Jackie and Maria

by Gill Paul

  “Hell, I would give them a nude shot of you if I thought it would win me a hundred more votes . . .” He leaned over to kiss her cheek, then stood up. “But I guess that’s not what Teddy means by ‘family values.’”

  “I believe you would,” Jackie murmured, but he had already gone.

  Chapter 14

  The Mediterranean

  August 1959

  Much as she enjoyed Aristotle Onassis’s company, Maria didn’t plan to accept his renewed offer of a cruise on the Christina. Aside from the prospect of paparazzi photographing her in swimwear, she preferred friends who were not in the limelight, loyal ones like Mary Carter. She knew none of her inner circle would talk about her to the press; that was of paramount importance. But she couldn’t trust the guests Aristotle might invite.

  In the end, though, Battista was insistent that they should accept. He loved mingling with the rich and famous, enjoyed all the accoutrements of real wealth. She wondered if he was aware that Onassis was flirting with her. And, if so, did he even care? As long as it didn’t go too far, he might decide it was good publicity.

  Aristotle’s attentions had become even more apparent at a party he threw for her in London’s Dorchester Hotel after she sang at Covent Garden that June. He scarcely left her side all night and they danced together several times. She decided Battista was either oblivious to it or flattered by it—he loved to wallow in the reflected glory of her fame.

  At last she let him persuade her to go on the cruise, on the proviso that they could disembark at any time if she felt uncomfortable. She would get her friend Biki to create a cruise wardrobe, with plenty of light cover-ups that she could throw on when they were close to shore. Both their spouses would be present, as would the Churchills and several other guests, so that would stop Aristotle from taking liberties. Not that she would have let him anyway, she told herself.

  They boarded the yacht in Monaco and were shown down a grand staircase lined with onyx pillars, then along a corridor to a guest suite that had the name Ithaca on the door. Inside were a sitting room, bedroom, and dressing room, all with wood-paneled walls, solid gold fixtures in the shape of dolphins, Venetian glass screens, and a carpet that her feet sank into. Through wooden doors she found twin marble bathrooms. It was more luxurious than the top hotel suites.

  Tina Onassis arrived to give Maria a personal tour of the facilities: a beauty and hairdressing salon, a library, a laundry, and two kitchens—one for Greek food, one for French.

  “We have cocktails on deck at six-thirty, then dinner at eight-fifteen. Earlier in the day, please ask the waiting staff for whatever food and drinks you require,” she said.

  “It sounds wonderful,” Maria replied, relieved she was not required to rise for an early breakfast. She was a night owl and seldom awoke before noon.

  Tina opened the door to a sumptuous lounge. “There’s a Steinway piano here. I thought you might like to use it when you practice.”

  “How thoughtful! But I’ve decided to give myself a break from singing.” She pressed Tina’s hands between her own. “Frankly, it’s been a hectic year, and I just want to relax and rest my voice.”

  Tina beamed. “We’ll make sure you do that, alright.”

  The two women embraced, and Maria looked at her hostess closely. Her complexion was fresh and there was no hint of a wrinkle, although she had celebrated her thirtieth birthday earlier that year, making her just six years Maria’s junior. Tina had never done a day’s work in her life: she’d been born into a wealthy Greek ship-owning family, then married Onassis at eighteen, and he’d taken care of her ever since. But who knew? Maybe there were pressures in her life all the same.

  TWENTY OF THEM sat down to dinner on either side of the long, elegant dining table. Stars twinkled through a skylight and candles flickered in silver holders on the walls. Churchill was the guest of honor, in the middle with Onassis by his side, but Maria was seated opposite, where she could see the great man up close. He was, of course, instantly recognizable, with those jowls and the broad, high forehead, but Maria was puzzled by the vacant look in his blue eyes. He was like a child. His wife, Clemmie, kept glancing across to check on him, but Onassis had taken charge.

  “Remind me again: Where are we?” Churchill asked his host, sounding bewildered.

  “You’re on a summer holiday, on my yacht. We’ll be setting sail soon.” Onassis spoke with infinite patience.

