by Ashly Graham
Chapter Six
The first thing that one encountered on arriving at the Chandler Brothers building in the mornings, seated behind the front desk in the nondescript cheaply furnished lobby, was the raddled and painted gorgon of a receptionist. Just before nine o’clock the Essex crowd of accounts, contract wording and claims staff, who were required to start work half an hour before everyone else, would pour in from Fenchurch and Liverpool Street Stations. They clutched paper bags of buttered soft or crusty rolls, paid for with left-over luncheon vouchers at the greasy spoon, Luigi’s, on Tower Place.
The rolls contained wafer-thin slices of pink processed meat, onto which mustard could be wiped from a plastic dispenser. They were eaten at the grey metal desks in the office and washed down with sludge-like coffee from the office machine accompanied by Embassy cigarettes.
The brokers, who trickled rather than poured in over the course of the next hour, were mostly drawn from the middle classes. Those who lived furthest away and had to get up at an ungodly hour somewhere in the Home Counties to drive to the railway station, arrived complaining about the weather and the delays on the trains.
After them came the middle-aged gentlemen from Knightsbridge, Kensington, and Holland Park, with their umbrellas and copies of The Daily Telegraph, good-humoured after leisurely breakfasts cooked by their wives. Last to arrive was the youthful Chelsea, Fulham, Wandsworth, Clapham, and Battersea set...and Freddie Garbanzo-Myers, who was not young in the sense of being under forty, but behaved as if he was.
Late of the King’s Royal Lancers and most recently aide-de-camp to a general in the Middle East, Major Garbanzo-Myers was known as the Galloping Major, per the song written by Stanley Kirkby for the film of that name:
All the girls declare
He’s a grand old stager
Bumpety bumpety bumpety bump
Here comes the Galloping Major.
Garbanzo-Myers was tastelessly well dressed and loudly unmarried, a self-proclaimed devil-may-care Casanovan gonad-piston. He always had a different exploit to recount—after returning from an illicit visit to the executive bathroom and sliding his wash bag and yesterday’s shirt, tie and underwear into the drawer of his desk that had contained today’s clean wear; he had enough drawers to last him from Tuesday to Friday without stopping on Jermyn Street on his way in, if he remembered to empty them on Fridays and drop off their contents at Lilliman & Cox for collection on Monday—about his latest unconfirmed conquest, in which he had starred in a bedroom farce written by him, for him, in addition to his having financed, musically scored, filmed from several angles, directed, and produced it for an audience of one.
The brokers sifted through their copies of the white incoming telexes that had arrived overnight from their American clients, looking for ones addressed to them individually, and checked for errors in the outgoing pink sheets that had been redacted from their handwritten communications of the evening before.
Anything relating to the accounts they handled personally they cut out and pasted on blank forms, which they then punched holes in and added to the prongs of the relevant contract file for that year: outgoing pinks on the left, incoming whites on the right. Exhibit cards were in the next section, and the cover-note in the next, and the most recent contract wording in the last. If the placement was not new the expiring slip, which underwriters needed to consult to ascertain their reference number before renewing their line, was somewhere in there loose. Brokers did not carry whole files up to the Room, but extracted whatever they needed each day to put in their slipcases.
Freddie Myers was by no means the only “character” in the brokers’ office. Cyril Cholmondeley, pronounced Chumley, and his friend Ramses Barrington-Knightley behaved like the cricket-mad characters Charters and Caldicott played on screen by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne in the 1938 film The Lady Vanishes directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
During the week Cyril stayed at his club on Pall Mall, and took the Tube from Charing Cross, and Ramses came in from Bayswater. Mysteriously each arrived together at Chandlers’ main entrance revolving doors at nine twenty-five, with courteous “Good morning, old boy,”s and “After you,”... and “No, after you”s. The young brokers secretly envied the blithe and blameless lives that the pair led, but resolved never to become as they were, unpromoted and over the hill: toujours la politesse was prejudicial to upward mobility in a cut-and-thrust world.
