by Ashly Graham
For non-marine brokers and those who were new to Lloyd’s, locating the boxes of some of the marine syndicates was as difficult as searching for Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest on a day when he was particularly anxious not to be disturbed; or trying to negotiate one’s way through a foggy Doone valley.
Even veterans of the marine market often swore that the routes around and through the boxes changed overnight, and that the straight path had been made crooked. The gangways were a one-way system, so that even getting from one end of a box to the other to have a slip entered, or reach a different underwriter seated at another corner, involved a circuitous journey filled with obstacles.
However carefully the brokers memorized landmarks and blazes along the way—a notice posted, the notch on a desk, the face of an underwriter or clerk, or the shape of the box—next time the trail was lost. There was a code that only those who worked on the syndicates were privy to, which signalled an incursion into their territory: a language of nods and winks, whistles and coughs, jerked thumbs, and racetrack bookie tick-tack semaphore.
In addition to discouraging brokers whom underwriters did not like, or those who peddled types of business that they did not commonly favour, it was thus that the mariners protected themselves against policemen, detectives, customs and excise men, members of the fraud squad, bailiffs, tax inspectors, and servers of either subpoenas to appear in Court or writs on behalf of ex-wives bent on collecting overdue alimony payments.
The complex pedestrian channels they created made navigating around the marine floor like driving around and through a Park and Ride-less Oxford City searching for the single, premium-rate, NCP parking garage while trying to stay out of the bus, and the wrong, one-way lanes and off the screens of the town’s traffic cameras, the pride and joy of the City Council’s fine-revenue officers and its relentless team of legal infringement enforcers.
Samuel Johnson might have had the place in mind when he was moved to define, in his Dictionary of the English Language, the word “Network”, as: “Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.”
As she followed her vague notion of where Shipshape Sharples might be lurking, Arbella wove in and out of the bricolage of boxes, about-facing and exiting several dead ends where heads looked up in surprise, and hands quickly covered papers, and slid the banknotes they were counting under blotters and into drawers.
At least her erratic passage enabled her to lose her usual train of youthful followers; as they lost sight of her in the maze, faltering in their tracks they panicked, expecting not without foundation that they were about to be ambushed by gangs of toughs and stripped of their valuables.
As large and influential as the Sharples syndicate was, Shipshape was terrified of Arbella, who was the only member of her sex he ever saw, living as he did reclusively in a flat in Earl’s Court that he shared with his elder brother.
Whenever he was alerted by the lookouts that Arbella had traced him to his source, and he had verified the intelligence through the small prescription periscope that he used instead of glasses for distance viewing, Shipshape’s spineless body stiffened and he began orating, as a kind of verbal defence, down the winkle buttons of his waistcoat.
Today the default subject was Bristol, the old port-side city where, as the Severn Bore began quoting from his guide-book memory,
‘…cargo had to be carefully stowed all shipshape and Bristol-fashion whenever ships were preparing to enter the floating harbour, because at low tide vessels could easily touch the bottom and...’
The only way to deal with this was for Arbella to fling a grapnel onto the deck of the good ship Sharples, whistle herself aboard, force the captain to surrender, and claim the vessel as her prize.
‘Mister Sharples,’ said Arbella sternly, annoyed that it had taken her longer than usual to find him; ‘Mr Sharples, sir. The extraordinary placement whereof I am possessed has already attracted generous support from several prestigious underwriters, including Mr Carew who is leading it, and I want to offer it to you while significant shares are still available.’
Arbella held the slip so closely over Shipshape’s nose that he could not breathe until he had gestured to confirm that he had read it, whereupon Arbella withdrew it and talked fast and loud.
‘Now I can assure you, Ship…Mr Sharples, that Sir Walter Ralegh—that’s Ralegh without an i, though like Shakespeare he spells his name various ways—while a Plymouth not a Bristol man, is a person who believes strongly in storing his cargo with the utmost care. To the best of my knowledge he has never allowed his ships to run aground in harbour or anywhere else.’