  “Ah, yes. A yacht. That’s like a boat, isn’t it? I enjoy boating.”

  As appetizers, there were eight types of caviar served in tiny heaps, with melba toast on the side. Churchill frowned as he tried to decide how to eat it. Finally he scooped some caviar onto a sliver of toast, but when he raised it toward his mouth, the black globules fell into his lap.

  Without a word, Onassis shook out the old man’s napkin and spoon-fed him caviar directly from his own plate, continuing his conversation without pause, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “The forecast is calm so we should have a good night’s sleep. But of course you must join me for brandy and cigars on deck after dinner.”

  “Cigars, yes, of course.” Churchill nodded. That was something he remembered.

  Maria was moved as she watched them; no son could have been more attentive. Onassis anticipated Churchill’s every need and met it without making him feel patronized. She had heard he was a generous host, but this was an unexpected side to his personality.

  English was the language spoken around the table, in honor of the Churchills and several other English guests. Tina leaned over to translate for Battista that first evening. Maria was rather quiet at dinner, feeling self-conscious among these people with whom she would spend the next three weeks. She wanted to observe first; there would be time to forge friendships later.

  THE CHURCHILLS RETIRED at eleven, and Battista went to bed at midnight, but Maria was restless. She wandered the decks, looking out at the velvety darkness penetrated occasionally by the blurred lights of a fishing boat. The movement of the yacht was so smooth, you could barely tell you were at sea.

  “Come and join us,” Onassis called from a doorway in the aft section. “This is what we call Ari’s Bar.”

  He was sitting with a couple of English women whose names Maria had forgotten.

  “Don’t do the joke, Ari,” one said. “I can’t bear to hear it again.”

  “What joke is this?” Maria asked, and the women groaned.

  Onassis shook his head. “I would never be so uncouth as to repeat it in front of the great Maria Callas.”

  “But I insist!” Maria clapped her hands.

  “Definitely not,” he said. “Tell me, what can I offer you to drink?”

  “Whatever you’re having,” she said, and he went to look for a waiter.

  One of the women confided, “His barstools are covered in whale foreskin, from his whaling days, and when a woman sits on one he asks, ‘Do you realize you are sitting on the largest penis in the world?’”

  Maria made a shocked face. “I’m very glad you told me so I can be sure to avoid them.”

  Onassis returned and handed Maria a glass.

  “Napoleon brandy,” he said. “The only drink for the small hours.”

  They toasted the voyage; then he switched to speaking in Greek, since the English women were talking to one another, and asked if Maria planned to base herself at another opera house now she was no longer part of the company at La Scala.

  Maria sighed. “No, I think I shall become a gypsy, wandering from place to place with nowhere to call home. Your life must be similar.” She took a sip of the brandy, which was smooth and warming.

  “My home is the Christina,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter which country’s waters we sail in; my toothbrush resides in the same bathroom. But I have read in the newspapers of your troubles with La Scala and the Met. It must make it difficult to focus on the music.”

  Maria agreed. “I hate that side of things. I’m fed up being
misquoted and called names and photographed at odd angles to look ferocious. It’s not good for a woman’s ego.”

  “No matter how hard they try, no photographer could make you look less than beautiful,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She felt shy suddenly. Ridicolo!

  “I had an idea I wished to discuss with you on this cruise,” he continued, “and maybe it is as well to introduce it now, on your first night, so you have time to consider it.”

  “Please do,” she said. She inhaled the exotic aroma of the brandy.

  “I don’t know if you are aware of my association with His Serene Highness Prince Rainier and the principality of Monaco?”

  She nodded. She knew he had a controlling interest in the Société des Bains de Mer, which managed commercial real estate there. Some said he was the true ruler of the principality.

  He continued: “I have suggested to Rainier that we create an opera company in Monte Carlo and invite you to be the resident soprano. You could choose how much or how little you sang each year and have a hand in selecting the repertoire. You don’t need to make up your mind now but . . .”

