by Ashly Graham
‘We won’t stay long. Please come...it’s entirely thanks to you that he’s started seeing things in a new light. I am most grateful for that.’
Grammaticus looked flustered when he answered the door, and the model of English Renaissance man could be heard bawling for him from within.
‘Don’t worry,’ Carew assured Arbella, ‘it’s never serious, as I dare say you’ve already surmised. What is it this time, Grammaticus? Good morrow, by the way.’
‘Master Carew, Mistress Arbella…His Nibs cut his finger on a sheet of vellum—bitten by the tool of knowledge, he calls it—and needs ointment and plaster immediately. You’d better let me take care of it before you go in, Master Carew. He’ll not take it well, you being here on an off day.’
As they waited they heard fulminating from within. ‘This is the wrong berlady salve, dull-pate, it is for boils.’
‘If you would bother to read the label, Genius,’ came Grammaticus’s patient but weary voice, ‘you’ll see it says “For Cuts, Contusions and Bruises.” You made it yourself, remember? This morning when you had a headache, I brought your tincture “For Migraines and Pains of the Neck.” I have one of the first right now, and you are the second.
‘For your shivers between breakfast and mid-morning coffee, I brought the embrocation or liniment for “Agues, Palsies and related Tremors.” Last night after dinner you called for a powder for indigestion. At bedtime, fearing an infection from the night air through an open window, you wanted a certain herb and an amulet.
‘I think by now I can be trusted to bring you the right stuff, despite the great diversity of choice; though in my opinion none of it would work were there anything to cure. We’ve not enough storage space for half of it. To say that you enjoy ill health, old man, is to put a premium on misery.’
‘Grammaticus, thou art a very ignorant person. I should have dismissed thee long ago, rather than continue to pay your exorbitant wages.’
‘You, manage without me! And what wages? I’ve never had a groat from you, and have lost count of the times his lordship has tried to hire me away from you…at attractive terms, I might add. Instead of which I’m on a fast track for sainthood. Who else would have stood for your tantrums, not only up to the day you got the chop but for centuries thereafter?’
Carew said, ‘Come on, Arbella, this could go on all day.’
Together they entered the main room.
‘Good morning, Father.’
Sir Walter, whose hand was thickly wrapped in a bandage, regarded the pair evilly. ‘What the devil are you two...’
‘We’ll come straight to the point, Father, since you don’t appear to be in the best of humours. Miss Arbella has drafted a contract that will, we hope, afford you the means to outfit a return expedition to Guiana. She has brought a copy of it with her, which we propose to leave for you to review.
‘You need to understand that it has yet to be subscribed. Even with me sponsoring the venture and Arbella as the broker, it’s going to be a major task for her to complete in light of your unlucky history, by far the most difficult she has ever tackled or ever will.’
‘How dare you, sir. My achievements speak for themselves.’
‘Indeed they do, Father. That being all we have to say on the matter for the time being, we will cut this visit short and leave you in peace to mull the proposition over.’
Arbella gave Carew the slip and he laid it on an occasional table.
After they left, Grammaticus watched as the muscles of Ralegh’s face worked with indecision. ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’
‘Coffee. Bring me coffee, Grammaticus; that is, if you have sufficient strength left after your recent exertions. I have work to do.’
‘Should you not be resting your finger? I could make you a sling.’
‘Fiddle-faddle. I mean thinking work. Do as you are told and then leave me alone.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Is this a slip I see before me?’, snapped Goldsack, ‘offering nothing in return for a million spondulicks, cash on the nail. Hardly cause for salivation. I knew that little coup of yours would go to your head, young lady. If I made a habit of writing deals like this I’d soon be panhandling, and not for gold, and living on Skid Row. I’d rather write Pluvius for Noah. That man Carew has lost his marbles. Next!’
Arbella felt the vacuum of surrounding ears sucking the news into the Reuters of market intelligence, that Icarus’s wings were melting. But she did not move.
‘The bloody persistence of the girl! Move aside. Next!’
