The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  The man known as Afterbirth had a mulberry birthmark on his face; Toffee was a snob with a caramel-freckled face; Frank the Bank was rich; Sprout’s real name was Bert Russell; Pissfroth had curly hair of reddish-yellow hue; A.L.F. was an aggressive little fucker; Bonkers Barker was as per his handle; the Smart Young Man was well dressed; Super-Tramp, a titled landowner, had been wearing the same Guards tie, bespoke suit, and Lobb shoes for so many years that he looked as though he dossed with his lesser brethren under Charing Cross Bridge at night.

  There were a number of animals: the Giraffe was tall with a long neck, Turkey lacked a chin, had a wattled throat and gobbled as he spoke, and the Ferret was small and furtive with a sharp nose. When the Ferret objected to his sobriquet, his quick-witted underwriting nomenclator said it was because of his reputation for tenaciousness in getting the best possible deal for his clients. Having considered this, the Ferret changed his tune: “I’m the Ferret, you know,” he would tell people; “you should treat me with more respect.”

  Sticky moaned in the basement bathroom stalls, the Egg in Aspic was bald and drove a bubble car, Skid’s surname was Marx, the ever-lustful Everest was called Climb Ev’ry (from the Mother Superior’s musical exhortation to Maria in The Sound of Music), and the Bike, a female claims broker, was well ridden. Piers Deepleigh had been whinnied under by many a filly, the hefty Peter Thomson-Waite was called P’Tonsome because he got ever fatter, Brains was thick, the Dwarf was one, Screaming Lord Sutch made his political aspirant counterpart seem tame, and Oink—Oink was Arbella Stace’s boss—was so slovenly of manners and dress that he gave a bad name to the baconic species.

  William Goldsack, Esquire, consistently made so much money for his Names that he was accorded the only respectful moniker at Lloyd’s, Bullion Bill. This extraordinary and flamboyant marine and aviation underwriter was so eccentric in his ways, that if he were to vanish in a flash and crackle of lightning, the brokers would assume that he was late for an important appointment, perhaps with the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, the Bank of England, in order to discuss shoring up the nation’s gold reserves.

  Bullion Bill Goldsack’s powers of divination were legendary: he made split-second decisions about which risks he would and would not write, and raked in profits that were unmatched by any other syndicate.

  Marine and aviation and motor underwriters were precluded from writing non-marine risks unless, because of the catastrophic limits involved, they were granted the dispensation required for a market-wide placement. Supertanker mariner and space aviator and Formula One motorist though he was, Bullion Bill could not give a toss about the old saw about marine business being defined as the alimentary targets of sea-going birds. He was not interested in birds of any kind except as the prototypical species for the aeroplanes he insured, and as suppliers of the many quill pens that he wore out.

  Irrespective of whether a risk was “Wet” or “Dry”, as the distinction was, even if what he was insuring was as unlikely to get guano dumped on it as an Arab’s burnous in the desert, so long as there was a fat premium involved, Bullion Bill Goldsack wanted it, all of it. He wrote more business in a day than the smallest syndicates saw in a year. He vacuumed risk from the air as if he were dedicated to making the world an Elysian Field of assurance, certitude and predictability, sucking it up greedily until it came out of his mouth as a golden river, which poured out of the building, and down Lime Street, and ran south until it became a tributary of the Thames river, where it swelled and threatened to overwhelm the flood barrier that protected the city.

  At the box Goldsack wore his heavy-framed glasses perched on top of his head, to show that he had no need of them to read, learn, and inwardly digest what was put before him. It was rumoured, in a lame attempt to explain his powers of divination, that they acted like satellite panels (Bullion Bill insured satellites, lots of them; actually, all of those that were not Communist) to receive up-to-the-minute meteorological information and on-site risk intelligence. He never mugged for the crowds at the Gallery as they gazed down at him in awe: the stakes were too high for clowning.

