by Ashly Graham
‘The premium, sir,’ said Arbella in a condemnatory tone, ‘if one can call it that, is constituted of a long-lost collection of decorative items of unestablished provenance—the applicant assured’s proprietary right to them is unproven—and authenticity, and therefore of indeterminate value, popularly known as Colonel Barkstead’s Treasure. You are undoubtedly already aware, sir, of the stuff’s rumoured existence.
‘The postulant for contractual adoption by underwriters, Walter Ralegh, who is unemployed, alleges that he came across it whilst ferreting around under the floorboards in his apartment. For all one knows, he stole it. Many of the items of jewellery, I understand, are vulgarly large.’
Arbella fingered the mother-of-pearl brooch that she was wearing at the neck of her cream silk blouse, over her matching skin, and Black Jack’s other eyebrow rose to the same level as the first.
‘Fuck me sideways.’
‘This Ralegh, Mr Newbold, who has a less-than-stellar financial record, converted the trove to hard currency and invested it with the Rothschild Bank, where it grew to be worth a million and a half guineas—a pretentious moribund monetary unit, the guinea: one might as well round it down to pounds sterling—which he converted back into gemstones…one has to shake one’s head at the wisdom of the man’s financial adviser, (and Arbella did so, setting off a not-unattractive movement of her hair) given the erratic performance of such a commodity as an investment compared with that of, say, gold. There are no Diamond Reserves at the Bank of England, to which the House of Rothschild once supplied enough coin to enable it to avert a market liquidity crisis.
‘But notwithstanding Ralegh’s fickle allegiance to sound monetary practice, and impulse buying without regard to the prudent practice of diversification, in this instance the decision worked in his favour.
‘Now, although there are bound to be some duds among the jewels, Mr Newbold, some untrustworthy sources allege that many of them are of a better quality, and larger, and that there are more of them, and a greater number that are said to be flawless—expert opinions have yet to be sought—than those in the royal collection.
‘The current value is reckoned to be…well, as I say they have yet to be appraised. Though the Amsterdam cuts are laughably old-fashioned, one supposes that they might be redone, if anyone were remotely interested and could be bothered.
‘Perhaps you collect jewellery, Mr Newbold: not for yourself, of course, I was thinking of Mrs Newbold, who may on occasion have had her attention drawn to pictures of the Eugénie Blue, the Centenary diamond, the Cullinans, the Golden Eye, the Spirit of Grisogono, the Earth Star, the Golden Jubilee, the Ocean Dream, or the Hope diamond.’
Black Jack stirred and opened the side of his mouth. ‘Fuck Mrs Newbold. The fourth Mrs Newbold did a runner a few weeks back, and is shacked up in the Bahamas with a toy-boy. Neither of them have much of a future, if you ask me. There are sharks in those waters, more than previously after a recent restocking, and my men inform me that the happy couple are spending a lot of time swimming at a certain beach where nudity is permitted. Safety is a concern in such a hazardous environment.’
‘Mr Newbold, I’m touched by your solicitousness as to their plight.’ Unable to ascertain whether she had succeeded in stimulating the appetite of this fearsome plug-ugly Pavlovian dog, Arbella switched to Plan B. ‘I was going to suggest, sir, should you be moved to take a big line on this risk, that you might consider donating your share of the jewels to Lloyd’s, and trying to persuade other underwriters to do likewise. I fancy they would look very well in a new display next to the Nelson Room. The Newbold Room: the name has a certain cachet.’
‘Fuck Nelson and his room, I don’t know the meaning of the word “donate”, and the only cash-ay I want to my name is money. But since you offer, I will take a bit of what I fancy. Which is a pound of flesh.’ Black Jack leered at Arbella’s chest. ‘Or is it more? Talk metric if you like—how many of those are there to the kilo?’
‘I gather you are up on your Shakespeare, Mr Newbold. The alternative was for Antonio to repay Shylock three thousand ducats at no interest in three months. We are talking a lot more than three thousand ducats here, and it’s not a loan, and you would earn interest on it. So technically…’
‘John Newbold likes to get technical with his women, and he likes it when they reciprocate his love for technical detail. Jacked-up Jack gets down and dirty and sticks his nose in places that...’