Shipshape, have replenished his supply of oxygen and sighed in recollection of the long-range contribution that, despite his assumed disability, he had made to Arbella’s aerial fishing fleet submission, gathered himself to repel the piratic assault:
‘Master Brunel, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was responsible for designing a dredger that would keep Bristol harbour free of mud, and…’
‘So he was, Mr Sharples. Now then, sir, as a woman who is in search of prestigious marine underwriters to support this contract, naturally the first person I thought of was you. If you were to write a line, your more timid colleagues would doubtless follow you without my having to dredge them up or press-gang them into service. The signatories hereon are destined to become as illustrious as those whose names are on the Magna Carta, or the American Declaration of Independence.’
‘The original of the Old Anchor Inn featured in Treasure Island is situated…’
‘Perhaps you will do me the honour of taking me to that famous hostelry, Mr Sharples, upon completion of this historic risk, to celebrate Sir Walter’s re-arrival on the seagoing stage after the long involuntary absence enforced by his detention.
‘I might even suggest that the Assured accompany us to Bristol, to share in the acclamation with which no doubt you are customarily greeted by the townspeople whose staunch advocate you have always been.’
Shipshape’s flatfish mouth bubbled. ‘There are other taverns in Bristol, of course; notably the Llandoger Trow, the Bunch of Grapes, the Old Duke, the Admiral Benbow, the Jolly Cobblers, and the Naval Volunteer.’
‘At the docks,’ Arbella persisted, ‘and attended by your renowned visitor, you would be received by the mayor and aldermen, hailed as Friends of Bristol, and presented with the keys to the city. Statues of you shaking hands with each other would be erected in the marketplace, with your names engraved in brass letters on a plaque at the base. A junior member of the royal family would break a bottle of champagne against the hull of a new ship, the Severn Bore…I mean the Basil Sharples.’
Shipshape struggled on gamely. ‘The phrase “to pay on the nail” originates from the four brass nails in Corn Street, where Bristol corn merchants struck their deals and paid each other in cash.’
‘Ever the businessman, Mr Sharples, I like that. And speaking of commerce, in considering a participation you will no doubt be heavily influenced by the possibility of making a great fortune, part of which you might use to endow Bristol with another college of education, hospital, or museum.’
Holding her slip again so close to Sharples’ face that he could blow his nose in it, Arbella explained the nature and provenance of the premium and profit commission; upon which, to the astonishment of all who were watching—apparently he was not going to take this lying down—Shipshape sat up at a forty-five degree angle.
The underwriter’ voice came weak. ‘In the St John the Baptist, or “American” Chapel at Bristol hangs the full armour of Admiral Sir William Penn, father of the founder of Pennsylvania, who…’
‘...also has a connection to the church of All Hallows by the Tower next to the Chandler office building. Your command of detail is commendable, Mr Sharples, if I may say so, and sure to endear you to my client.
‘You will doubtless be interested to know that Sir Walter Ralegh, who will be headed to the south of Pennsylvani
a, was responsible for the first expedition to what was to become the State of Virginia. Though I believe he might actually have been in North Carolina at the time. He named it in honour of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth the First, who was not averse to handing out the occasional knighthood, an honour that you might reasonably aspire to, were you to...’
‘The Bristol Zoo: rare okapi, and white tigers...’
‘...ocelots, manatees, and capuchin monkeys,’ added the broker. She had done her homework.
‘Sarah Ann Henley,’ Sharples whispered, ‘intending to commit suicide, jumped off the Clifton suspension bridge and was saved by her petticoats, which opened like a parachute and deposited her safely on the mud. The woman subsequently married and lived to be eighty-five years old.’
Arbella sensed victory. ‘It was with a similar sense of safety, Mr Sharples, that this time I considered dropping myself, wearing no more than a silk camisole, instead of a cardboard slip from the upper level onto your box while you were looking up. I am sure you would have caught me.’
