by Ashly Graham
Arbella understood why the union office-cleaners who came in at night had won the battle with management over whether or not cleaning the place was included in their job description, without a wage increase and the provision of HazMat suits. It no longer was.
Oink’s arms were short with small hands and fingers that resembled flippers. The balls of his thumbs were covered by the frayed sleeves of a heavily darned grey jersey—Arbella wondered who might have done this, for Oink was not married; perhaps it was the jersey’s former owner—which protruded from the polyester suit jacket that he never took off in the office…the shirt it covered did not bear thinking about.
The jacket was buttoned in the middle, and strained so tightly across Oink’s stomach that the button threatened to ping off with the velocity of a bullet. The material was stained and, like the carpet tiles, ashy and burned in places by careless cigarette butts and matches. The tie, which might have been that of a minor public school, was twisted and stretched and dark with grease, and the shirt collar that it loosely secured rimmed with dirt.
From above swollen cheeks, Oink scrutinized his visitor with small red rheumy eyes. His eyes flickered downwards, to reassure himself that he could grab what was left of his food faster than she could.
Arbella’s nose wrinkled. ‘Oink, please. Mr Oink. As my boss, I’d appreciate a pointer or two from you on how to handle Mr Carew when I go to see him. You gave me my first new risk yesterday to get quoted and led, and I would like Carew to be the first to see it.’
Oink swallowed a little too early and the bolus of food headed south, causing his collar and tie to strain over his bulging Adam’s apple. For a moment there was doubt as to whether the oesophagus would be equal to the task demanded of it, and a brief sheen of alarm crossed Oink’s badly shaven features; but the crisis passed. He took a mouthful of office coffee from a plastic cup, tore another bite from the matter before him, and the motion of his jaw resumed.
Without removing his gaze from Arbella’s he reached into his jacket pocket, and with one hand withdrew a fresh cigarette, put it in the corner of his mouth next to the half-smoked filter of the old one, and lit it with a loose Swan Vesta that he struck on the edge of his desk. The skin around his eyes puckered in the acrid haze, the cigarette bobbled, and with a bubbling inhalation of phlegm Oink sniffed so hard that it seemed to Arbella the surrounding morsels and crumbs jumped an inch closer to him. It was clear that her boss had nothing to say to her on the subject.
Anxious not to prolong the encounter, Arbella stood up with a haughty expression and withdrew. In the ladies’ she washed her hands twice, brushed her teeth with the miniature kit that she kept in her desk, and dabbed a little scent behind her ears to counteract the wretched smell that had invested her clothes.
It was not many days before Arbella reluctantly accepted that she could not hold off seeing Carew any longer. She needed some new markets to complete several risks that some underwriters had declined to renew owing to the prevalence of rate reductions in the current soft market; and, with any luck, to find someone to quote a small new offering that Oink, to her great surprise, had entrusted her with to see what she might make of it.
As Arbella entered the Room at the south-east entrance, as bad luck would have it the Lutine bell rang once to suspend trading, and the revolving door was stopped and locked behind her by the attendant waiter who a moment before had checked her Chandler Brothers Substitute’s card. It was announced over the Tannoy that there was to be a presentation ceremony, on the ground floor in the open area before the rostrum, of a Gold Medal to the retiring Chairman of Lloyd’s.
The honoree was an underwriter called Erskine Dodge-Bullitt. Dodge-Bullitt was known in the community as Dumdum, because of the speedy and explosive revenge that he took upon those who opposed or crossed him; and his obtusity, which ironically had served him as well as a blundering army tank may roll over a concealed sniper. He was an absentee—he left day-to-day underwriting to his deputies—marine underwriter, who also controlled a number of non-marine operations that he had expanded into a network of interconnected business interests, some of them related to insurance and reinsurance.
Such an occasion was a rarity: Lloyd’s Gold Medals were only awarded to those who had done the institution, as Othello the Moor claimed to have on behalf of the state of Venice, “some service”. In this case the magnitude of the usefulness, which was supposed to be determined by vote of the Corporation’s central Committee, had been measured by the beneficiary himself not long after he had decided to elect himself Chairman of Lloyd’s.
