Jackie and Maria

by Gill Paul

  “This is absurd,” Maria said, struggling to comprehend. “Ari was devastated by our son’s death. We visited Omero’s grave every year on his birthday.”

  “It’s a cruel deception. I’m sorry I had to tell you about it.”

  And then Maria noticed the signature at the end of the letter: Gallo. “I know that name!” she cried. “Of course! He’s the hospital porter. Ari told me about him.” There was an address in Milan, and a telephone number.

  Eyes blazing, she strode to the telephone on the other side of the room. Jackie started to get up, as if worried that this might be too personal, but Maria motioned for her to remain in her seat as she dialed the number.

  “Are you Signore Gallo?” she asked in Italian. “Junior or Senior?”

  “Senior,” the man said. “Did you want my son?”

  “No, you will do. This is Maria Callas.”

  “I’m honored to hear from you, Signora Callas,” the man said, sounding flustered. He clearly hadn’t been expecting this call.

  “I’ve read the letter your boy wrote to Mrs. Kennedy. He claims he is my son. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, it’s true. I’m sorry, Signora.” He launched into a complicated explanation, but she silenced him.

  “There’s one way to settle this definitively. Tell me, what is your boy’s blood group?”

  There was silence on the line. Mr. Gallo was whispering to someone else in the room. She had flummoxed him. “I’m sorry,” he came back. “We don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Her voice rose an octave. “I suggest you find out. I will call you this time next week and if you tell me the correct blood group, we can talk further. If not, I will ask the police to stop you harassing me. Is that clear?”

  She hung up the phone and turned back to Jackie, who was watching, wide-eyed.

  “That man blackmailed Ari years ago,” she explained.

  “I’ve always been a little bit scared of you,” Jackie said. “And now I know I was right to be.”

  THE WOMEN RETURNED to the salon, and Bruna brought a tray with coffee and petits fours.

  “I’m sorry you lost a child,” Jackie said. “I lost three, but I am blessed with the two who lived.”

  “Omero was born in 1960, the same year as your son. When I see photographs of John in the press, it helps me to imagine what my boy would have looked like now. He would have been sixteen, almost seventeen.”

  “That must be hard.”

  “We’ve both suffered,” Maria replied. “And let’s face it—Ari was not the easiest of partners.” She chuckled. “He never wanted us to meet, so he would hate it if he could see us now.”

  Jackie looked down at her lap, and her next words were quiet. “I’m sorry for taking him from you. It was clearly you he should have married, not me.”

  Maria got goose bumps all over. She had never dreamed that Mrs. Kennedy would admit that.

  “You were the bigger prize, and Ari always had to have the best. I didn’t blame you,” she added, not entirely truthfully. “I only ever blamed him. He could be such a . . .” She sought the right word. “Such a nincompoop.”

  They both laughed at the inappropriateness, but at the same time the peculiar rightness, of her choice.

  Chapter 78

  Lefkada, Greece

  June 1977

  Lefkada Town had become more touristy since Maria had last been there almost a decade earlier. She and Ari used to dine at a favorite restaurant in the town square, and once she had given a concert there for local people. Now the marina was lined with tables where tourists sat by the waterfront, and waiters had to rush across a busy main road carrying their food from the restaurant kitchens.

  She got her driver to continue along the coast to the fishing village of Nydri, checking her watch anxiously. Still half an hour to go. The moon was almost full, so there was plenty of light.

  When she had called Costa and told him she needed his help, he’d said, “Name it and it’s yours.” That was kind. She’d always gotten along with Costa.

  She stood on the jetty at Nydri and gazed across to the dark shadowy outline of Skorpios on the horizon. It would be strange to set foot on it again: strange but comforting at the same time. She hoped she would feel close to Ari once more. She had dressed smartly in a black dress, with a black shawl over her hair, and circling her throat were some emeralds she’d been wearing the night they met.

