Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree

by Santa Montefiore

  through everything. They had spent their whole lives together, and now it was over. A fat tear plopped into her hot chocolate.

  Outside, the street bustled with people; everyone had somewhere to go. A tea party perhaps, a job, friends to see, family to drop in on. She had no one. No one cared about her here. She could die on one of these cold, unfamiliar pavements and no one would notice. She wondered how long it would be before someone found out who she was in order to notify her family of her death. Probably weeks, months, that is if they would bother at all. She possessed a British passport thanks to her grandfather, but she didn’t belong in this place.

  She paid the bill and left. On her way down the street she passed Maggie’s again, and decided to turn back and take another look. She pressed her face up to the window and peered in. A tall, lanky man was cutting a woman’s hair, stopping every now and then to use his hands to illustrate his story. A young blonde girl sat at the desk answering the telephone. She had to control her laughter in order to take the bookings. Just then the door opened, sending out into the street the strong smell of shampoo and perfume.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked a redheaded woman of about fifty, poking her head out into the street. She wore scarlet lipstick like Dominique and had painted

  the most hideous shade of lime green above her eyes with an unsteady hand.

  ‘I hear you’re looking for someone to help?’ replied Sofia tentatively.

  ‘Jolly good. Come on in. I’m Maggie,’ she said once Sofia had stepped into the warm interior of the salon.

  ‘Sofia Solanas,’ she replied. The man had stopped telling his story and turned to look at her. His snake-like eyes traced her features, taking in her clothes, mentally scrutinizing her from top to toe. He sniffed his approval.

  ‘Very nice, Sofia. Very nice. I’m Anton. Anthony really, but Anton sounds more exotic, don’t you think?’ he said and then laughed before mincing over to the cupboard to pull out a large pot of gel.

  ‘Anton’s a real character, Sofia. Just laugh at his jokes and he’ll love you, sweetie. Daisy does, don’t you, dear? And he loves her.’ Daisy smiled warmly and extended her hand from behind the desk. ‘Now, it’s ten till six, sweetie, helping out. That’s sweeping, washing hair and keeping the place tidy. I can’t pay you any more than eight pounds a week, tips on top. Is that all right? I think it’s fair. Don’t you, Anton?’

  ‘Very generous, Maggie,’ he gushed, filling his palm with what looked like green slime.

  ‘But my rent is eight pounds a week,’ Sofia protested.

  ‘That’s all I can do. Take it or leave it,’ said Maggie, folding her arms in front of her large bosom.

  ‘I rent too. What if we pooled our resources. I mean, if we shared?’ suggested Daisy eagerly. She lived in a rundown flat in Hammersmith, and it took her ages to get into work in the morning. ‘Do you live locally?’

  ‘Queen’s Gate.’

  ‘No wonder your rent’s so high. Where are you from, darling?’ asked Maggie, who couldn’t quite place her accent.

  ‘Argentina,’ she replied, and her throat tightened. She hadn’t heard that word spoken aloud for so long.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Anton, who didn’t know where in the world it was.

  ‘Well, if you want a flatmate, I’d be happy to share.’

  Sofia didn’t like the idea of sharing. She had never had to share anything. But she was desperate and this Daisy had a nice face. So she agreed.

  ‘Right - your first job can be to go and buy a bottle of good cheap wine, Sofia!’ laughed Maggie, opening the till and pulling out some change. ‘This is indeed cause for celebration - isn’t that right, Anton?’

  ‘A cause for celebration, Maggie,’ he repeated, his hand flopping over on its wrist revealing well-manicured nails.

  After a couple of weeks, this small salon became Sofia’s new home, and Maggie, Anton and Daisy her new family. Maggie had left her husband and had started her own business to make ends meet. ‘Silly girl,’ said Anton, when she was out of earshot. ‘He was very rich and very well-connected.’ Anton lived with his boyfriend, Marcello, a dark, handsome, hairy-chested Italian, who occasionally came into the salon to drape himself over the leopard-print sofa and listen to Anton’s stories. Maggie would open a bottle of wine and join him. But however much she fluttered those false lashes at him he had eyes only for Anton. Maggie flirted with the clients too. Most of them loved the attention. ‘I sprinkle them with Maggie dust, sweetie, then send them back to their wives,’ she’d say. Daisy and Sofia would laugh all the way home at her delusions.

