by Clare Mulley
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’.38 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.39 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.*40 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’.41 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.42 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’.43 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.44 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.45 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.’46 ‘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.’47 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’.48 Patrick Howarth pointed out that she was ‘widely travelled’ and ‘a most accomplished linguist’, well able ‘to establish ha
ppy relations with people of the most varied backgrounds’.49 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.
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.’51 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’.52 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.53 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.54 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.55 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’.56 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’.57 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’.58 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?’59
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.60 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.61 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.62 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’.63 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’.64 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.’65 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 w
rite 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.66
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’.67 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.68 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.
