by Bruno Noble
‘Sharon, Mie,’ Robert paused to finish chewing the triangle of sandwich he had put in his mouth whole, ‘draw up a list of every sterling investor and of every Japanese investor we know. Divide each list in two: existing clients and prospects.’ Swallowing, he said to the salesmen, ‘They’ll be gagging for this one and if we’re going to let them have the paper, this’ll have to be more than a one-off trade – we want the relationship. Kick the spivs and the flippers off the list. Yuuto, you’re going to have your work cut out – our co-lead is bound to go after your clients hard; they’re all they’ve got. We’ll update you on pricing first thing tomorrow. Adam, David, anything more to add?’
Adam looked at David who was looking at Yuuto, much like actors looking at each other in a Michelangelo Antonioni film. David looked down at his shoes and shook his head. Adam said, ‘No.’
David leaned against a low sideboard, an open sliding panel of which revealed more plates and glasses. In his posture, I saw a visual echo of Fubuki leaning nonchalantly against the washbasin in Yumimoto’s hallowed ladies’ loos but, where my attraction to her had been physical, mine to David was emotional. Of all the men in the room, David was the least remarkable. He didn’t dress to impress. He was the least distinguishable and yet the most distinguished to my foreign eye. It wasn’t lost on me that what was a great advantage and source of delight to me, namely, that in a foreign country people struggle to place you socially so that you can’t help but meet them on equal terms, could prove a handicap as much as an advantage.
Jonathan clicked his fingers before my eyes. ‘Are you with us, Mie?’
I blushed.
As the meeting broke up, amid much clapping of backs and pumping of fists in anticipation of the successful distribution of Japan’s new issue the following day, I looked from David to where he was looking: at Yuuto. Most quiet people, less looked at than looking, have a quality of observation that’s profound, I had found; and, indeed, Yuuto appeared relatively subdued and his expressions of eagerness phony. Back at our desks, he accepted the list of investors I handed him without interest. In return, he handed me a slip of paper on which he had noted a derivatives trade enquiry.
Note in hand and heart beating faster, I walked briskly down two aisles of traders and salesmen, replying in kind to the salesmen’s odd friendly, ‘Hi, Mie,’ and ignoring the traders’ occasional fake-fawning, ‘Me! Me! Me!’ – stimulated, too, by the noisy room’s heady atmosphere. The good news about the new mandate had percolated down a trading floor that hummed in anticipation of a glorious day. I stopped at the derivatives desk and, giddy with the sense of gaiety and levity that affected us all, as well as stirred by the prospect of some moments with Sebastian, sat in the empty chair beside him and handed him Yuuto’s piece of paper.
Where salesmen had, typically, two or three screens and bond traders three or four, Sebastian, an options trader, had six, amassed in two stacks of three. There was an implied trading room hierarchy that placed derivatives traders at the top of the pile, which irritated some people but that Sebastian seemed impervious to. He kept his eyes fixed on one of the screens ahead of him for a moment, sat back in his swivel chair, turned his head to look at me and only then, after another moment, after I felt he’d considered me properly, did he look down at my outstretched hand and deliberately take the note from my fingers. He retained his air of ironic detachment, signalled by a perpetual half-smile, as if everything were a big joke that only he were in on and that, to my irritation, I couldn’t help but feel I wanted in on too.
Sebastian unfolded and studied the piece of paper. ‘What is it with this guy? Who does he think he is? What is it with his request for an offer on gilt puts in such size the day before the Japan deal? This industry is as leaky as a sieve. Gilts,’ and he indicated a screen with a wave of his hand that showed predominantly red, blinking figures, ‘are already weaker on the day, despite no “news”.’ He tapped his teeth with a biro and then sat up straight. ‘It’s clear. News of the Japan issue has leaked. He’ll want to dump a ton of gilts on me to buy the issue. Sell UK, buy Japan. Why not? It’s worked for cars and electronics.’ He turned to his screens and keyboard and I studied his profile as he considered the many factors that would enter his calculations and, ultimately, the price he’d quote the client.
Sebastian had fair eyelashes that formed fine brushes either side of blue eyes beneath a shock of blond hair. The faint scent of his aftershave floated like a protective shield, a decoy from the sweeter, underlying fragrance of his body. I closed my eyes momentarily and inhaled deeply. The only sound I could hear was the mesmerising tap-tap-tapping of his fingers on the keyboard. It occurred to me with a rush that Sebastian could be the first person I had ever met to whom I might be prepared to subjugate myself and whose self I might be prepared to admit into mine. This new sentiment – my acceptance of it – intrigued me. I struggled with the possibility that I would have to deny my whole life philosophy in physical, biological response to someone foreign to me on so many levels. I had, somewhere in the back of my mind, allowed myself to believe that if – if – I were ever to have a relationship, it would be with an intellectual equal. I had never admitted of the possibility that the right combination of atoms at the most superficial olfactory or visual levels would have a contribution to make in my ultimate capitulation. I grabbed at what clues I could that my attraction to him was other than physical and, blushing as soon as the words escaped from me, indicated the books on his desk with a wave of my hand and asked, ‘How come you’re the only one here to keep novels on his desk instead of finance books?’
