by Ashly Graham
Without waiting for Ranulph’s wrath to descend upon him, Chinless, hooting with hilarity, fell onto all fours, tossed a banana skin over his shoulder, and raced out of the office clawing at his armpits.
Oink Chandler was a popular individual who was important enough to warrant a glass cubicle of his own outside the brokers’ bullpen, and he was Arbella’s boss. As a black-sheep descendant of the founding family, Oink had gambled and drunk most of his inheritance away, and was working hard at getting rid of the remainder after business hours. He slept, it appeared, in the same brown wrinkled and malodorous suit and shirt as he wore to work. His piggy eyes and features were bloodshot and flushed with indulgence.
Despite his rotundity and shambling walk, Oink was capable of putting on a surprising burst of speed, especially after work when an open pub door swam into his ken. During the day, however, Oink was conscientious about his responsibilities and abstained from betting, except for a call or two to his bookie, and alcohol, even at lunch. He hardly ever went up to the Room because as an Assistant Director he was in immediate charge of all the brokers, and had to be available in the office to give them instructions or advice if they needed them or called in from Lloyd’s with a question.
In the afternoons, as soon as his American and Canadian East Coast clients were at their desks and calling him or vice-versa, Oink would be slumped at his desk jawing with them on the phone with as much mutual exchange of banter as there was of business, a Number Six cigarette wagging in the corner of his mouth, and taking notes of their instructions.
When Oink did go up to the Room he was able to reduce the most impossible ass of an underwriter to tears of laughter with his jokes, and the performance of such stunts as micturating into a waste-paper basket from a dozen feet away in return for a rate reduction. But as much as his clients adored Oink’s irreverent manner, and as much as they had a taste for expensive restaurants like The Ivy, Le Gavroche, and Le Caprice, they drew the line at eating with him.
It was an abhorrent spectacle, and those who witnessed it were never quite the same afterwards, and had difficulty in speaking about the experience. Drinking with Oink was a different matter, if one could hold one’s booze. Five minutes after knocking off at night, Oink came into his own and was to be found standing on one leg at The Ship in Hart Street, buying rounds and pounding down large scotches, preparatory to departing en route to the next watering hole of the evening.
Despite which, he was always first into the office every morning, after a long commute from near the coast, and ready to remonstrate with anyone who was late.
Oink, of course, was hardly alone in the industry in having a taste for drink in quantity at lunchtime, and in return for meting out considerate treatment to brokers, underwriters expected to be well entertained by them, if not as royally as their clients were. The mariners, in particular, were heavily into port, which made sense since they never went to sea, and would spend entire afternoons with their mess-mates polishing off bottle after bottle in the safe haven of the Marine Club.
Underwriters often reasoned that they were doing their Names a favour by taking long lunches with their own kind in their favourite dives, because during their absence they could not be press-ganged by the brokers back to their boxes and bullied into putting loss-making business on the books.
One senior brokerage executive, a legend in his own lunchtime, upon attending his compulsory annual physical examination was deposed by his doctor on the amount of alcohol that he consumed.
The man reflected. ‘I don’t keep count of the number of drinks or units, whatever they are, if that’s what you mean, or the quantity. Maths was never my strong subject. But I’d say my intake is pretty average on any given day.’
‘Be more specific.’
‘Difficult. The size of the glasses varies, and I’m sure a lot of places dilute their spirits or chintz on the measure. In addition to saving time that’s why one orders doubles.’
The doctor rattled a pencil between his teeth. ‘Run me through one of these average days.’
‘Well, around mid morning I’ll pop up to Lloyd’s and see who’s there. If there’s nobody much about I’ll drop into the Club for a sharpener. Bloody Mary, perhaps two—large ones—extra Worcester. You can keep the Tabasco and lemon.’
‘Thanks. You can leave out the twiddly bits.’
‘Then it’s back to Lloyd’s I s’pose round eleven-thirty. At a quarter to one, so as to beat the rush I’ll meet an underwriter at the rostrum and go back to the Club for lunch.’
