by Simon Brett
A GOOD THING
Generally speaking, it has to be said I’m quite good with money. I mean, I think about it; I don’t just rush out and do daft things; I’m careful about whose advice I listen to. I can always spot a good thing.
Obviously, having been born to it helps. I mean, I have got this kind of genetic aptitude. You know, some ancestor of mine back in the seventeenth century or whenever caught on to the idea that there was money to be made in this new slave-trade business, and he went for it. Then subsequent generations chose their moment to go into coffee, or rubber, or railways, or armaments, or whatever it happened to be and, generally speaking, they got it right. Money breeds money, as the saying goes, though my view is more that breeding breeds money.
And it has to be said, we Foulkeses have got the breeding. Obviously we didn’t have it when we started, but then who did? Mind you, once one of my distant ancestors had saved up enough to buy a peerage from James I of England – and VI of Scotland, don’t let us forget – well, we were up and away.
And haven’t really looked back since. Entrepreneurial we’ve always been – that’s the word – entrepreneurial. We haven’t just let our money sit and vegetate – good heavens, no – we’ve been out there watching it work for us. I mean, I’ve got a lot of chums who caught nasty colds over the Lloyds insurance debacle, and though I feel sorry as hell for the poor buggers – and particularly for their wives – I have to say they had it coming to them.
I’d never get involved in something like that – just salting the money away and sitting quietly at home, waiting for the divvies to come in. No, I invest in things I can see. And let me tell you, I’m pretty damned sharp about recognizing the kind of guy who’s going to point me in the direction of the right sort of investments. I’m an extremely good judge of character. I know a good thing when I see it.
Which is why I was so delighted when I first met Roland Puissant.
It was in my club, actually. Blake’s. The Foulkeses have been members there virtually since the place started, back in the – what? – 1830s, some time round then. Roland himself isn’t a member – came as the guest of a friend. He told me frankly when we met at the bar that Blake’s wasn’t really his scene. Didn’t like the idea of being anywhere where he had to wear a suit and tie. Wasn’t that he hadn’t got suits and ties – he was wearing a very nice pinstriped number and the old Harrovian colours that day, actually – but he didn’t like being forced to conform by club regulations. Said he thought it was an infringement of the rights of the individual.
And I respected him for that. Respected him for coming out with his opinion right there, at the bar in Blake’s, surrounded by all those crusty old members. As I discovered later, there’s never any pretence about Roland. If he thinks something, he says it. Would rather run the risk of offending someone than compromising his opinions and values.
Good thing, so far as I’m concerned. There are so many bullshitters around these days, who’ll contort themselves into knots agreeing with everything you say to them, that a direct approach like Roland’s is very refreshing.
Anyway, we got talking at the bar. His friend had nipped off to make a phone call – though Roland secretly suspected that the phone call would quickly lead to a nearby hotel where the friend had set up an assignation with a rather dishy little thing from a public relations company. Roland had a nasty feeling that he was being used simply as an alibi for the chap’s wife.
Well, the bloke I was meant to be meeting hadn’t shown, either. Can’t say I was too disappointed. Some fellow I’d apparently known from Eton, though the name didn’t ring a bell. Phoned up saying he’d been out of the country for some years and was dead keen to meet up with old chums like Nicky Foulkes. This already made me a bit leery; so many times that sort of introduction leads to someone trying to sell you insurance. Even been known for people in that world to lie about having been at school with you. Buy a tie and invent some rigmarole about having been three years below you in a different house and always looking up to you, soften you up a bit, then wham, in with the ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever stopped to consider what your family would stand to receive if – and heaven forbid – but if something were to happen to you . . .’
So, basically, I was standing at the bar wondering why the hell I’d agreed to meet this bloke, and getting chirpier with every passing minute that he didn’t show up. I was beginning to feel confident that the danger had passed, reconciling myself quite cheerfully to an evening’s drinking, assuming I could find someone congenial to drink with . . . when – lo and behold – Roland Puissant turned up.