He looked from his screens to the books and back to the screens. ‘Because I like reading.’
‘But not finance books.’
‘Markets are just people. Novels tell me more about people than finance books do.’
‘So, what novel should an aspiring financier read?’
‘Financier? It’s traders and salespeople in here and investors and spivs out there.’ He handed me back the piece of paper on which he had written indicative pricing.
I read what he had written. ‘You’ve kept the price and the bid/offer spread unchanged from last week.’
He leant back in his swivel chair and turned to look at me. ‘You’ve remembered and you’ve noticed. But you seem surprised – why?’
‘Well,’ I had to think about this. ‘The market is up, so the first tells me you think our client might be a better seller than buyer and you don’t really want to be hit with a ton of gilts.’ I looked at him for confirmation but he said nothing. ‘And the second suggests that you are, after all, I mean, despite all this serious literature’ – and I waved the piece of paper in the direction of his books, my heart beating faster as I dared familiarity – ‘a little macho.’
‘Unreal!’ He leant back further and laughed. ‘See you later!’
I looked up and over at the trading room, at the rows of salespeople, traders and desk assistants and momentarily suffered the unexpected mirage of seeing Sebastian and myself replicated in a series of near endless contiguous mirrors. A faint pride and other emotions hummed above the trading room’s hubbub.
Attraction that one dares consider reciprocated brings with it an increased degree of introspection. What did, could Sebastian see in me that I must preserve and nurture in order to maintain and grow his interest? I entered the underground at Moorgate in profound reverie and exited at Clapham South in the same intense, internally focused state of mind. I blinked in the evening light and apologised to a fellow commuter for having stopped dead in her path when I realised I could recall no detail of my journey. She glared at me; I was an obstruction to her. What was I to Sebastian? A sales assistant. A foreigner. At best, someone who played a small role in bringing him the information he sought in order to better manage his derivatives book and to service his bank’s clients.
I ate lightly so as to be able to sleep and rise early; I wanted to be at the bank from the beginning of the distribution of Japan
’s sterling-denominated bond issue. My thoughts, as I fell asleep despite the sound of music and the buzz of televisions and of end-of-day chatter of families in back gardens, didn’t trouble so much as entertain me; there was a novelty to them, as I, who had always been resolutely egocentric and for whom all points of reference had been mine to the extent that my background, culture and education allowed, found myself wondering how I appeared to Sebastian. I had no answer. I had the sensation of being the outline of a woman, thick, clearly delineated but opaque to herself.
*
On entering the trading room, I knew immediately that something was wrong. In place of the positive charge of anticipation was the negative aura of crisis. Heads were low, shoulders hunched and the ceiling oppressively close. The fixed income sales and trading teams and Adam and David had got in even earlier than usual and were clustered around Yuuto’s empty desk. I immediately shared what I presumed to be my colleagues’ irritation that Yuuto had chosen to celebrate what was to be his biggest, most important deal the night before rather than following its conclusion. A long day with a hung-over Yuuto was not something anyone looked forward to.
‘Yuuto has resigned.’
The shock was such that I sat down abruptly while my superiors all stood. I didn’t even know who had spoken the words that I repeated mechanically to no one in particular. Today, of all days, no Yuuto was worse than a hungover one.
‘It’s straightforward,’ said Adam. ‘Jonathan, your team will have to do the heavy lifting among UK investors. David, we’ll call the co-leads and increase their participation, which will mean cutting our own back. But so be it. Where has Yuuto gone? There’s no way I’m rewarding a Japanese bank for poaching our entire, admittedly one-man, Japan bond sales team.’
‘No,’ I heard myself say. ‘I’ll place it. I know who to call and what order to call them in. I know what size they’re good for and I know what they own that we can switch them out of if we need to. However, I’m not an authorised salesperson, so I’ll need someone authorised to hand the phone to to confirm the sale. And someone from compliance or personnel to work on getting me authorised as quickly as possible. It may be a good idea to get someone from personnel down here anyway.’ I put my handbag down and switched my computer screens on. I shrugged my jacket off and hung it over the back of my chair. ‘What’s the latest on pricing? Do we have a term sheet yet?’
For a moment, all was silence. Waves of anxiety, as I recalled my ill-fated intervention at the first and last meeting I had been asked to participate in at Yumimoto alternated with pulses of confidence as my screens came on and my investor databases slowly materialised; I knew I could do this.
‘Here it is,’ said David, stepping forward and placing the term sheet before me while exuding a strong sense of proprietorial pride, though whether in me or in the deal I could only guess.
‘Go, girl!’ said Adam, clapping his hands and then squeezing my shoulders.
‘All right, everybody!’ shouted Jonathan. ‘Smile and dial! Sharon, get me personnel and compliance down here right now.’