Cyril was portly and moustachioed, and Ramses lean and clean-shaven; otherwise there was nothing to tell between them: they had attended the same school, Harrow, their voices and mannerisms were identical, they went to the same tailor, and their families holidayed together. Both carried Swaine Adeney Brigg umbrellas irrespective of the weather forecast. They worked on the same accounts and visited underwriters in tandem at their own pace and reliably. They did the Times crossword over coffee every day in the Captains’ Room, separately except when they were both stuck on the same clue, which they always were, at the same table facing the portrait of Churchill by Alfred Egerton Cooper; and ate lunch together at an undisclosed City location where, because one did not discuss business at meals, they talked cricket.
Cholmondeley and Barrington-Knightley did not entertain underwriters to lunch, nor did they wine and dine clients, few of whom they had met, because the assistant director they reported to did not want them to, which suited them because they preferred to correspond with them by cable and letter. They did not negotiate with underwriters, because gentlemen did not haggle, but took what the market offered. Only a bounder held out for less than the going rate, or demanded broader than usual coverage. The beneficiaries of the policies that they arranged wanted Lloyd’s of London security behind them, rather than that of some fly-by-night insurance company, even if the price was higher, which it always was…that was why one came to Lloyd’s.
Cyril and Ramses did not accord rank in the commercial world any greater respect than that they showed to everyone as a matter of courtesy. Nor did they feel humiliated by their lowly station, and they were always happy to oblige when grey hair, good breeding, acquaintance with minor royalty, and an MCC tie, were needed to impress someone else’s client. Other than Arbella they were the only ones who knew their way around the Tower of London, and they never objected to taking colonials’ wives on tours of the place.
But at five-thirty precisely Cholmondeley and Barrington-Knightley put work out their heads and departed to the theatre, concert hall, opera or ballet, or to dinner with friends.
One executive who was irritated by C & R’s lack of rah-rah enthusiasm for corporate goals had tried to chivvy them along. ‘You’re a right pair of old tortoises, you are,’ he said, ‘the speed you get around. Why don’t you split up? You’d get twice as much done. Last time I checked, this company wasn’t a charity.’
There was a silence while C & R looked at each other, then Ramses said, ‘I say, Chum, give him the benefit of the doubt, he might be right: you are rather slow, you know.’
‘My dear Ramses, it’s quite the opposite. Not that I would have mentioned it otherwise, but you positively hold me back.’
‘Nonsense, old fellow, I’m just keeping step with you.’
‘Don’t old-fellow me, old horse. I seem to remember I had the better of you at tennis last week, notwithstanding my few extra pounds.’
‘That’s a bit thick. You know I had a strained hamstring.’
‘And I’d a broken string on my racquet, didn’t have a spare.’
‘Well, there it is. “More haste, less speed,” is the gist of what this chappy’s saying, I gather.’
‘Counter-productive. Do it faster, make mistakes.’
‘Bad form, I call it. “Haste makes waste.”’
‘Lets the side down. He mentioned tortoises. The tortoise won the race, not the hare.’
‘He’s lost most of his. None of our clients have complained, have they?’
‘Not that I’m aware.’
‘I dare say he’s feeling the
strain of haring about too much himself.’
‘Best to ignore him, then.’
‘They all burn out sooner or later.’
‘Perhaps he’ll go away in a moment.’
‘I don’t know. He’s a stubborn cove, this one.’
‘Where will we have luncheon?’
‘What’s today?’
‘Wednesday. No, Thursday.’
‘Then the Lime Street Club. It’s roast lamb.’
‘Perhaps old Buffy Broadstairs’ll be in. Haven’t seen him in a while.’
‘Fancy a few overs at Lord’s this afternoon?’
‘Splendid idea. We’ve not much on at the moment.’
‘At least this one won’t be there.’
‘Who?’
‘Chap talking to us.’
‘Football man, no doubt. “Soccer.”’
‘Not the sort who would be interested in...’