‘With respect, Mr Newbold, philanthropy is a worthy motive for financial acquisition. “Philanthropia: the disposition or effort to promote the happiness and well-being of one’s fellow people; practical benevolence.” I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, and made a note of it to pass on to underwriters, as an incentive to their participating on this historic placement. “Philanthropy” could be your middle name, sir.’
‘“Shark” is my middle name.’
‘Even were the Assured, who coincidentally shall also be occupying the same Bahamian waters as your wife, to suffer some accident of...’
‘Accidents,’ said Newbold, relaxing in his seat, ‘involving sharks happen more often than people know. Mostly they get hushed up so as not to put off the tourists. You’ve probably seen the film, Jaws. Sharks can smell a drop of blood a mile away, and rough up a body in less time than it takes a piranha to brush its teeth. Jagged flesh is the signature dental impression left by your shark’s overbite.’
‘Mr Newbold, you are a fount of oceanographic knowledge.’
‘Actually, I’m going to the Bahamas next week to put my affairs in order, both marital and financial. The area is crawling with sharks of the fish variety and offshore banks managed by the human sort. I speak the language of both fluently. You could accompany me: like sharks I have a strong appetite for flesh, and I’m ready to start interviewing for a fifth Mrs Newbold.’
‘Next week doesn’t work for me, I’m sorry to say, Mr Newbold. I’ve got a lot of work on at the moment, besides which I’ve used up my holiday allowance for the year. But were you to speed me on my way by writing…’
‘You could call it a business trip. If you agree to come along, I might give your slip a tickle with my big fat Montblanc Masterstück pen. It’s full of ink. There’s plenty of lead in my pencil, too, and I’m ambidextrous in their use.’
‘Oh, Chandlers wouldn’t allow me to travel on business, Mr Newbold. I’m only a junior broker.’
‘On the fast track, I’d say. I’m still up and coming myself, and you’d find me right up your alley.’
When Arbella did not respond Black Jack shifted his gaze to the slip. ‘You could get banned from the Room for pulling a scam like this, and I know about scams. There are ways to scam and ways not to scam. And what’s this—no brokerage? I smell a rat. The only broker ever to suggest forgoing brokerage got the almighty piss taken out of him by that Bateman fellow, the artist; unfairly, because I had his nuts in my drawer at the time. The original cartoon is hanging in my office, and the nuts I dried and cracked for Christmas.’
Shere Khan’s voice turned as silky as that of George Sanders in the film of Kipling’s book. ‘Tell you what. How about you take brokerage, bribe your accounts guy, and kick back half to me? If there’s any trouble with the Bureau, I’m Chairman of the Oversight Committee. Out of sight, out of mind. Most of the committee members are Names on my syndicate.’
Arbella consulted her manicure. ‘I didn’t hear that, Mr Newbold.’
The sliding shutter on the dark lantern in Black Jack’s brain opened. ‘Got it! I’ll have my men arrange for a maritime mishap; your Caribbean-bound buccaneer and crew can sleep with the fishes and Mrs Newbold, and we’ll park the swag in my Bahamian bank. You can have a fifteen per cent instead of brokerage.’
‘Still deaf, Mr Newbold.’
‘Okay, another option: this says underwriters get to share the profits as well as the premium, right? We’ll give the guy an escort home, drop him off a few leagues short of Plymouth, and fence the g
oods. I’m an expert fencer.’
“Nothing doing, Mr Newbold.’
‘For chrissakes, girl, you’ve no imagination. All right, I’ll write ten per cent. No, fifteen...I can’t let the other tits in the Room have too much, I’d be a right tit myself if I did. I’d hate to look like a tit.’ Newbold again inspected Arbella’s poitrine. ‘So…in a twat for tit, excuse me while I reach between your legs. My stamp’s in the cupboard but not for long. Look, here it comes...’
He did not move quickly enough, as Arbella stood up and stepped back. Grunting his disappointment, Black Jack took out his stamp. He put it down at a rakish angle and wrote the line untidily, so as to make it look like he did not care. It would never do to show that Black Jack cared. He thrust the slip at the entry boy on his right, who set aside the overseas bank statement that he was checking for his boss, to make sure that the twenty per cent interest had been calculated correctly, and flicked a last glance at Arbella.
