Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree (72 page)

As she neared the shacks she could make out the red flames of a campfire. The twangy tones of a guitar reached her, then singing voices, getting louder and louder as she approached. She was dismayed to find a group of
gauchos
sitting around the fire, laughing and drinking, their brown faces illuminated by the skipping flames. She stopped short and stood behind a tree in order to watch them. They couldn’t see her. She strained her eyes, searching their faces for her son. Then she saw him. He was sitting in the middle between Pablo and another man she didn’t recognize, singing enthusiastically with the others.

Every now and then he’d smile, his white teeth gleaming in the flickering light. She couldn’t see him well enough to notice whether he looked like herself or Santi and was unable to remember his features from the few times that she had seen him. She narrowed her eyes in frustration, attempting to see better.

Suddenly a slim woman opened the door to her house and wandered out to join the group, carrying a tray of dishes. Sofia was able to make out a skinny dog bouncing around her heels. When she moved to get a better look the dog must have sensed someone in the trees for it started yapping. It scuttled towards her, its tail pointed straight up in the air like a wild boar, ready to attack. The woman looked over to where Sofia was standing. She said something to the men and a couple of them leapt to their feet, hands on their
facones.
Sofia had no choice but to come out from her hiding place. Ashamed to have been caught, she showed herself. She noticed a ripple of sobriety pass through them as the guitar was put down and they stopped singing.

Javier, already standing up, took his hand off his knife and came marching towards her. ‘Good evening, Senora Sofia. Are you all right? Is there anything you want?’ he asked politely, frowning at her curiously.

She watched him stride over. He was tall, had good posture, was broad like

his father. He also walked a bit like Santi, his knees turning outwards, but then he had spent his life on a horse so that wasn’t really surprising. As he came closer she noticed that he had dark hair like her. He stood before her, waiting for her to speak. She was about to tell him that she was his mother, but the words wouldn’t come out. Her enthusiasm vanished. She looked behind him at the small gathering of his fellow
gauchos
and realized that he was happy there. He was happy not knowing. He possessed something that had eluded her for so many years; a sense of belonging. He belonged there at Santa Catalina. How ironic that he belonged there more than she did and certainly more than her mother ever had. Sadly she realized that it would be cruel and selfish to shatter everything he had grown up to believe in. She gulped back her words and smiled weakly.

‘I used to come here a lot as a child when Jose was still alive,’ she said, trying to start up a conversation.

‘My mother tells me you’ve been away a long time, Señora Sofia,’ he said.

‘Yes, I have. You have no idea how much I missed it.’

‘Is it true it always rains in England?’ he asked, his mouth breaking into a shy grin.

‘Not as much as you’d imagine. Some days are as clear and blue as they are here,’ she replied, hoping he wouldn’t notice how closely she was looking into his features.

‘I have never left Santa Catalina,’ he said.

‘Well, if I were you I would keep it that way. I have seen many different parts of the world and I can tell you there is nowhere more beautiful than Santa Catalina.’

‘Will you be staying? My mother hopes that you will.’

‘I don’t know, Javier,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Your mother is an old sentimentalist!’

‘I know.’ He laughed.

‘She’s been a good mother to you, I bet.’

‘She has.’

‘She was good to me when I was a child too. She was my partner in crime.’

After a while Sofia could see he was anxious to get back to his friends. After all, she was his boss’s daughter, they were from two different worlds. He would never talk to her as an equal. Humouring her was part of his job.

She watched him walk back before making her own way home through the

trees. He was definitely her son. Although she couldn’t make out the colour of his eyes in the darkness, she imagined they were brown. If they had been green like his father’s, she believed she would have noticed them before. There was nothing extraordinary about his appearance. He was handsome and yet he had been brought up as a
gaucho.
He was very much a product of his surroundings. No, it wouldn’t have been fair to tell.

When she returned to her room, Soledad was still sitting there. She sat hunched and defeated, her hands clenched in her lap. When she entered Soledad blinked up at her with the eyes of someone whose very reason for living has been snatched away from them. They were raw from crying and dull with grief. Sofia, too, felt bereft. But seeing Soledad like that reinforced her decision. She had done the right thing.

When Sofia told her that she hadn’t been able to tell him, Soledad’s face lit up from within and her shoulders that had been stooped with tension, now relaxed with relief. She wept again, but this time her tears were of happiness. She held Sofia to her bosom, thanking her over and over again for giving her back her son. She told her that not a day had gone by when she hadn’t reminded herself that Javier did not belong to her, that she was merely a guardian, bringing him up as best she could until the day his real mother would return to claim him. But Sofia told her sadly that he was Soledad’s son. It was irrelevant who had borne him.

‘Javier even looks like you, Soledad,’ she said, sitting next to her on the bed, allowing her old friend to place a comforting arm around her shoulders.

‘I don’t know, Señorita Sofia, but he is a handsome boy, that is true,’ she said, suppressing a smile of pride, knowing there was no place for her pride in that small room.

‘How did it happen?’ Sofia asked curiously. ‘How come no one noticed when you and Antonio suddenly got a child out of nowhere?’

‘Well, Señor Paco came to see us in our house. He told us that we were the best people qualified to look after your baby because you and I had always been close. I nursed you when you were a baby, remember?’

Sofia nodded. She thought of Dominique and Antoine devising their plan to send Santiguito out to Argentina. She didn’t resent them; in fact, they had given him the best home he could have had. The home she lost, he had found. She smiled bitterly at the irony.

‘What did he tell you?’

‘He told us that you would come back one day, but that you were unable to look after the child yourself. I didn’t ask any questions, Señorita Sofia, I didn’t pry. I believed what he told me and did my best to bring up Javier the way you would have wanted.’ Soledad sniffed and her voice trembled.