  Maria loved the idea. She missed working with a team that she knew. Perhaps she could tempt some of her favorite backstage staff from La Scala to join them. And having creative control would suit her to a tee. She interrupted him. “Yes, please. When do I start?”

  He laughed. “It’s just as well you don’t negotiate your own contracts, my dear. You need to drive a much harder bargain. Hold out for an extortionate fee. A penthouse apartment overlooking the harbor. A say in the choice of orchestras and conductors . . .”

  “You tell me that after plying me with your best brandy.” She laughed. “It’s a clever tactic. But the answer is still yes.”

  Onassis called for more brandy, and they clinked glasses to seal the deal.

  Chapter 15

  Hyannis Port

  August 1959

  Jackie persuaded Jack to buy a house in Hyannis Port, on a road that ran behind the main house occupied by Rose and Joe, so she wouldn’t have to stay with her in-laws anymore. Bobby and Ethel already owned a property just in front of theirs. Jackie spent the summer of 1959 there with Caroline and her nanny, and she invited Lee and her new husband, Prince Stas Radziwill, to join them straight after the birth of their son, Anthony.

  The affair Lee had mentioned during their vacation in the South of France had proved irresistible, and both parties had left their spouses so they could be together. Jackie felt sorry for Michael but she warmed to Stas from the start, finding him easy company, with elegant manners. He and Lee seemed well suited, and even looked a bit alike, with their high foreheads, sharp noses, and sculpted cheekbones. It felt as if he was the husband her sister had always been meant to have and that Michael had been an aberration along the way. A baby arriving just five months after the wedding seemed proof of their compatibility, and Jackie was delighted for her sister.

  Motherhood mellowed Lee: with Michael she had been carping and never satisfied, but now she had the inner glow of a woman whose emotional needs were being met. In the past, she had been loath to accept her big sister’s advice—Lee had to be the one who knew best—but now she was grateful for tips on how to settle little Anthony, or how to burp him. He was an easy baby, and a rather aristocratic-looking one, with jet-black hair and a high brow, reflecting the looks of his father’s regal family.

  Lee and Stas spent a lot of time in their room and Jackie scarcely had any moments alone with her sister, but she enjoyed their company over dinner each evening. Stas told fascinating tales of the Radziwills’ lengthy history in Poland, and he was a voracious reader with a keen appreciation for literature and the arts, so Jackie was in her element; they felt more like her true family than the politics-obsessed Kennedys. Sometimes Jack would join them, sometimes not. He was more distracted than ever that summer, his head bursting with polls and campaign strategies.

  “No politics at dinner,” Jackie chided. “You’ll spoil our appetites.”

  Most days the weather was too windy to sit on the beach, and a pungent, glutinous mass of seaweed hugged the shoreline. You had to clamber through it to reach open water, but Jackie waded out every day for long solitary swims, floating on her back beneath scudding clouds. She also spent a lot of time with Caroline, who loved to toddle along the shore collecting “treasures” that had washed up—colored sea glass, conch shells, a dead crab. Their porch was fast filling up with souvenirs.

  In August, Jack was officially on vacation, but the campaign team turned up most days to hold meetings around the kitchen table. One morning Jackie came down early to make coffee, still in her pale blue nylon negligee, and found half a dozen of them reading the morning papers, like unwelcome houseguests.

  “Morning, all!” she said. “Are you waiting for Jack? He’ll be down in ten minutes.”

  They coughed and scraped their chairs, embarrassed by her skimpy attire, as she breezed out again, swallowing her annoyance. Bit by bit her life was being consumed by politics, and it seemed as if the moment when it might have been possible to draw the line had long since passed.

  ONE EVENING, JACKIE went to bed before Jack returned. She read for a while, then turned out the light but couldn’t sleep. Her body was tired but her brain was buzzing. The vacation was drawing to a close, and soon they’d be traveling back to Georgetown, where she would see even less of Jack than she did here. They were supposed to be trying for another baby, but she couldn’t imagine how that would happen when she was invariably asleep by the time he came to bed, and Caroline woke her early in the morning, running into their room and clambering in for a cuddle.

