Jackie and Maria

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Jackie and Maria Page 26

by Gill Paul


  Her protection officer stepped in: “Please, could you leave Mrs. Kennedy in peace? She’s here in a private capacity.”

  A few of them dispersed, but the rest just stepped back a pace or so and kept on staring. Eventually Jackie stood, picked up her purse, and walked out.

  The same scene played out many times: in the street, in Central Park, in airports and department stores. Even knowing that her Secret Service officer was close by, it could be terrifying. What if someone in the crowd had a gun? What if they attacked her or her children? And Lee wondered why she lived in self-imposed purdah? Let her step into her sister’s shoes for just one afternoon.

  She had to spend her days pretending to cope, pretending she was recovering. Only she knew that she still couldn’t get to sleep without pills and vodka, that she shook with terror every time she left home, that she lived in dread of something awful happening to her children—and that she missed Jack every single minute of every single day.

  Chapter 50

  Athens

  Spring 1966

  One afternoon, Ari left his battered address book on deck close to the lounge chair where Maria was sunning herself. Glancing up to make sure he wasn’t watching, she flicked through it to the letter R. “Radziwill, Stas,” the entry read, before listing his telephone numbers in London and at Turville Grange. Lee’s name was not mentioned.

  She scanned the deck again but there was no sign of Ari. Using the stub of pencil attached to the address book by a piece of string, she scribbled both numbers in the back of the novel she was reading, Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. Next she turned to K and wrote down Jackie Kennedy’s Manhattan number. She would transfer them into her address book later. You never knew when they might come in handy.

  And then she had another idea. There was a 3 in Lee’s London number and, with a couple of tiny pencil touches, she turned it into an 8. In the Turville Grange number, she used a quick stroke to turn a 1 into a 7, then closed the book and put it back where she had found it, adjusting the angle so it looked as if it were out of her reach. Leaning back, she carried on reading her novel, smiling to herself. She hadn’t planned that; it had come to her on the spur of the moment. Perhaps she should have done it sooner.

  When Ari returned, he said he’d been on the phone to Alexander, who was now approaching his eighteenth birthday and worked at his father’s office in Monaco. He was dating an Englishwoman named Fiona Thyssen, who had been a fashion model before her marriage to a Dutch baron.

  “He could have any woman in the world and he chooses a divorcée in her midthirties,” Ari complained. “A dinosaur! I told him she will have the change of life soon and her breasts will be dangling around her kneecaps.”

  “Hey!” Maria rebuked, flicking his leg with her novel. “I’m forty-two, remember?”

  “Your bosom is magnificent,” he said quickly. “But why doesn’t Alexander pick a girl his own age, without skeletons in the closet? This Fiona Thyssen has two young children. My son’s not ready to be a father—he’s only a child himself.”

  Maria shrugged. “It was inevitable that Alexander would choose a beautiful woman: he has grown up around them on his father’s yacht.”

  “I want my grandchildren to be born to a Greek girl from a good family, not some international socialite.”

  “Would you have let your father choose who you married?”

  He snorted. “God, no. I arranged my marriage to Tina directly with her family. It made good business sense.”

  “Alexander is young,” Maria advised. “I think so long as you don’t interfere, this relationship will run its course. He will see his friends out partying every night and realize he is too young to be tied down. But if you protest, he will stay with Fiona to defy you.”

  How the tables have turned, she thought. Who would have believed she would end up defending Alexander? He still refused to sit down to dinner with her.

  “He’s got no sense of responsibility. He spends his time in casinos and clubs and barely shows up to work.”

  “You were planning to get him involved with Olympic Airways, weren’t you?” Maria asked. “Why not bring him over to Athens now? See if Fiona is willing to follow him . . .” She nodded, thinking it through. “He’s always been obsessed with flying. Maybe once he has a job he enjoys, you’ll find him more devoted to work. And he would be traveling a lot, spending time away from home. You might find that puts a strain on his great love affair.”