  Owing to his well-known insatiability for business, Bullion Bill’s queue of brokers wound around the floor of Lloyd’s like a Chinese dragon. It clogged the gangways and got in the way of those who were transacting business at other boxes. Underwriters frequently mistook the broker at their elbow for someone who had come to see them, when they were actually in line for Goldsack. If two brokers were in conversation and one of them edged away, it was likely that he was one step closer to getting in with Bullion Bill.

  But no matter how many eager petitioners there were waiting for him, Goldsack was never “a bad wait”: his line moved faster than powder up a junkie’s nostril. One had better be ready with one’s story prepared when no fewer than three people back, for he had an uncanny ability to tell bad and underpriced risks from those that were good and paying the right rate or better. Even as he barked with dismissive disgust, without turning his head the tentacle of an arm would be shooting back to grab the first offering out of the next broker’s hand.

  Woe betide that person if he was reading the newspaper or holding the wrong slip, one that he had not intended to offer. Goldsack was no respecter of a pedlar’s plans: he had been known to rip a slipcase from someone’s grasp, rifle through it until he found something to his liking, and cover it with more stamps—he had a lot of so-called “baby” syndicates, very large babies who shaved twice a day—than Romeo planted kisses on Juliet’s lips.

  It was also a mistake to try and “broke” or negotiate with Bullion Bill. Instead of getting angry he would sulk and announce that he had closed one’s account for several days. Goldsack sulked a lot, and any intermediary whom he held a grudge against for long was at a serious disadvantage in generating commissions for his firm during his period of banishment. The man devoured slips, however lengthy and complicated, with his supposedly myopic eyes and picked out the salient facts without having them drawn to his attention.

  If he had a question, and he never asked more than two, the broker had a brief opportunity to spit out a handful of carefully chosen words. Then, if he was lucky, there would be a series of thumps from Bullion Bill’s battery of stamps. The lines went down on the slips without regard for accuracy or tidiness. Then he would seize a blunt quill from an inkwell and scrawl his percentage or dollar participations. Goldsack got through pints of black ink in a week, and a person better have his hand out of the way when Bill went into action, for whatever happened to be underneath the pen got written, including cuffs and sleeves. Jackson Pollock-like blots sprayed in all directions, and, while the underwriter himself remained spotless, brokers often came away covered with as much ink as their slips.

  When Bullion Bill especially liked a piece of business, without asking permission he might whack down a line of one hundred per cent. This was an embarrassment to the broker, because to accept such a line from any underwriter, unless it was on a very small risk or one that could be replaced elsewhere the following year without difficulty should one not be able to agree terms and the underwriter “came off”, was inadvisable. Because the underwriter had control of the placement, the last thing that one wanted Goldsack to have, he could demand as much money as he wanted on renewal.

  But the size of Bullion Bill’s lines were not negotiable, and the only thing one could do, if a single underwriter swallowed the lot, was proceed to see more underwriters, because at Lloyd’s additional participations that resulted in overplacement were signed down proportionately. Thus if Goldsack took a hundred per cent and three more underwriters, alerted to the game that was being played, did the same, they would each end up with twenty-five per cent when the lines were “signed down” pro rata.

  Of course, when Goldsack saw the slip the following year and discovered the trick that had been played on him, he would sulk and come off the risk altogether and ban the broker from coming to see him for some days; but that was next year’s problem, one that the
broker might solve by making an advance holiday booking for the week following the anniversary date of the policy.

  After completing the messy business of subscription, Bullion Bill would hurl the slip down the box over the heads of his staff to the far end, where ashen-faced entry boys eventually plucked it from the morass of others and entered a reference in the boxes on the stamp. Bill wore out these lads like cheap socks: after a month or so the most resilient of them felt the pangs of angina, and had to be replaced by trainees who would soon themselves be in the final stages of nervous collapse.

  Then the broker would move on and fin feebly like a played-out fish in the dead pool out of the current that swirled around Goldsack, and linger there until he might recover his slip or slips.

