Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree (64 page)

Soledad had told Sofia that he was quietly conducting an affair with Encarnacion’s daughter, Maria (named after Maria Solanas) who was not only married but had a daughter, the father of whom could have been almost anyone in the
pueblo.
‘A nice young man like Pancho doesn’t want to go to a brothel. He’s just learning the ways of women,’ she had said in his defence. When Sofia looked at ‘young Pancho’ she imagined he’d been ‘learning the ways of women’ from the moment he’d discovered what his penis had been made for.

During dinner Santi and Sofia talked with restraint. On the surface no one would have guessed the tension they both felt in their chests, the effort it was to act as if they felt nothing more than the warmth of an old friendship. They laughed when they wanted to cry and spoke calmly when they wanted nothing more than to shout, ‘How do you feel?’

Finally Sofia kissed her cousins goodnight. Claudia stood rigidly in front of the French windows, eager to leave the terrace and retreat into the house with her husband. ‘See you tomorrow, Sofia,’ she said smilingly, but her eyes remained distant.

It was at that moment that Santi thrust a piece of paper into Sofia’s hand. He looked at her with an expression of longing and kissed her on her cheek. Claudia didn’t notice because his back was facing her. She just stood there expectantly.

Sofia stepped out into the night, clutching the piece of paper to her chest. She was impatient to open the note but the minute she saw it crumpled and distressed she recognized it as the very note she had sent Soledad to give him twenty-three years before. She struggled with her emotions as she opened it and read the words again:
Meet me under the ombu tree at midnight.
Conquered once more by that now-familiar sense of regret, she clutched it to her bosom and walked on. She couldn’t sit as she would normally have done in order to regain her composure - she was too agitated. She kept walking.

Santi’s feeling hadn’t changed. He had kept her note, cherished it. And now he delivered it to her with the same urgency and secrecy as she had sent it to him that terrible night. He wanted her. She had never stopped wanting him. She couldn’t help herself. She knew it was wrong but she was unable to pull herself back. Her heart ached with the thought of what might have been.

She felt like a child again, breaking the rules. As she brushed and plaited her hair at her old dressing table Sofia could have been eighteen again. She was thousands of miles away and swept back into a life so removed from the one she shared with her husband and girls that it was almost as if she were living a fantasy in which they had no place. At that moment nothing mattered but San-ti. It felt so right. Santi was part of her. He belonged to her. She had waited twenty-three years for him.

She was about to leave the room when there was a hesitant knock at the door. She looked at the clock. Quarter to midnight.

‘Come in,’ she said irritably. The door opened slowly. ‘Papa.’

Paco stood hesitantly in the doorway. She didn’t want to invite him in, she was anxious to get to the ombu. She couldn’t bear to be late for Santi, not after

having waited so long.

‘I just wanted to make sure that you are all right.' he said gruffly, and his eyes flicked around the room as if he was nervous of looking into hers.

‘I’m fine, Papa, thank you.
⁷

‘You know, your mother and I are happy you are home. You belong here,’ he said clumsily. He looked frail as he stood there, uncertain of what to say. He had always known exactly what to say.

‘A part of me will always belong here,’ Sofia replied. Then she felt sorry that this gulf existed between them. That it was so easy for people’s lives to change them. She walked up to him and embraced him. While she held him in her arms she glanced at her watch. There was a time when nothing would have distracted her from his love.

‘Now, go to bed and get some sleep. We’ve got all the time in the world to talk. I’m tired, it’s been a long day. We’ll talk tomorrow,’ she said, gently but firmly showing him to the door.

'Bueno,
Sofia, I will say goodnight then,’ he whispered, disappointed. He had come to tell her something, something that had cast a shadow over his conscience for many years. But it would have to wait. He would tell her another

time. Reluctantly he left the room. Once he had shuffled down the corridor she was aware of a tear that he had left on her cheek when he kissed her.

Sofia didn’t need a torch that night; the moon was so phosphorescent it cast silver shadows over the grass and fields. It felt oddly surreal as she ran over them. She remembered the night she took the same route for her last meeting with Santi. It had been dark and ominous then. She could hear a few dogs barking in the distance and a child crying. It wasn’t until she could see the silhouette of the ombu tree against the glittering navy sky that she began to feel afraid.

As she approached she slowed down to a hasty walk. She searched the tree for him but couldn’t see him anywhere. She had imagined she would see the glow of his torch jumping around like the last time. That moment would be for ever engraved on her memory. But tonight he needed no torch and it was light enough for her to see the hands on her watch. She was late. Had he not waited? She went cold. She felt her throat constrict with impatience. Then suddenly from behind the tree he appeared like a black shadow. They stared at one another. She tried to work out his expression, but she couldn’t see it clearly in spite of the moonlight. He must have been doing the same. And then instinct overcame them, releasing them from all rational thought. They fell upon each other, touching, smelling, breathing, crying. Their actions spoke where words could never have done justice to the years of longing and regret. She felt then that she had truly come home.

She didn’t know what time it was when they finally lay fulfilled and delirious on the sweet grass, and she didn’t really care. She was aware only of his hand playing with the strands of hair that had worked free from her plait. She breathed in the spicy scent of him and buried her face in his chest. She could feel his warm breath on her forehead and the roughness of his chin against her skin. She wallowed in the sensual pleasure of the moment. Nothing else mattered or existed for her but him.

Talk to me, Chofi. What happened when you left?’ he asked finally.

‘D/os, I don’t know where to start.’

‘I have asked myself so many times, what could I have done?’

‘Don’t Santi, don’t torture yourself. I went crazy asking myself those same questions and I still don’t know the answers,’ she replied, raising herself onto

her elbow and placing her finger across his lips. He took her hand and kissed it, blinking up at her.