Later in the year Erskine was destined to become Sir Erskine, in recognition of services of his own recognizance rendered to Industry.
For such a meaningless ceremonial occasion during which no business could be done, Lloyd’s would normally be deserted of underwriters and brokers as, forewarned, the former stayed in their offices catching up on paperwork, and the latter holed up in the pubs and wine bars.
But in order to command the largest possible audience Dumdum had neglected to inform the press office of what was to take place, and the waiters had been instructed to bar and guard the doors, ostensibly in the interests of security while a number of very important Names and City of London dignitaries, including a Prince of the Realm, a Government Minister, and the Mayor, were in the building.
Those trapped inside either resigned themselves to lounging around the boxes, determined to ignore what was going on, or were massed around the balcony rail in the hope of spotting a celebrity, film or sports star below as they trooped downstairs after being entertained to refreshments in the Committee Room and were ushered into rows of chairs in the centre of the marine floor.
When everyone was seated and expectant Erskine Dodge-Bullitt entered and mounted a temporary podium that had been erected close to the rostrum in order to play up his status as the father of the Market and cause people to remark how little distance separated him from deification. Dumdum was gratified to observe so many of his captive administrative and commercial constituents before him.
Proudly he considered how he had fleeced many of them over the years so discreetly via commissions and doing backdoor trades at differential rates without their detecting the snickety-snick of the shears. For it had been Erskine’s genius to take care that they made handsome onshore profits from his offshore dealings, and never thought to begrudge him his villa in Cap Ferrat, his Regency furniture, his collection of Impressionist art, his Swiss bank account, and the yacht that was moored three down from Onassis’s on the portside at the entrance to Monaco harbour.
As boring and self-congratulatory as Dumdum’s speech was, it began with an arresting choice of metaphor in place of the platitudes that were customary on such occasions. Erskine was proud of his marine heritage, and fond of salty epithets, and saw no reason to hold his language in check in deference to the senior members of Society who were present; not after all that he had done for them. He would be judged by his deeds not his words.
‘When I learned,’ he boomed, ‘that I was to be presented with Lloyd’s Gold Medal—well, to use a nautical expression, you could have buggered me through my oilskins.’
This was met with a rumble of throat-clearings from the male guests, and gasps from the lady aristocrats in their tight-fitting dresses, one of whom sustained a wardrobe malfunction as her bodice ripped. An apoplectic pearl button ricocheted off the Lutine bell. The Prince of the Realm, who had served in the Navy, chuckled. The Countess of Bogs and Pigswillity fainted into the lap of Rear Admiral (Ret’d) Sir St John Longdong, KVCO, CMG, just as he was informing the Conservative Member of Parliament for Rottenborough that such an act as Dumdum was referring to would void the waterproofing guarantee on the sailors’ yellow prophylactic garments that his company supplied to the Senior Service. Some Names vowed to resign, while others made up their minds to contact their managing agents immediately afterwards and increase their lines on the Dodge-Bullitt syndicates.
That old
rogue Erskine! In a charcoal sketch in the style of H.M. Bateman, an artist for the Daily Gunge who had slipped past the waiters recorded the simultaneous expressions of astonishment, horror, and delight on the faces of the audience. Guffaws of appreciation came from the gallery and balcony and the boxes within earshot of the Tannoy.
Now, thought Arbella, while the attention of the young brokers who liked to follow her progress was distracted, was the perfect opportunity to head for the farthest corner of the marine floor to see if Mr Carew was at his box. For it occurred to her that, as removed from the action as he was, he might either be unaware of the affair taking place at the epicentre of the Room, or uninterested in it.
