Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘Don’t worry about Valeria,’ said Chiquita as she showed Anna around the estancia. ‘She will like you when she knows you. Everyone was hoping that Paco would marry an Argentine. It is a shock, you see. Paco announces that he is getting married and no one has met you. You will be happy here once you are settled.’

  Chiquita showed Anna the ranchos - the tight cluster of squat white houses where the gauchos lived - and the polo field which came alive in the summer months when the boys did nothing but play, and if they weren’t playing they were talking about it. She took her to the tennis court that sat nestled amidst the heavy, damp plane trees and eucalyptus, and the limpid pool placed on a man-made hill from where one could see a large grassy field full of pale brown cows chewing the cud.

  With Chiquita Anna soon began to practise speaking Spanish. Chiquita explained to her the grammatical differences between the Spanish from Spain, which Anna had learnt in London, and the Spanish spoken in Argentina, and she listened with patience as Anna nervously stumbled through her sentences.

  During the week, Anna and Paco lived in Buenos Aires with his parents and although at first the mealtimes were tense, as Anna’s Spanish progressed so did her somewhat overwrought relationship with Hector and Maria Elena. Anna voiced little of her fears during these few months of their engagement, sensing that Paco wanted her to cope and fit in. He began to work in his father’s business leaving Anna to spend her days studying Spanish and taking a course in Art History. She dreaded the weekends when the whole family gathered together on the farm, primarily because of the hostility she felt in Valeria.

  Valeria made her feel unworthy. In her immaculate summer dresses, with her long dark hair and aristocratic features, Valeria made Anna’s stomach churn with feelings of inadequacy. She would sit with her friends in a whispering huddle around the pool and Anna knew they were talking about her. They would smoke their cigarettes and watch her like a pack of beautiful, glossy panthers lazily observing a timorous doe and enjoying it when she stumbled. Anna recalled with bitterness her cousins back in Ireland and wondered who were worse. At least in Glengariff she had been able to escape to the hills; here she had nowhere to hide. She couldn’t confide in Paco as she wanted him to feel she was fitting in and she didn’t want to whinge to Chiquita who had become a real friend and ally. It had always been her way to hide her feelings and her father had once told her to hide her weaknesses from people who might take advantage of them. In this case he was sure to be right and she didn’t want to give any of them the satisfaction of watching her fail.

  ‘She’s no better than Eva Peron!’ Valeria said crossly when Nico confronted her about being so unfriendly. ‘An upstart trying to climb up the social ladder by marrying into your family. Can’t you see it?’

  ‘She loves Paco, I can see that,’ he replied gruffly, in defence of his brother’s choice.

  ‘Men are so dopey when it comes to understanding women. Hector and Maria Elena see it, I can tell,’ she persisted.

  At that time Peron was at the height of his power. He had reduced the population to total subjection. Backed by the military, he controlled the press, the radio, and the universities. No one dared deviate from the party line. Although he had the popularity to implement a democracy he preferred to rule with military precision and total control. Admittedly, there were no concentration camps for those who dissented and the foreign press were permitted to visit the country with complete freedom, yet an undercurrent of fear simmered below the

  surface of Peron’s Argentina. Eva, named Evita by her millions of supporters, used her status and power to act like a modern-day Robin Hood and the waiting room of her office literally vibrated with the queues of people requesting favours - a new house, a pension, a job - to which Eva would respond with a wave of her magic wand. She saw it as her personal mission to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, of which she had first-hand experience, and took great pleasure in quite simply taking from the rich in order to give to her descamisa-dos - a name coined by Peron himself which literally means ‘shirtless ones’. Many of the wealthy, worried that Peron’s dictatorship would lead to Communism, left the country altogether during that time.

  ‘Yes,’ Valeria said spitefully, ‘Anna is just like Eva Peron. Socially ambitious, and you and your family are going to let her get away with it.1 Nico scratched his head and decided her argument was so ridiculous he wouldn’t dignify it by discussing it.

  ‘Give the girl a chance,’ he said. ‘Put yourself in her shoes and then I think you’ll be a little kinder.’

  Valeria bit her lower lip and wondered why men were so hopeless at seeing beneath the surface of a beautiful woman. Just like Juan Peron.

