E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten
Buchan Against Her Nature
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ISBN: 978-1-83895-544-1
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
'A modern day Vanity Fair' Mail on Sunday
E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-83895-544-1
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs Clifton and The Museum of Broken Promises. Buchan's short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She was a judge for the Whitbread First Novel Award and for the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival. elizabethbuchan.com
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CHAPTER TWO
ROUND ABOUT THE CHEESE COURSE, NIGEL HAD BECOME a little drunk which, while not unpleasant, loosened his tongue. ‘Bloody Americans!’ He strove, as always, to impress his peers. ‘I reckon all these court settlements will be disastrous.’
Nigel had been permanently allocated the role of buffoon (the waistcoats and notebook helped). However, it did not necessarily cancel the correctness of his observation. The willingness of American courts to settle in favour of plaintiffs – Shell was currently facing a bill for £200 million to clean up the toxic waters leaching into the water table in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado – was affecting the insurance market.
The cheese, Cheddar and Wensleydale, was excellent, and its spicy, tangy taste was commented on knowledgeably and with affection, almost love.
‘Bloody Americans,’ repeated Nigel, to no one in particular, and ate his cheese. ‘I wonder if this was made with pasteurized milk?’
The Bollys had met at Luc’s restaurant in Leadenhall Market. A group of ten colleagues, they had been so dubbed because of their fondness for champagne by Chris Beame, who fancied himself a wit. They met to exchange gossip, because they liked one another and because it was both useful and agreeable to mull over the business. As an informal gathering, it counted two active underwriters, a managing agent, a members’ agent, an investment expert and an accountant among the ten. With his beaked nose and hooded eyes, Matt Barker, an underwriter with a Midas touch and a member of Lloyd’s council, gave it a welcome touch of gravitas, and Louis its glamour. Except that they all enjoyed healthy earnings, nothing of significance united them, neither taste nor lifestyle – apart from Louis’s and Matt’s mutual fondness for roses.
Yet once absorbed into the Lloyd’s sphere something odd tended to take place. Much as patients given new hearts have been found to develop the tastes and craving of the dead donors, so recruits into the world of Lloyd’s could be said to step inside the skins of the seniors.
Insiders, including the active underwriter, have by custom to demonstrate faith in their own judgement by investing their own money in their own syndicates. It was thought to be sufficient, and soothing, demonstration of good faith to the external Names. If the insiders were putting money where their mouths were, then the external Names – those like Colonel Frant, who knew nothing of the market only that they wished to make money for little effort – could rest easy.
Strangely, not one of the ten here at Luc’s, neither the seniors nor the juniors eating their cheese and drinking their claret, had ever been tempted to place their personal business on the syndicates specializing in reinsurance, known as the LMX, which was reputedly flourishing. Or on those known to have long-tail liabilities. (For example, claims were coming in to some syndicates for cases of cancer caused by asbestosis as long ago as twenty years.) Yet a percentage of Colonel Frant’s underwriting liability had been placed in precisely these dubious areas by at least one of the men sitting round the table.
The Far East . . .’ Chris Beame had the sheen of excitement on his face. His syndicate was a relatively modest one, having around five hundred Names and an underwriting capacity of twenty million or so. Unlike some of the stuffier underwriters, he did not care – well, not – if the Names on his syndicate did not include the royal and the titled. No, Chris argued that the aristocratic pot was empty and that it was better to concentrate on culling a new harvest of politicians, lawyers, accountants, businessmen, sports stars and – even – women. It was, he had been heard to say with only a trace of complacency, a remarkably progressive, democratic set-up.
‘Self-regulation at Lloyd’s,’ Matt Barker had a trick of drawing his listener into a conspiracy, whose secrets promised to be intoxicating, ‘will have to be seen to be better managed.’
Louis nodded and moved his glass around his knives. ‘Tricky.’
Well back in the past, both men had been aware of, indeed had dabbled in, activities that were not criminal – no, nothing like that – but were open to criticism. Activities such as the creation of baby syndicates and, when taxes had been high, a little bond-washing.