‘...the Gentlemen versus the Players? Hardly. Look at his neckwear.’
‘Rabbit wearing a bow tie. What school’s that?
‘It’s not Downside.’
‘No Old Gregorian he.’
‘...’
‘...’
‘Well, I was right.’
‘About what?’
‘The chap who was here. He isn’t any more.’
‘Good show. Come on, let’s get up to the Room.’
Long after Cholmondeley and Barrington-Knightley had left for the day, the younger ambitious generation was still hunkered down over their telex pads, and nipping out to traipse down the executive corridor, known as the Golden Mile, on the pretext of needing to see their bosses, who were on the telephone to North America, so that they could show them how late they were working.
At seven o’clock a group of them would cab it to the Carlton Towers to meet some already well-oiled buckaroo from Houston, take him to Daphne’s for dinner, and pour him into a taxi back to his hotel. Then they would head to Raffles nightclub on the King’s Road, where they would frolic on expenses—the snoring client was allegedly still with them—before hitting the blackjack table at the Connoisseur Club before calling it a night.
While the scions of aristocracy and braying Sloane Rangers with their Blue Pomaded centre-parted hair styled at Trumper’s did not give a damn, because they had money and nothing else to do with their time except practise dry-casting on their parents’ lawns for the Scottish grilse they hoped to catch that weekend, it was worrisome to the middle-class penurious university graduates who had joined Chandlers as management trainees, at negligible pay, that the Essex brigade—comprising youngsters who had not attended university, and who were employed at salaries only a little less than their own—proved such an obstacle to what turned out to be a pie-crust promise of swift advancement.
Despite the graduates’ age seniority of several years, they had no experience of the world and how to get on in the school of hard knocks, unlike these sharp-elbowed upstarts with their lamentable accents and polyester suits.
“The Chimp” was an East Ender, a loyal and enthusiastic individual who communicated by means of whoops and grunts. He worked like a slave for the most meagre of salaries, was pathetically grateful if anyone took the trouble to speak to him, and expressed his pleasure at the smallest kindness with Smike-like effusiveness and much appreciative chattering of teeth.
Since the Chimp was known to live in reduced circumstances, and to have a wife who spent her days leaving equally gibberish messages for her husband at the office, nobody had the heart to make life more difficult for him than it already was. He hoarded his luncheon vouchers instead of squandering them on coffee and rolls downstairs at the greasy spoon, and took bags of canteen sandwiches home for dinner.
The Chimp endeared himself to everyone by always offering to get his co-workers “scratches” done. Scratches were underwriters’ initials that had to be obtained on endorsements, or riders, to contracts, making some footling amendment such as a change in the assured’s name from the Acme Insurance Company to the New Acme Insurance Company. Brokers were embarrassed to be seen taking the glaring white panels—they were printed with crossword-like boxes for each syndicate to initial, signifying its agreement to whatever contract change was to be made—instead of the pristine grey slips that denoted a new placement, around the market because it implied that they were not senior or trusted enough to negotiate terms.
Getting a risk quoted was a broker’s premier job, because it involved dealing with the market leaders. Only when a rate or rates had been secured and presented to a client, and a “firm order” obtained, could the broker proceed around the market in an attempt to secure enough lines to complete the order; which task, because it involved a new placement was a responsibility much greater than being charged with getting an as-before contract renewed with, one hoped, the same underwriters the following year.
Nonetheless, a contract renewal was still preferable to getting the hateful scratches done, a job that put one on a level only marginally above that of being a claims broker, which in turn was only slightly superior to working in the back office on accounts and contract wordings, which was only a little more interesting than studying for one’s ACII, or Chartered Insurance Institute exams, which nobody bothered to do—even the bosses took a dim view of any trainee who tried to impress them by studying for them.