  The decisive moment arose one afternoon when the whole family draped themselves over the hot paving stones around the pool, basking in the glorious sunshine and drinking the abundant fruit juices brought up from Hector’s house by maids in pale blue uniforms. Anna was sitting with Chiquita and Maria Elena in the shade when one of Miguel’s friends, Diego Braun, finding himself dazed by the Celtic beauty of Paco’s fiancee, couldn’t resist but flirt with her in front of everyone.

  ‘Anna, por qu no te bands?1 he asked from the pool, hoping that she might jump in and join him for a while. Anna understood the question perfectly. ‘Anna, why don’t you come for a swim?’ But she was so nervous, sensing everyone was listening for her response that she muddled up her grammar and translated directly from the English.

  ‘Porque estoy caliente,' she replied, wanting to communicate that she didn’t want to swim in the cold water because she was comfortably hot. To her surprise everyone disintegrated into laughter. They were laughing so hard they had to hold their bellies to ease the pain. Anna looked helplessly at Chiquita who, between infectious giggles, told her what she had said.

  1 “I’m lustful” I think is the correct translation.’ Then Chiquita began to laugh

  again with the rest of her family and friends.

  Anna reflected on what she had said and suddenly Chiquita’s laughter ignited a tickle in her own belly and she too began to howl with mirth. They all laughed together and for the first time Anna felt part of the clan. Standing up she said in her strong Irish accent, not caring if the grammar was right or wrong, that she had perhaps better take a swim to cool off

  From that moment on she learnt to laugh at herself and realised that a sense of humour was the only way she was going to endear herself to them. The men stopped admiring her quietly from afar and teased her about her poor Spanish and the girls took it upon themselves to help her not only cope with the language but the men as well. They taught her that Latin men have a confidence and shamelessness with women that meant that she would have to take care; she wasn’t safe even as a married woman. They’d try it on all the same. As a European and beautiful, she would have to be doubly careful. European women were like red rags to bulls, they said, with a reputation for being ‘easy’. But saying ‘no’ had never been a problem for Anna and, gaining confidence, her strength of character and that familiar capriciousness began to assert themselves again.

  As Anna’s character emerged out of the fog that had been her fear and the limitations that the language barrier had imposed upon it, Valeria realized that Anna wasn’t weak and hopeless, as at first she had suspected. In fact, she had a steely strength of character and the tongue of a viper, even in faltering Spanish. She answered people back and even disagreed openly with Hector one lunchtime in front of the whole family and won her argument, while Paco looked on triumphantly. By the time of the wedding if Anna hadn’t won the affections of each member of her new family, at least she had won their respect.

  The wedding was held under an ocean-blue sky in the summer gardens of Santa Catalina. Surrounded by 300 people she did not know, Anna Melody O’Dwyer glowed beneath a misty veil studded with small flowers and sequins. As she walked down the aisle on the arm of the distinguished Hector Solanas she felt she had truly leapt into the pages of the fairytale books she h
ad pawed over as a small child. Through her sheer determination and force of personality she had earned it. Everyone was looking at her, nodding to each other, commenting on what an exquisite creature she was. She felt admired and adored.

  She had shed the skin of the frightened girl who had arrived in Argentina three months before and emerged like the butterfly she always knew she could be. When she made her vows to her prince she believed tales like these really did have happy endings. They would walk off into the sunset and live happily ever after.

  On the morning of her wedding she had received a telegram from her family. It read: TO OUR DEAREST ANNA MELODY STOP ALL OUR LOVE FOR YOUR FUTURE HAPPINESS STOP YOUR LOVING PARENTS AUNT DOROTHY STOP WE ALL MISS YOU STOP. Anna read it while Encarnacion threaded jasmine into her hair and afterwards folded it away with her old life.

  Their wedding night was as tender and stirring as she had hoped it would be. Finally, alone together beneath the shroud of darkness, she had allowed her new husband to discover her. Trembling she had let him undress her, kissing each part of her body as it was revealed to him. He enjoyed the fair innocence of her skin, iridescent in the dusky moonlight that entered in shimmering shafts through the gaps in the curtains. He enjoyed her curiosity and her delight as she abandoned herself to him and allowed him to explore those places that had previously been forbidden. With each caress, with each touch,

  Anna truly felt that their very souls were uniting on a spiritual plain and that her feelings for Paco pertained to another world, a world beyond the physical. She felt blessed by God.