‘Bread and water?’
‘Surely you jest. I like to eat, but the food is optional. We’ll have a couple of G&Ts to limber up...’
‘Singles or doubles?’
‘I think we covered that. Anyway, they only serve them one way at the Marine Club,’—the doctor made a note—‘on the rocks with a dash of Angostura bitters...sorry, doc. There’ll be a brace of bottles of white with the fish, a nice Sancerre, perhaps, followed by the same of Bordeaux with the meat. I don’t eat dessert because I like to stay in shape, but I’ll partake of a bottle of Sauternes or Beaumes de Venise with the others. Just a glass for me.’
‘Abstemious of you.’
‘Calories are calories, doc. The rest is standard, goes without saying.’
‘Let’s pretend it isn’t and doesn’t.’
‘You know…’
‘Say I don’t.’
‘…port with the Stilton, and kümmel with the coffee, leave out the flaming bit, it burns off the alcohol, and flick the coffee bean at whoever’s at the next table...ah, more than you wanted to know. Then, seeing as I’m a busy man with a division to run, I’ll go back to Lloyd’s. By late afternoon when the market closes my throat’ll be dry from talking, so I’ll stop by the Club for a drop of what it takes to lubricate the larynx for the phone calls I have to make when I get back to the office.’
‘This Marine Club of yours, the manager must appreciate your custom.’
‘We’re friends, sure, and he pushes the boat out for us. As well as the calls there are cables to dictate to my secretary and letters to sign. Then it’s home—I’m close-ish weekdays, Chelsea—for a bath before dinner. There are always clients in town and I’m out most nights, often with my other half. She’ll bring me a tumbler of single Islay malt, Laphroiag’s my favourite, while I’m in the tub...three fingers to help me unwind. To paraphrase Joshua McGee, Laphroiag’s a fist-fighter that comes out swinging; phenolic notes in the nose and palate; medicinal—you should appreciate that, doc—seaweedy, a ton of iodine—I am a marine broker, after all—with sweet notes, kelp, peat, and driftwood. An acquired taste, one might say, but acquired it I have.
‘Then it’s off to the theatre, preferably something I can sleep through. The wife wakes me up for the interval drinks. There’ll be a late dinner afterwards. Martini, very dry, no olive, it displaces the gin. Wine, of course, white, red. Brandy and a cigar to finish. No dancing or nightclubs for me, I like to hit the sack early, so the Trouble and I cab it home. And so to bed. After a nightcap, of course.’
The doctor felt punch-drunk. ‘Mr Mackenzie, let me tell you something. My partner and I recently had a party at our house. Although it was only in the course of the evening, don’t hold that against me, I can safely say that less alcohol was consumed than you are accustomed personally—you, Mr Mackenzie, all on your own—to put away on what you are pleased to call an average day. I don’t dare ask about the weekends when you’re relaxing.
‘If I were to attend one of your celebrations I’d have to check into Britain’s answer to the Betty Ford Center just from the effects of your breath. God, I can feel cirrhosis attacking my liver just from being in the same room as you.’
Mackenzie looked blank. ‘Are we done here? I’m meeting an old friend at the Club for lunch, and FYI I have no intention of confining myself to orange juice. You’re a doctor, haven’t you read that new study about what OJ does to you? If you’re one of those who swears by vitamin C
and pounds down ascorbic acid tablets in great quantity, you’d better watch out, old chap.
‘Tell you what, join us for lunch if you like. Do you good.’
Chapter Seven
At the opposite end of the scale of appetite for risk to Mr William Goldsack was another marine underwriter, Mr Carew.
Carew had been at Lloyd’s for as long as anyone could remember. There was no record that anyone had been able to find as to when his syndicate was formed. Generations of brokers had tried to find evidence that Carew had ever subscribed to a single contract, by descending into the vaults under their office buildings where the old expired slips were stored in fireproof metal boxes.
