The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville (48 page)

Once in London Christine had checked back into her old room at the Shelbourne Hotel, booking another down the corridor for Muldowney. Two days later he moved into the Merchant Navy Welfare Club a short walk away at Lancaster Gate, the other side of Kensington Gardens. According to the hotel records, however, he was back for at least one night, discreetly booking a separate room on 17 October, when Christine was also in residence. There seems little doubt that their relationship was more than platonic. When Christine had first got back, Countess Przezdziecka, the cook, noticed how tired she looked and asked her if it wasn’t very hard for her, as a young woman, to work as a cabin steward. Christine just laughed, saying ‘No, no, no, I have a young man, he always steps in.’
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The Countess disapproved, telling Christine that it was dangerous to get the man’s hopes up, especially as he was clearly not a suitable partner. Christine paid no need, so the Countess repeated her anxieties – and the accompanying lecture – to her teenage daughter, Teresa. Teresa, however, knew that Christine had risked her life for their country during the war, had heard the stories of her rescuing men in Poland and France, and believed her to be ‘a great hero, very beautiful, tall and slim … and very capable’.
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She was certain that Christine could take care of herself.

Andrzej, meanwhile, was only too happy to show Muldowney his gratitude for standing up for Christine throughout the voyage. Thanking him ‘heartily’ for ‘being so decent’ he introduced him to their London circle.
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Christine asked her friends to be kind to her colleague, explaining that he had stood by her, but also warning them that he was ‘very sensitive’. Muldowney was given a warm welcome, regularly invited out for lunch, drinks and to the cinema, and Ludwig Popiel even gave him a petrol lighter as a token of friendship. Soon Muldowney was spending most afternoons among ‘the dispossessed aristocrats and aging generals’ at the White Eagle, waiting for some of Christine’s circle to come over.
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He even started to learn Polish.

But although Muldowney was pleasant and polite, he was as intimidated as he was impressed. Clearly out of his depth, he would sit nervously on the edge of his chair, hesitant in conversation and ashamed of his war record and job as a steward.
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Patrick Howarth remembered having tea with Christine and Muldowney at the White Eagle, but after a few abortive attempts to strike up a conversation Howarth simply forgot all about him, admitting that ‘he never made the slightest impression on me’.
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Andrzej, meanwhile, gave Muldowney every chance to make his mark, but soon described him as having ‘a sort of face over the surface of which words seemed to hover for a while, as though in search of an orifice to sink in’.
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Soon Andrzej had reached the slightly worrying conclusion that what Muldowney really wanted to do was to stay silent, and ‘curl up on a mat, on the threshold of Christine’s bedroom’.
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Muldowney was ‘a curious little creature’, Christine’s Zakopane friend remembered. ‘It was obvious that he had a frightful inferiority complex. We used to wonder why he was with her. He did not come from her milieu, and he was definitely not her type. Christine always had a wide choice of stunning men, so why did she waste her time with a goblin like Muldowney?’
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Back among friends, Christine began to wonder the same thing. Andrzej was now with her whenever possible, much better company, and clearly still deeply in love with her. For some time he had been pressing Christine to sit for a portrait by the society artist Aniela Pawlikowska, who was in London exhibiting in the Polish clubs. Christine finally agreed, and Pawlikowska made an initial sepia pastel sketch showing Christine with her dark hair set high on her head, looking much more aristocratic, and slightly more nervous, than she does in any photograph. She then sat for a formal oil painting, with the same hairstyle and slight look of hesitancy, but this time in profile as she leans on the arm of a chair, her long fingers clearly displaying her Skarbek signet ring; it is a portrait of a lady, not a ship’s steward, but above all it is a portrait of a defiantly proud woman.
*

In mid-November Christine joined Hanka Nicolle on the
New Australia,
sailing this time to Australia from Southampton. Muldowney was serving on a different ship. During her shore leave, three weeks later, Christine visited Michailov and Hamilton, but she could neither revive the business plan nor extract Andrzej’s investment from them. The night before they sailed for Britain Christine wired Andrzej, telling him to write off his capital.
†
Despite this disappointing result, the voyage itself had been much happier, and on the homeward journey she and Hanka decided to sign up for another trip on the same ship a few weeks later. The
New Australia
slipped back into Southampton on 20 January 1952. Muldowney was there, waiting to meet them, which surprised Hanka as she knew that Christine had neither wanted nor encouraged him to come. The three of them caught the train to Waterloo, Christine becoming increasingly irritated until she abruptly told Muldowney to leave her alone, at which point he backed down, apologizing and saying that he hadn’t meant to offend.