  Ari removed his sunglasses and gave her an admiring smile. “You have a devious mind. I like it!”

  “DID YOUR DIVORCE from Battista go through yet?” Maggie van Zuylen asked Maria over lunch one day.

  Maria shook her head. “Just a legal separation. He won’t consent to divorce.”

  Maggie tapped the rim of her glass with a fingernail. “I heard about a Greek friend who managed to divorce her domineering husband against his will. I can’t remember the exact details but she says that any marriage since 1946 that did not take place in the Greek Orthodox Church is not legal in Greece. Something like that. It could be worth looking into.”

  Maria raised her eyebrows. “It certainly could. At least it would remove one of Ari’s excuses for not marrying me.”

  “Let me get the name of her lawyer,” Maggie offered.

  Maria visited the lawyer’s Athens office for a consultation and learned that what Maggie had said was true. The only problem was that it did not apply to her, because she was an American citizen.

  “It would be a simple matter to renounce your American citizenship and become Greek,” the lawyer told her. “We have a department that could take care of it.”

  Maria didn’t tell Ari straightaway. Frankly, she didn’t care which nationality appeared on her passport. She’d been born in New York, spent her teenage years in Athens, lived in Italy during her first marriage, and now lived either in Paris or on the Christina, so she was a citizen of the world. She consulted her accountants about the tax situation, and they said that it could be beneficial to have Greek citizenship. She didn’t plan to live in America again, so there seemed to be no drawbacks.

  She shared her plans with Ari over dinner.

  “You can’t renounce your American citizenship,” he insisted straightaway. “All over the world people are desperate to become U.S. citizens. It would be crazy to throw that away.”

  “I don’t need it,” she said. “I don’t want to live there and I’ll never have a problem getting a visa to visit.”

  “What about your investments?” he argued. “Your status will change. There would be all sorts of legal and financial complications you haven’t considered. It could have implications for our deal with Vergottis, for a start.”

  The previous year, Ari had persuaded Maria to invest in a ship, along with him and his friend Panaghis Vergottis. He’d promised there would be good returns stretching into the decades ahead when she was no longer singing. They’d named their joint venture Operation Prima Donna in her honor.

  “My lawyers have looked into every aspect and don’t think there will be a problem,” she countered.

  “What lawyers? Have you been paying some shysters? Why didn’t you use my team?” He crashed his drink down on the table.

  Maria was irritated by his patronizing tone. “I didn’t want to bother you. It’s a way I can finally get free of my marriage to Battista and I intend to do it. I don’t need your permission.”

  “Is this part of a plan to make me marry you?” he snapped. “Because it won’t work. You’re more useful to me with American citizenship than without.”

  A switch flipped and Maria’s temper flared. She picked up a bowl of salad and hurled it at him. It was a good throw. The wooden bowl glanced off his head, and the cubes of cucumber and tomato, slick with oil, slithered down his shirt.

  Ari leapt to his feet and tossed the contents of a bowl of gigantes, broad beans in tomato sauce, in her direction. Maria ducked, but some of them clung to her hair.

&
nbsp; “You bastard!” she cried and rushed at him, fists swinging.

  Artemis had been in the kitchen, but she rushed into the dining room upon hearing the commotion. “Stop!” she screamed. “What are you doing?”

  Maria slipped on the sauce-covered floor and pulled Ari to the ground with her, still trying to punch him. He pinned her shoulders, making her madder than ever.

  “You never planned to marry me, did you? You just wanted me as your whore!” She was screaming now, straining her voice.

  Ari slapped her. “You certainly have the manners of a whore.”

  Maria tried to bite his arm and kicked out with her legs. “In your head, you’re still married to Tina. You can’t bear it that she left you. That’s what this is all about.”

  “No, it’s about your ridiculous insecurity,” he countered. “Just grow up, Maria.”

  She got one leg free and kneed him in his testicles, not hard but enough to make him yelp. When he leapt back to protect himself, Maria wriggled free.