Answer to a maiden’s prayer, eh? The other members I was surrounded with in the bar were of the crotchety nothing’s-been-the-same-since-we-lost-the-Empire persuasion, so it was a relief simply to see someone round my own age, apart from anything else.
And, once we got talking, it pretty soon became clear that Roland hadn’t just got age going for him. Oh no, he was very definitely an all-round good bloke.
Could put back the sauce too. I’m no mean performer in the tincture stakes, but he was more than matching me glass for glass. We were on the malt. Lagavulin from Islay’s my favourite. Turned out Roland loved the stuff too. Clearly a man of taste.
Well, after an hour or so on the blessed nectar, I suggested eating something by way of blotting paper. And since the food at Blake’s is indistinguishable from blotting paper, I said we should eat in the club dining room. Roland said fine, so long as it was his treat – he insisted on that. I said, your treat next time, old lad. Non-members aren’t allowed to pay at Blake’s.
At first he wasn’t keen on being in my debt, but he came round graciously enough. So we got stuck into the club claret. Long experience has taught me that the only way to deal with Blake’s food is to anaesthetize the old tastebuds with alcohol. Always works for me – I can never remember what I’ve ordered and don’t notice what it is while I’m eating the stuff. Perfect.
We were into the second bottle before we got talking about money. Roland just let something slip by mistake. He tried to cover it up, but I’m pretty Lagavulin- and claret-resistant, so I leapt on it straight away.
All he actually said was ‘. . . and you know that wonderful feeling of confidence when you’re on to an absolute copper-bottomed cert of a good thing.’
He could have been talking in purely general terms, but the way he hastily moved the conversation on told me he was dealing with specifics. I’m pretty sharp about that kind of stuff. Something of an amateur psychologist, actually. Well, you need to be in the kind of circles I move in. Stuffed full of shysters trying to put one over on you – particularly if you happen to have a bit of the old inherited.
So I pounced. ‘“Good thing,” Roland?’ I said. ‘And what particular “good thing” are you talking about at the moment?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
But I stuck at it. ‘Horse?’
‘No, not a horse in this instance.’
I was rather pleased with myself: my line of questioning had made him admit that he was talking about something specific rather than general.
‘Investment opportunity?’ I pressed on.
He was embarrassed that I’d seen through him so quickly, but nodded.
‘Tell me more,’ I said. ‘Always like to hear the details of any investment opportunity. We Foulkeses have traditionally had a nose for this kind of thing.’
Still Roland prevaricated. ‘Oh, I don’t think it’d interest you.’
‘Let me be the judge of that. Go on, tell me – unless of course you’ve got the whole thing sewn up yourself and don’t want to let anyone else in on it.’
‘No, for heaven’s sake,’ he protested. ‘I wouldn’t do that. It’s just I do hate giving tips to friends. It’s like selling them a car – hellish embarrassing if the thing breaks down.’
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m a grown-up. I’m quite capable of making my own decisions. I don’t get taken in by anything iffy. Don’t forget, my sur
name’s Foulkes, and we Foulkeses have had quite a reputation over the years for making some pretty damned good business decisions. Come on, Roland, you bloody well tell me what this is all about!’
That little barrage broke down his resistance. He sighed, shrugged, and told me what it was all about.
Basically, like most financial projects, it was buying and selling. Buying cheap and selling expensive – the principle on which the British Empire was built. And the principle by which the Foulkeses had done so well out of the British Empire.
Like the slave trade on which the family fortune had been built, Roland’s investment scheme was not illegal. Some people might perhaps go a bit wobbly about its ethics, but it was undoubtedly within the law. Sounded just the sort of ‘good thing’ a member of the Foulkes family should get involved in.
In fact the project’s parallels with the slave trade didn’t stop at its legality. The commodities being bought and sold were domestic servants. Men and women from the Caribbean were offered a complete service – flight to London, job found, work permit sorted out. The investment required was to pay for these services. The profit came from the fee the clients paid to the agency which handled their cases.