  She heard the sound of the motorboat before she saw it. It curved around a headland at high speed, before Costa cut the engine and drifted the last few feet toward her. When he was close enough, he held out his arm to help her step on board. She knew how to get in and out of boats after all the time she’d spent on the water with Ari, and she settled herself in the prow, looking out toward Skorpios.

  “What did Mr. Gallo say?” Costa asked once they were out on the water.

  Maria imitated him: “‘B negative. No, I think it might be A positive. They weren’t entirely sure but it could be O positive.’ He tried every combination.” She laughed. “To be honest, I don’t have a clue what Omero’s blood group was. I was bluffing and he fell straight into the trap.”

  “Was there a part of you that was disappointed?”

  She shook her head. “God, no! If it had been true, it would have meant that Ari had deceived me about our son. That would have been appalling. He was a scoundrel, but I knew he would never sink to that depth.”

  “He shouldn’t have paid off Gallo all those years ago. He was just trying to protect you but the man clearly got a taste for extortion.”

  “I bet you advised him against it. You were always the sensible, cautious one of the pair of you.”

  “Really?” Costa said. “What I’m doing tonight is not very cautious . . .”

  “I’m so grateful,” Maria said quickly. “But you already know that.”

  When they pulled in at the jetty on Skorpios, a long-haired Greek boy was waiting for them.

  “This is my nephew, Konstantinos,” Costa told her. “My sister’s boy. He’s going to help.”

  “Good evening, madame,” he said to Maria. “The coast is clear. Christina is in Athens, so you can take your time. I’ve brought the jeep to drive us up the hill.”

  Costa passed him the cargo that had been in the stern, then tied the boat to a cleat. Maria took a deep breath, smelling the scent of eucalyptus mingled with salt. It was silent on Skorpios apart from the murmur of waves.

  They climbed into the jeep and drove up to the white-painted chapel, with bougainvillea and jasmine climbing the walls and sea lavender lining the paths.

  Lanterns were burning by the tombs of Ari and Alexander, and the air was sweet with incense. Maria examined a little shrine by the tombs. Someone had set out bottles of whiskey, brandy, and ouzo, along with two glasses. There was a dish of Ari’s favorite olives, all the way from Smyrna, a jar of caviar, and an old photograph of him with Christina and Alexander as children, playing on the decks of the Christina.

  Konstantinos was holding a crowbar. “Are you ready, ma’am?” he asked her.

  She stood back to let the men do the work of prizing open Ari’s marble tomb. Inside she saw a white-painted coffin with silver handles. The flowers that had decorated the top had long since decayed into brown streaks.

  “Hello, Ari,” she whispered. “It’s me. You knew I would come, didn’t you?”

  She stopped, unsure if she had been speaking out loud or inside her own head.

  “Would you like us to say a prayer?” Costa asked.

  “No. I will have a priest bless them another time. I’m sure the gods will forgive us for now.”

  Costa walked forward, holding the cargo.

  “Is there enough room?” she asked.

  “Plenty of room,” he said.

  For the first time, she let herself look at the tiny box he held, and the memory came back to her with full force, of holding Omero in her arms all those years ago. The tufts of soft dark hair, the frog leg
s, the plump cheeks, the tiny fingers. All that potential. All the hopes and dreams she had invested in him.

  Everything would have been different had he lived.

  “Put him in,” she said, and Costa lowered the box down gently beside Ari’s casket.

  “There you are,” she said, and a wave of happiness washed over her, like sunlight emerging from behind thick clouds. “My boy is a proper Onassis at last.”

  “I’m sure Ari would be delighted we’ve done this,” Costa said, putting an arm around her.

  “It doesn’t matter whether he would or he wouldn’t,” Maria replied with a smile. “For once in our lives, I am going to have the final word.”