Hidden from view, Carew might be willing to take advantage of the hiatus in general trading, and, while others sat chafing at the loss of time and money, prepared to put some surreptitious income on the books that might otherwise not come his way. But as wary as she was about the mixture of fulsome endorsement and evasive answers that she had been given about Mr Carew, Arbella already suspected that the man was as picky as they came. If that proved to be the case she could deny that she had been to see him…and there would be no witnesses to swear otherwise.
The first thing that struck Arbella about Mr Carew, as she rounded the pillar behind which his box was situated where the roar of the Room was reduced to a murmur, was how young he looked. She had expected a wizened little man, peering over half-moon glasses and mumbling to himself as he perused old tomes of maritime law and scribbled notes in a crabby hand in the margins.
But as she got closer she could see that the underwriter’s face, which was very pale, was possessed of an elven agelessness. He had a curtain of fine blond hair, worn shoulder-length in what occurred to her could most accurately be described as Elizabethan style. Each strand had a loose integrity to it, and the whole hung very straight and seemed to change colour from fair to silver in the artificial light.
When he saw her coming, Mr Carew stood up courteously and extended a straight arm to shake her hand. To be received in such a fashion, even upon a first visit, was unusual in Lloyd’s unless a syndicate Name was being brought by his agent to meet his underwriter. At the approach of the female claims brokers, who—very unfairly—because of the nature of their jobs were assumed not to be the most morally fastidious of women, most underwriters merely checked the package out from top to toe, lingering over the important bits without any attempt at concealment.
This one looked at her levelly and did no such thing. Now that his full frame was visible, Arbella saw that he was tall and slim, with the slight stoop of one who led a sedentary life or had banged his head on too many low door-frames. Fully unwound he must have been several inches over six feet.
‘Good morning, sir,’ she said, and took the proffered hand.
Carew returned the greeting in a pleasant baritone. ‘Good morning to you.’ He motioned Arbella to the seat opposite, which at similar boxes would be occupied by a deputy, and which today, perhaps because it was a Monday, was clear of fly-fishing-related literature and materials.
For a broker to be sitting down and facing an underwriter, instead of standing at his side in the manner of a waiter serving a dish to a customer, was as disconcerting to Arbella as turning to say goodbye to a stranger, upon disembarking from an aeroplane, whom one has been talking to for hours on a long-haul flight, and dozing off as closely to as one might a family member at home. There was an implied equality about delivering one’s pitch eye to eye that seemed especially inappropriate for a junior broker.
Arbella noted that Carew was examining her with a curious look of appraisal as if he were trying to guess what she was thinking. In an effort to distract herself she lowered her gaze to his hands; the nails on his long fingers, she noticed, had perfect crescents above the cuticles and were filed into ovals.
Though it was up to her to open the discussion she was diffident and said nothing, instead shifting her examination to the fly-tying materials that were scattered about the desk. In addition to a vice there were bobbins of thread, hackle pliers, scissors, a hair-stacker, wire, coloured wools, yarns and flosses, and a magnifying lens on a stand.
To one side was a miscellany of pieces of fur, as well as the capes, wings, saddles, and tails of various fowl. Many of the items were familiar to her from her grandfather’s collection.
Mr Carew detected her interest. ‘Do you fish?’
Arbella shook her head with a smile. ‘No, but my grandfather...he used to show me his collection of dry and wet flies. I was never very good at distinguishing the types and species of hair and feathers, there are so many of them. Not that my grandfather knew any more than I did, but we loved to look at them together.’
‘Well, let me show you what’s what.’ Carew reached to the end of the box and drew several piles towards him. ‘Beasts of the field first: this one’s grizzly bear, and that elk. White bucktail, mohair, moose mane. Hog bristle. Deer body. Fox, badger, squirrel, rabbit. Seal fur—a substitute, I assure you. A hare’s mask and a couple of ears.’
‘You have a very varied collection.’
Carew surveyed the congeries of hair and feathers before them. ‘You would think a grown man could find something better to do with his time. Strange as it might seem to you, I never go fishing. Megan Boyd, the famous Scottish fly-tyer, who has made thousands and works seven days a week, told me she has never caught a fish. Like her I get all the satisfaction I want from tying flies, and the only useful things here for my purposes are the quills I use to make pens…’
Thought Arbella, aha!, he must wear out so many quills by writing lines on brokers’ slips.
