Diva by Daisy Goodwin

Author:Daisy Goodwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

That night the dinner was on deck. Tina placed Maria next to Churchill, and Aristo at the other end next to Clemmie.

Maria, who was wearing a red silk column gown with a matching chiffon wrap, made great use of the scarf as she set out to fascinate Churchill, using it to punctuate her conversation just as she did onstage.

Churchill had asked her something about wartime Athens and Maria was telling him a story that she felt must endear her to the statesman, who she sensed was not entirely aware of her significance.

“The RAF pilot spoke no Greek, and he had blond hair and blue eyes, like Mr. Montague Browne. He could not walk around the streets of Athens like that—the Italians would have picked him up at once—so we hid him in our apartment in Patission Street. We dyed his hair brown and stained his skin with walnut juice and pretended he was our cousin Stavros, who had come from the Peloponnese, while we waited for the NKD, the Resistance, to arrange his escape. Unfortunately, not everyone in those days was on the side of the British and one of our neighbors betrayed us.” Maria made a dramatic gesture with her hand, bringing it down on the table, which made the cutlery rattle and roused Churchill from his torpor sufficiently to make him drain his glass of champagne and call for another one.

“There was a knock on the door, a hammering, and I knew that the enemy was on the other side. We were in mortal danger. The price of harboring the enemy was death.” Maria’s eyes opened wide. “But I would not give Jimmy up. I had to think of something that would give him enough time to escape through the window and climb onto the roof; from there he might be able to find his way to one of the Resistance safe houses. I wanted to give him a chance.”

By now the whole table had gone silent, and Maria was giving a full performance.

“So I tell my mother, who was shaking with fear, to answer the door. And there on the threshold were five Italian soldiers with guns, looking for Jimmy. I had to act quickly. I wonder if you can guess what I did?”

Her eyes swept the table.

“Remember that in those days I was just a plump teenager with glasses and spots, not glamorous like my sister, Jackie. I knew that they would not be interested in me as a woman. So I sat down at the piano, and I started to sing.”

Maria paused and then, seeing the whole table was listening, she opened her mouth and sang the first lines of Tosca’s great aria, “Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore,” at full volume.

The stewards, who were coming in to serve the main course, stopped dead.

The notes hung in the air as the whole table wondered if she would continue, and then Maria smiled. “My audience was enemy soldiers, but they were also Italians and they had opera in their souls.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.