  Acknowledgments

  Barbara Douka, to whom this book is dedicated, is a social media friend who lives in Athens, and at the time of writing we still haven’t met in real life (although I hope to remedy that soon). Back in September 2017, she messaged me suggesting I write about Maria Callas, Jackie Kennedy, and Onassis, and straightaway my brain lit up like a pinball machine. Their story has all the elements I look for in a novel subject, and I knew I wanted to write it. My incomparable U.S. editor, Lucia Macro, jumped on board without hesitation, and Helen Huthwaite in the UK was close behind. All I had to do was get the words down. . . .

  As it turned out, the writing of Jackie and Maria took longer than any of my other novels so far. I went through many, many drafts, trying to balance the women’s stories and decide which bits to include, which to leave out. Karen Sullivan, Lor Bingham, my agent Vivien Green, and author Tracy Rees and her mum Jane were early readers, and I was grateful for their honest reactions. Barbara Douka advised me on all matters Greek, while opera singer Heather Keens helped with singing techniques, and Lor Bingham was my go-to expert on pregnancies. As always with my novels, any mistakes that have crept in are my responsibility alone.

  Karel Bata came to the Ionian Islands with me for a recce and drove a motorboat repeatedly around Skorpios while I took photographs and imagined my characters swimming in its coves and lying on its beaches. It’s a private island, closely protected by security guards—who asked us to move off more than once—but I managed to swim ashore and feel the sand between my toes, just as Jackie and Maria felt. Thanks for your assistance, Karel, aka James Bond.

  My grateful thanks to all those who helped in the making of the book, including copyeditor Jane Hardick, who corrected several matters relating to U.S. politics and terminology to spare my blushes. I also want to thank the entire team at Morrow for their energy, enthusiasm, and professionalism: Lucia Macro, Asanté Simons, Jennifer Hart, Amelia Wood, Danielle Bartlett, Jean Marie Kelly, and Jessica Rozler are the ultimate publishing dream team!

  I’m incredibly grateful to all the imaginative bloggers and Instagrammers who have supported my recent novels, in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and around Europe. It makes my day when someone photographs my book with a beautiful backdrop, writes a considered review, or lets me post on their website, and I wish I had space here to thank you all individually.

  Thanks also to the author friends who keep me (comparatively) sane in this crazy business, to Hope Bingham for making me laugh, to my sister Fiona for letting me share her children, and to all the pals who buy my books and even read them. I love you all!

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  About the Author

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  Meet Gill Paul

  About the Book

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  Historical Afterword

  What Happened Next?

  Reading Group Questions

  About the Author

  Meet Gill Paul

  GILL PAUL is an author of historical fiction, specializing in relatively recent history, mostly twentieth century. She has written two novels about the last Russian royal family: The Secret Wife, published in 2016, which tells the story of cavalry officer Dmitri Malama and Grand Duchess Tatiana, the second daughter of Russia’s last tsar; and The Lost Daughter, published in August 2019, which tells of the attachment Grand Duchess Maria formed with a guard in the house in Ekaterinburg, where the family was held from April to July 1918.

  Gill’s other novels include Another Woman’s Husband, about links you may not have been aware of between Wallis Simpson, later Duchess of Windsor, and Diana, Princess of Wales; Women and Children First, about a young steward who works on the Titanic; The Affair, set in Rome in the early 1960s, as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton fall in love while making Cleopatra; and No Place for a Lady, about two Victorian sisters who travel to the Crimean Peninsula during the war there from 1854 to 1856 and face challenges beyond anything they could have imagined.

  Gill studied medicine at Glasgow University, then English literature and history, before moving to London to work in publishing. She speaks at libraries and literary festivals about subjects ranging from the British royal family to the Romanovs, and she swims year round in a wild pond.

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  About the Book

  Historical Afterword

  Jackie and Maria is not a retelling of historical events; rather, it is my creative response to the relationships between three women who tried to win the hand in marriage of a Greek tycoon, and I have shaped and altered the facts to fit this narrative.

  The first fabrication I should confess to is that, as far as we know, Maria and Jackie never met. Maria told TV interviewer Barbara Walters that Onassis had been opposed to them meeting. She claimed she invited Jackie to a charity gala after her marriage to Ari but was politely turned down. However, I couldn’t tell the story of these two fascinating women without letting them interact with each other. As a novelist, I had to make it happen.