‘But sir…’
‘But sir! Are we in the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem or Lloyd’s of London? Lloyd’s is filled with madmen, but do you take me for a Bedlamite? Or a fool?’
‘No sir. May I point out, sir, that the premium, undefined as it is, could turn out to be extremely substantial; and that the pledge of the entire profits of the expedition could not be more generous.’
‘Pooh! Unlike everyone else in the Room, I don’t deal in uncertainty. There’s no guarantee that the premium will amount to a penny. As for the profit commission, one hundred per cent of zero is zero, ducky.
‘It is clear that this poseur, this Wally Rally, intends to deliver neither premium nor profit. If he wants to spend the rest of his life lounging on a Bahamian beach being plied with piña coladas by dusky maidens, good luck to him, I’ll rent him mine for a non-refundable deposit. So I suggest you have a whip-round for him amongst Chandlers’ directors, not here at…’
Goldsack paused. ‘When did you say the beggar was alive?’
‘I didn’t but it’s on the slip. From fifteen fifty-four to...following the failure of a non-elective surgical procedure in sixteen eighteen...to the present day. He’s taken a licking but his heart’s still ticking.’
‘Don’t come the raw prawn with me, honey.’ Goldsack took a deep breath. ‘This slip stinks to high heaven,’ he said loudly, for the benefit of the human Towers of Pisa surrounding the box. Then he reached up and, tugging Arbella by the hair, pulled her head down so that he could whisper in her ear. She curbed a yelp.
‘Now look’ee here. I’ll write you twenty-five per cent but only “to finish”. Which, if you don’t know, means I shan’t see you again until you’re at seventy-five per cent. Not seventy-four-point-nine-nine-nine, but seventy-five. Got it, sweetie? Even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter: you won’t be coming back.’
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ she whispered back; ‘you won’t regret it.’
‘Nothin’ to regret, darlin’. Ta ta and have a nice day.’ Bullion Bill released her and leaned back. ‘What, are you still here?’ His voice had risen to its usual pitch. ‘You’re acting very cool and casual for a wet-behind-the-ears graduette with a hundred per cent to go on a hiding-to-nothing risk like that.’
‘Ninety-nine, sir. Mr Carew’s the leader with one per cent.’
Goldsack affected perplexity. ‘Call that a lead? Even with my glasses, wherever they are, I can’t read one per cent lines. If that man wants to be a leader he needs to get some capacity. Bring me his reinsurance and I’ll sort that out for him. If he really wants to get back into the market I could use the income, there’s precious little around these days precious enough to be worth writing. Next!’
Over her shoulder, Arbella said, ‘Mr Carew doesn’t buy reinsurance, sir. His lines to date, both of them, will be retained net.’
‘The more fool him. Next! Are you deef back there? Next, I say!’
Where to go next? Upstairs to the non-marine floor, Arbella decided, which she only visited on risks where there were non-marine as well as marine exposures. By the same token non-marine brokers were not strangers downstairs, because in placing their catastrophe contracts with earthquake, volcanic eruption, hurricane, tornado, flood, and tsunami exposures the layered limits were so great that they had dispensation to access the entire market.
As she emerged from the stairwell Arbella walked past Screaming Lord Sutcl
iffe’s box.
“Screaming Lord Sutcliffe” was a vociferous non-marine entertainer of those who would congregate for the pleasure of seeing him humiliate, bully, and excoriate the broker who was “in” with him; emasculate and disembowel him; tear him limb from limb, and throw the remains to the dogs.
In truth, Sutcliffe’s manner was nothing more than a cowardly means of concealing his latent terror of risk. At home he was still a mummy’s boy, for he was a confirmed bachelor, and afraid of spiders. Although as an underwriter Sutcliffe wrote only the smallest most humdrum type of business, which went under the generic title of Inland Marine, such as stamp collections, pets, and personal articles floaters, he treated every submission as if he were being asked to assume the National Debt.
The brokers’ theory was that the man had an unusually small penis.
But Screaming Lord Sutcliffe was the acknowledged market authority on gerbils: when burrowing rodents of the Muridae family, subfamily Gerbillinae, were the plat du jour. there was no way to avoid seeing Sutcliffe first. The same went for guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, mice, parrots, budgerigars, parakeets, canaries, and fish.