  Not many brokers had the energy to visit other underwriters after such a nervous ordeal, and most headed back to their offices, after stopping at the Orpheus Club or some other sympathetic institution for a drink, to add up the lines they had got that day, telex clients with their quotes and placement progress, see what was in their in-boxes, and bring their expense reports up to date.

  That Goldsack’s reference numbers were so short and often identical meant they could not have been of much use to the syndicate in classifying its business, but the Lloyd’s Policy Signing Office system required that something be entered. Although he never looked up his records, brokers doubted at their peril Bullion Bill’s steel-trap memory for what he had summarily rejected, should they think to come back a few days later and submit the same risk again in the hope that Bill might not recall it and decide to write it.

  The only person to have tried this was fired by his brokerage house and spent the next three years flipping hamburgers at McDonalds; where he gained sufficient knowledge of what passed for beef that he emigrated to Texas to apply for work in an abattoir, and ended up a youthful cattle baron whose meat packaging business was insured at Lloyd’s of London without the support of Bullion Bill Goldsack.

  Chapter Four

  What of me, your prune-faced roué of a city?

  By nine a.m. the busiest trains have drilled

  Into my sparse and carious mouth, except

  The shabby hangovers who dull- and sullenly grind

  From Haywards Heath, bearing ghosts who linger

  In the coffee bars beneath the Bridge, HMS Belfast-

  Grey, chewing the fat in bacon rolls.

  My guts pulsate with bacteria and men who worm

  The tubes sluggishly from Liverpool Street,

  Paddington, Victoria, and “The Drain” from Waterloo.

  Frequently there’s a wait while duodenal discomfort

  Abates, and passes, temporarily. The beer

  And grease of yesterday repeats; and nothing

  Can settle the acid stomach,

  The reflux of tomorrow and the years ahead.

  *

  As committed as she was to leading as unadventurous a life as possible, one devoid of emotional portamento, Arbella had welcomed the opportunity to work as an insurance broker. The sordid grey office building of Chandler Brothers, which squatted like a stucco-skinned toad next to the Tower of London with its legs wrapped around Tower Place, was admirably suited to her purpose. The only interesting thing about it was that because it was within a longbow shot of the Tower the Monarch had the right to raze it to the ground, and a five pound annual fee was said to be paid to insure against the possibility that His Majesty would have a George the Third moment and choose to exercise the privilege.

  The King’s views on sixties’ architecture being as strong as they were, it was not inconceivable that he would, in which case Arbella’s delight could only be increased by the discovery that someone had forgotten to pay the premium.

  Every morning, as soon as she had read the incoming cables and got her slipcase in order for the day, Arbella would escape from the office and make the hajj up to the Captain’s Room at Lloyd’s for coffee. It was a historic ten minute walk from Chandler Brothers to Lloyd’s, which was bordered by Fenchurch Street, Leadenhall Street, Lime Street, Billiter Street, and Cullum Streets.

  The first notable place that she passed, if she did not take the alternative route via a subway under Byward Street to Great Tower Street and up either Mark Lane or Mincing Lane, was the church of All Hallows by the Tower. All Hallows, Barking, was the oldest church in the City, and in its crypt were buried a number of bodies of those who had been executed on Tower Hill, including Thomas More, John Fisher, and Archbishop Laud. William Penn had been baptized there, and John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States of America, had been married in it. Admiral Penn, William Penn the founder of Pennsylvania,’s father had saved the place during the Great Fire of London in 1666.

  Ignoring another subway next to the church, Arbella would cross Byward Street, pausing on the central island to let the lorries thunder by on either side, and walk up Seething Lane. At the end on the left was St Olave Hart Street, which contained a pulpit carved by Grinling Gibbons and was where Samuel Pepys worshipped and was buried. Pepys lived and worked at the Navy Office, bordered by Seething Lane and what is now Pepys Street, and Trinity Square. Like Admiral Penn, he was instrumental in saving the church—later to be referred to as St Ghastly Grim by Dickens in his The Uncommercial Traveller—during the Great Fire by having the surrounding buildings destroyed.

