Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘Well, Santi will hardly have confided in her then, would he?’

  ‘No, you’re right.’

  ‘Okay, if I were you, I would wait until you receive a letter from Santi.’

  So Sofia waited. The days lengthened into summer until the sun had melted all the snow and the farmers let their cows out of their sheds to roam freely amid the mountain flowers and long grasses. By May she was four months pregnant. Her belly was round but the rest of her was thin and gaunt. Dominique’s doctor told her that if she didn’t eat she would damage her child. So she forced herself to eat healthily and drink plenty of fresh water and fruit juices. Dominique worried about her constantly, praying that Santi would write, damn him! But no letter came. Sofia still hoped long after Dominique had given up hoping. She would sit for hours on the bench looking out across the lake, watching winter melt into spring, spring flower into summer and finally summer die into autumn. She felt a part of her die with it. Her hope.

  It was only later when she felt less emotional and able to look at things more objectively, that it occurred to her that if Maria had known her whereabouts then Santi most certainly would have known, too. She realized that he could easily have written to her, but he hadn’t. He had betrayed her, for whatever reason. He had made a conscious decision not to communicate. Sofia tried to console herself by justifying his betrayal with many different reasons that might have given the desperately love-sick Santi no other option but to let her

  goOn 2 October 1974 Sofia gave birth to a healthy baby boy. She wept as she held him to her breast and watched him feed. He had dark hair like her and his eyes were blue. Dominique told her that all babies were born with blue eyes. Then his will be green like his father’s,’ Sofia said. ‘Or brown like his mother’s,’ added Dominique.

  The birth had been difficult. She had screamed as the pain had viciously

  wrenched her womb apart. Gripping Dominique’s hand until it had drained of blood, she cried out for Santi. In those intense moments where struggle gives way to relief and finally joy, Sofia had felt her heart empty with her womb. Santi didn’t love her any more and the withdrawing of his love cast a shadow over her soul. She felt she had not only lost her lover, but the only true friend she had in the world. She sank once more into despair.

  The delight she felt when she first held her child momentarily filled the void Santi had left. She ran her hand down his mottled cheek, stroked his angel hair and breathed in the warm scent of him. As he fed she played with his tiny hand that clutched hers possessively and refused to let it go, even once he had fallen asleep. He needed her. She took great pleasure in watching him fill his little stomach with her milk. Milk that would sustain his life and make him grow. As he sucked on her breast she felt a strange pulling sensation in her belly that delighted her. When he cried she felt it in her solar plexus even before she heard it. She would call him Santiguito, because if Santi had been there that is the way he would have wanted it - Little Santiago.

  After the initial joy of loving her new baby, Sofia’s vision once more darkened and her future seemed to hold nothing to brighten it. It was then that she experienced a crisis of confidence. She was consumed by an icy panic that seemed to squeeze the air out of her lungs and make it difficult for her to breathe. She wasn’t capable of looking after a small baby on her own; she didn’t know how to. Not without Santi, not without Soledad. When she opened her mouth to scream, nothing came out but a long, silent cry. She was alone in the world and she didn’t know how to face it.

  Sofia thought of Maria often. She yearned to share her misery with her friend, but didn’t know how to. She felt guilty. If Maria knew, which by now Sofia felt she most certainly did, she would feel betrayed. She knew for sure when no more letters arrived. Sofia felt so cut off from all that had been familiar to her. As much as she tried to love Geneva, it represented nothing but pain. Whenever she looked out of her hospital window, over those shimmering mountains in the distance, she thought about what she had lost. She had lost the affection of both Santi and Maria. She had lost her much-cherished home and all that was familiar to her, everything that had made her feel loved and secure. She felt abandoned and alone. She didn’t know where to go from there. Wherever she went, however far away, she couldn’t run away from herself and the deep sense of bereavement she carried inside her.