‘Why did they have to send you away? I mean, they could have sent you to boarding school - anything, but sending you to Switzerland was a bit drastic, and then not knowing where to find you ...’

Sofia watched his anguished face, those tormented green eyes searching hers for an answer. He looked as vulnerable as a child and her heart lurched for him.

They sent me away, Santi, because I was expecting your child,’ she said quietly, and her voice quivered. He stared at her in disbelief. ‘Do you remember when I was ill? Well, Dr Higgins was sent for. Mama went crazy. Papa was more understanding but furious. There was only one thing to do as, of course,

I couldn’t keep the child. Our affair was improper; they could never have accepted it. Mama, naturally, was only worried that I would bring shame upon the family and that was more important than anything else. I think at that moment she saw the devil in me. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.’

‘Slow down, Chofi-you’re babbling. What did you just say?’

‘Darling Santi, I was pregnant.’

‘You were pregnant with my child?’ he stammered slowly, unable to take it all in. He then sat up abruptly and rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand.

‘Yes,’ she replied sadly, sitting up and letting him draw her into his arms.

‘Oh Chofi, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Mama and Papa had made me promise not to tell anyone. They sent me to Geneva to have a termination. They didn't want anyone to know. I was afraid that if I told you, you’d demand to come with me, demand your rights as the father, confront my parents. I don’t know - I was afraid. I was frightened to go against their wishes. You should have seen them. They were different people that night. I decided to write to you once I was far away, when my parents would be unable to do anything about it.’

She couldn’t tell him that she had had the child and then given him away. She was too ashamed. How could she tell him that she had regretted giving him up from the moment she had come to her senses that bleak winter morning in London. Would he believe her if she told him that not a day went by when she didn’t think about Santiguito, wonder where he was and what he was doing? How could she tell him without sounding callous or flippant? That

wasn’t the way he remembered her. So she left him to assume that she had terminated the pregnancy, and suppressing the pain, she carried it alone.

‘Maria,’ he said flatly.

‘It’s a long time ago,’ Sofia said quietly feeling it was wrong to criticise her cousin now that she was dying. He held her close and she knew that the fact that she had carried his child brought them irreversibly closer together. He was thinking of what might have been. She could feel his regret because it reflected her own.

‘Is that why you never came back? Because you lost our child?’ he asked into her hair.

‘No. I never came back because I believed that you didn’t want me, that you had moved on and found someone else. I didn’t want Argentina without you. I reached a point where my pride prevented me from coming home. I suppose I left it too long.’

‘Surely you trusted me?’

‘I wanted to, but after a while I lost hope. You were so far away - I didn’t know what you were thinking. And I waited. I waited for years!’

‘Oh Chofi, you should have come back. If only you had come back, you would have seen how I was pining for you. I was lost without you. Nothing was the same. I felt utterly useless. I didn’t know where to find you. I didn’t know where you were, otherwise I would have written.’

‘I know that now. I didn’t think for one minute that Maria might have destroyed my letters.’

‘I know. As I didn’t receive them, I couldn’t write back. I didn’t know where you were. Maria confessed to me years ago, but by then it was too late. I know at the time she thought she was doing the right thing. She has been torturing herself with remorse for years, that’s why she stopped writing to you. She couldn’t bring herself to tell you, or to face you.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘I can’t believe we were beaten so easily,’ he said hoarsely, shaking his head. ‘I gave up in the end. I had to, or I would have been driven insane. I thought you had found someone else. Why else would you not have come home? Then Claudia came along and I faced the decision of making a life with her or waiting for you. I chose a life with her.’

‘Are you happy?’ asked Sofia slowly.

‘Happiness is relative. I thought I was happy until yesterday when you appeared at the hospital.’

‘Santi, I’m so sorry.’

‘I’m happy now.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m very sure,’ he replied, taking her face in his hands and kissing her forehead. ‘It hurts me to think of you suffering alone in Switzerland. I want to know what happened. We have years to catch up on. I want to share every minute of them with you. I want to feel that I know your life so well I could almost have been there with you.’

‘I will tell you about Switzerland, I’ll fill you in on everything.’

‘You should get some rest.’

‘I wish we could spend the whole night together.’

‘I know. But you’re back. I’ve dreamed of you coming back a hundred times.’ ‘Did you dream it would be like this?’

‘No, I imagined I’d be furious. But when I saw you, it was like we had parted only yesterday. You haven’t changed at all, not at all.’ And he looked at her with such tenderness she felt the tears stinging the backs of her eyes.

‘I love this old tree,’ she said, turning her face away to hide her emotion. ‘It’s watched us grow up, it’s seen our pain, our love, our pleasure. No one knows

it all like this old ombu tree.’

He sighed deeply and squeezed her. ‘I never let my children come here,’ he said.

‘I know, your son told me.’

‘Silly, really. I just felt it had let me down. I didn't want my children to live in a fantasy world of magic and wishes like we had.’

She squeezed him back. ‘I know, but for me it always meant more than that. It was our secret place. It was our little kingdom. To me, the ombu will always represent an idyllic childhood. It’s at the very core of all my memories. Every one. You see, we’ve just given it another.’

He laughed with her and his sadness lifted. ‘I suppose I’ve acted foolishly.’ ‘No, but I don’t think it would do any harm to let your children come here. Remember how we loved to climb it?’

‘Yes, you were pretty athletic in those days.’

‘In those days! I could climb it now for a few
pesos.'

And so they climbed it together. And when they reached the top they could see the dawn breaking on the horizon, its blood-red rays seeping into the night and turning it to gold.