  But none of this featured in Arbella’s thoughts as she proceeded: they were directed behind her to the other side of All Hallows, where by far the most ancient and prestigious building in all London loomed: the Tower of London. Arbella had loved the Tower, which was founded by William the Conqueror, since childhood, and often thought of how wonderful it would be to have an apartment there, behind walls fifteen feet thick, where she could retreat during the day and pretend that there was no such place as Chandler Brothers, no job, no life in general. She had been gratified to learn upon joining Chandlers that although trainees and passed-over elder brokers were occasionally detailed to escort the wives of American clients to the Tower on sightseeing visits, despite its closeness employees were not interested in anything to do with the place.

  If the Tower of London did inspire a pang of sorrow in Arbella it was by association with happier childhood days, when her mother Veronica was alive, and her father—then still gay and impromptu in his ways—would escort them through the Middle Tower entrance, reeling off dates from the Tower’s history and the names of people who had been incarcerated there. Such had been his enthusiasm for the place, she recalled, that before entering he would only reluctantly linger in response to the young Arbella’s tugging hand and urgent request that they spend a moment listening to the soapboxers as they availed themselves of their right to freedom of speech at the City’s equivalent of Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park; and listen to the kilted and untuneful bagpipe player, who was said to pull pints in the evenings at the Blind Beggar, haunt of the Kray brothers on the Mile End Road, and to be as Cockney as they come.

  The future peer would ignore the Beefeaters—or, to use the proper designation that they were given when they were formed as Henry the Seventh’s bodyguard in 1485 after the Battle of Bosworth, the Yeomen Warders (not Yeomen of the Guard) of His Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, and Members of the Sovereign’s Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary—and the guides and tourists, and launch into his personal account of everything that there was to see and much that had been or was not.

  As a family they had visited the Tower at least once a month until Arbella was ten years old, and Charles, which had been his name in those days before he became Your Lordship, or Sir, never tired of going.

  Charles Stace had been especially interested in Mary Queen of Scots, whose cousin, Arbella Stuart, was an historic antecedent of his wife Veronica. In honour of the pair of them the only Stace daughter had been christened Arbella Mary Stuart Stace.

  Arbella grew up with every piece of the Tower’s history embedded in her memory. She was
au fait with the execution dates and identities of every head that had rolled on Tower Green; and the noblemen who had been hung on the gallows at Tower Hill; and of the lesser sorts who had met the same fate at Tyburn, later to be called Marble Arch. She knew how the Knights of the Bath, before their investiture, held night-long vigils over their armour in the Chapel Royal of St John the Evangelist, in the White tower; and she could cite the owner of each torso that was interred beneath the floor of its twin, the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula. She had been as a child, and was still, friends with the Yeoman Ravenmaster; and what was now a very old castle cat, to whom she used to speak reprovingly about its habit of stalking the pigeons.

  The ravens were a subject in themselves. Should their number fall to less than six, the legend went, not only would the Tower fall but the Monarchy too. Many of the birds lived to a ripe age, of up to forty years or more. Their quarters were next to the Wakefield tower, where they were fed a diet of raw meat, bird formula soaked in blood, and rabbit fur. They were also partial to eggs, and fried bread; and leftovers from the Yeoman Warders’ mess.

  Arbella was familiar with how King James the Sixth of Scotland, and the First of England, started a menagerie that included leopards and lions, and an elephant; and a polar bear, which was tethered by an iron chain, and stout cord when it was allowed to swim and catch fish in the area of the Thames off the Tower known as the Pool. The menagerie came to be the Tower’s most popular attraction, and the origin of the phrase “seeing the lions”.

  She could identify each item in the Jewel House, and loved to picture herself attending balls and banquets bedecked with her favourites. She knew the traditions of the Tower, such as the Ceremony of the Keys, which has been performed nightly since 1340. At seven minutes to ten the Chief Yeoman Warder emerges from the Byward tower in his long red coat and Tudor bonnet, carrying a candle lantern and the Tower keys. He proceeds along Water Lane to Traitor’s Gate, where his guard escort awaits him.