Many a lunch-hour was spent by glory-seeking young brokers going through tin after tin in search of one of his lines that might provide some clue as to what sort of business might tempt him, as an unusual pattern of dry fly might lure a wily trout onto a fishing hook.
But no matter how far they went back, and though turning anything up seemed as likely as coming across a live dodo in one’s garden, or an ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas, they found nothing. How the man had survived for so long without any premium income was a mystery; unless he had private means, in which case it was most odd that he should choose to fritter his life away twiddling his thumbs on a little old box in an unpopulated out-of-the-way corner of Lloyd’s instead of kicking up his heels in Monte Carlo or St Moritz.
At Lloyd’s each box was identified by an acronym of three or four initials: either those of the names of the founding or active underwriter of the syndicate, or the first letters of his surname. The designation appeared on the die stamp against which underwriters wrote their lines, in the top right-hand corner above the syndicate’s registration number. Carew’s acronym was C.A.R. 001, and his Christian name was unknown. But because to everyone’s best knowledge Mr Carew had never written a risk, no one had ever seen his underwriting stamp or knew if he possessed one.
The eldest member of the Three Rooms’ Club, an old soak called Jamieson, said that he had known someone’s father whose grandfather had known someone whose great-great grandfather had nearly got a line from Carew. While that this would make Carew a very old man indeed—while he seemed to have been around for ever, there was nothing of the ancient mariner about him; in fact he looked quite youthful—confirmed that the story was apocryphal, even allowing for the extreme unreliability of the source it was more than passing strange that Jamieson should persist in maintaining the truth of the assertion.
Though Carew was as useful to the brokerage community as tits on a bull, Lloyd’s loved its legends and enjoyed sharing the lore about him. While Goldsack was famed for his ravening hunger for business and gargantuan underwriting capacity for the largest and juiciest porterhouse steaks in the house from the brokers who waited on him, with baked potato heavily buttered, side-plate of creamed spinach, and double order of onion rings, Carew lived on locusts and honey in the desert. Metaphorically speaking, because the only thing the two men had in common was that neither accepted luncheon invitations from brokers. No one knew where Goldsack ate—he just disappeared at one o’clock and reappeared at two-thirty.
Carew brought his own vittles to work with him, and either consumed them at his desk or, when the weather was fine, on a bench in Fenchurch Court. He was also often seen walking in the general direction of the Tower of London, but never appeared in any of the restaurants and coffee shops along the way.
Carew’s box was at the opposite end of the Floor from Bullion Bill’s, tucked behind a pillar in an appendix of the Room in the farthest corner away from the entrances. It was so removed from the vortex of activity around the rostrum and the balcony circle that it seemed not to be in Lloyd’s at all. Brokers only passed through the area to get to the couple of telephone booths behind a wall from which they could call their offices, and a number of empty boxes where they might get away from the hurly-burly, review their placements, or converse privately with a colleague. The air here was so still that the Caller’s voice sounded like that of an Arcadian shepherd summoning his sheep from a distant hillside.
As general as intelligence was in the Lloyd’s community about the dryness of the Caruvian underwriting well, first knowledge of it came as part of the initiation process or hazing that each trainee broker was subjected to on the occasion of his being sent up to Lloyd’s for the first time. It was a ritual like that of a new boy at public school being ordered by a prefect to go to the tuck shop to buy a tin of elbow grease.
The venerable underwriter was a soft touch for a big line, the neophyte would be assured; without doubt he was the best underwriter on whom to cut one’s teeth as an intermediary because he was an easy touch and wrote anything and everything that was put before him.
Then, inevitably and without exception, so conclusively would the inductee be apprised on this expectant visit to Mr Carew of his disinterest in commerce, that there was no point in ever going back for a second try; and no one ever did.
Fortunately Carew was a gentle and patient man, who did not object, or if he did he never showed it or said anything to that effect, to the tired old joke that was played, at his expense, on each inductee who made the pilgrimage to see the promiscuous Mr Carew, anxious only that he should not be the first broker to have his risk declined by him.
