Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree (17 page)

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 had 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
^l
Ana 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 dominated 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.

When Sofia Emer Solanas screamed her way into the world in the autumn of 1956 the chill had turned to a frost. Paco and Anna were barely speaking. Maria Elena wondered whether the separation from her family wasn’t beginning to take its toll, so she suggested that Paco fly her parents out to Santa Catalina as a surprise. At first Paco resisted; he didn’t know whether it would please Anna to go behind her back. But Maria Elena was firm and determined. ‘If you want to save your marriage, you should think less and do more,’ she said sternly. Paco relented and called Dermot in Ireland to tell him of his plan. He chose his words carefully so as not to bruise the old man’s pride. Dermot and Emer accepted his gift with gratitude. Aunt Dorothy was mortified she wasn’t included. ‘Don’t forget a single detail, Emer Melody, or I’ll never speak to you again!’ she warned in good humour, fighting her disappointment.

Dermot had never been further than Brighton and Emer was nervous of flying, even though she was reassured that Swissair was a very respectable airline. However, the thought of seeing their beloved Anna Melody and meeting their grandchildren for the first time was enough to expel those fears. The tickets arrived as promised and they began the arduous forty-hour journey from London to Buenos Aires, stopping in Geneva, Dakar, Recife, Rio and Montevideo. They survived the trip in spite of getting lost in Geneva Airport and almost missing their connecting flight.

When Anna returned to Santa Catalina with the two-week-old Sofia tightly wrapped in an ivory lace shawl she found her parents tearful and exhausted waiting for her on the terrace. She handed the child over to the excited Soledad

and threw her arms around both her parents at once. They had brought presents for the six-year-old Rafael and little Agustin and Emer’s book of old photos for Anna. Paco and his family tactfully left them to be together for a couple of hours, during which they talked without drawing breath, cried without shame and laughed as only the Irish can.

Dermot commented on the ‘fine life’ that Anna Melody had acquired for herself and Emer went through her closets and the rooms of her home with genuine admiration. ‘If Aunt Dorothy could see you now, dear, she’d be so proud of you. You really have fallen on yer feet.’