  “Don’t you dare tell me to grow up!” she yelled. “You’re the insecure one who needs to collect famous friends in order to feel he measures up to his daddy.”

  A maid appeared with a brush and dustpan, and Maria took them from her and began to sweep the floor.

  “Maria,” Ari said, too quietly. “We need to talk.”

  Cold fear twisted her insides. What was he going to say? She wished she had handled this with more dignity, but it was a conversation that was long overdue.

  BY THE TIME they were seated in the garden behind Ari’s house, brandies in hand, the atmosphere had changed, as if between the acts of an opera. Maria spoke first.

  “I don’t understand why you reacted so strongly to me trying to get free of my marriage to Battista. If you’re not planning to marry me, surely it’s nothing to you?”

  “I’ve always said we will marry someday, when the time is right. I just don’t like you trying to force my hand.” He wouldn’t look at her, his eyes following a giant moth that was fluttering around a lantern, bashing against the glass.

  Maria scoffed. “That old excuse again—the time isn’t right. Can’t you think of an original one?”

  He ignored her. “And when we do marry, it will be more useful to me if you have American citizenship. I’m cross that you would think of doing this without consulting me.”

  “What’s behind your obsession with America? Is it because they rejected you and now you are determined to impress them, the way you tried to impress your father?” She could tell he was annoyed from a stiffening of his posture.

  “It’s the richest economy in the world. Why do I need another reason? With an American wife I could operate freely in their markets.”

  “So you might decide to marry me for commercial reasons? How romantic!”

  He shook his head. “You’re twisting my words, Maria.” He took out a cigar, and she watched as he went through the ritual of trimming it, running a flame over it, and puffing till it glowed. She loved him too much and he knew it; that was her problem. If she had loved him less, he would have pursued her more. She could see that now.

  “I should have insisted you marry me back in 1960 when I was pregnant,” she said. “You would have done it then. Now you’re used to me, like an old stick of furniture.”

  “That’s not true.” He turned to her with a sad smile. “Other women soon bore me, but you continue to surprise and delight me as the years pass. How long is it now?”

  “Almost seven years,” she said, and the Marilyn Monroe comedy The Seven Year Itch came to mind.

  “You and I are the same,” he told her. “That’s why it works. We both like our independence. The only difference is that you worry what other people think. That’s not a good reason to get married.”

  Maria snapped, “Another difference is that I am faithful.”

  He puffed on his cigar. “In my heart I am always faithful to you. No legal ceremony would change that. You are the only woman I want to spend my life with.”

  “If you want to spend your life with me, why do we not have a home of our own?” she asked. He started to interrupt but she raised her hand. “No, let me finish. I know you say that Skorpios is to be our home, but—let’s face it—the building work has barely started. I may act as hostess on the Christina when it suits you, but it will always be your domain. And I rent an apartment round the corner from yours in Paris, like a mistress, not a wife. None of them are my home. I want to be the woman who takes care of you as you get older. How can I do that if you keep me at arm’s length?”

  “Let me think about this,” he said, his tone soft. “I will see what I can do.”

  They sat in the dark for a while sipping their drinks; then, with a surge of affection, Maria reached across and stroked his head. “I didn’t hurt you with that salad bowl, did I?”

  He shook his head, stubbed his cigar in an ashtray, and said, “Let’s go to bed.”

  It was where all their arguments ended.

  Chapter 51

  Paris

  May 1966

  A few weeks after their fight, Maria and Ari had lunch in Paris. Afterward, he had his driver stop outside a grand building on Avenue Georges Mandel, close to the Trocadéro, saying, “I’ve got a surprise for you. Come inside.”

  He produced a set of keys and opened the street door, then led her through the vestibule and up the stairs to an empty apartment on the second floor. It had high ceilings, spacious rooms, art deco fixtures, and tall windows looking out into the topmost branches of a chestnut tree.