  After a week in the hospital, Sofia brought her baby home to the Quai de Cologny. She had had a lot of time to think while she had lain in her hospital bed. It was no easy decision to come to, but it was plain that Santi didn’t want them. She couldn’t return home to Argentina, and she certainly wasn’t going to Lausanne as her parents had planned. At first, back in March, they had both written to her, attempting to explain themselves. Her father had written more often. But Sofia had never written back, so their letters had dried up. She supposed they thought that things would get back to normal once she returned home. But she wasn’t ever going home.

  She explained to Dominique that she couldn’t bear to be in Argentina if she couldn’t have Santi, and Geneva was too quiet for her to build a future there. She was going to put her roots down in London.

  ‘Why London?’ asked Dominique, deeply disappointed that Sofia and little Santiguito were going to leave her. ‘You know you can stay here with us. You don’t have to go.’

  ‘I know. But I need to get away from everything that reminds me of Santi. I love it here with you. You and Antoine are the only family I have now. But you have to understand, I want to make a new start.’ She sighed and lowered her eyes. Dominique saw that the child before her had grown into a young woman since she had become a mother. Yet, she didn’t glow with that post-natal radiance normal in young mothers. She looked sad and oddly evasive.

  ‘Mama and Papa met in London,’ she went on, ‘I speak the language and I have a British passport thanks to my grandfather who was from the north of Ireland. Also, London is the last place they would come looking for me. Geneva or Paris would be their first choices, or Spain, of course. No, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to London.’

  Sofia had always been fascinated by London. Having been to the English school of San Andres in Buenos Aires, she had learnt about England’s kings and queens, the beheadings and the hangings, the pageantry and the ceremony that went with the monarchy. Her father had promised to take her one day. Now she would go alone.

  ‘Cherie, what are you going to do in London with a small baby? You cannot bring him up on your own.’

  ‘I’m not taking him with me,’ she replied, her eyes fixed on the Persian rug beneath her feet. Dominique was unable to hide her shock. Her eyes bulging like a frog’s, she stared at Sofia’s pale face in horror.

  ‘What are you going to do with him? Leave him with us?’ she stammered angrily, sure that Sofia must be suffering some sort of post-natal depression.

  ‘No, no, Dominique,’ Sofia responded wearily. ‘I want to give him to a nice, kind family who will look after him as their own. Perhaps a family who have wanted a child for a long time . . . please find such a family, Dominique,’ she pleaded, but her expression was one of resolve.

  Sofia was drained of tears. She had no more left to shed. She had reached a drought and her heart was numb. Antoine and Dominique sat her down to try to convince her otherwise. It was raining heavily outside, mirroring her own inner misery. Santiguito slept peacefully in his cot, wrapped in an old shawl of Louis’. Sofia explained that she couldn’t be with this child who reminded her every time she looked at him of Santi and his betrayal. She was too young. She didn’t know how to cope. Her future seemed like a big black hole that she was spinning towards without control. She didn’t want her baby.

  Antoine sternly told her that this was a human being she was talking about. She was responsible for him. He wasn’t some toy one could simply give away. Dominique told her gently that she would forget about Santi, that her child would develop a personality of his own and no longer remind her of him. But she didn’t listen. If she left now
it wouldn’t hurt so much to be separated from him; he was a mere baby. If she stayed any longer she would never be able to let him go and she had to let him go. She was too young to look after him and he couldn’t be part of the new life she felt compelled to begin. She had made up her mind.

  Dominique and Antoine spent long hours discussing what Sofia should do while she was out of the house walking Santiguito up and down the lakeside in his pram. Neither of them wanted her to give the child up for adoption; they knew she would regret it for the rest of her life. But Sofia was young and unable to see that far ahead. With her inexperience, how could she have possibly known that those nine months of carrying him and few weeks of loving him would tie him to her in an indestructible bond?

