Just Jackie by Edward Klein (web based ebook reader txt) 📗

would really like to meet you. She’s a very sweet person.”

“Okay,” said Jackie, “tell her it’s fine.”

Loring got up and went over to Ivana’s table, and brought her back.

“Oh, I’ve always wanted to meet you,” Ivana gushed.

They chatted for a while, and Ivana left.

“She’s really very sweet,” Jackie said.

“Yes, Jackie, she is,” said Loring. “She is nothing like what the press says about her. I think we all know a thing or two about that, don’t we?”

“She changed a great deal over the years,” said Loring. “In the beginning, she still seemed very haunted by things. She still seemed to be pursued by her own demons. And if anyone in the world had a right to be, she did. On occasion, she seemed very upset and troubled. But all that changed as the years went on, and one can suspect a lot had to do with Maurice Tempelsman, and finally having a very satisfying and good relationship with someone who was a very strong and very brilliant and quiet and charming and companionable person to be with. That undoubtedly was a tremendous influence on bringing her back to the happy person again.

“And the great change that was wonderful to me was that she became a very happy camper. She was very happy with everything. I think also she was delighted with her children, that as they grew up she was beginning to be so proud of them and so happy with them, and everything to do with them made her happy. And her enthusiasm was boundless all the time.

“And so all those haunted looks completely disappeared. It was like a scene change from one period, when we were hiding in her office, sitting on the floor, eating junk out of a paper bag, to, ‘No, I’m a perfectly normal person and I can get all dressed up and go to Le Cirque for lunch and have a good time.’

“And it was astonishing. I mean that change just came like that. Bingo! At one point she was very much into trench coats and a scarf over her head and large sunglasses and things. Then suddenly, there she was, no trench coat, no scarf, just herself, walking straight down Fifth Avenue, leaving me at Tiffany and walking on down to Doubleday.

“It was amazing watching the passersby’s faces. There was this look of astonishment, and then there was a look of total denial, and you could see them saying to themselves, ‘Oh, it couldn’t possibly be….’ And so, the best disguise in the world was to walk straight through the crowds on Fifth Avenue, because nobody believed it. They would sort of get a jolt, and then they would think, ‘Oh, I’m crazy, that can’t possibly be Jackie Onassis walking down the street.’ So they’d pay no attention, and she learned that a disguise was not necessary, and that she could do whatever she wanted to.”

SACRED GROUND

The sun was rising over Martha’s Vineyard, burning off the fog that had blanketed the island during the night. As Jackie pedaled her bike through Gay Head, a damp chill clung to the morning air. The town had three ramshackle buildings—the town hall, the library, and the fire station—and none of the understated glitz of neighboring Chilmark, where barefoot New Yorkers in selfconsciously aging Volvos lunched on designer pizza at the country store owned by James Taylor’s brother Hugh.

Jackie had spent her adolescence in the tony resort of Newport just a few miles away across Massachusetts Bay. But in its simplicity and unpretentiousness, Gay Head was about as far from Newport as she could get.

On this particular summer morning, she was dressed in her usual Gay Head getup—a pair of jeans, a windbreaker, and a scarf over her ponytail. She rode west on South Road, passing tumbledown fieldstone walls and wild, low-lying bayberry bushes, scrub oak, beach plum, roses, and poison ivy. Beyond these knotty masses, she could glimpse moors, beach grass, and the Atlantic Ocean. On the right in some places were small, sheltered inlets, and at one scenic turnout, a spectacular view of Menemsha Harbor, where Maurice Templesman kept his thirty-seven-foot schooner, the Relemar.

Moshup Trail was the last turn before the Gay Head cliffs and the end of the island. The first driveway on the left was Red Gate Farm, which belonged to Jackie. The rustic wooden gate was open, but her caretaker, Albert Fischer, had posted a NO TRESPASSING sign to keep out intruders. If anyone happened to wander in, Tempelsman usually took care of them himself, without bothering to tell Jackie.

She pedaled up a long, meandering gravel road, which passed over a creek, and came to a large forecourt in front of a cluster of three gray-shingled, white-trimmed buildings. Off to the side, there was a tall osprey pole for nesting that had been erected by Gus Ben David, director of the Audubon sanctuary at nearby Felix Neck. On the path leading to the main house, one of Jackie’s grandchildren had abandoned an old red wagon.

The breathtaking wetlands site had once belonged to the Hornblower family of the Hornblower & Weeks stock exchange firm. In the late 1970s, Robert McNamara and a group of friends, including Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, put together a syndicate to buy the property, but before they could close on it, some local Wampanoag Indians complained that part of the land was the sacred burial ground of Chief Moshup and his wife Squant. McNamara tried to settle the legal dispute, but while he dithered with the Indians, Jackie came along in the person of her attorney Alexander Forger and stole the land from under McNamara’s nose.

Jackie took the Indians to court and eventually won the legal battle. However, her well-publicized victory inflicted some damage to her reputation as a dedicated preservationist. The property, which was assembled by Forger piece by piece over a period of years for about $3.5 million, constituted 464 acres, one third of the entire town of Gay Head. By