Christine had only just over a fortnight before she and Hanka were due back on the
New Australia.
Although still tolerated, Muldowney’s constant presence was now regarded as ‘tiresome’ by Christine and all her friends. Francis called him ‘a pathetic bore’, ‘intolerably clinging’, and Andrzej thought him ‘unbelievably thick-skinned … a dangerous simpleton’ with ‘a mass of obsessions and neurosis’ who jumped whenever Andrzej clicked his fingers, as he habitually did, mistaking the noise for hammers pounding in his head.
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Aware that his welcome had cooled, Muldowney became moody and resentful, but he could not leave Christine alone. He was ‘violently in love with her’, Kate O’Malley wrote, and Andrzej noticed that he had started pathetically following her around ‘like a dingo dog, trotting at Christine’s heels’, sometimes even pacing the streets outside her friends’ houses when she visited them or simply waiting for her to turn up at the Shelbourne or White Eagle.
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One evening, during dinner with John Roper, Christine told him that Muldowney was starting to frighten her and, fearing that they might not see each other again, when they parted she said an impromptu prayer for Roper and his young family.

Soon Christine admitted that she was thoroughly tired of the ‘obstinate and terrifying’ Muldowney.
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Telling Francis and Andrzej that they had to shake him off, she started avoiding the White Eagle, considered putting out a story that she had sailed on another ship, and asked the Shaw Savill Line not to assign her to ships on which he would be serving. Andrzej now worried about the effect that a blunt rejection might have on Muldowney, warning Christine that ‘not only is he madly in love with you, but
mad
’.
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Knowing that Muldowney was due to sail for South Africa, Andrzej persuaded her to keep the peace a little longer. As a result, Muldowney joined them at the cinema on his last evening in London. It was a mistake.

Christine had always told him, Muldowney later claimed, that she had known Andrzej since childhood, and that it was a purely platonic friendship. ‘In fact he had had a leg shot off’, he said, ‘and was impotent – no good sexually’.
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If this was Christine’s story, it would not have been the first time that she had used it. However, something about the way that she and Andrzej behaved towards each other that evening made Muldowney start to have his doubts. ‘As a result I got upset’, he admitted. ‘I thought she had been playing the fool with me and kidding me all the time.’
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After the cinema, Christine and Andrzej walked Muldowney to his ship at Albert Dock. Delighted to see the back of him, Christine kissed him goodbye in the traditional Polish way, and flippantly promised to write at every port. She later told Andrzej that she had no intention of writing at all, thinking that this would be the best way to finish what was now an unwanted friendship. ‘He bores me so, he’s such a nuisance’, she told Andrzej, but when Andrzej remonstrated that it would be both hurtful and possibly provocative to cut Muldowney out altogether, she agreed to drop him a last short note.
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A few days later, at the start of February 1952, Christine and Hanka rejoined the
New Australia.
They were away until mid-April. This time Andrzej came to meet Christine on her return to Southampton docks. Learning that he had only a week in London before flying to Switzerland, Christine decided to go with him. At the end of a note to Hanka, letting her know her plans, she added a PS: ‘Not a trace of Dennis, what luck’.
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But Muldowney sailed back into London the next day. He had not received any letters from Christine, and he had had plenty of time to brood over her. Now he found her last note to him, hoping that he had had a pleasant trip, and letting him know that she was leaving the Merchant Navy and going to the Continent. She wished him all the best.

Irritating and slightly worrying though he was, Muldowney was the last thing on Christine’s mind that week. Earlier in April a select committee of the US Congress had arrived in London to take the testimony of witnesses to the Soviet massacre of Polish officers at Katyn. Thirty Polish witnesses were heard during the course of four days, after which a mass meeting was held to commemorate the twelfth anniversary of the massacre. Although not a witness herself, Christine could hardly have missed the speculation surrounding the interviews. The Soviets had killed her brother as surely as they had killed the officers at Katyn, and it was probably not coincidence that she and Andrzej booked their flights to Switzerland for just after the remembrance meeting. Returning to the Shelbourne the night before they were to leave, Christine went ahead while Andrzej parked the car. Before he had time to lock it, Muldowney came rushing down the hotel steps. Andrzej called out a greeting, but he stormed past. Christine was in the lobby, shaking with anger that Muldowney had reproached her, in a ‘very rude’ and threatening way, for not writing from her ship and for avoiding him since her return.
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She had told him, bluntly, that she did not want to see, or be pestered by, him any more. She then told the porters not to let him into the hotel again and, if he ever enquired about her, to tell him that she was not there.