  Jackie got up and walked to the window. The shutters were flung wide; she hated a stuffy bedroom, and the regular shushing of waves in the distance was soothing at night. She heard the strike of a cigarette lighter and, looking out, saw Lee sitting in a deck chair on the lawn. The orange tip of her cigarette floated like a firefly. Jackie was about to call to her when she noticed that Jack’s Cadillac was in the drive; she hadn’t heard him return.

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she realized he was sitting on the grass by Lee’s chair and they were talking in low voices. Jackie strained to hear but could only make out snatches.

  “Great guy . . . good one this time.” She guessed Jack was saying that he approved of Stas.

  Lee replied, her voice harder to follow, but Jackie caught the word annulment drifting on the night air. She knew Lee wanted to apply to have her first marriage annulled so that she and Stas could marry in the Catholic Church. Perhaps she was asking Jack’s advice on how to go about it.

  “Shame we won’t be able to have a repeat of our tryst,” Jack said—or at least she thought he did. Jackie froze. What did he mean? What tryst?

  Lee reached out and touched his shoulder. Jackie felt a stabbing pain in her chest as she tried to make sense of it. Was tryst the word he had used? Did it mean that her sister and her husband had slept together? They wouldn’t, would they?

  Lee had always been crazy about Jack, and made no secret of it. She openly embraced him in front of Jackie, and cocked her head to one side in her irritating manner, asking his opinion and giggling disproportionately at his witticisms. That was fine. She was like that with any handsome man. But why was her hand still resting on his shoulder? Had they really betrayed her? The two people she was closest to in the world? She clutched her stomach, sick at the thought.

  As she watched, Jack stood and said, “Good night.” He didn’t stoop to kiss Lee, but strode across the grass toward the front door. Jackie shrank behind the shutter so he wouldn’t catch her spying, then scuttled to bed, deciding she would pretend to be asleep when he came in. She needed to think.

  Her heart was banging in her chest. Was this about Lee’s jealousy of her? What a bitch! She’d been annoyed that Jackie had married a richer, more ambitious husband. Perhaps that’s why she swapped Michael for a Polish prince, albeit one in exile; she was
sure to drop her new title into conversation at any opportunity. Princess Lee. Had she flirted her way into Jack’s bed? It was possible, but Jackie couldn’t think of when it might have happened.

  What about her husband? Would he do that? She could accept that he was unfaithful with faceless, nameless blondes; them she could ignore. But her own sister? Would he be so disloyal? Her throat felt raw at the thought.

  Perhaps she had misheard and it was all a mistake. Maybe “tryst” had referred to something else entirely—but she couldn’t think what. She heard his feet on the stairs and wondered whether to admit she had overheard the conversation and ask him what it meant. That’s what a normal wife would do.

  But they didn’t have a normal marriage. They had a marriage full of secrets, in which each lived separate lives that overlapped from time to time. He had the Scandinavian blonde in the hot-pink bikini, and all the other women whom he thought she didn’t know about, while she held that knowledge hidden in her breast pocket, like a dagger.

  “Are you awake, honey?” he whispered as he tiptoed into the bedroom.

  She lay very still, slowing her breathing, as she listened to him remove his clothes and fling them on the chair. His belt buckle clattered to the floor; then she heard him curse as he unfastened his fiddly back brace.

  The mattress dipped as he sat on his side of the bed to remove his socks, and Jackie pretended to stir.

  “Are you alright?” she asked, in a drowsy voice.

  “Yeah, we had a good meeting. I’ll tell you in the morning. You go back to sleep.”

  When he climbed under the covers, she rolled toward him for a hug, trying to ignore the fury and hurt that she knew would make her implode if she ever let them.

  Chapter 16

  The Mediterranean

  August 1959

  The cruise took them around the boot of Italy and across the Aegean to Piraeus and the Greek islands. Onassis—Ari, as Maria now called him—said he wanted to show his guests the places he loved best.