  Daisy was bright and witty, but most importantly she was warm. With a shock of thick blonde hair that fanned out behind her in tight, shiny curls and a chin that went into a cheeky point, giving her face the definition of a love heart, she was exuberant as well as kind. They shared the flat, small as it was, and everything that it contained. At first Sofia found it hard to share her space, but

  little by little she began to rely on her new friend. She needed her. The other girl took away the loneliness and filled the hollow space that had once belonged to Maria.

  Daisy’s parents were from the country - from Dorset, which Daisy pointed out on a map. ‘It’s green and hilly and very pretty,’ she told Sofia, ‘but provincial. I’ve always been attracted to the bright lights of the city.’

  Daisy’s parents were divorced. Her father, a builder, trawled the North Country for work while her mother, Jean Shrub, lived with her lover Bernard, by coincidence also a builder, in Taunton and worked as a beautician.

  ‘I always wanted to do what she did, going around to people’s houses and filing their nails. But once I qualified I tripped on my first job and poured wax over Mrs Hamblewell’s dog, a total disaster, the poor thing practically had to be skinned. So I put down my manicure tools and came up here. Don’t tell Maggie, but I might very well take it up again. Maggie’s could use a beautician, don’t you think?’

  She always made jokes about her name, Daisy Shrub, introducing herself as, ‘Daisy as in flower, Shrub as in bush.’ She said it was lucky she wasn’t a gardener; no one would ever take her seriously. Daisy rolled her own cigarettes that she’d sit and smoke out of the window in their flat as Sofia hated the smell, and they’d talk about their lives and their dreams. But Sofia’s dreams were invented for Daisy’s benefit; she could never reveal the truth of her past, not to anyone.

  At Maggie’s Sofia swept the floors, marvelling sometimes at the multicoloured hair she often found herself cleaning away. Anton loved dyeing hair. That was his favourite job. ‘All the colours of the rainbow, duckie, so much choice.’ He had a client, Rosie Moffat, who came in literally every fortnight for a new shade. ‘She’s been through them all. I’ll have to start at the beginning again or give her stripes. Such a dilemma,’ he complained.

  Sofia also washed hair. That part of her job she didn’t like so much at the beginning, as it ruined her nails. But after a while she got used to it and the men especially gave her big tips.

  ‘Doesn’t talk much about herself, does she, Anton?’ said Maggie, lying on the sofa filing her talons.

  ‘She’s an adorable girl, though.’

  ‘Adorable.’

  ‘And hardworking. I just wish she didn’t look so sad,' he said, pouring

  himself a glass of wine. It was half past six, time for a drink.

  ‘She laughs at your jokes, doesn’t she, sweetie?’

  ‘Oh yes! But she still carries sadness around with her like some sort of hideous penance. Tragedy in motion, darling.’

  ‘Darling, you’re so poetical. You’re not going to leave me to write poetry, are you?’ She laughed and lit a cigarette.

  ‘I am poetry, duckie, anyway I wouldn’t want to put all those sweet little poets out of business, now would I?’ He brought her an ashtray. She inhaled deeply, her shoulders relaxed instantly.

  ‘Do you know why she came to London?’

  ‘She never said. In fact, Maggie, we know
sweet bugger-all about her, don’t we?’

  ‘I’m frightfully curious, darling.’

  ‘Ooh, me too. Give her time. I’m sure she’s got a gripping story to tell.’

  As Christmas approached and the streets of London glittered and sparkled with decorations and fir trees, Sofia couldn’t help but wonder whether they missed her back at home. She pictured them preparing for the festivities. She imagined the heat, the dry plains and those leafy eucalyptus trees until she could almost smell them. She wondered whether Santi ever thought about her, or had he forgotten? Maria had stopped writing to her after that painful letter she had sent back in the spring. They had been friends, best friends. Was it really that easy to forget? Had they all forgotten? When she thought of home she felt gutted inside.

