High life
Fishing for praise
Taki
Most of what has been written about her is speculation, because those who wrote about her didn't know her, and those who knew her didn't write. One thing is sure: upon meeting her, most people inwardly genuflected, especially in Ameri- ca. One exception was De Gaulle. On his way back from JFK's funeral, he turned to Andre Malraux and said that he expected Jackie to 'end up on some oilman's yacht'.
De Gaulle turned out to be right, despite the fact that the Kennedy family's debaucheries, drug taking and all round ruthlessness were at the time unknown to him. They were not to Jackie. She began to look for a way out almost immediately. And my fellow Greek, Aristotle Socrates Onassis, was waiting in the wings. In fact, he had driven to the White House while JFK lay in state and Jackie• had welcomed him. Their friendship had begun in 1963, when Lee her younger sister, had arranged a cruise on the Christina. This is where I came in.
In the spring of 1965, Lee took me up to Jackie's flat for a drink. Jackie was friendly and made me feel at home, with that ever- present vague and defensive smile on her face. What I also remember was that her grace and charm masked a slight tyrannical streak. Lee told her that the night before she had seen me in a nightclub dancing the latest dance craze of the time. Jackie immediately asked me to show my stuff. Embarrassed, I declined. But she insisted politely. I demured once again. She was not best pleased.
I saw her a couple more times, in Gstaad and in El Morocco, New York's premier nightclub at the time, but by then she was Mrs 0, and the couple were feuding. Onassis lived at night, conducted business non-stop over the telephone, and enjoyed tavernas, bars and nightclubs. She liked the arts, hated bars and downtown places, and loathed earthy humour. Never were two people less suited to each other. But he had the moolah and she had the fame, and they each wanted what the other had. It was a marriage made in Hollywod.
When Onassis landed Jackie, Greeks the world over cheered. The cheers soon turned to jeers, especially when with the collapse of the Colonels, the Greek press published stories about the millions she spent 'while the brave Greeks groaned under the boot of the CIA- funded dictators'. But there was more to it than just her wild spending. Greeks are superstitious, and when Onassis after his marriage lost in succession his son, ex-wife, his airline and finally his own life, nemesis and Jackie became one. She was the black widow who brought an ancient Greek curse to a mod- ern argonaut.
Ted Kennedy's behaviour during Onassis's funeral didn't help matters. When he approached Christina after the funeral and demanded to know what she would do for Jackie, financially, Christina howled. Then came the fight over her father's will, which had left only 250,000 big ones per annum to Jackie. Christina gave in to pressure and gave Jackie 26 million greenbacks, which soon quadrupled when her financial adviser, Andre Meyer, put all the moolah into gold. (By 1980 gold had reached 800 dollars per ounce.) From the little I knew of her, and from things I heard from people in the know, Jackie had a fixation for a father-figure all her life. She had one in John Kennedy who gave her power and celebrity, one in Onassis who made her financially secure, and in Maurice Tempelsman who became her emotional rock. Her strength was in seeing as clearly as any showman the power of dramatic scenes — remember the JFK funeral — and she conducted her life in terms of drama. She knew that by being inaccessible to the hot polloi her legend grew daily, and she was tough enough to resist bores and losers. I think her greatest accomplishment was to have been a perfect mother, and in the goldfish bowl in which she chose to live, this is high praise indeed.
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