  At first she didn’t miss her family or her country at all. In fact, her life was suddenly so much more exciting. As the wife of Paco Solanas she could have anything she wanted and respect came with the name. Her new status far outshone the traces of her humble past. She enjoyed playing the hostess in her new apartment in Buenos Aires, gliding about the large, exquisitely decorated rooms, always the centre of attention. She charmed everyone with her poor attempts to speak Spanish and her unsophisticated ways; if the Solanas family had accepted her then so would the Portehos - the people of Buenos Aires. As a foreigner she was a curiosity and got away with almost everything. Paco was deeply proud of his wife. She was different from everyone else in this city of strict social codes.

  At the beginning of her marriage, though, she still made mistakes. She wasn’t used to servants so she tended to treat them in a manner that was discourteous, believing it to be the way the upper classes treated their staff. She wanted people to think that she had grown up with maids in the house,

  but she was wrong; her attitude towards them offended her new family. Paco had pretended not to notice for the first few months, hoping that she would learn from watching her sisters-in-law. But eventually he found himself having to take her aside to gently ask her to treat them with more respect. He couldn’t tell her how Angelina, their cook, had appeared at the door of his study wringing her hands in distress, claiming that no Solanas had ever talked to her in the way that Señora Anna did. Anna was mortified and sulked for a few days. Paco tried to coax her out of her bad humour. These moods didn’t belong to the lAna Melodia’ he had fallen in love with in London.

  Anna suddenly found she had more money than the Count of Montecristo. In an attempt to show that she wasn’t a smalltown girl from Southern Ireland and to lift her spirits, she wandered down Avenida Florida looking for something special to wear for her father-in-law’s birthday dinner. She found a very glamorous outfit in a small boutique on the corner where Avenida Santa Fe crosses the Avenida Florida. The sales girl was very helpful and gave her a free bottle of scent as a gift. Anna was delighted and began to feel again that inner buoyancy she had felt when she had first set foot in Buenos Aires.

  However, the moment she entered the room at Hector and Maria Elena’s apartment that evening and saw what all the other women were wearing, she realized to her embarrassment that she had chosen badly. All eyes turned to her and their smiles hid the disapproval they were far too polite to show. She had chosen a dress that was much too low-cut and fancy for this quietly elegant occasion. To add to her shame, Hector walked up to her. His black hair, which was only greying slightly at the temples, and tall frame made him look terrifying. Overshadowing her with dread, he offered her a shawl. ‘I don’t want you to feel the cold,’ he said kindly. ‘Maria Elena doesn’t like to heat the house, it gives her headaches.’ She thanked him, repressing a sob, and gulped down a glass of wine as fast as was dignified. Paco later told her that although she was inappropriately dressed she had still been the most beautiful girl in the room.

  By the time Rafael Francisco Solanas (nicknamed Rafa) was born in the winter of 1951 Anna felt she was beginning to fit in. Chiquita, now her sister-in-law, had taken her shopping and she began stepping out in the most elegant outfits imported from Paris, and everyone was full of admiration that she had produced a boy. He was fair and so pale he looked like a fat little albino monkey. But to Anna he was the most precious creature she had ever seen.

  Paco sat by her hospital bed and told her how happy she had made him. He

  held her slender hand in his and kissed it with great tenderness before placing on one of her fingers a diamond and ruby eternity ring.

  ‘You have given me a son, Ana Melodia. I am so proud of my beautiful wife,’ he said, hoping that a child would help her settle in and give her something to fill her days with besides shopping.

  Maria Elena gave her a gold locket studded with emeralds that had belonged to her mother and Hector took one look at the child and said he looked like his mother but cried with the might of a true Solanas.

  When Anna telephoned her mother in Ireland, Emer cried for most of the call. More than anything she wanted to be with her daughter at this time, and it tore her apart to know she might never lay eyes on her grandson. Aunt Dorothy took over the receiver and interpreted what her sister was trying to say, repeating her niece’s words to all those in the small sitting room.