When Roland mentioned this, I shrewdly asked whether the word ‘fee’ was appropriate. Wasn’t ‘bribe’ nearer the mark? He just gave me a charming grin and said we didn’t want to get bogged down in semantics.
But wasn’t it hellish difficult to arrange work permits for foreigners? was my next question. Roland agreed it was. ‘This is the beauty of the scheme, though,’ he went on. ‘My contact has an “in” with the Home Office.’
It was the first time he’d mentioned a ‘contact’. Felicia Rushworth, she was called. She had had the idea for the business and needed capital. Roland Puissant had backed her to the tune of fifty grand six months before. The return on his stake had quadrupled since then. People from the Caribbean definitely did want to get jobs in England.
I didn’t ask how much the ‘fee’ they paid for this privilege was. Nor did I ask the rates they were paid once they started working in London. When you’re investing in something, there are some details you just don’t need to know about.
By the end of the evening – rather late, as it happened, because we’d moved on to a little drinking club I know round the back of Bond Street – Roland had agreed that the next week he’d introduce me to Felicia Rushworth.
It has to be said – she was bloody stunning. I mean, I’ve known a lot of girls, but Felicia Rushworth definitely took the Best of Show rosette. Generally speaking, I keep girls at arm’s length. Of course I go around with a good few – everyone needs sex – but I don’t let them get close. Always have to be on the lookout if you’ve come into a bit – lots of voracious females out there with their beady eyes fixed solely on the old inherited. So I’ve never even got near marriage. Never wanted to. Mind you, the sight of a creation like Felicia Rushworth could go a long way towards making a chap change his mind about that kind of thing.
She had this long blonde hair that looked natural. I don’t know much about that stuff, but if it wasn’t natural it was damned cleverly done. Come to that, if it was natural, it was damned cleverly done.
Shrewd blue eyes. Intelligent. Normally, I don’t look for that in a girl, but then what I’m looking for in most of them isn’t a business partnership. Anyway, in Felicia’s case, the intelligence in the eyes wasn’t so overpowering they stopped being pretty.
And beautifully tanned skin. I suppose that’s one of the perks of doing business with the Caribbean. Slender brown arms and endless brown legs, of whose unseen presence beneath the table I was aware right through that lunch at Nico at Ninety.
I’d suggested the venue. One of my regular bread-and-watering holes. Sort of place that can impress clients when they need impressing. Mind you, Felicia Rushworth looked cool enough to take anything in her stride.
Roland was kind of formal with her. Don’t know why I thought that odd. I’d probably assumed he knew her better than he did. After all, she was just someone he was doing business with. He was done up to the nines again, old Harrovian tie neatly in place. I think he was probably trying to impress her.
Felicia had a no-nonsense approach to the reason for our meeting. ‘Let’s get the serious bit out of the way first,’ she said firmly. ‘Then we can enjoy the rest of our lunch.’
And she spelled it all out to me. The more she said, the better I felt about the whole picture. That old Foulkes nose for a ‘good thing’ was twitching like a ruddy dowsing rod. Felicia’s long-term plan was to run the business completely on her own with her own savings, but in the short term she needed start-up capital. The experimental six months with Roland’s fifty grand had worked so well that now she wanted to expand the operation – set up offices in London and Kingston, Jamaica, take on staff, put the whole affair on a more permanent footing.
‘One thing I should ask at this point . . .’ I said, ‘is about the legality of what’s going on. Roland’s told me it’s kosher, and obviously I believe him, but in my experience you don’t get the kind of profits we’re talking about here without the odd rule being ever so slightly bent.’
Felicia turned the full beam of those shrewd blue eyes on me. ‘You’re not stupid, are you, Mr Foulkes?’
I gave her a lazy grin back. ‘No. And please call me Nicky. Everybody does.’
