Read Online Jack's Widow by Eve Pollard - Free Book Online

president, especially as he was so attractive, would mean money for the box office.
    Some of the published articles were highly annoying to the White House, not least because they had a germ of truth in them.
    The one given most credence was that the president liked the movie so much that he had moved his bed into the White House cinema. The truth was that he had installed a new hard, single daybed in the room so that he could rest his bad back while watching movies. Since he had always kept his various medical conditions as secret as possible, there was nothing the White House could do to refute these stories.
    Some of the sleaziest gossip columns would from time to time inform their readers that red, white, and blue bouquets delivered daily to the star on her latest film set were from the president.
    Jackie knew that this was rubbish. She might have worried if the pieces quoted that the actress had been receiving books.
    Books he sent, flowers, never.
    Occasionally the gossip columnists would record sightings of the pair. But she didn’t worry. On the dates in question her husband had been with family members. Although she knew that he was not monogamous before becoming president, she expected that as nowadays he was surrounded by the whole retinue of White House staff, often including Cabinet members, there was safety in numbers.
    So it was not until two slightly fuzzy pictures of just the outline of that famous M.M. shape appeared in one of the supermarket weeklies that she began to worry.
    Apparently the photographer had positioned himself across the road from the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles where the president and his retinue were staying. Aiming for what he presumed was the presidential suite, even though he couldn’t see much through the half-drawn curtains, he thought he would run off a roll of film using his new long lens.
    There were two photographs of the actress. In each the straps of her evening gown had been pulled down so that it was clinging to the tips of her nipples. She was being held by a man whose face was out of focus but who had his naked arm around her waist.
    In one of them her head was tipped back, eyes closed in rapture. In the other she was mischievously putting her tongue out and smiling up at her unknown partner.
    Upset and suspicious, Jackie challenged her husband with this. He denied everything.
    He also tried to reassure her by adding that, nowadays, there was no way that he “could cat around and not get found out.”
    For hours she had raged at him and his ability to hurt her.
    The president swore that the photographer had picked the wrong suite.
    “Look at the pictures,” he snapped. “Note there are no pieces of paper, empty coffee cups, or dirty ashtrays visible. You of all people know what it is like. The speechwriters, Phil, Dave, and even Deck, come in and out of the bedroom. You know that even the bathroom gets a trashing.
    “Just to remind you, the weather was bad and we got to L.A. late. We had a quick meeting and a final discussion on the speech I was going to make at breakfast the next morning. I can get you minutes of those, by the way. Then we headed out for the dinner but we were late so we just had the hors d’oeuvres and went straight into the speech. California, as you know, is really important to us so we hung around, pressed the flesh, had a few chats. Artie reminded us that when they give in that state they give big-time, so he introduced us to some of the guys he thinks will do so. By that time we were absolutely starving, so we went to the Crosby place to eat. Lots of people, but she wasn’t even there, and I was with my sister, who is sticking to me like glue, my other sister who has just bought a house in La Jolla, two speechwriters, and Deck, Paul, Steve, and Jim, not to mention the Secret Service guys and so on and so on.”
    The minutes of the meeting were delivered the next day. He sent them to her in an envelope covered with his kisses and hearts drawn