The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville (47 page)

But Christine refused to settle, even when the opportunity was handed to her on a plate. Some time after the war a firm of chartered accountants notified her that a colonel with whom she had enjoyed a romance in Cairo before he was killed on active service had left her a London house in his will.
†
Christine reportedly renounced the gift without even checking the address, or stating her reasons. And when Livia ‘Pussi’ Deakin, with whom she had once sat gossiping round the Gezira Club pool, asked why she did not simply marry Andrzej, warning her that she was not getting any younger and he might not wait for ever, Christine laughed it off, saying that her only plans were to go travelling and send back ‘sackfuls of pretty postcards’.
34
She was already looking for work that involved travel. A distant cousin called Hanka Nicolle, the sister of a Polish journalist Christine had known before the war, had a job as a stewardess on a passenger liner taking Polish émigrés to Argentina, and bringing back excellent meat.
‡
Christine met her for lunch when she was on shore leave in London, but the thought of changing sheets and cleaning bathrooms put her off the idea of signing up as a cabin steward. In January 1950 Francis gave her a glowing reference for a job with a travel agency, and in March, Aidan Crawley’s lobbying finally led to an offer of work, as a secretary, but in the Air Attaché’s office in Paris. By then, however, another, more exciting, opportunity had come up.

In early 1950 Christine heard again from George Michailov, the Serbian pilot with whom she had had a brief fling in Cairo. Having settled in Australia, Michailov had joined forces with a well-connected Australian pilot called Norman Hamilton to set up an ambitious network of car dealerships across the continent. In Britain it was all but impossible to buy a new car, as almost everything produced was being shipped to the USA to help pay off the British war debt, but Christine immediately thought of Andrzej. Andrzej was still living in Germany and had now swapped his interest in Opels for an obsession with Porsche, who had brought out their first branded sports car two years earlier. Discussions began about the possibility of a car dealership joint venture, with Andrzej responsible for supply and Michailov and his partner running the sales side in Australia. Christine and Andrzej spent the next few months developing motor contacts in Britain and Germany, among other coups winning the rights for Porsche agencies in Australia. Andrzej was in heaven. That summer they drove through France together, ostensibly for work but also taking in a tour of Christine’s old haunts, meeting Sylviane Rey and the other friends who still knew her as ‘Miss Pauline’, and ending up at the annual commemoration ceremony at Vercors. By the end of the trip, Andrzej felt that their relationship was back on track and they returned to London in high spirits.

Michailov and Hamilton, who had travelled over to London, were duly entertained at the White Eagle. They discussed the finer details of the joint venture, and registered samples of their signatures for a joint business bank account. A few days later they returned to Australia with the promise of some serious investment to back the Australian side of the start-up. ‘Please immediately transfer by telegram all money to national bank Australia in Sydney…’ Andrzej received a telegram a few days later, ‘love George Michailov’.
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Andrzej knew a lot about cars, and plenty about German tax and export duties, but much less about business. ‘He didn’t love to work’, his niece said tactfully, he ‘preferred to enjoy life, read history books, and talk about how to change the world’.
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But the world was already changing. A few months later the deepening recession in Australia completely knocked the bottom out of the market for expensive European cars, Michailov and Hamilton fell out, and Andrzej’s investment appeared to be completely irrecoverable. Both he and Christine were now once again penniless. Christine, who had brokered the partnership partly as a way of squaring her debt to Andrzej, was mortified. But without the means to get to Australia there were few avenues they could pursue either to make good their investment or to decide whether to make a claim against their former partners.

It was now that Christine learned that her brother had died in hospital in Poland the previous June. Andrzej Skarbek had been released from Wronki prison with a lung condition, almost certainly tuberculosis either contracted in custody or exacerbated by the conditions there. He died soon after and was buried beside his father in the Skarbek family plot in Warsaw’s famous Pow
ą
zki Cemetery. Although they had not seen each other since 1939, and had not managed to re-establish contact after the war, Christine was deeply affected by the news of her brother’s death. She would never know that he had kept a photograph of her among his few family possessions all his life.
37
*