‘I know you did. I’m not blaming you. I just need to know, that’s all,’ Sofia said calmly, reassuring Soledad with a squeeze of her clammy hand. Soledad took a deep breath and then continued.

‘So we made up some story about a niece of Antonio’s who had died, leaving Antonio instructions in the will to look after her child. No one questioned it - that sort of thing happens all the time. Everyone was overjoyed for us. We had wanted a child for thirty years. God had been kind.’ Her voice was reduced to a throaty husk and a fat tear plopped onto her plump cheek. ‘Then a week later Señor Paco arrived at our house in the middle of the night with little Javier wrapped in muslin. He was beautiful. Like the baby Jesus, with large brown eyes, like yours, and soft brown skin. I loved him the moment I saw him and I thanked God for His gift. It was a miracle. A miracle.’

‘My father was the only person who knew besides you and Antonio, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So how did he treat him? Was it difficult for him?’

‘I don’t know, Señorita Sofia, but he was always especially kind to Javier. The child used to follow him about the farm like a dog. They had a good relationship. But Javier was always a
gaucho.
He was happier with us than he was with your family. He didn’t belong in the big houses, he felt out of place. So as he grew up a natural distance developed between them. But as I said, Señor Paco has always been especially kind to Javier.'

‘What was he like as a child?’ Sofia dared to ask, although she knew it would be painful to hear what she had missed out on.

‘He was cheeky. He had your moodiness and Señor Santiago’s talent. He was always the best at everything. The best on a horse, the best at his schoolwork.’

‘I was never good at schoolwork,’ said Sofia. That didn’t come from me.’

‘But he is his own person, Señorita Sofia,’ Soledad added truthfully.

‘I know - I saw it. I expected him to look like me, limp like Santi. I expected him to have that self-confidence, that Solanas look. You know what I mean? But he’s totally himself. He’s a stranger to me and yet I carried him for nine months and I bore him into the world. Then I deserted him,’ she said, her

voice trailing off. ‘At least I will no longer be tormented by not knowing what has become of him. I’m happy he has you as a mother, Soledad. Because you were my mother, too.’ Then she cried again against the bosom of her maid. She cried for what she had lost and she cried for what she had found and she didn’t know for which she cried the most.

That night she could barely sleep. Dreams seemed to appear as much when she was awake as when she drifted into a shallow slumber. She dreamed of making love to Santi, gazing into his face which suddenly transformed itself into Javier’s. She awoke in panic, turned on the light and waited for her heartbeat to slow down. She felt so alone. She longed to be able to tell Santi about Javier, but she knew the damage she would cause if she did. She wondered why Dominique had never told her. She wondered how differently things might have turned out had she managed to speak to her that time their sullen housekeeper had informed her they were out of the country.

In the beginning, she had been afraid to tell Dominique and Antoine that she had changed her mind because she couldn’t bear them to know she had made a mistake. They had warned her, she hadn’t listened. If she had voiced her regret sooner, perhaps they would have told her where he was. Maybe she would have gone back to live in Argentina. She might even have had a future with Santi, who knows. At least she was sure of one thing; her father had acted out of love and she was grateful. He had ensured Santiguito a good home, a loving family. He must have expected her to come home in the end. Now of course it was too late. Too late for everything.

Tuesday, 11 November 1997

The following morning, after spending some time with Maria, Sofia went to visit Grandpa O’Dwyer’s grave. She placed some flowers against the headstone which was green with moss and mildew. She didn’t imagine anyone came there very often, for the grave hadn’t been tended in years. She ran her hand over the words cut into the stone and thought how little there was left for her now at Santa Catalina. She could almost hear her grandfather’s voice reaching her from the grave, telling her that life was a training ground, it wasn’t meant to be easy, it was designed to instruct. A harsh school it was indeed.

When she turned to leave, the ghostly figure of her mother appeared from behind the trees in a pair of floppy white trousers and a crisp white shirt. Her hair was flowing and fell about her shoulders in limp rust-coloured curls. She looked old.

‘Do you ever come and talk to Grandpa?’ asked Sofia in English as she approached. Anna, hands in pockets, walked over slowly and stood in the shade of the weather-beaten eucalyptus tree that protected the grave from the

elements.

‘Not really. I used to.' she said and smiled sadly. ‘I suppose yer going to tell me that I should be looking after his grave.'

‘No, not at all.' replied Sofia. ‘Grandpa liked things wild and natural, didn’t he?’

‘He’ll like yer flowers,’ she said, bending down stiffly to pick them up to smell them.

‘No, he won’t,’ laughed Sofia. ‘He won’t even notice!’

‘I don’t know. He was always full of surprises,’ Anna said, pressing her nose against the flowers before placing them back by the headstone. ‘Though he never did care much for flowers,’ she added, remembering how he used to chop their heads off with the secateurs.

‘Do you miss him?’ Sofia asked tentatively.

‘Yes, I do. I miss him.’ She sighed and took a deep breath. Looking at her daughter she paused for a moment as if working out how best to say something. She stood with her hands in her pockets, her shoulders hunched slightly as if it were cold. ‘I regret many things, Sofia. One of them is losing my family,' she said hesitantly.

‘But Grandpa lived here.’

‘No, I don’t mean then. I mean . . .’ She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. ‘No, I regret running away from them.’ Sofia noticed that her mother found it difficult to look her straight in the eye.

‘Did you run away from them?’ she asked, surprised. She had never thought of her mother’s marriage in that way. ‘Why?’

‘Because I wanted a better life than the one they had given me, I suppose. I was selfish and spoiled. I thought I deserved better. You know, the funny thing about getting old is that you think with time pain and hurt will fade, but time is irrelevant. I feel the same now as I did forty years ago. I just look different on the outside.’