  Dermot wanted to know that she was happy and well cared for. He spoke briefly to Paco who told him that Anna was much loved by his entire family. When Dermot put down the telephone he was more than satisfied, but Aunt Dorothy wasn’t convinced. ‘She didn’t sound herself, if you ask me,’ she said darkly, putting down her knitting.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Emer was still tearful.

  ‘She sounded happy enough to me,’ Dermot said gruffly.

  ‘Oh yes, she sounded happy enough, though slightly chastened,’ Aunt Dorothy said thoughtfully. ‘That’s the word, chastened. Argentina’s obviously doing our Anna Melody the world of good.’

  Anna had everything she could possibly want in her life, except for one thing that was constantly nagging at her pride. However hard she watched and copied those around her, she could never seem to shake off the feeling of being socially inadequate. In late September when spring covered the pampas with long rich grasses and wildflowers, Anna found another obstacle that wedged its way between her and the sense of belonging that she craved for -horses.

  Anna had never liked horses; in fact she was allergic to them. She loved most other animals: the mischievous vizcachas, big rodents similar to the hare, which burrowed all over the plain, the gato monies or wild cat, which she often spotted sloping lithely through the bushes and the armadillo which fascinated her by virtue of its absurd shape. Hector used the shell of one as an objet on

  his study table, which she found very distressing. But she soon realized that life at Santa Catalina revolved around polo. Everyone rode a horse; cars were obsolete in a place where the roads joining one estancia to another were often little more than dirt tracks or simply paths cutting through the long grasses.

  Life at Santa Catalina was very sociable; they were always taking tea or enjoying large barbecues, asados, at other people’s ranches. Anna found herself having to drive the long way around by truck when all the others simply jumped on a horse and galloped their way there in no time at all. Conversation was d
ominated by polo, the matches they played against other estancias, their handicaps, their ponies, their equipment. The men seemed to play most evenings. It was entertainment. The women would sit out on the grass with their children and watch their husbands and sons gallop up and down the field - but for what? To hit a ball between two poles. It was hardly worth the effort, thought Anna sourly. When she watched small children, barely able to walk, playing on the sidelines with a mini mallet she would roll her eyes in despair. There was no getting away from it.

  Agustin Paco Solanas was born in the autumn of 1954. Unlike his brother he was dark and hairy. Paco said he looked just like Grandfather Solanas. This time he gave his wife a diamond and sapphire eternity ring. But there was a chill in their relationship that hadn’t been noticeable before.

  Anna occupied herself fully in the young lives of her two sons. Although she had Encarnacion’s young niece, Soledad, to look after them she preferred to do most of the caring herself. Her sons needed her, depended on her. To them she was everything and their love was unconditional. She responded to their affection with blind devotion. The more she doted on her sons the more distant her husband became, until Paco resembled a shadowy character in the background of her nursery life. He seemed to spend more and more time away from her, arriving very late from work most evenings and leaving before she got up in the morning. At weekends at Santa Catalina they spoke to each other with a cool politeness that had crept into their relationship with the subtlety of a prairie puma. Anna wondered where all the joy and laughter had gone. What had become of their games? Now they seemed to talk only about their children.

  Paco dared not admit to anyone that perhaps he had been wrong. That perhaps he had been asking too much of Anna to acclimatize to a culture that was alien to her. He had watched the Ana Melodia he had fallen in love with

  disappear slowly behind the remote veneer of a woman trying to be something that she was not. He had watched helplessly as her unbridled nature and defiant independence had turned to sullenness and petulance. She was defensive about everything. She seemed to be struggling to find herself, which only resulted in attempting to emulate those about her in order to become just like them. She sacrificed those unique qualities that Paco had found so endearing in exchange for a sophistication that hung loosely on her like an ill-fitting gown. He knew she was capable of great passion but as much as he tried to kiss away her reserve their nocturnal encounters became nothing more than that, encounters. As much as he might have wanted to discuss his worries with his mother he was too proud to admit that maybe he should have left Anna Melody O’Dwyer on those smoggy London streets and saved them both from this unhappiness.