  In the hope that by talking to a doctor she might come to her senses, Dominique and Antoine sent her to a psychiatrist. Sofia obliged them by going, but stated very firmly that she wasn’t going to change her mind. The psychiatrist, Dr Baudron, a small man with silver-grey hair smoothed back off his face and a chest that looked to Sofia like that of a fat, happy pigeon, talked to her for hours, making her analyse moment by moment the last year of her life. She

  told him everything impassively, as if she were sitting up in the corner of the room on the ceiling, watching herself recount the moments that had led her to his office with the mouth and voice of someone else. After endless, futile talking, Dr Baudron told Dominique that either she was in a state of trauma or she was the most controlled human being he had ever met. He would have liked more time, but his patient had refused to see him any more. Sofia was still in her ship, undeterred by the delay, navigating her way to London.

  Once Sofia had managed to convince her cousins that she wasn’t going to change her mind, there were papers to sign and people to see in order to legally give her child up for adoption. Dominique was devastated. She tried to tell Sofia that she would regret it, maybe not now, but later. Sofia didn’t want to know. Dominique had never met anyone more stubborn in her life and for a moment she sympathized with Anna. When she didn’t get her own way Sofia wasn’t quite the angel she had thought she was. She had a violent temper, sulked and then folded her arms in front of her, settling her face with an expressionless veneer that no amount of cajoling could break through. Not only was she stubborn but she was proud. Dominique longed for Sofia to pack her bags and take the child back to Argentina with her; after the initial shock and scandal the storm would abate and they would both be accepted again. But Sofia didn’t want to go back. Ever.

  While she waited for the adoption process to be completed the reality of leaving her son grew more intense as each day passed. Now she knew she was leaving she treasured every moment with Santiguito. She could barely look at him without weeping; she knew she would never know him as a grown man, have no input into the shaping of his character or his destiny. She wondered what he would look like as a small child. She held his tiny body against hers and talked to him for hours as if by some miracle he would remember the sound of her voice or the scent of her skin. Yet, in spite of the pain of leaving him she knew she was doing the right thing for both of them.

  Reluctantly, Dominique and Antoine gave her some money to help her get started in London. Dominique suggested she stay a few nights in a hotel before finding a flat to rent. The couple took her to the airport to see her onto her flight.

  ‘What shall I tell Paco?’ Antoine asked gruffly, trying not to show his emotions. He had grown tremendously fond of Sofia, but he couldn’t help resenting her for her ability to be so cold. How she could give up her child was

  something he was unable to understand. Delfine and Louis were the best things that had ever happened to him.

  ‘I don’t know. Tell them I decided to make a new life, but don’t tell them where.’

  ‘You will go home eventually, won’t you, Sofia?’ asked Dominique, shaking her head sadly. Sofia watched her long, ethnic earrings swing about her neck. She would miss her cousins. She swallowed hard in order to maintain her composure.

  There is nothing left for me in Argentina. Mama and Papa cast me away as if I meant nothing to them at all,’ she said, and her voice trembled.

  ‘We’ve been through all of this before, Sofia. You must forgive them or your bitterness will eat away at you and bring you nothing but unhappiness.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she replied.

  Dominique took a deep breath and hugged her cousin who had become a daughter to her - though no daughter of hers would ever be this stubborn. ‘If you need anything, anything at all, you can always call. Or come back. We are here for you, cherie. We will miss you, Sofia,’ she said and held her tightly and allowed her tears to wash away her makeup.

  Thank you. Thank you both.' sobbed Sofia. ‘Oh dear, I didn’t want to cry. I’m such a cry-baby. What’s the matter with me?’ She sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her hand. She promised to keep in touch. She promised to call if she needed anything.

  Holding tiny Santiguito for the last time she felt his soft head against her lips and breathed in his warm baby smell. She could barely leave him and almost changed her mind. But she couldn't stay in Geneva, to be reminded every second of her misery. She had to start again. She gazed down into his dear little face and held it there, taking a mental picture to carry with her and remember for always. He returned her gaze, his shiny blue eyes watching her curiously. She knew he would never remember her, he probably couldn’t see her clearly anyway. She would disappear out of his life and he would be ignorant of ever having known her. She pulled herself up and silently willed herself to go forward. Running a finger down Santiguito’s temple she turned, picked up her bag and disappeared through passport control.