A typical interview with Sutters ran as follows:
‘Good morning, sir,’ says the broker cheerfully, knowing that he has nothing to be cheerful about. ‘A shipment of gerbils, sir, from Dungenness to, er, let’s see…just a minute. Er, sorry, sir,’ he falters, riffling through his case; ‘I’m sure I’ve got the slip here somewhere.’
The momentary lapse is enough to trigger Screaming Lord Sutcliffe’s wrath, and he pounces on the gerbil-pedlar like a desert fox. ‘I LIKE THAT,’ he says, his mouth and face contorted into a rictus of scorn as he pans his voice and gaze around the box so that everyone, alerted that the curtain is going up on another performance, stops what he is doing to watch.
Having secured general attention, Sutcliffe smooths his Brylcreemed hair, which is parted in the middle, with both hands. He tugs at his waistcoat and looks behind him, to make sure that the brokers in his queue are aware of what was coming, like the cone geyser Old Faithful erupting with boiling water every ninety minutes or so in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.
As soon as he is satisfied of his audience, Sutcliffe proceeds to eviscerate his victim. ‘I like that!’ he repeats caustically, doing another three hundred and sixty degree turn; ‘there was a time when brokers did their homework, and were properly prepared when they went to see an underwriter. But not now, oh no. These days the old professional standards have been replaced with sloppy, slapdash presentations. Nowadays these parasite brokers think they don’t have to do anything to earn their exorbitant fifteen per cent commissions.’
Sutters eyeballs his deputy across the desk, a lanky broken-spirited individual in a grey suit with a hang-dog expression and sagging frame, whom his lordship pays to bolster his ego with Uriah Heep-like subservience and dead-on-cue sniggers—and settles into his tirade. ‘I mean, look at this spotty specimen, this apology for a broker: is this the best we can expect these days? Pace Marlowe, is this girly-boy likely to launch a thousand slips during his career? I don’t think so!
‘Where’d they dig you up from, sonny? Oxbridge, I suppose. Did Daddy get you the job? Did he buy you a shiny red sports car, and tell you how proud you’re going to make him? At home as you are amongst your cronies on the cocktail circuit, all naice and refained, in here it’s a different story, isn’t it? In here it’s “Er-er-er,” and “Sorry, sir.” What a promising start. Old Sutters won’t harm you, they said; his bark’s worse than his bite, and he’ll write a line on your cargo of Norway rats and thank you for...’
The Screamer draws a deep breath—
‘…for insulting me, you ugglesome boy! What made you think I would touch this vermin with a bargepole? How d’you know these gerbils are not carrying bubonic plague? Where is the disease-free warranty, the certificates of inspection, and of pedigree, and the guarantee of provenance? You don’t have them, do you? you little bastard, you don’t have them because they don’t exist!’
Sutcliffe pinches the broker’s buttock very hard and twists the flesh, in a schoolboy snake bite, as he glances again at the slip. ‘Horrors! It gets worse. A penny a tail? Is that what you’re offering me, a miserable penny a tail? Since when has the rate on gerbils ever been less than a penny and a half?’
The broker mumbles something. ‘Aha! How do I know when brokers are lying? Because their lips move.’ Sutcliffe tosses the slip onto the floor, sticks out a short leg and stamps his Gucci loafer on it. ‘I’ll tell you what. The owner of this gerbil farm, if it exists at all, is a crook; the supplier is a crook, the agent’s a crook, and the shipper’s a crook. You can tell them so from me, Herbert Sutcliffe, leader of gerbils to the gentry.
‘So off you go now, sonny, and dry your tears like a good little Old Etonian. Go and see the Shifting Sands Mutual Insurance Company; they’ll take this Pied Piper total loss in the making off your hands.’ His voice rises to a scream. ‘But it’s not for MEEE! Ee-EH! It makes me MA-AD to see…’
‘Hwa hwa hwa,’ the staff on the box mouth mirthlessly for the tenth time that day; and There-But-For-The-Grace-of-God-Go-I expressions creep onto the faces of the other brokers in line. Furtively they check their offerings for disease warranties, and certificates of provenance, and several tiptoe away.