‘My other offer still stands, as do I. Let me know if you change your mind, or wish to reconsider a fallback position.’ And with that Black Jack Newbold resumed his stony gaze into the building across the street.
Her prospects considerably brightened, Arbella headed for the far end of the floor, to cleanse herself of Black Jack and search for easier prey. Bill B was always good for two and a half per cent, because Bill B was the nicest man in the Room. He was a chubby and rubicund desperately shy middle-aged bachelor, who lived with his mother in East Croydon.
Any broker could tell, as Bill stared at a slip, that he had not the faintest idea what was before him; in self-acknowledgement of which he theorized that, if he wrote two and a half per cent on everything he was offered, the syndicate would survive. Later he was proved sadly wrong.
Whenever Arbella went to see Bill B he had to fight his inclination to double his standard line to five per cent. It was painful for her to see him struggle with his one and only rule of underwriting; but in the end, with profuse apologies for not being able to do more, he would abide by his principle.
To compensate, after much agonizing and heavy breathing and perspiration, Bill would always—he was ever mindful of the adjurations regarding his bachelor status that he received every morning from his mother when she served him his breakfast and watched him eat it, as to when was he going to do something about it, for there must be some nice Church of England lady he knew whose hand he could ask for—invite her to his home for Sunday lunch.
Arbella accepted her two and a half per cent from Bill B gratefully, and said she would let him know if she ever had a weekend free.
Next on her list was Wally. Wally was a wally, and a fusspot, and a great advocate of the many greater and lesser restrictive clauses and exclusions that underwriters liked to append to contracts in order to emasculate them of their risk content. To emphasize his syndicate’s conservative image, Wally wore three-piece subfusc suits and sported a monocle.
In arriving at a determination of whether or not to participate on a risk, Wally rode piggyback on such market leaders as Geoffroy and Brillo, and never subscribed to a contract that men of such calibre had not either quoted or were not on.
But first Wally feigned underwriting the thing for himself, wasting brokers’ time by asking a series of fatuous questions, such as whether there was any flood exposure on a placement for a factory in Arizona; or single dwelling values exceeding a million dollars in a mobile home park in Florida.
For his deputy underwriter, Wally had an aggressive stupid short-legged and long-backed pipe-smoking, huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ Old Etonian buffoon called Cunliffe. Cunliffe, who sat across from Wally, listened in to every broker’s pitch when nobody was in on his side, so that he could make cautionary interjections to Wally about details that he may have missed, or information that the broker seemed to have convinced Wally was to the syndicate’s advantage when really it was the opposite.
Cunliffe had a brow that was permanently furrowed, to show how hard and seriously he was thinking, when really he was straining hard to think, a voice like a twelve-bore to scatter his pronouncements to the four winds, and a brain the size of a pellet of birdshot.
Noting that both men were open, Arbella chose to see Wally rather than Cunliffe as her underwriter du jour at the box, because although he was the senior underwriter she preferred his less threatening manner.
She was not surprised when the absence of a line from Geoffroy and Brillo set the alarm bells ringing on both sides of the box, and she was lectured in stereo on the folly of approaching the syndicate with any risk that had been spurned by recognized leads.
When Arbella protested that Carew was hardly anonymous, Wally brushed her objection aside, saying that was irrelevant because he had “no form”, and that it was impossible to respect the judgement let alone trust the sanity of an underwriter who to the best of his understanding had never written a non-marine risk.
As to the apparent absurdity of the contract, Wally had no comment to make; which gave Arbella the idea of getting Geoffroy to lead a spoof contract next year with an April Fool’s Day inception date, covering the Swiss spaghetti harvest, per the 1/4/1957 BBC Panorama programme, and seeing how much she could get Wally to write on it.
So, still cheered by her line from Newbold, Arbella moved on unabashed.
Mad Max was an ingratiating man, highly risk-averse, who manifested rather than suffered from (because he was not aware of it) a bad speech impediment. Brokers had no choice but to stand in the path of an impossible to predict trifecta of droplets, spray, and mucus from the loquacious Max’s endlessly productive salivary glands and throat.
