Cornish guilt

I have just been out to lunch with Mrs X, my Cornish widow. I should be more precise: I have just been taken out to lunch by Mrs X. This is not a normal state of affairs, as I tried to explain to her. It is for the banker to entertain the client. But Mrs X was having none of it. 'I'm the one with all the money, aren't I?' she said. I submitted that my bank - and its expense account - might be the wealthier party, but she dismissed that argument out of hand. 'I'd like to treat you!' she said.

This London visit had an air of the Grand Tour about it for Mrs X. She rarely comes to the capital, and she has planned a splendid programme of arts and cultural betterment. Lunching with her banker was an elemental part of the Grand Tour. I got the impression she would have wanted to do it even if there was nothing to discuss, simply for the joy of an old-fashioned formula.

In fact, there was something to discuss. 'I've been feeling guilty,' she confessed, 'about Singapore.' Mrs X, I might remind you, has a good deal of "undeclared" money in Singapore. 'It didn't feel so naughty when it was in Switzerland. I mean that's traditional, isn't it? Quite respectable. But Singapore feels almost illegal.'

I liked the "almost".

It is not a banker's place to spell out what he has already intimated - that holding undeclared offshore funds does not fall, by any interpretration, within the sphere of law-abiding behaviour for residents of the United Kingdom. So I passed over that gloriously naive concern and paid deserved compliments to the chef's work. Mrs X had chosen an extremely fashionable restaurant in the West End, against whose unconventional decor she looked quite lost at first, but which produced a marvellous St Emilion, and a pretty good steak tartare.

'I mean, I ought really to be paying tax, oughtn't I? For hospitals, and what-not.'

It pained me to see her persist in this destructive line, one which I could only pretend not to hear for so long. 'I assure you, you're in very good company,' I tried. 'Plenty of our clients have the same arrangement.'

'Oh!' she said. 'Good show.' She really did say that.

But although her sense of guilt had diminished with my intervention, it hadn't entirely disappeared. 'I suppose,' she ventured cautiously, 'all this money you're making for me tax-free... I could give some of it to charity?'

I think I might have flinched at that.

There really is some kind of virus going around.

Is anybody out there?

I do slightly wonder if anyone is reading this anymore. Anonymity is all very well, but one can't help craving a little reaction to one's musings.

Feedback, please, or I shall just continue droning on about island ecology and keep the juicy client stuff to myself.

If you don't want to add a comment, you can contact me at absolutelyconfidential@hush.com

Island addendum

It occurred to me belatedly that writing about creating "islands" in the UK this weekend might not have been entirely sensitive to our friends in the west country.

My apologies to anyone reading this with their lower limbs submerged in Severn water.

On the positive side, if your butterflies have had to flee in search of dry refuge, they are more than welcome in Sussex.

Island Weekend

Inspired by another piece about threatened butterflies in The Times this weekend, I made a start on the wildlife island sanctuary that will be my mental and moral salvation. My children and I set out bravely and steadfastly into the wilds of those abandoned six acres we intend to transform into Eden. I can't say in all honesty we achieved very much beyond consumption of marmalade sandwiches and other such Enid Blyton delights, but we did manage to survey the plot, and we now have a serviceable map of the fields.

There are fences to remove, ponds to dig, trees to plant and wildflowers to nurture. Lots of work, all of which I expect to be entirely therapeutic, even if the current expectations of my excitable children leave me somewhat exhausted this Monday morning. My youngest wants hedgehogs, my oldest deer. And my son, bless his uninherited genius, wants a fully self-sustaining ecosystem of carnivores, herbivores, parasites, saprophytes, and a dozen other biological components I had never heard of.

Any advice from people who know about this stuff will be most welcome.

Stage Angst

My clients have so many different anxieties about their money, but some are more peculiar than others.

D is an actor, middle-aged and British, who a few years ago went from penury to moderate affluence when he was given a part in a big-budget Hollywood movie. To be honest, I took him on in expectation of further parts with bigger paycheques, but he went around grandly telling people he was a stage actor and wasn't interested in mass market celluloid, and regrettably the studios took him at his word. He soon became one of those awkward clients who simply wasn't rich enough to justify the time I had to give him.

Until last year.

Bizarrely, he was approached, on the basis of his Hollywood role, to star in a rather saucy series of TV advertisements in a certain Latin American country. It seems the film has achieved a kind of cult status there, with his character especially adored. The remuneration was, shall we say, hefty, and his portfolio is now really quite respectable - and lucrative to the bank. Now, of course, he wants to spend a few million on a house and a yacht, perhaps some horses, and here we come to his particular problem.

No one in England knows about the Latin American advertisements.

D is revered, apparently, in the London theatre world. I've been to a couple of his plays, more out of duty than desire, but I couldn't tell you if he's as talented as they say. Nevertheless, he assures me that he will be the laughing stock of Shaftesbury Avenue if his peers learn he has sold out to a foreign clothing company. The Hollywood movie was accepted by all as an ironic gesture (whatever that means). The ads most definitely won't be.

So - how to explain the sudden riches?

D's whole persona is founded on the basis of lofty talent, not wealth. In public, he scorns luxury and makes a point of wearing shabby clothes and eating in substandard restaurants. It's a dreadful bore having to meet him for lunch in some faux-Napolitan dive. But now that he's rich he's suddenly seeing the attraction of the country manor and the roar of a premium marque car. He wants the good life he's never had, and is terrified he will be found out the moment he reaches out and takes it.

The solution, in his opinion, is to reverse engineer a spectacular portfolio, to explain how he's turned his modest Hollywood fee into such splendid riches. Investment genius is acceptable, if not admirable, in the Green Room. So this is how I am having to spend my afternoon: going back through the past few years and picking out the most extraordinary equity performers, the cleverest derivative plays, so that D can sit at his manor dinner table and airily explain to his thespian friends that it was all a matter of inspired investment.

Apparently he is rendered almost entirely naked in the final advertisement. I shall be scouring YouTube one of these days.