‘All right, Nicky. Well, you’ve probably worked out that the area where the rules are being bent a little is round the work permits.’ I nodded, confirming her assumption that I was way ahead of her. ‘And yes, people involved in that area of the business are running risks. They’re being well paid to run risks, but I suppose in a worst-case scenario they might get found out. In that eventuality, no blame could possibly be attached to the investors in the company . . . although, of course, trouble of that sort could cut down the kind of returns they’d get.’ Once again she fixed those unnerving blue eyes on mine. ‘But I’m looking for the kind of investor who likes risks.’
‘I like risks.’ Then I added, ‘In all areas of my life.’
She didn’t give me anything so rude as a wink, but I could see she’d salted the message away. There was now a kind of private bond between us, something that excluded Roland.
I moved briskly on. ‘So what size of investment are you looking for at the moment?’
‘Over the next year I need a quarter of a million,’ she replied coolly. ‘Immediately a hundred thousand. Roland’s supplying most of that, so I’m just looking for top-up funds at the moment.’
‘Top-up to the tune of how much?’
‘Ten grand.’
‘What, Roland, you’re already committed for the ninety?’
He nodded. ‘Seeing the return I got on fifty, can you blame me?’
‘No.’ I was silent for a moment. ‘Pity I came in so late on the deal, isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, ten grand’s not much of a stake for a real risk-taker, is it?’ As I said the word, I fixed Felicia with my eye. She gave an almost imperceptible acknowledgement of the secret between us.
‘There’ll be more opportunities,’ she said soothingly. ‘Better for you to start small. See how it goes. I mean, the next six months may not go as well as the first. I don’t want you to be out of pocket.’
‘Not much danger of that, is there?’
She shook her head firmly and, with a little smile, said, ‘No.’
‘So are you going in for the ten grand, Nicky?’ asked Roland.
‘You try and stop me.’ I took a sip of wine. ‘You sure I can’t go in for more, Felicia?’
‘Absolutely positive.’
‘But look, if you’re after a quarter of a million over the next year, surely I could—’
The blue eyes turned to steel. ‘Mr Foulkes, I am offering you a stake of ten thousand pounds in my business. That is the offer. Ten grand – no more. Take it or leave it.’
Felicia Rushworth w
as quite daunting in that mode. I left it there for the rest of the lunch. But I was a bit miffed. She’d opened up this glowing prospect to me, and then severely limited my access to it. Ten grand’s nothing to an entrepreneur like me. I knew this was a really good thing, and I wanted to be into it a lot deeper than that.
Still, we didn’t talk about it further, just enjoyed Nico Ladenis’s cooking. Bloody good. Makes you realize just how bad the garbage is you get dished up at places like Blake’s. We got through a couple of rather decent bottles of Pouilly Fumé too.
Which inevitably led to Roland and me needing an excursion to the Gents. It was there that I moved on to the next stage of the plan I’d been forming during the lunch.
‘Any chance of my getting in for more, do you reckon?’ I asked casually.
‘Mm?’ Roland was preoccupied with his zip.
‘More than ten grand . . . in Felicia’s little scheme . . . I mean, ten grand’s nothing . . . I want to be a serious player.’
Roland grimaced. ‘Hm . . . Felicia’s a strong-willed lady. She says she’ll let you in for ten grand, that’s what she means. Probably just protecting herself. I mean, she doesn’t know much about you – only what I’ve told her. I know you’re the genuine article, but you can’t blame her for being cautious. There’re a lot of villains about, you know.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that. Do you think it’s worth my having another go – asking Felicia straight out if I can invest more?’
He jutted out a dubious lower lip. ‘Like I say, when she’s decided something . . .’ He turned thoughtfully to wash his hands in the basin. ‘Tell you what,’ he said after a moment, ‘. . . I could cut you in on a bit of mine.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, so long as I give Felicia the ninety grand, she’s not going to know where it comes from. If you give me another ten, your stake goes up to twenty, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, but that’s cutting down your profits, isn’t it?’
Roland Puissant shrugged. ‘I did all right first time round. Got a few other good things I could divert the spare into.’