It was very difficult. My husband is English. It was a difficult time for both of us. Neither of us wanted that war.’

‘I know, it was between the governments, nothing to do with what the people wanted. That piece of shit, Galtieri - I was there in the Plaza de Mayo in 1982 with thousands of others to applaud him for invading the islands, then again a few months later baying for his blood. An unnecessary war. All that bloodshed, for what? A distraction. That’s what it was, a distraction.’

As they weaved their way precariously up the freeway that took them straight into the centre of Buenos Aires, she gazed out of the window onto a world that looked to her like an old familiar friend, but wearing a new expression. It was as if someone had built over all her memories, polished away the rust that she had grown up with and loved so deeply. As they drove through the city she noticed the parks were beautifully clean and full of well-trimmed flowerbeds. The shop windows were framed with shiny brass borders and displayed the latest

European collections. It looked more like Paris than a South American city.

This place looks really amazing,’ she said. ‘It looks so . . . well, I suppose the word is prosperous.’

‘You say you haven’t been here for twenty-three years,
qu barbaridad!
You missed the Alfonsfn years when inflation reached such heights I had to print a new price sheet every day, sometimes twice a day. It got to the stage where I asked for dollars, the only way not to lose money. You know, people lost their life’s savings from one day to the next. Terrible. But now things have improved. Menem has been a good President. A good President,’ he said, nodding his head in approval. ‘The
austral
was replaced by the
peso -
one
peso
to the dollar. Now that changed everything. We can depend on our currency again and have pride in it. One
peso
to the dollar - imagine that!’

‘The streets look fantastic - look at those boutiques.’

‘You should see the shopping malls.
Patio Bulrich
and now that fancy
Paseo Alcorta.
You’d think you were in New York. The fountains, the cafes, the shops. There’s so much foreign investment now, it’s incredible.’ Sofia gazed out of the window as they passed a beautifully manicured park. ‘Companies look after the parks - it’s good advertising for them and means they’re clean for our

children to play in,’ he said proudly.

Sofia’s head swam as she breathed in the smell of diesel mingled with the shrubbery and flowers from the park and the sweet scent of chocolate and
churros
from the
kioscos.
She noticed a brown-skinned boy striding across the road towards the park with about twenty pure-bred dogs on leads trotting eagerly behind him. When her driver tuned into the football match between Boca, whom he obviously supported, and River Plate, Sofia knew she had lost him. When Boca scored he swerved so violently across the road that he would have crashed had all the other cars not done the same. Once more he stuck his fist out of the window and tooted his horn to the other cars to display his delight. Sofia watched the small porcelain Madonna swing from the mirror and after a while she found herself drawn into its hypnotic rhythm.

Finally, the taxi halted outside the Hospital Aleman and she paid him with unfamiliar
pesos.
There had been a time when you wouldn’t have stepped out of the car until the driver had done so in case he drove off with your bags still in the boot, but Sofia was too eager to get out. She felt carsick. Her driver placed her two bags on the pavement then returned to his radio. She watched him rattle his way up the street and disappear into the swarm of buzzing vehicles.

Weary from her thirteen-hour flight and over-emotional, Sofia went right in, bags and all, and asked for Maria Solanas. When she mentioned her name the nurse frowned momentarily before nodding in acknowledgement.

‘Ah, yes,’ she said. She wasn’t used to people using Maria’s family name. ‘You must be her cousin - she has spoken a great deal about you.’ Sofia felt the colour rise in her cheeks, she wondered what exactly she had been told. ‘You’re lucky, she’s going home this afternoon. You might have missed her.’

‘Oh,’ Sofia replied blankly. She didn’t know what to say.

‘You are very early - we don’t usually allow visitors until nine a.m.’

‘I have come all the way from London,’ she explained wearily. ‘Maria isn’t expecting me. I’d like some time alone with her before her family arrive. I’m sure you understand.’

‘Of course.’ The nurse nodded sympathetically. ‘I have seen your photos. Maria loves to show us photographs. You look . . .’ She hesitated uncomfortably, as if suddenly aware that she was on the brink of making a
faux pas.

‘Older?’ Sofia suggested helpfully.

‘Perhaps,’ the nurse mumbled and her cheeks glowed. ‘I know she will be so happy to see you. Why don’t you go on up - it’s the second floor, Room 207.’

‘How is she?’ Sofia ventured, wanting to prepare herself a little before seeing her cousin.

‘She is a very brave lady, and popular. Everyone has grown enormously fond of Señora Maraldi.’

Sofia made her way towards the lift. ‘Señora Maraldi’ - the name sounded alien to her and Maria suddenly drifted further out of reach, like a small boat disappearing into the mist. Back in England Sofia had tried to absorb the news of her cousin’s illness, but it had seemed so far removed from her life that it hadn’t touch her like it touched her now. The smell of detergent, the sound of her shoes on the shiny plastic floors that lined the long hospital corridors, the nurses striding purposefully up and down with trays of medicine, the gloom that always lingers in such places penetrated her understanding and suddenly she felt afraid. Afraid of seeing her cousin after all this time. Afraid she might not recognize her. Afraid she wouldn’t be welcome.