The laughter that erupted around the box was too much for Shipshape, and he surrendered. Bolt upright and dazed, he mumbled, ‘Ten per cent.’
‘Ten per cent!’ cried Arbella for all to hear; ‘what a lovely man you are, Mr Sharples, that’s a major line. Sir Walter will be thrilled.’
Fearing that she might be about to kiss him, as soon as his assistant had plumped down the stamp, Shipshape scrawled the line with a rusty quill in a backward-sloping hand, and subsided into his former invertebrate position.
Shortly after Arbella had gone triumphantly on her way—the occupants of the boxes along the most direct route to the rostrum stood up and respectfully flagged the way—the Severn Bore announced that he had a migraine, and scuttled to the exit and home to sardines on toast and a strong pot of tea with his brother, who was working a night shift as a nurse at the Royal Marsden hospital and would just be getting up.
Mr Nysely and Mr Duesitt were the Lloyd’s underwriterly equivalent of Cyril Cholmondeley and Ramses Barrington-Knightley at Chandler Brothers. Like them they carried rolled umbrellas in defiance of summer droughts, and wore bowler hats: Mr Nysely’s was brown and Mr Duesitt’s black.
The pair gave the impression of being two pleasant retired gentlemen who had wandered into the Room after meeting in the City for a long lunch—which was exactly what they were and had done, at Wheeler’s fish restaurant in Fenchurch Buildings, before sitting down at a couple of side-by-side boxes of long defunct syndicates to watch the comings and goings as they digested their meal. The waiters who guarded the entrances, being accustomed to the daylong entrances and exits of similar-looking individuals, and this being the age before people were asked to produce Lloyd’s passes to identify them as members of the community, did not give them a second glance.
A intermediary’s instinct, as he circled the Room for the last time around four o’clock looking for an easy touch before heading back to the office, was to pounce on any underwriter he saw who did not have anyone with him, and go through his spiel one more time in hope of picking up a final quick line, perhaps of a quarter or half per cent.
And because the one-man two-seater boxes that the Nysely–Duesitt duo had alighted upon were close to the south-east exit, they fell prey to the first broker who noticed them as he was giving up for the day.
Having taken a liking to the nice young man who approached each of them in turn for a chat, and being fascinated by what he had to say and desirous of learning more, Messrs Nysely and Duesitt, after hesitating out of a professional concern that, the one being a former bookkeeper and the other an assistant bank manager, they might be out of their depth, agreed to write, “each for himself and not one for another”, as Lloyd’s required, a couple of “obliged lines”; which is what small participations are called that an underwriter agrees to write as a favour to help a broker out, on the understanding that he should not feel obliged to renew the line the following year.
Messrs Nysely and Duesitt, being a most obliging couple, obliged without feeling at all obliging, using the two dusty stamps that the broker found for them in the boxes’ drawers.
Nysely and Duesitt conferred on the train going home and agreed that, since their leisure occupations of gardening and train-spotting could still be indulged at weekends, they would travel up to town again to Lloyd’s the day after their initiation, taking sandwiches prepared by their wives, who wanted to lunch with each other anyway and discuss womanly things; and the day after that, and the day after that, because they enjoyed it so much.
Although the vacant boxes that the pair had sat themselves down at had for a long time been available for occupation by start-up operations, the waiters presumed that Messrs Nysely and Duesitt were what they thought they were, and did not bother to verify that they were taken.
And since the syndicates were still registered as active in the Lloyd’s Policy Signing Office’s antiquated system under their old names, Nysely and Duesitt daily started received the bundles of yellow premium and pink loss advice cards that were distributed by the waiters to each syndicate, which the pair either threw away unread, or used as bookmarks for the horticultural and train magazines they read when nobody was in with them.
And they remained complaisant and compliant to the brokers’ wishes in obliging them with lines.
