'I know I'm not much, Lovejoy,' she said quietly. 'You only brought me along to do the job. I'm not deceiving myself. I know it isn't because you're head over heels, me older than I say ...' etc, etc.
She went on, running herself down. I dozed a bit while she rabbited on. Why women deplore themselves like this I don't know, but they do. She catalogued her defects –
overweight, fingers too thick, low-quality ears. Finally I managed to open my eyes and rouse, the monster from the Black Lagoon.
'Shut up, you silly cow,' I told her drowsily. 'You're just right. Can't you tell? You're the only bird I can depend on.'
I felt her turn in the darkness. 'Am I?' she asked in amazement. (See? Astonished that somebody liked her. Beats me.)
'Silly mare,' I said. 'You miss the point. You're the one I'm in bed with. It's a clue.' I can't honestly work out what women are on about. It's a flaw in their character.
Next morning I was up early. Sure enough, there was an envelope under the door.
Good old indefatigable Thomasina Quayle (Mrs), asked if she might prevail on my good offices to appraise her of my movements 'for the convenience of all those concerned'.
Quickly I hid the letter before Peshy nicked it.
We had breakfast in our room, though room service always embarrasses me. Then Alicia went and booked us out. I eeled out of the rear of the building to the trunk road.
She picked me up at the crossroads. This was in case those two blokes were looking for me. We were in Kings Lynn by noon. We posted off the goods to Eleanor.
The central library was open. I made Alicia promise not to nick – sorry, to shoulder –
anything from the mall and left her and Peshy window shopping while I went to the reference library and looked up everything I could lay hands on about Hugo.
At last I knew where I was.
27
REFLECTION TIME.
SOMEWHERE, it seems to me, I harbour a deep suspicion that God is having us on. Just look at the state mankind is in. It's not just our own messes – wars, pollution, famine –
it's everything God starts us off with. Like our shapes, for instance. Like having to gulp slices of dead plants and animals just to keep alive. Having to go to the loo is another winner. Could anything be more pointless? Or sleeping. Stop what we're doing, to lie flat and become unconscious for hours, just to do it all over again. Daft. I reckon God was a beginner. God wanted to create a brilliant computer but never read the manual.
He's as hopeless with animals. Think of parasites. For heaven's sake, whatever was God thinking of? Every spring I worry for the swallows. Poor little sods have to fly all the way up the entire world, hang about East Anglia for the summer, then migrate all the way back to South Africa and just make it in time to start back again. Where's the sense in that? For God's glory? I ask you. It's time God got his act together. Please, oh God, next time read the instructions on the box before reaching for the screwdriver.
Better still, leave us alone. We're thick, but we're not total duds like Somebody Up There I might mention.
Except for one thing.
Remember greed?
Once upon a time, back in darkest old London town, coffee houses flourished.
Everybody loved to forgather in smoky old seventeenth-century streets, Greenwich to Hampton Court, and swill the new tarry stuff. Coffee even had streets named after it. It was believed to be so-o-o healthy. In those dens you could meet gentry, famous society beaux, politicians up to no good, empire builders. You might chat to Dr Johnson, harken to admirals, notorious gamblers, saints and sinners all.
And businessmen.
Years passed. Coffee dives specialized. Some tended to cater for literary buffs, others for society. In cramped old Tower Street, one Edward Lloyd charged penny a swig for his brew. This wasn't all that cheap in those days, incidentally, when it took 240 pence (each penny worth four whole farthings!) to make one pound, coin of the realm. Lloyd kindly chucked in ink, quills, paper and free spills for you to light your churchwarden pipe as you sat by his fireplace and penned messages about your mercantile enterprises. At first, ladies frequented the coffee caffs but, as this place and then that place became teeming outhouses of London's free-wheeling markets, the ladies drifted to fashion-conscious emporiums to gossip over cakes and furbelows, leaving the men to deal.
London's insurance market was born.
Insurance wasn't new. Long before 1 AD, traders bargained on the shores of North Africa when insuring cargoes in Mediterranean galleys. But the sheer global range and intensity of London's maritime activity was beyond anyone's imagining. And nowhere was it more boisterous than in Edward Lloyd's little coffee pad. They called it assurance at first, then standards slid as the underwriters – who inked their names at the bottom (under-writing, see?) of agreements scribed in Lloyd's nook – started plain gambling.
Besides ships, they bet who would win wars, who might survive if the Black Death returned, who'd marry and when. You could drop in Lloyd's coffee shop and insure yourself against losing at cards or the chances of rain on your new daffodil. Anything, in fact.
Deceit flourished.
Something had to give. A cluster of sober merchants hived themselves off. Still identifying themselves by Edward Lloyd's moniker, they became, in effect, a dedicated insurance market, the great Lloyd's of London. Its humble messengers became magnates in their own right, flourishing by part-time spying for the Empire as Napoleon did his tyrannical stuff and navies fought and fleets foundered.
Through it all, Lloyd's loyally surged on.