The deal was placed in its entirety by midday. The co-lead banks and the UK team placed their share, as did I, call by call by call. By late morning, news of the deal was out on the wires and those of Yuuto’s former clients I had yet to call were calling us, so that allocations to all but the best of clients had to be scaled back. In retrospect, Yuuto couldn’t have chosen a better time to resign: the deal overshadowed his departure and his career at the bank was consigned to history. Unnoticed by me in the morning’s mêlée, someone from personnel had quietly cleared Yuuto’s desk so that at the day’s end it shone bare, like a physical metaphor for the Japan deal that had so effectively been pillaged by our hungry clients.
I participated reluctantly in the champagne celebration that followed. I kept to myself the realisation that our Japanese clients would have bought the bonds at any price, out of a sense of patriotism that would have declared it a loss of face should any of Japan’s bonds have remained unsold. The UK team had, in fact, had to work harder to place their part of the deal, as their clients’ considerations had been purely economic and not patriotic. Telerate and Reuters announced the deal a success: Japan had raised all the money it had announced it would, and the bonds had only marginally outperformed gilts on the day, which suggested that the lead banks had got their pricing right and not made Japan’s money-raising activity any more expensive than it need have been.
I spent the late afternoon completing trading slips and the paperwork necessary to secure my registration with the bank regulator. In one day, I had gone from desk assistant to bond salesperson and, in the space of a few months, I went from that to the bank’s Japanese bond salesperson, attempts to recruit a formal replacement for Yuuto having petered out as my superiors came to recognise my competency and, I suspected, baulked at the price for someone experienced. I received a pay rise that I accepted, although I knew it to be less than what I was worth to the bank. ‘In this business,’ Adam Johnson had advised me, ‘you’re not paid what you’re worth, you’re paid what you negotiate,’ but I didn’t mind; I was in it for the long term.
Sharon
I had passed my professional secret from Yuuto to Mie and with her too, it would seem, my secret would stay safe – for a time, at least. I put this quality of consideration and reserve down to the natural good manners of the Japanese but wondered, as I contemplated myself without make-up in the mirror one morning, whether I had told her in order to have the secret spill out and so force a change in my life. I felt that I needed saving from – something, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. I had renewed visions of self-mimicking holes in the ground and of elves and goblins that no longer hid in parks but disguised themselves as gargoyles and shop mannequins. To keep myself busy and my mind occupied, I worked longer hours in the bank, where I grew to love the security identifiers and the other long lists of numbers I wrote on trading slips, delighted by the order I would find behind their supposed randomness.
I was saved, distracted, initially, by Mie’s immediate promotion. Her assured performance on the day on which she had so effectively risen to assume Yuuto’s job was one that made all of us who liked and respected her admire her all the more. I embraced the additional position of interim Japan desk assistant happily, in order to support her, believing that the success of my ward reflected on her mentor, and I was delighted to accompany her on shopping trips once I had successfully persuaded her that she needed a wardrobe that would reflect her new status in the bank.
Mie followed me into the ladies’ toilets, where she stood facing the wall mirror above a row of hand basins, and observed herself severely. It was the first time we had found ourselves alone together since she had become the bank’s Japan salesperson. She held the hem of her grey, shapeless cardigan between her thumbs and forefingers, lifted it and let it drop before standing, palms out, arms and legs straight like a paper cut-out of a woman, and exclaiming, ‘You’re right. I can’t see clients dressed like this.’
I nodded.
‘I’ve put client meetings off as long as I can, but I have my first one next week. What are you doing on Saturday?’
‘Going to the shops with you, at a guess.’
We stood side by side, my hand on Mie’s shoulder, her arm around my waist, facing each other in the mirror. Black and blond. East and West. Tall and short. Chic and shabby. Mie would be my project, my walking, talking, living doll. I giggled with anticipation, with glee at the prospect of Mie’s imminent metamorphosis and said, ‘Just you wait. No one will recognise you. You will be a quite new person.’
‘Oh no,’ replied Mie seriously. ‘Admittedly, I may look different. But I won’t be. I’ll still be me, but just wearing different clothes.’
‘“The apparel proclaims the man,”’ I said, still smiling.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Mie, turning from the mirror to look at me directly. ‘I’d always considered it to be the other way around. How supe
rficial a person must be for that to be the case.’
I began to see less of Mie outside of the office after what had been, for me, a joyous Saturday afternoon spent shopping, advising her and admiring her in a succession of smart trouser and skirt suits, blouses and shoes and, in department store changing rooms, in her underwear.
‘What’s the matter?’ had scowled Mie in her knee-length socks, beige granny knickers and bra, more anxious and scared than angry, I had thought – uncertain of herself, perhaps because unused to being seen so nearly entirely bare. Behind her had stood my reflection, knees ever so slightly buckled, eyes wide and one hand over my mouth to mask a laugh, and the other clutching hangers and clothes.
What a contrast to Mie’s old-fashioned underwear were the spangled bikinis, thongs and bodices that others and I wore at the club! I could hear Pierre’s French accent in my ear, him breathing, ‘She has a nice, well-proportioned body but her legs are – how do you say? – too bandy.’