  Once on the other side she swallowed hard, held her head up and stopped crying. She was starting again, a new life. As Grandpa O’Dwyer always used to say, ‘Life is too short for regrets. Life is what yer make of it, Sofia Melody. It’s

  the way yer look at it. A glass is either half empty or half full - it’s all a matter of attitude. A positive mental attitude.’

  Chapter 22

  Santa Catalina, 1976

  Two years had gone by without a word from Sofia. Paco had spoken to Antoine who had explained that she had left without revealing where she was going to stay. Sofia hadn’t wanted them to know where she was, not even which country she was in, but Antoine considered the whole thing wholly out of proportion. So he told Paco that she had simply said she wanted to lay her roots down in London.

  Anna was devastated that Sofia had not gone to school in Lausanne as planned and desperately wanted to contact her daughter to beg her to come home. She worried that Sofia might decide never to return. Had she been too harsh? She told herself that the child had needed discipline - that’s what parents were for. What had she expected, a mere pat on the wrist? ‘Don’t do it again, dear.’ No, she had deserved every bit of it. Surely she understood that. But it was all behind her now, it was in the past. Dominique had assured her that Sofia had ‘dealt with her problem’. How could the child hold a grudge for so long? It had all been for the best. She’d thank her one day. But not even to

  communicate? Not even a letter, nothing. After all the letters they had written her. Anna felt like a monster. She convinced herself that Sofia was going through an ‘unfortunate’ phase and would eventually return. Of course she would return, Santa Catalina was her home. ‘She’s as stubborn as her grandfather was. A true O’Dwyer,’ Anna lamented to Chiquita. But inside her heart ached with the nagging regularity of someone who knows she has done wrong but cannot admit it, even to herself.

  Chiquita had watched Santi grow thin and pale. She worried that his limp was giving him trouble, but he wouldn’t communicate with her. He was there in body but his mind was in another place. Like Anna she hoped that her child would return. Fernando was at university in Buenos Aires, studying engineering. He was also going through a difficult stage. Staying out after curfew, losing his ID card, getting into trouble with the polic
e. There were stories of people being arrested and disappearing. Sinister stories. She worried that he was mixing with irresponsible young socialists who plotted to overthrow the government. ‘Politics isn’t a game, Fernando,’ said his father gruffly. ‘You get into trouble, it’ll cost you your life.’

  Fernando rather enjoyed the attention. Finally his parents were noticing him.

  He basked in their concern and took to telling exaggerated stories of his exploits. He almost willed himself to get caught by the police so that his parents would be forced to demonstrate how much they cared for him by the effort and energy they put into getting him out. While his father got angry his mother cried with relief that he had returned unharmed. He enjoyed pulling her emotional strings; it made him feel loved. He watched Santi occupy the house like a spectre. He came and went and made very little noise. Fernando hardly noticed him. He lost himself in his studies and grew a beard, so he lost himself in the mirror too. How fortune had turned on him, thought Fernando gleefully, and all because of Sofia. They deserved each other.

  Maria had broken down into deep sobs when her mother told her that Sofia had gone to live in London and had left no forwarding address. ‘It’s all my fault,’ she had wailed, but she wouldn’t say why. Her mother had comforted her as best she could, reassuring her that she’d come back eventually. Chiquita felt helpless; all of her children were so unhappy. Only Panchito smiled all the time and seemed content.

  In November 1976 Santi was nearly twenty-three years old, but he looked much older. He had finally resigned himself to the fact that Sofia was never

  coming back. How the lines of communication could have failed he just didn’t know. They had planned it so carefully. After having waited for her letters in the apartment, he had thought that perhaps his father was taking them from the porter as he left the building for the office every morning, so Santi had taken to getting up early and going through the post at dawn. But still there was no letter from Sofia. Nothing.