  Daisy returned to her mother for Christmas. She called to say that there was so much snow they weren’t able to leave the house, so her mother was giving them all manicures and pedicures. ‘I hope this goes on for weeks, we might get a new house out of Bernard.’ Sofia was sad to see her leave - she had no family to go to and felt her friend’s absence dreadfully.

  Sofia spent Christmas Day with Anton and Marcello at Maggie’s powder-pink house in Fulham. ‘I love pink,’ she gushed displaying her pink fluffy slippers as she showed Sofia around.

  ‘I’d never have guessed,’ laughed Sofia, but inside she felt dead. She noticed that even the loo seat was lilac. They opened bottles of champagne, Anton danced around the room in zebra-print bell bottoms with tinsel wrapped around his head like a Roman crown, and Marcello lay on the sofa smoking a spliff. Maggie had spent all day cooking with Sofia, who had nothing else to do

  except miss her home. They had all brought small presents for each other. Maggie gave her a box of nail varnishes Sofia knew she’d never use and Anton gave her a green vanity case, complete with mirror and pouch for makeup. She reflected on her poverty. She had belonged to one of the richest families in Argentina; now she had nothing.

  After dinner and too much wine they sat by the fire, watching the flames lick the walls, transforming them from pink to orange. Suddenly Sofia dropped her head into her hands and wept. Maggie eyed Anton who nodded at her. She got down onto the floor and put a heavily perfumed arm around her.

  ‘What is it, sweetie? You can tell us, we’re your friends.’

  So Sofia told them, omitting the part about Santiguito. That secret was too shaming to reveal to anyone.

  ‘A man. Wouldn’t it just be a bloody man!’ complained Anton angrily, when she’d finished.

  ‘You’re a man, darling.’

  ‘Only half, duckie,’ he replied, draining his glass and pouring himself another. Marcello lay sleeping on the sofa, his mind floating somewhere amid the Tuscan hills.

  ‘You’re better off without him, sweetie,’ Maggie said gently. ‘If he couldn’t even keep his promise and write to you, I’d say you’re well rid of him.’

  ‘But I love him so much it hurts, Maggie,’ she sobbed.

  ‘You’ll get over him. We all do in the end, don’t we, Anton?’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘You’ll find some lovely Englishman,’ Maggie said helpfully.

  ‘Or Italian.’

  ‘I’d steer well clear of those if I were you, darling. Yes, a nice Englishman.’

  The following day Sofia awoke with a headache and a desperate yearning for her child. She curled into a small ball and sobbed into the muslin until her head felt it would split in two like a melon. She recalled Santiguito’s small face, those clear, innocent blue eyes that had trusted her. She had betrayed him. How could she have been so callous? What had she been thinking? How could Dominique have allowed her to give away her precious baby, the life she had grown inside her? She held her belly and mourned the loss of her son; she suddenly feared she would never see him again. She had cried so much, the aching in her throat had become unbearable. Finally, she pulled the telephone

  onto the bed and dialled Switzerland.

  4Out?’

  Sofia’s heart sank when she heard the grumpy housekeeper’s voice answer the telephone. ‘Madame Ibert, it’s Sofia Solanas in London. Can I speak to Dominique, please?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘I’m afraid, Mademoiselle, Monsieur and Madame La Rivfre are out of the country for ten days.’

  ‘Ten days?’ she asked, surprised. They hadn’t said they were going anywhere.

  lOui, ten days,’ she replied impatiently.

  ‘Where have they gone?’ she asked desperately.

  ‘They did not say.'

  ‘They didn’t say?’

  ‘No, Mademoiselle.’

  ‘Did they leave a number?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They didn’t leave a contact telephone number?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Sofia.' the woman said irritably, ‘they did not say where they were going, they did not leave a number or an address. They said they would be away for ten days but that is all. I regret, I cannot help you. I am sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ she sobbed, and put down the receiver. Too late, it was too late.

  Sofia rolled into a ball once more and wrapped her arms about her. Putting her face against the muslin she recalled that the last time she had felt this kind of unhappiness had been when Grandpa O’Dwyer had died beside her. She would never see Santiguito again. She would never see her beloved grandfather again either. It was so final, as if Santiguito had died. She would never, ever be able to forgive herself.