One broker who has a jeremiad of gerbils, or a lamentation of lemmings, to dispose of, realizes with dismay that he is offering a quarter penny per tail less than his luckless competitor. ‘Bugger,’ he says to the man behind him in line, cocking an ear to the Tannoy; ‘there’s my name again, that’s the third time I’ve been called, so it must be something important. You can have my place and welcome to it.’ And he slopes off.
Fortunately, there was no point in Arbella visiting Screaming Lord Sutcliffe; unless she were to add a section to the Ralegh risk covering the rats in the Tower of London.
Her first port of call was Geoffroy—his surname was triple-barrelled and no one bothered with it. Geoffroy, despite his youth, was the underwriter for one of the biggest and most prestigious syndicates at Lloyd’s. He was long and languid, with fair thinning hair and a peaches-and-cream complexion. He wore out-of-fashion bespoke suits, and striped or pastel-shaded Sea Island cotton shirts, which were faded and frayed at the cuffs in the careless way that bespeaks patrician-hood. At home at his country mansion in Gloucestershire this attire was exchanged for flat cap, check shirt, and tweeds.
Nobody knew where Geoffroy lived during the week, or whether he was married, and he did not care to enlighten amyone. He was never seen driving a car or taking taxis; people spotted him coming to work by tube or train from a different direction each day.
Although he was a market leader for non-marine catastrophe reinsurance contracts, with limits in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Geoffroy, who also happened to be Lord Lieutenant of his home county, did not put on airs, and treated the Waiters in the same way as he did senior brokers. He lounged and enjoyed himself, ribbing those who came to see him with easy humour, comfortable in the knowledge that no one could best him in negotiation, because he did not negotiate.
Geoffroy made business seem like a hobby, and had no interest in joining the market committees that other leaders went on to reinforce their prestige. He did not take appointments or go on long pissy lunches with his friends in the market, but was always as accessible at the box to trainees as he was to executives; with whom he would share an anecdote, joke or piece of gossip before getting down to brass tacks.
While other leaders sweated over complicated sums, Geoffroy had the facility of plucking from his mercurial mind a Goldilocks rate that was neither so high as to give the client apoplexy, or so low as to fail to generate support from the following markets. However major the risk, nothing fazed him, and he never agonized over a decision, had second thoughts, or lost a moment’s sleep over the massive liabilities that he exposed his syndicate to.
Geoffroy was a good sport abo
ut coming to brokers’ lunches, where he would drink a single Tuborg lager, and charm their most obnoxious clients. He would ask about their families and golf handicaps and where they went on vacation; in the evenings he would chat up their fat and overdressed wives, and laugh at stories of how they had spent the day melting their husbands’ credit cards on West End shopping sprees.
If he accepted an invitation to join a business luncheon with a broker and representatives from a client company, at a round table in the River Room at the Savoy, and the Queen Mother entered with an entourage, as everyone respectfully stopped talking and stood, she would nod at Geoffroy and say, “Oh hello, Geoffr’y. See you at Asc’t.” To which Geoffroy, bowing from the neck not the waist, would reply, “Mam,”—not a long “Marm,” or “Ma’am”, per protocol. There was not a client in the world who could fail to be awed by such connections.
This took a burden of entertainment off the tired brokers, for which they were grateful, and they repaid him by doing everything they could to sell his terms. Because he lent such kudos to a slip, the client usually decided in the end, after much bellyaching, that yes, he could live with Geoffroy’s terms. For in truth the risk manager in Boston or Boise had no idea himself as to what his company should be paying, except that his boss, who had no idea either, wanted it to be less.
Since Geoffroy was an expert in everything, Arbella could not afford not to see him. Fortunately when she approached his box, his customary queue had not yet formed, and he was doing the Times crossword without filling in the squares.
‘Oh hi, Arbella,’ he said, smiling and pushing the folded newspaper to one side. ‘How’s tricks?’