Occasionally brokers would give the Chimp their unplaceable contracts, the no-hopers that nonetheless had to be shown around the market for form’s sake to prove to the client or prospective client that they had been turned down by everyone; or, if a rate had been secured from some third-rate underwriter, that they were uncompletable. Frequently the brokers were astounded when the Chimp returned to the office with sellable rates and lines on their “dogs”. How the Chimp achieved the impossible was a mystery even to the underwriters whom he had somehow suckered or soft-soaped into subscribing to them; and as Chandler Brothers’ simian servitor was nattering his way back to the office in the company of some fellow worker he had latched onto along the way, these Chimp-Chumps, as such underwriters were called, having come to their senses, would be scrambling unsuccessfully to offload the thing in the reinsurance or secondary market at twice the premium.
The Chinless Wonder was another well-heeled ex-military man, late of the Grenadier Guards, a regiment for which he was genetically ill-suited because had no underside to his jaw over which to secure the strap of his bearskin. Several times the King had complained to Chinless’s Commanding Officer about it falling off on ceremonial occasions.
Chinless had been dismissed from the military for insubordination, after an incident involving his Regimental Sergeant-Major, Mr Battershell—a man with chins to spare who used to rub the fact in, literally, by obtruding them during inspection where Chinless’s own might have been, so that they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
“There’s a cunt at the end of this stick, Guardsman,” the pigeon-chested Sergeant-Major snarled one day after watching a square-bashing rehearsal for Trooping the Colour, as he poked Chinless, while he was standing in the At Ease position, in the chest with his pace-stick.
“Not at this end, sah!”, responded Chinless; and he went on to inform Mr Batters-Hell that, in support of his refutation, he understood that Mr Batters-Hell’s maternal ancestor was the woman who had put the cunt in Scunthorpe.
The Chinless Wonder, who was a tireless practical joker, had Chimp-speak down pat, and made many an underwriter jump by imitating his unmistakable sounds behind the box. In the mornings when the Chimp left the office, Chinless would give vent to the general relief by scampering across the desktops, dragging his knuckles and screaming until called from the Golden Mile to complain about the noise.
On one occasion the Chief Executive came round in person. Chinless got off the desk, saluted him, answered a ringing phone and handed it to his chief, informing him that his office was forwarding a call from his mistress. The young brokers occasionally saw the CEO, whose name was Ranulph, in the
company of this woman, a sultry Argentinian temptress called Ramona who carried it all before her, at Annabel’s nightclub; after which they were confident that American Express could rely upon their outstanding expense account balances that month being paid in full.
The boss scowled at Chinless and grabbed the handset. ‘Hello, Honeybunch, how are you?’ he crooned into the mouthpiece—he was proud of his extramarital accomplishments, and did not care who knew about them, with one exception: his wife—‘Is Honeybunch looking forward to putting on her camiknickers tonight, the pair Daddy got her for her birthday, and spanking him for being so naughty? Guess what, Honeybunch: the Old Lady thinks that Daddy’s staying in town tonight for dinner with a client, instead of meeting Honeybunch at the flat at six and eating caviar out of her belly-button.’
At home in Hove and on the other end of the line, the Old Lady, otherwise known as the Chief Executive’s wife, or Arlene, was chagrined that she was the one to get all the proof she needed so easily of her husband’s latest infidelity, rather than the private investigator whom she had paid handsomely to do the job for her in addition to forking out for his wire-tapping service, which was extra.
Arlene had only telephoned Ranulph to tell him to order a case of good champagne—she knew nothing about wine except how to drink it—on his account at Berry Bros & Rudd for her to serve at her next ladies’ book club meeting—it was her turn to host.
Notwithstanding, thanks to Chinless’s penchant for mischief, the Ranulph and Ramona show was over...or perhaps not, though it was hardly likely that Argentina would stick around now that Arlene had everything she required to secure a substantial divorce settlement and marry a man who was wealthier and better-looking than Ranulph, and who did not fall asleep on the job; and if Honeybunch knew what was good for her, and Arlene suspected that she did, she would soon be on the qui vive for someone similar herself.
Who knew? perhaps Arlene and Ramona could be of mutual assistance again.