  Chapter 25

  Christmas had been painful. Alone in her flat, Sofia had cried herself to sleep thinking of Santa Catalina and missing them all. Anton and Maggie had looked after her over the rest of the holiday, making sure that she wasn’t left alone to spiral into depression. When the salon reopened, she was relieved to go back to work, and hoped that 1975 would prove to be a happier year for her. To this end, Sofia willed herself to look forward instead of backwards - after all, that’s what her grandfather would have advised had he been alive. It seemed to help.

  Dominique visited London regularly as Antoine was doing more business in the City than before. When she was with Dominique they’d eat in elegant restaurants and shop in Bond Street; Sofia was reminded of the life of privilege she had once had and she appreciated it, because the moment Dominique returned to Geneva her life would drop down to that of a normal working girl again.

  The year passed swiftly. She made friends with Marmaduke Huckley-Smith, the bespectacled man who ran the bookshop. He introduced her to his friends, one of whom took her out every now and then, which was nice, but Sofia didn’t

  fancy him. She didn’t fancy anyone.

  In their spare time, Sofia and Daisy would trawl the King’s Road for bargains. The ethnic look was in fashion and Sofia indulged in long floaty skirts from Monsoon; Anton coloured her hair with thick streaks of red and straightened Daisy’s hair one day when he was bored, which left the blonde girl barely recognizable, but striking. They went to the cinema once a month and to the West End where they saw The Mousetrap.

  ‘You know the man who built this theatre was a rich aristo who fell in love with an actress. He built it for her. Don’t you think that’s incredibly romantic?’ hissed Daisy from their seats.

  ‘Maybe one of Maggie’s lovers will build her a new salon. Now that would be something!’ giggled Sofia.

  Anton took them all to The Rocky Horror Show and embarrassed them by arriving in a rented pink Cadillac clad in suspenders and lace underwear, with Marcello mincing along behind him in a tiger-print trouser suit. Maggie was horrified and exclaimed that she hoped he would remember to change before work on Monday morning. Sofia remarked that all Marcello needed to complete the outfit was a long tail. The Italian replied dryly that if he showed her his

  ‘tail’ no other man would live up to the comparison.

  Daisy managed to get cheap tickets for David Bowie who was playing at Wembley. Besides Bowie, Daisy had a crush on Mick Jagger and played his music very loudly in the
salon, which irritated Maggie, who preferred the gentle tones ofjoni Mitchell.

  The bleak winter months slowly disappeared, taking with them Sofia’s misery. As the streets filled with pink and white blossom, Sofia discovered a new state of mind - Grandpa O’Dwyer’s positive mental attitude.

  She threw herself into her work and Maggie raised her salary. Sofia enjoyed living with her friend Daisy and they spent many nights out at the Cafe des Artistes, laughing over their drinks. Daisy always drank beer, which Sofia found quite repulsive. Neither could she understand the greatest British love of all -Marmite. But it seemed to her she was in the minority. Everyone, it appeared, had grown up on Marmite. ‘That’s why we’re so tall,’ beamed Anton, who reached at least six foot three.

  In August Maggie closed the salon for two weeks and invited them all to stay in her rented cottage in Devon, to enjoy the sea and the beaches. Sofia had a lovely time, although she did miss the sunshine, as it seemed to rain most of the time. She remembered her mother talking about of the hills of Glengariff and wondered whether they resembled the hills of Devon. They had picnics on the damp beach in their bathing suits, cowering under umbrellas as the wind blew sand into their sandwiches. But they laughed at each other’s jokes and at Marcello who would never understand the madness of the English, shivering in thick velvet trousers and polo-neck sweater. Take me back to Tuscany,’ he whined, ‘where I can see the sky and know that there is a sun.’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Marcello, don’t be so Italian,’ mumbled Maggie, wolfing down a slice of chocolate cake.

  ‘Careful, duckie, I love him because he’s Italian,’ Anton said, allowing his friend to snuggle up against him for warmth.

  ‘Marcello’s right,’ said Daisy heartily. ‘Look at us - the only people on these beaches are British. Aren’t we ridiculous, sitting out here in the rain, on a cold summer’s day as if we’re in the South of France.’