Christine and Andrzej spent the next few weeks in Germany.
†
By the mid-autumn of 1950, with no further word from Michailov, she had decided to look for work as a stewardess on a shipping line with routes to Australia, so she could both earn a wage and hopefully pin him – and Hamilton – down. The tedious process of job-seeking followed. In the new year she applied to the Merchant Navy for work as a stewardess with the New Zealand Shipping Company, only to be rejected in March. She then resubmitted her application for a job as an air stewardess with BOAC, directly lobbying Whitney Straight, the deputy chairman, who had served as a pilot in the Battle of Britain and crossed paths with Christine in Cairo in 1943. However, she was now forty-three, eight years above the company’s age requirement for air stewardesses, and her application was rejected, but by then it didn’t matter. In late April she had been taken on by the Shaw Savill Line as a stewardess, ironically for the New Zealand Shipping Company’s new luxury ocean liner, the
Ruahine.

On 1 May 1951 Christine travelled up to Glasgow to join the crew of the
Ruahine
in advance of her maiden voyage. She was an impressive ship. Over 580 feet long and weighing nearly 18,000 tons, she had the capacity to carry over 300 passengers serviced by 200 staff. The passengers had the run of four decks, including a sports deck with a small pool surrounded by red and white striped deckchairs, a promenade deck with lounge, library and reading room, a gently curving smoking room with the all-important bar, and a ‘verandah lounge’ boasting a dance-floor that overlooked the pool. The last time that Christine had been on a liner, she was in first-class, heading to South Africa with Jerzy in 1939. Now, ten years later, she was on the staff, up at six in the morning to take charge of second-class passengers’ cabins on deck D, and in a uniform unlike any she had worn before. The shipping company stipulated light blue cotton dresses with a crisp flared skirt of the length ‘as usual in leading hospitals’, a nurse’s white apron with bands crossed over the shoulders and a white ‘Sister Dora Cap’.
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She looked more like a staff nurse than a stewardess, and very little like any previous incarnation of Christine Granville.

Christine arrived at the Glasgow docks with her new Merchant Seaman’s card and record book in her pocket, and her uniform and other personal effects in a heavy, square, shipping trunk. Leaning over the ship’s railings, ‘neat, tidy, well dressed in a rather spivvish way’, was a steward called Dennis George Muldowney, who had been working on passenger liners for the last two years.
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Dennis, who always had an eye for the ladies and was known to brag about his conquests, watched Christine struggling, ran a hand through his Brylcreemed hair and headed down to help. As usual she did not demur, but neither did she expect much of a friendship with this vain working-class man from Wigan. Dennis, however, was rather struck with his down-on-her-luck Polish aristocrat.

A week later, the
Ruahine
was in London’s Victoria Dock, with all staff fully outfitted, trained and ready to take on passengers for New Zealand via the Lesser Antilles, through the Panama Canal and on to Tahiti before docking in Wellington. As there were a few days before they set sail, Andrzej flew out from Germany to see Christine before she left. She told him that she was not happy with the atmosphere on the
Ruahine
and, disappointingly, that they would not be stopping at Australia on this maiden voyage. However, it was a start. A few days later Andrzej drove her down to Southampton Docks and saw her off.

The
Ruahine
would be at sea for four months; discipline was strict and appearances mattered. One of the requirements was that while on duty staff were expected to wear any decorations they had been awarded during the war. Christine’s impressive line of ribbons, enough to flatter a general, made her an immediate favourite with the passengers, and an obvious target for resentment among the crew. Naturally proud, speaking heavily accented English, and decorated to the nines, she was soon the victim of a campaign of abuse for being a foreigner, a woman and a suspected liar, which made her life a complete misery. The only person to stand up for her was the steward who had helped her at Glasgow Docks, Dennis Muldowney. Things got worse when several groups of passengers, Polish émigrés hoping to make a fresh start abroad, gained a reputation for drunkenness and disorder. Complaints about their behaviour led to xenophobic gossip in the staff rooms, with even the Captain himself loudly expressing his dislike for foreigners. Eventually Christine could no longer let the moaning about spending taxpayers’ money to ship émigrés overseas – ‘in luxury’ – go unchallenged.
*
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Having not minced her words she stormed out of the staff mess, followed only by Dennis, who lent her his shoulder, and then gave a piece of his mind to the rest of the crew. Things improved slightly, but Christine was still ostracized. It was to be a much more difficult voyage than she had anticipated. A week later Christine sent her first letter to Andrzej, mentioning only that ‘the other stewards are not very friendly, except one’.
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After that she wrote two or three times from every port of call, almost every letter repeating how unhappy she was.