  “Why are we here?” she asked, giving him a quizzical look.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Of course I do. It’s beautiful.” She loved the sunlight flickering on the walls, the grandeur.

  “Good,” he said. “Because it’s yours. I bought it for you.”

  “You did what?” She was astonished. “But why?”

  “You said you didn’t have a home. Now you do!” He stretched out his arms, pleased with himself.

  So, that’s the part of the argument you chose to remember, Maria thought to herself. Very clever. But at the same time, the apartment was so magnifico that she was not about to turn it down. If she made it welcoming and beautiful, she hoped it would become a home for both of them.

  MARIA THREW HERSELF into decorating the new apartment. For the Grand Salon she chose dark-green brocade wallpaper, Renaissance paintings, and Louis XV furniture. She found some eighteenth-century Venetian hand-painted doors and renovated the art deco marble fireplace. There was also a Salon Rouge, which she decorated in chinoiserie, and a Louis XVI dining room, with a table that would seat twelve comfortably. In the bedroom, she installed the eighteenth-century bed she had bought while married to Battista, with its pretty carved headboard painted with flowers. And the adjoining bathroom became her private sanctuary, in pink-and-white marble, with gold taps and lush hanging plants. As well as a large bath, it contained a rose-velvet sofa and matching armchair, a telephone, and a record player, and everywhere there were mirrors, reflecting the light and shimmering with the movement of leaves outside the window.

  “It’s like an opera set,” Ari said when invited to survey the finished effect. “Perfect for a prima donna.”

  “And stylish enough for an international tycoon, I hope,” she said. “We can entertain your business colleagues here.”

  But although Ari had a closet for clothes there, and he often dined and stayed overnight, he still kept most of his belongings at the Avenue Foch apartment.

  LATER IN THE year, Maria was stunned when Vergottis refused to hand over her shares in the ship they had bought jointly in Operation Prima Donna. She had always liked Ari’s close friend and business colleague and was bewildered when it appeared he was trying to cheat her. It didn’t make sense, unless it was part of some private battle between him and Ari that he was not telling her about.

  She couldn’t afford to lose her investment, so she asked Ari to get it back fo
r her.

  “We’ll sue you and we’ll win!” Ari yelled at Vergottis on the phone, but Vergottis countered by saying that if they did he would make sure details of their private life were dragged through the courts.

  “That’s blackmail!” Maria was distressed by the prospect. “What should we do?”

  Ari shrugged. “I’ll get my lawyers to file a suit and we’ll bankrupt him. No one double-crosses me.”

  “But I don’t want us to be headline news. Couldn’t we settle out of court?”

  “Absolutely not. It would send the wrong signals to my other business partners worldwide and encourage them to cheat me. That’s not the way I operate.”

  Throughout the second half of 1966 and into ’67, the impending trial loomed over Maria, and anxiety affected her health. Her blood pressure, always on the low side, dipped alarmingly, and she became prone to painful and unsightly swelling of her legs, as well as persistent headaches. She wished she could send a written testimony to the court in London rather than appear in person, but Ari’s lawyers insisted they must both be there. Worse than that, they advised the couple to describe themselves as “good friends” rather than lovers, and not admit to any possibility that they would one day marry.

  “They’re asking us to lie in court?” She was dismayed. “Surely that can’t be ethical?”

  “It seems that if we went into the deal as a couple, it changes the nature of the legal contract. It’s a technicality Vergottis would use to his advantage.”

  “But I don’t want to lie in court! I refuse.”

  “I hope it won’t arise,” Ari soothed her. “Our affair is our own business, no one else’s. Let’s keep it that way.”

  But in court, Vergottis’s lawyer homed in on their personal life during the early part of his questioning. “Since you are both separated from your spouses,” he asked Ari, “do you regard Miss Callas as being in a position equivalent to a wife?”

  “No,” Ari replied. “If I wanted a wife, Maria and I would have had no problems in marrying. We have no obligations to each other except those of friendship.”

 

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