  My primary purpose in telling this story was to illuminate the characters and seek what seem to me to be emotional truths—but these are my impressions, and biographers, friends, and family would not necessarily agree.

  Maria is often portrayed as a “difficult woman”—Stelios Galatopoulos’s worthy biography of her is subtitled Sacred Monster—and the press in the 1950s almost unanimously criticized her for diva-like behavior. Now, I have to say that my hackles rise when women are condemned for displaying qualities that we would admire in a man. There’s no doubt that Maria was perfectionistic about her music, driving fellow performers to distraction with her insistence on rehearsing for hours on end till she was happy with the result. She had a reputation for telling blunt truths to her friends; she had a difficult, distant relationship with her family; she left her first husband after falling for Ari. In the mid-twentieth century, being strong, ambitious, and determined was a crime if you were a woman, but I hope we can judge her by different criteria now.

  My Maria story is written from her point of view, so it is entirely sympathetic. The great benefit of writing historical fiction, as opposed to biography, is that I can presume to tell you what Maria was thinking and feeling. I can step behind the documented facts and imagine what it was like to be her. Once I had read all I could and watched videos of her speaking and performing till I felt as if I understood her, I then looked back at the various controversies of her life and decided how my version of Maria would have behaved.

  Some biographers claim that Maria’s relationship with Battista had irretrievably broken down long before she met Ari, and that she leapt into bed with him in London in June 1959, months before the Christina cruise. One reports that they had sex in the backseat of his Rolls-Royce—but how could anyone possibly know? Maria’s religion was important to her, so I took the view that she would have required a lot more persuasion. The blessing by the Patriarch is recorded fact, and it seems to me very plausible that Ari arranged it in order to entice a woman with religious scruples to become his mistress.

  Did she have a child with Ari? Nicholas Gage makes a case for it in Greek Fire, but Battista claimed in his memoir about their marriage that Maria’s gynecological problems would have made pregnancy impossible.
I decided that in my novel Maria would have a son, Omero, who died shortly after his birth, as it would add to the poignancy when Ari later married a woman with a son of the exact same age, and then when he subsequently lost his only living son.

  Some biographers claim that Maria told friends Ari forced her to have an abortion. She may have said this in the heat of anger, but I don’t believe for a minute that she would have done it. My Maria was no pushover. All the scenes in the novel in which she tries to stop Ari from sleeping first with Lee and then Jackie were my inventions, but surely Maria would have done her best? She was a passionate, fiery woman, not a doormat.

  Did she become Ari’s mistress again after his marriage to Jackie? Opinion is split on this, but I’m sure she wouldn’t have been able to resist when he started pursuing her straight after the wedding (as several witnesses have reported). I don’t think she deliberately tried to kill herself in 1970; in fact, she sued one newspaper that claimed she had, and won. She was taking prescription meds perhaps a bit too carelessly, but these were the early days of Valium and Mandrax, and the side effects were not yet well known.

  JACKIE ONCE SAID that both she and Jack were like icebergs, meaning no one saw the nine-tenths below the surface. I took this as a key to her character and went further, proposing that she repressed her feelings to such an extent that she wasn’t even in touch with them herself. Few really knew her, not even her sister, Lee. They had been close as children, and they bonded over clothes and their love of sunny foreign vacations, but they didn’t seem to have discussed their innermost thoughts and feelings often—if ever.

  Why did Jackie put up with Jack’s infidelity? She seldom spoke of it, so biographers are just guessing, but it must have had something to do with the fact that she grew up knowing her beloved daddy was unfaithful to her mother, giving the behavior a gloss of acceptability. Plus, divorce was still a huge scandal in the 1950s that would surely have destroyed Jack’s chances of becoming president. And there’s no question of her love for Jack. Even when she was furious with him, she still adored him.