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Authors: Ashly Graham
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files up to the Room, but extracted whatever they needed each day to put in their slipcases.
Freddie Myers was by no means the only “character” in the brokers’ office. Cyril Cholmondeley, pronounced Chumley, and his friend Ramses Barrington-Knightley behaved like the cricket-mad characters Charters and Caldicott played on screen by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne in the 1938 film The Lady Vanishes directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
During the week Cyril stayed at his club on Pall Mall, and took the Tube from Charing Cross, and Ramses came in from Bayswater. Mysteriously each arrived together at Chandlers’ main entrance revolving doors at nine twenty-five, with courteous “Good morning, old boy,”s and “After you,”... and “No, after you ”s. The young brokers secretly envied the blithe and blameless lives that the pair led, but resolved never to become as they were, unpromoted and over the hill: toujours la politesse was prejudicial to upward mobility in a cut-and-thrust world.
Cyril was portly and moustachioed, and Ramses lean and clean-shaven; otherwise there was nothing to tell between them: they had attended the same school, Harrow, their voices and mannerisms were identical, they went to the same tailor, and their families holidayed together. Both carried Swaine Adeney Brigg umbrellas irrespective of the weather forecast. They worked on the same accounts and visited underwriters in tandem at their own pace and reliably. They did the Times crossword over coffee every day in the Captains’ Room, separately except when they were both stuck on the same clue, which they always were, at the same table facing the portrait of Churchill by Alfred Egerton Cooper; and ate lunch together at an undisclosed City location where, because one did not discuss business at meals, they talked cricket.
Cholmondeley and Barrington-Knightley did not entertain underwriters to lunch, nor did they wine and dine clients, few of whom they had met, because the assistant director they reported to did not want them to, which suited them because they preferred to correspond with them by cable and letter. They did not negotiate with underwriters, because gentlemen did not haggle, but took what the market offered. Only a bounder held out for less than the going rate, or demanded broader than usual coverage. The beneficiaries of the policies that they arranged wanted Lloyd’s of London security behind them, rather than that of some fly-by-night insurance company, even if the price was higher, which it always was…that was why one came to Lloyd’s.
Cyril and Ramses did not accord rank in the commercial world any greater respect than that they showed to everyone as a matter of courtesy. Nor did they feel humiliated by their lowly station, and they were always happy to oblige when grey hair, good breeding, acquaintance with minor royalty, and an MCC tie, were needed to impress someone else’s client. Other than Arbella they were the only ones who knew their way around the Tower of London, and they never objected to taking colonials’ wives on tours of the place.
But at five-thirty precisely Cholmondeley and Barrington-Knightley put work out their heads and departed to the theatre, concert hall, opera or ballet, or to dinner with friends.
One executive who was irritated by C & R’s lack of rah-rah enthusiasm for corporate goals had tried to chivvy them along. ‘You’re a right pair of old tortoises, you are,’ he said, ‘the speed you get around. Why don’t you split up? You’d get twice as much done. Last time I checked, this company wasn’t a charity.’
There was a silence while C & R looked at each other, then Ramses said, ‘I say, Chum, give him the benefit of the doubt, he might be right: you are rather slow, you know.’
‘My dear Ramses, it’s quite the opposite. Not that I would have mentioned it otherwise, but you positively hold me back.’
‘Nonsense, old fellow, I’m just keeping step with you.’
‘Don’t
Freddie Myers was by no means the only “character” in the brokers’ office. Cyril Cholmondeley, pronounced Chumley, and his friend Ramses Barrington-Knightley behaved like the cricket-mad characters Charters and Caldicott played on screen by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne in the 1938 film The Lady Vanishes directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
During the week Cyril stayed at his club on Pall Mall, and took the Tube from Charing Cross, and Ramses came in from Bayswater. Mysteriously each arrived together at Chandlers’ main entrance revolving doors at nine twenty-five, with courteous “Good morning, old boy,”s and “After you,”... and “No, after you ”s. The young brokers secretly envied the blithe and blameless lives that the pair led, but resolved never to become as they were, unpromoted and over the hill: toujours la politesse was prejudicial to upward mobility in a cut-and-thrust world.
Cyril was portly and moustachioed, and Ramses lean and clean-shaven; otherwise there was nothing to tell between them: they had attended the same school, Harrow, their voices and mannerisms were identical, they went to the same tailor, and their families holidayed together. Both carried Swaine Adeney Brigg umbrellas irrespective of the weather forecast. They worked on the same accounts and visited underwriters in tandem at their own pace and reliably. They did the Times crossword over coffee every day in the Captains’ Room, separately except when they were both stuck on the same clue, which they always were, at the same table facing the portrait of Churchill by Alfred Egerton Cooper; and ate lunch together at an undisclosed City location where, because one did not discuss business at meals, they talked cricket.
Cholmondeley and Barrington-Knightley did not entertain underwriters to lunch, nor did they wine and dine clients, few of whom they had met, because the assistant director they reported to did not want them to, which suited them because they preferred to correspond with them by cable and letter. They did not negotiate with underwriters, because gentlemen did not haggle, but took what the market offered. Only a bounder held out for less than the going rate, or demanded broader than usual coverage. The beneficiaries of the policies that they arranged wanted Lloyd’s of London security behind them, rather than that of some fly-by-night insurance company, even if the price was higher, which it always was…that was why one came to Lloyd’s.
Cyril and Ramses did not accord rank in the commercial world any greater respect than that they showed to everyone as a matter of courtesy. Nor did they feel humiliated by their lowly station, and they were always happy to oblige when grey hair, good breeding, acquaintance with minor royalty, and an MCC tie, were needed to impress someone else’s client. Other than Arbella they were the only ones who knew their way around the Tower of London, and they never objected to taking colonials’ wives on tours of the place.
But at five-thirty precisely Cholmondeley and Barrington-Knightley put work out their heads and departed to the theatre, concert hall, opera or ballet, or to dinner with friends.
One executive who was irritated by C & R’s lack of rah-rah enthusiasm for corporate goals had tried to chivvy them along. ‘You’re a right pair of old tortoises, you are,’ he said, ‘the speed you get around. Why don’t you split up? You’d get twice as much done. Last time I checked, this company wasn’t a charity.’
There was a silence while C & R looked at each other, then Ramses said, ‘I say, Chum, give him the benefit of the doubt, he might be right: you are rather slow, you know.’
‘My dear Ramses, it’s quite the opposite. Not that I would have mentioned it otherwise, but you positively hold me back.’
‘Nonsense, old fellow, I’m just keeping step with you.’
‘Don’t
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