While the men’s lack of knowledge about hulls, cargoes, and bills of lading might have aroused suspicion as to their bona fide status as underwriters had they been market leaders, many low-division teams played on the Lloyd’s field of ignorance, and the brokers only cared about the lines they wrote, which were tiny but nonetheless appreciated just as was all “innocent capacity”, as it was called, in the market...the term might have been coined for the pair.
Over the ensuing months satisfied pedlars again used the defunct syndicates’ acronyms on the printed grid-sheets that served as their market aide-mémoires for entering the amount of lines on their placements and programs.
Quaintly, despite their boxes being only a few feet apart, Nysely and Duesitt adhered to the accepted practice of pretending that whatever syndicate he was next to did not exist, because underwriters were accorded the courtesy of being treated to a separate presentation by the brokers. But for those on the forage, the two were the equivalent of a “right-and-left” in the shooting of game-birds.
All one had to do, after finishing with Mr Nysely, or Mr Duesitt—to avoid implying that either was more important, one alternated the order in which one saw them on successive visits—was to turn around and repeat one’s story. For although neither underwriter’s hearing was impaired, and it was a waste of time going through the details twice, owing to the party-in-waiting being able to hear every word as he twiddled his fingers and gazed at the ceiling with the intensity of one admiring a fresco, neither was a stickler for detail, which endeared him to the tired pedlars, and the process did not take long.
The second man received the information with every evidence of interest, which was genuine because he wanted to hear the story again anyway, and brokers came away with support from each of neither more nor less than one-half of one per cent.
The personal nature of these encounters was initially limited: one could not address the gentlemen as other than “sir” because nobody knew their names, their signatures were illegible, and it was too late to inquire without appearing rude.
Perhaps intuiting that there was something nonconformist about the pair, and because it was after four-thirty—marine underwriters typically stayed open longer than those upstairs—and they were tired, and they could smoke, and they were in no hurry to get back to the office, the brokers soon found themselves telling the avuncular couple everything about themselves, and seeking their advice on matters relating to their personal lives.
Mr Nysely was a little man with a crinkly smile and ill-fitting dentures, and wispy hair that stood up again on his gnome-like dome the moment he smoothed it down. One imagined him living in a lattice
-windowed cottage wreathed with roses and honeysuckle, and bicycling down the lane to the post office, wobbling as he tipped his hat to the ladies.
Mr Duesitt had an erect bearing and lustrous auburn locks, and, despite his public-school accent and military tie, a soft voice and ready wit. He probably had a capable wife who organized parish outings and coffee mornings.
Arbella bent down to speak into Nysely’s fuzzy ear.
‘Hullo!’ he said, pleased to see her. ‘How are you, my dear? Lovely day.’ Over his shoulder, Arbella caught sight of a broker entering who, having left his office without an umbrella, was wet through from the steady rain that had been falling since well before sunset—it was nearing the shortest day of the year.
She went through her story, including a great deal more about Sir Walter Ralegh than it was necessary to impart for the sake of a half per cent line; but she did not want Mr Nysely to feel that he was receiving less information than much bigger syndicates demanded, or that he should not feel free to ask any questions he might have. It was, after all, an unusual placement.
When she finished, Mr Nysely smiled broadly. ‘Goodness me, this is one for the record books, eh? Privilege to be asked, really. Brings back my history lessons.’
There followed a disjointed discussion of the life of Ralegh, and Tudor and early Jacobean times in general, matters in which Nysely was well versed. Then he reached a knotty hand into the bulging side-pocket of his jacket, which was centrally buttoned over a grey V-necked pullover, and withdrew his—or somebody’s—stamp, along with a tangle of string, a penknife, a packet of carrot seed, a stick of sealing wax, and an unwrapped sweet covered in fluff.
After breathing on the stamp and putting it down, Nysely was unable to find his pen, until Arbella pointed to the stain on his breast pocket that had leaked through from inside. The ink was less forthcoming in public, and he had to trace his line several times before he could coax it forth.
