On the Floor

Aifric Campbell
was born in Ireland and grew up in Dublin. She spent thirteen years as an investment banker in London and now lives in Sussex. She teaches at Imperial College. Her previous two novels,
The Semantics of Murder
and
The Loss Adjustor
, are also published by Serpent's Tail.

Praise for
The Loss Adjustor

‘Aifric Campbell is one of my favourite Irish novelists and I love this book. It's written with seriousness, lightness, intelligence and insight, but most of all with great beauty and presence' Joseph O'Connor

‘Sexy, sad, riven with longing,
The Loss Adjustor
confirms a talent of unusual promise' Nicholas Shakespeare

‘Campbell allows her disturbing story to seep out slowly and to deliver unnerving punches in this extremely well-paced novel'
Mslexia

‘So full of beautiful writing that even the insurance industry comes to life. From its beguiling first sentence – “I was born in a place that presumed departure” – to its simple, humane ending, it is beautiful to read. Aifric Campbell's language is rich and exact, never flowering into too much; she is concise without being dry, her characters painted in deft, tight strokes' Suzanne Harrington,
Irish Examiner

‘Clear-eyed, lyrical… Campbell manages to infuse the cool, lucid language of the narrator with some truly luminous descriptions of place and emotion… a book that demands to be taken seriously, both because of its ambitions and the beauty of its writing' Catherine Heaney,
Irish Times

‘Aifric Campbell's absorbing second novel celebrates friendship past and present and the enduring hope of redemption'
Waterstone's Books Quarterly

‘Campbell writes with lambent precision… a mesmerising study of a woman clinging to the knotted cord of adolescence, uncertain whether to go backwards or forwards' John O'Connell,
Guardian

‘Campbell's style is lyrical, revealing sharp, important truths with mesmerising intensity as Caro begins to embrace a future that is rich with possibility, hope and reconciliation' Eithne Farry,
Daily Mail

‘The imagery is evocative, the narrative well-paced and there is a genuine sense of sympathy with the main character. Thought-provoking'
Scotsman

‘The flawless depiction of a life destroyed by the devastating loss of a loved one is testament to her skill as a writer' Jennifer Ryan,
Sunday Independent

‘Campbell's eloquent prose is both beautiful and compelling, making
The Loss Adjustor
a haunting and gripping novel'
Ulster Tatler

‘A powerful and thought-provoking book… the real beauty lies in her elegant and evocative prose'
Sunday Business Post

‘
The Loss Adjustor
is a beautifully written, lyrical exploration of loss and grief. Campbell's skill as a writer, however, ensures that although this is a sad story, the overall effect is far from depressing'
Canberra Times

aifric campbell

A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the
British Library on request

The right of Aifric Campbell to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988

Copyright © 2012 Aifric Campbell

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real
persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publisher.

First published in 2012 by Serpent's Tail,
an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
3A Exmouth House
Pine Street
London EC1R 0JH
website:
www.serpentstail.com

ISBN 978 1 84668 808 9
eISBN 978 1 84765 801 2

Designed and typeset by [email protected]

Printed by Clays, Bungay, Suffolk

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Women in the money-making world,
Climbing to the top,
Women in pin-striped suits,
Clutching briefcases, hurrying,
Going up in lifts
With set jaws and anxious faces…

Surely when they entered
This daily madness,
We might have hoped that they would somehow
Do more to transmute
Its vast encompassing sadness.

Anthony Cronin

HERE'S HOW IT GOES
, the moment of my becoming:

The call comes in at 16:09, while we're already winding down. The London market's just closed so the trading floor is quiet and the only shouting is what's spilling out of the squawk box from New York.

First thing I notice is a flurry on the Block Desk, a change in tempo, like the rumble of approaching thunder. Then the Grope strides out of his glass tower, his jawbone set like stone, the way it always is when something big is going down. And it's like a tom-tom alert has gone out, faces are bobbing up behind the rows of monitors as a Mexican wave of heads rolls right across the floor from South East Asia to the US desk.

Rob stands up at his pitch directly opposite me, slaps the receiver in his palm like he's testing a cosh. Al rises from the chair beside me and the big fat research report on waste management that he keeps telling us is the Industry of the Future. And then I'm standing too, the skirt amongst men.

The Grope stops at the Block Desk where Skippy Dolan is on his feet with the phone clamped to his ear. His elbow sticks out at a right angle so you can see the sweat circle darken his blue armpit. And I'm thinking it looks bad, Skippy standing there leaking like that, he's the only Yank
on the floor who doesn't wear a white shirt with a vest underneath to mop up the juice. The Grope leans into the Reuters screen and we're all craning our necks like prairie dogs, trying to see whose vitals he is checking.