The next day Christine and Andrzej left for a week in Switzerland. As the Pawlikowska portrait had not yet arrived, she gave the pastel sketch to Andrzej as a promise of things to come. Andrzej later told his niece that he had given Christine an open proposal, that they marry and live somewhere in Europe on condition that she would be faithful to him. Christine had yet to make a commitment when she received a telegram from the Union Castle Line shipping company, offering her work on the
Winchester Castle
sailing from Southampton to South Africa at the end of the month. She decided to accept the job, with its useful salary, after which she and Andrzej would hole up together for a while in Brussels or Liège and plan the future.

With Christine in Switzerland, Hanka bore the brunt of Muldowney’s frustration in London. Unknown to either of them, he had left his job on the ships to take work as a resident porter at the Reform Club on Pall Mall, for what he called ‘pin money’, purely so as to be closer to her. Now she was not to be found at her regular haunts, Muldowney started repeatedly phoning Hanka, asking to meet, and when Hanka said she had no wish to discuss Christine with him, he swore that he had no feelings for her before asking whether she had met someone else.

Christine wisely stayed with Andrzej until the last moment, returning to London only on 28 April, two days before she was due to join the
Winchester Castle.
Coming back from a restaurant the following evening, she had a sudden surge of anxiety and phoned Ludwig Popiel, asking him to meet her at High Street Kensington. As they walked back to the Shelbourne together Christine told her old friend how frightened she was of Muldowney, and how he had been ‘molesting’ her, following her wherever she went and watching her hotel.
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Ludwig was sceptical and told her she was exaggerating, but Christine was convinced that Muldowney would be ‘prowling around’, and when they reached the hotel, at about 11 p.m., they saw him there, waiting.
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After a few pleasantries Muldowney said he wanted to speak to Christine alone. She refused, giving the classic ‘I have no secrets from anyone’ line, although all of them knew this was patently not true.
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When pressed she said that she had now repaid his kindness, she did not mean to be rude but he was behaving oddly, and she insisted that she no longer wanted to see him and that he should leave. Ludwig watched the distraught man struggle to control himself, and was struck by what he called ‘a strange look in his eyes’.
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Finally Muldowney mumbled that he knew he was not good enough for Christine and her friends, agreed to go and, shoving his hands deep into his raincoat pockets, he stalked off down the street.

17: BRUTAL END

Christine had never had a strategic approach to life. Since childhood, her most defining characteristic had been an intense desire for freedom: freedom from authority, to roam and ride and live, as wealthy men did, a life of action and adventure. Jobs, marriage, and the polite rules of society were unacceptable constraints, quickly making her, as SOE’s Vera Atkins astutely recognized, ‘a loner and a law unto herself’.
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When Germany invaded and occupied Poland in 1939, Christine suddenly found herself perfectly placed to fight. Duty and pleasure at last went hand-in-hand as she pitted her wits, courage and charm against absolute, imposed authority. Christine was an opportunist, whose greatest opportunity came with the war, but Poland’s defeat had left her not only without a home, but without a role. It was, as Paddy Leigh Fermor wrote, ‘out of restlessness, independence and need, and at a loss suddenly with nobody to rescue’, that she ‘sailed away from her rather thoughtless adopted country with a temporary job as a transatlantic stewardess’.
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But by 1952 Christine knew that while working on the ships felt in some ways like helping to run another escape route, she herself remained trapped. The shore leave was not enough to compensate for the long weeks spent cleaning bathrooms and serving as a personal maid. And then there was Muldowney, a black cloud, waiting for her every time she sailed back into London. She needed a strategy. Andrzej was her ‘one lasting attachment’, as Atkins put it, and Christine began to wonder whether he might not, after all, be her best chance of some kind of freedom.
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