Ended Carew, ‘…for underwriters around the Market. They’re much in demand.’
Stupid me, thought Arbella, getting ahead of myself. ‘I quite understand. Fly-tying is an art. My grandfather, on the other hand, who couldn’t tie flies for toffee [what a childish expression to use, she thought] and bought all of his, was nonetheless passionate about the sport; he said it elevated the spirit and made one feel at one with Nature.
‘Ah, I do recognize these feathers: peacock and pheasant. Duck. This might be partridge.’
‘It is.’
‘And ostrich?’
‘Right again.’
‘It’s coming back to me a little, and not just from remembering my mother’s collection of old ladies’ hat decorations. And my father used to shoot. It’s criminal the animals and birds that people have hunted to extinction. The Victorians and Edwardians slaughtered any creature they could get their sights on, not just game. Let’s see…these are domestic: cock and hen and…goose I should think. Turkey? These I don’t know.’
‘Guinea fowl and heron.’ Carew opened a drawer. ‘Speaking of hats, here’s half a marabou plume that I got it off a bonnet a lady left in a railway station waiting-room. And part of a beaver hat I acquired at a sale of unclaimed items at the lost-and-found office at Euston Station.’
Arbella smiled. ‘You and my grandfather would have got along famously. Though, the only headwear he ever pinched was a policeman’s helmet on Boat Race night. You probably know that there’s a ceremony going on at the rostrum at the moment, and there are plenty of ladies there in fancy hats, so I could nip over while they’re distracted and….’
She shut up, unable to believe what she had been about to propose. And had she suggested that Mr Carew had stolen the marabou? She must be making a terrible impression, she thought.
Carew did not seem to have taken anything amiss. After a furtive look around the box he took from the drawer a few feathers that had creamy white eyes on them.
‘Jungle cock,’ he whispered conspiratorially; ‘but very old, I hasten to add. It’s illegal to procure these days because of the species’ rarity. I got these way back in...they were purchased well before the ban. Beautiful, don’t you think?’
Relieved, Arbella nodded. Then she remembered why she was there, and was embarrassed by the paltry nature of the new and unquoted risk
that Oink had entrusted to her and which she would have to produce. It was for a small fleet of privately owned fishing vessels, based at a terminal in Seattle on the west coast of the United States: purse-seiners that caught salmon in Puget Sound and in the waters off Alaska.
The commercial risk was such an ungainly contrast to the refined sport of fly-fishing: surrounding the fish with a wall of commercial netting rather than catching them one by one with dry flies. The irony would surely not be lost on Mr Carew, a man who was so sensitive as to disdain the practical side of fishing in favour of the delicate task of manufacturing, not attractor flies or spinning lures, but delicate entomological imitations on size twenty-four hooks and two-pound nylon tippets for accurate presentation to trout rises.
Arbella felt suddenly miserable. It was as if her whole life had just been channelled into the contents of her slipcase; and she was reminded of the line from the Book of Job, “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?”. How could she have thought to catch this whale with a single plankton?
Rattled, she heard herself prattling. ‘Now my grandfather, eccentric that he was, for some reason liked to fish at night. His line would get into an awful mess, and often he fell into the water of whatever lake or stream or river he was fishing. It was a miracle that he didn’t drown or catch pneumonia, trying to retrieve his flies from trees and bushes by the light of a torch. He didn’t mind not catching fish, and he never did very many, even by day, but he hated to lose the flies.
‘What’s odd is that although he didn’t have the patience to make flies, my grandfather would spend hours and hours constructing model ships, the old tall ones with lots of sails, to put in Haig Dimple whisky bottles. He said it was even more fun than drinking the whisky. He made them with the masts lying down, so that he could put them in the neck of the bottle and pull them upright with thread.