Dennis Muldowney liked a pretty face, but he also recognized pride, frustration and loneliness. The son of a Lancashire woman and her Irish Catholic husband, he had grown up in a household in conflict. His parents were both hard drinkers and as a child he was often left outside pubs to wait for them, sometimes being abused by other adults, only to watch them fighting violently when they were thrown out. His sister Lillian died in infancy, and some years later he gained three half-siblings but never felt particularly close to them. Leaving school at fourteen, he tried to improve himself through reading, but became obsessed with his appearance, working as a hairdresser and then in a range of service jobs before marrying and having a son in 1940. His wife divorced him seven years later, citing cruelty and the excessive ‘sexual demands’ he made upon her.
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He later confessed to having an unusually high libido. He had worked as a fireman and fire service dispatch rider during the war, hazardous work during the Blitz but, as he was all too aware, never in the front line. After his divorce, he joined the Merchant Navy as a steward. It was work he enjoyed, and he soon relaxed into the routine of life on board, replacing his rather earnest Errol Flynn look with a clean shave and easy smile. With plenty of experience under his belt, he now taught Christine how to balance multiple tea trays, strip a bed in seconds, and manage her relationships on board ship, and when his own chores were done he would often head down to deck D to give her a hand. Christine gratefully accepted his help, becoming increasingly attracted to this blunt man who was so different to her previous, officer-class, admirers.

Two months later, the
Ruahine
was heading back to London. The ship was almost empty on the return journey, and Christine passed much of the time sunning herself on deck, as often as not with Muldowney beside her. According to him they were already lovers. She was, he said, ‘the only woman who would meet his constant sexual demands’.
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But they were something more as well. Christine, Muldowney claimed, was ‘neurotic’, torn between determination and depression, and at times obsessed with death to such a degree that in Panama they made a suicide pact, which in the event came to nothing.
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Muldowney was clearly under her spell, recognizing the grief and bitterness under the web of stories, but so besotted with her, and so damaged himself, that he was unable to offer any constructive support. If Christine was sinking, Muldowney would loyally sink with her. In better days, she might have dismissed him as just another lame dog, but during the months on board ship, shunned by the rest of the crew, Christine had no one else to turn to. Instead she focused the full beam of her personality on Muldowney, and he became convinced that she was in love with him, and unable to live without him. Whether from real feeling, or the lack of it, Christine did nothing to counter this impression. By the time they arrived back at Plymouth, in mid-September 1951, she had decided that it was time to repay all Muldowney’s kindnesses to her, starting with a lift to London in Andrzej’s car.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the ‘cheerful though often wistful’ Christine, as one passenger described her, had turned out to be an excellent stewardess, caring for the deck D inhabitants as they struggled with sea-sickness, and giving them consistently good-humoured attention, as several letters of thanks testify.
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These letters also reveal how obviously painful much of the passage had been for her. ‘I hope your future voyages will be good ones’, one woman wrote just before they docked. ‘As a passenger I have not found this ship a “happy” one – the atmosphere is definitely against that.’
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‘You were always so willing and obliging and cheery in spite of the many difficulties and trials you had’, wrote another. ‘Wishing you all good luck and a happier ship.’
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But Christine had no wish for a happier ship. As soon as she got to London she solicited her British friends to help get her any other line of work. Aidan Crawley, now MP for North Bucks, recommended her as ‘a woman of great integrity and distinction … capable of filling any administrative or other post with great ability’.
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Patrick Howarth pointed out that she was ‘widely travelled’ and ‘a most accomplished linguist’, well able ‘to establish happy relations with people of the most varied backgrounds’.
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But it was Francis who went overboard. ‘I cannot speak too highly of her abilities as a serving officer or as a human being’, he wrote in a reference that Christine had copied many times. ‘Her ability, which is quite exceptional, should make her of the greatest value to any employer who wishes to use her services…’ It is impossible, he finished, ‘to cover all the qualities of so outstanding a personality’.
50
That the reference had been written by a lover was all too obvious, and Francis later admitted that he had to tone it down. But even that version had little effect.