As diffident as Carew’s manner was, he liked people, and was always interested to meet and talk to newcomers to the market. It made a change from tying trout and salmon fishing flies, which is how he spent much of his time, on a vice that he clamped to the edge of his small box, which had the usual tower of drawers and shelves in the middle, and a single seat opposite him that was usually stacked with fishing paraphernalia.
With no portfolio to manage, Carew had no need of a deputy, entry boy or claims underwriter, and his only company was the occasional visiting youth. He turned out some beautiful fishing patterns, selecting hair and feathers from a variety of animal pelts and bird remiges and rectrices, including those of some protected or endangered species of mammal, and plumage that had last been seen on the hats of Edwardian women.
Those of an ornithological bent who swung by the box to get a look, swore that some of the birds were either extinct or so scarce as to induce apoplexy in any Audubon Society member who saw them.
When he was approached, Carew would look up from winding a harl from a feather round the shank of a hook, or lacquering the whipping on a head, and smile. Ranged on the shelf above him, the broker would note, were the standard reference books of the Merchant Marine by Jane’s, ordered by year; and some long out of print works of naval history, bound in cracked dull leather, and accounts of the voyages of early explorers. There were a few rectangular metal binders with snap hinges and yellow index sheets, but they were empty of underwriting information cards.
What was in the drawers and cupboards above and below was anyone’s guess. Also puzzling to the virgin pedlars was the absence of tell-tale signs of underwriting, such as ink on the blotting-paper, stamps and pens, and nubs on the leaves of scrap paper that hung from the hook on the side of the box.
Puzzling, at least, until Mr Carew, having listened attentively to the young persons’ faltering presentation of whatever it was that they had brought for his delectation, said that he was very sorry but really this was not his cup of tea…or coffee. He would thank them for coming to see him, apologize for not being able to help out, and wish each broker good fortune in the placement. Upon which the poor tyro would depart, certain that he would be fired as soon as he got back to the office, ridiculed by everyone as he cleared out his desk, and compelled to apply for a job as a shop assistant.
But that did not happen. Instead, whomever it was that he reported to—at Chandlers it was Oink—would take him into an empty room, shut the door, and cheerfully explain that all new bugs had to go through what he just had, and that they were expected to be good sports about it, bearing in mind that next time they would be ones laughing at someone else’s exp
ense.
After being sworn to keep the thing a secret upon pain of much worse than firing, the blooded broker would be bought drinks that night and told to make the best of his career opportunity.
Which was all very well, but still no one was any the wiser about what made Carew tick. For lack of a better explanation the reluctant consensus was that he must have such a scholarly interest in risk that he preferred to confine himself to the theoretical side of it, and refrain from putting his expert knowledge to practical purpose and his reputation for an empty but unsullied record on the line.
In other words Carew was not the sort of person to write a Tonner.
Tonner policies were not for the faint of heart or poor of spirit or weak of stomach. They originated as simple bets by the armchair swashbucklers at Lloyd’s that a ship reported missing would either come home, or it would not. Even the most intellectually challenged subscribing underwriter understood this to mean that the premium was either free money, because whatever might happen had likely already happened, or that he had just assumed a share of a total loss. Win or lose, it was an opportunity to benefit mankind by slowing the growth of the black art of actuarial science, and confound those who practised it.
Over time, the search for a definition of what constituted a tonner prompted underwriters to enter into so many of them, and to come up with such increasingly liberal interpretations of what that construction might be, that ultimately they were banned as being contrary to the spirit of Lloyd’s, where men were supposed to have at least a foggy idea of what they were insuring.
But until the gavel came down, in a ruling by the Committee that every policy must have at least a smidgen of insurable interest to it or else it was nothing more than a wager, when a tonner was placed and sent to the Lloyd’s Policy Signing Office, or Bureau, for processing the clerk, having scratched his head in vain, stamped the thing “Policy Proof of Interest”—a sort of res ipsa loquitur that was a cop-out but it would have to do—and chucked it in his Out tray.