‘I'm guessing it's Fido on the line,' says Al. ‘Skippy said he's getting real tight with them.'

And Skippy is ranting into the phone, nodding his strawberry meathead as if he's in spasm, as if he can't stop. His free hand chops the air space in front of him into big empty pieces and after 352 days in this job I can read all the signs: Skippy's client is a seller in size who wants out NOW. And I can tell from the way he's bent double and winding the phone cord around his neck, that if we don't pull the trigger soon, Skippy's client will trade away.

‘Let me call Felix Mann.' My voice is very loud and very clear. The Grope snaps round. Heads swivel. Rob turns to face me with a flopped jaw. Al is sucking wind through his teeth.

The Grope hoovers up the space between us and leans across Rob's desk to fix me with that killer stare.

‘Felix Mann is the only one who can do this,' I say, the receiver smooth and warm in my hand like a favourite toy.

You make your own luck. You pick your moments and this is mine.

‘Two minutes,' Skippy squeals, air-slicing his throat. ‘Or my man takes his business to Goldman's.'

‘OK, Geri, let's smile and dial,' says the Grope, all soft and dangerous. And then he tells me what Skippy's got to show.

It is midnight in Hong Kong but Felix answers on the first ring.

‘Cemco,' I say. ‘I have a seller in size.'

I hear his fingers flutter across the keyboard. Picture his pale face spotlit in the darkened office, the harbour lights twinkling behind the black glass.

‘I've got 56 million shares on offer at 224.'

Al is a still life beside me. The Grope and Rob like a tableau on the other side of the monitors. And behind them an audience is assembling to witness my circus animal performance. The truth is I have no fucking clue what Felix thinks of Cemco. Or the price. Or anything. But I know that he's the only one who can do this right here, right now.

‘And I've got one minute,' I tell Felix. Skippy is in panicked silence, his fingers counting down the seconds to expiry.

There is a lurch in my chest like a part of my lung has just collapsed. The tickers whizz green across the black tape and I reach out to touch my Reuters like a sacred stone. In the corner of my eye I see Al's finger tapping his desk, he is keeping time with Skippy's countdown as I hurtle towards my own funeral.

‘Geri,' the Grope's voice hits me like a blow to the temple.

‘Felix,' I say. ‘We're out of time.'

There's a crackling on the line and I imagine my voice sinking undersea, picture starfish gliding dumbly over the transcontinental cable, a scuttle of claws across the silent floor. Al stops tapping the desk and the faithless audience leans in to get a better view of Geri Molloy choking on the slime of reckless ambition.

Felix's voice shoots to the surface and into my ear.

‘He'll pay 223 for the lot,' I look up into the Grope's blinkless stare. Skippy holds three frantic fingers in the air. The Grope nods quick and tight and I raise my trembling thumb level with his head and say loudly, so everyone can hear: ‘You're done, Felix, 56 million Cemco sold to you at 223.' And Skippy is thumping into his phone now, he's spinning round and unravelling the coil, waving the blue ticket above his head. ‘Thank you, Felix.' I kill the line, write out a pick ticket and slam it in the timestamp. It is 16:21 on 5 March 1986 and everyone is gawping like I just became someone else.

‘'Kin-ell, Geri,' roars Rob and a hoot goes up. Skippy lunges across the monitors and my palm is burning from a machine gun of high fives.

Then the Grope is beside me showing the full set of white teeth.
His hand lands hard and heavy on my shoulder like it has never done before. He lets it linger for a moment while he looks down at me, differently somehow, like I'm not the person he thought I was. For I am now reborn and in my hand is a piece of living history: the biggest ticket ever written on Steiner's trading floor.

This was how I became a legend in my own lifetime.

This was the Big Fucking Ticket that made me everything I am.

AND FOR A LONG, LONG TIME
after the Big Fucking Ticket, things had all the appearance of being on an upward trend. I met Stephen and fell in love, the '87 Crash came and went, stock markets kept roaring ahead and I was coining it at Steiner's. So who could have guessed just how much trouble lay down the road? Who could have known that Stephen would dump me in Venice four years later, Felix Mann would be forcing my relocation to Hong Kong and I'd be lying here on the floor at 5:17 a.m. with an empty bottle of Absolut, watching a million troops line up in a desert theatre of war?

For a while I chose to believe that things just snuck up when I wasn't paying attention, but I've since figured out that this downward trend started exactly 737 days ago. It was 1988 and all through that summer I'd been dreaming about Kit Kats. The whole country was in meltdown about the nation's favourite chocolate bar being gobbled up by the Swiss and Stephen was working flat-out on the takeover bid, so I barely saw him.