Louis’s position, which he shared with Matt, was simple: if the opportunity was there, take it. They knew how to operate the market, and operate it they would. There was, particularly with regard to the younger men, a lot of sabre-rattling and declarations of ‘Let him who dares, dare.’ Louis had reached the age when he simply did it.
As a result, Louis’s personal wealth could now finance rose gardens from Arctic to Antarctic, and Matt, if he wished, could have bought up a couple of factories specializing in the production of his favourite bright-coloured ties.
Neither man was dishonest.
Sometimes Louis asked himself why the business fascinated him so much. Then he would recollect the childhood where each step had been proscribed, each thought tagged with potential damnation, each impulse questioned. A childhood in which the Virgin Mary’s dreaming face and rose-bordered shimmering blue cloak suggested all manner of tenderness, but the cold, hard discipline exacted by her and her Son was anything but. A childhood where a sense of possibility had been whittled to nothing – and from which Louis had escaped.
.
After a satisfactory lunch the Bollys broke up and, in the gents’ afterwards, Nigel examined his reflection in the mirror. Was he imagining things or was a touch of yellow painting his eyeball? He felt for the portion of his torso containing his liver and prodded it. Nothing.
It was tiring being a hypochondriac, tiring and burdensome, and it was an effort to stave off the terrors that threatened each corner he rounded.
‘What a good party it was.’ The Widow cornered Angela Frant in Appleford’s mini-supermarket. ‘Wasn’t it? It was nice of you to invite me.’
She looked for further affirmation to Jilly, who was buying at the counter on her way to her monthly appointment with her astrologer and then on up to London for a little lunch.
Jilly smiled but with not too much warmth, for the Widow had been marked down in her mental social register as a non-runner. She waited while Jennifer coaxed forth the coins in her plastic purse for a tin of soup, a small loaf, a half tin of baked beans, and then paid for her magazine.
She drove to Granton – once a solid market town, specializing in candles and cattle, now a vision of white paint and shop windows selling the magazine, artificial flowers and coloured bathroom fittings – more than ready for an expensive dose of reassurance.
Mercury is making a good aspect to Uranus, Jilly was told. Be prepared for changes. She must also take care not to overstretch herself. Jilly made an immediate resolution to cut down on her charity work.
Money, pronounced the astrologer, who did her homework, is there. Plenty of it. But beware the tricky aspects of Pluto in your House.
On the way home, Mrs Frant asked Jennifer Gauntlet if she would mind signing up to help with the annual fête. ‘Then,’ she added, ‘there are the cricket teas. I think Mrs Thrive would appreciate some help.’ The gist of Mrs Frant’s meaning was that Eleanor Thrive, who could not organize the contents of a lavender bag, was as usual making a hash of her rota. The implication was also that, being alone, Jennifer would have plenty of time to give. But, Jennifer bravely concluded, it was infinitely more comforting and less bitter to be included on a dubious basis than not at all.
Mrs Frant walked slowly back to the High House, so-called because it had been built by a Regency remittance man on the top of the only rise in a flat swathe of rolling Hampshire land. The rise did not immediately strike the onlooker as very high but she liked to think of the house as occupying a rarefied stratum with purer air; it was a home that worked to make her better.
At present, she required the reassurance: Jack, her good and wonderful son, was becoming a source of worry.
If he had given her no trouble during his childhood, Jack had, nevertheless, been difficult to understand. Or, at least, his mother found his motives and ambitions, and the marked puritan streak, mystifying and, lately, a source of pain. Certainly, his progress since leaving Oxford with a degree in Philosophy had not conformed – if taking a series of temporary jobs in reputable charities was not conforming. He had been lined up for a position at a merchant bank, and all would have been well. But he had had other ideas and held out stubbornly to work in Africa for a charity. It was Tess who had gone into the merchant bank.
‘Jack is a missionary ,’ Tess informed Becky as they waited at Waterloo for the train down to Appleford, the weekend following the party. ‘He sort of burns with fervour to do good, or at least to flagellate himself.’
‘Why?’
Tess raised her shoulders and stepped back to allow a flock of girls to scuttle down the platform. ‘Some strange tic in his make-up. Maybe we have a saint in our past.’
Becky, who that week had been telephoned twice by Jack, had her own...