Because Mad Max also had an annoying habit of answering his own questions, brokers got a replay drenching from each sentence. Caveat vendor, those who were Max-bound reminded themselves before leaving the office, as on cloudless days they donned their raincoats. They remained as far away from him as possible while remaining in earshot, and held their slipcases before them like umbrellas against a head-on squall.
Senior brokers were accompanied by polyester-suited trainees, who had been instructed to interpose themselves as boulders in front of their bosses as their superiors addressed Max over the youths’ shoulders, to shield them from the effluvial response that ran in rapids over and around the logjam and rocks of Max’s enlarged tongue and irregular teeth, downriver from his glottis, epiglottis, and uvula.
The startling nature of Arbella’s risk put Mad Max in even more sibilant state than usual, as he seeded the clouds that hung over the box and talked himself into a declination. ‘Sscchho you schh-schee,’ he concluded, invisibly through the brume, ‘I’m sch-chorry to ss-ss-ss-tschay we can’t asch-tshischt. It’tch ssch-shimply too exxschotic a propojjijjitshion for thischhh scchindicate, jushht too eesho...eeeschoa!...eeeeschoteric.
‘Yeththsch, I’m afraid we’ll have to take a parrsschhhth on thicchh one. Our tasht-tteh is for th-th-thimple rithkths. Perhapssche you have sh-sh-shumeththing elssshhh to sthchow us? No? Then you’ll have to excuththth uththth, I’m afraid. Shoshoschoscthorry. Tsschee you again tsschoo-oo-oon. Tschheeecchhh.’
Something more solid than spit landed on Arbella’s sleeve. To attempt to change Mad Max’s mind would necessitate her changing into a rubber diving suit or swimwear, or a Mrs Emma Peel as played by Miss Diana Rigg in The Avengers television series-style catsuit; and although that might have boosted her chance of a line, it was not going to happen.
So she politely withdrew and betook herself, in order to clean up, to the small ladies’ toilet that (either in recognition that Lloyd’s was a bastion of femina-phobia, or out of belief that women were naturally perfect and not subject to involuntary bodily functions, and that only men were in need of a long line of urinals and stalls as occupied the basement mausoleum of the Gents’ WC, and—situated behind Screaming Lord Sutcliffe’s box on the non-marine floor—the male Members Only discharge and evacuation facility complete with uniformed waiter to dust the dandruff off one’s shou
lders) was located at the far end of a passageway on the fourth floor.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The slip so far was a mess. One per cent from Carew, fifteen from Newbold, and two and a half from Bill B, equalled eighteen and a half; plus Arbella had a promise of twenty-five per cent from Goldsack contingent upon her reaching seventy-five. There was long way to go, and the key members of the non-marine market had turned her down.
Since the risk was more “wet” than “dry”, Arbella decided to return to the marine floor. She would start with someone who was in love with the sound of his own voice, she thought, in order to give her time to find her sea legs again; that made the choice easy: she would go and see Shipshape Sharples.
Shipshape Sharples was known as the Severn Bore because, in addition to being very boring, he hailed from the city of Bristol near the River Severn, which is famous among other things for the tidal surge wave that runs up the estuary as the tide enters the Bristol Channel from the Atlantic and continues into the Severn Estuary, filtering the volume of water into a narrow channel that increases the height of the water by anything up to fifteen metres, and causes the second highest tide in the world of up to two metres travelling at an average speed of sixteen kilometres per hour.
Allegedly descended from a five-hundred-year-old family from Bristol, all the men of which went to sea at an early age, Sharples had attended a polytechnic, where he studied landscape design. But he was very proud of his marine heritage, and never lost an opportunity to inform or remind people of it. For them the Severn Bore performed much more frequently than the freak tide that had earned him his monicker, without moving a muscle.
At the box Sharples lay supine, rather than sat—dry-docked rather than anchored and moored—so that brokers had to hold their slips over his nose for him to read. From that position he delivered a series of monologues, which may or may not have anything to do with whatever it was that one had come to see him about.