Another soulless office in a bank: another ebullient robot in a dark suit in the chair opposite. This one wanted me to invest a small inheritance in one or both of two investment funds. With these in mind, he showed me a laminated diagram of an equilateral triangle illustrating the correlation between risk and financial gain. It was the kind of thing researchers show chimps to find out how bright they are. The nearer the apex, the greater the profit, but also the greater the risk. It was a bit rich showing me this, I thought, when they should have been showing it to themselves for the past five years. I kept my thoughts to myself, however, and studied it gravely.
His opinion of the current state of the financial markets, which he gave me with the air of sharing a confidence, was that they aren’t in nearly as bad shape as the media pundits are claiming. Yes, the stock markets have fallen, but to the levels of which past year? I hazarded a guess. ‘Fifteen eighty-eight?’ I said. Wrong, he said. It had fallen back to the level it was only a few years ago. So what were my thoughts? he said. Did I have any thoughts so far about how I was going to invest my windfall?
I certainly did have some thoughts. I had already decided to withdraw the whole lot in £50 notes, seal it in a Tupperware box, and bury it in the back garden, under the laurel bush most likely. He could talk about stock markets and investment funds until he was blue in the face — my money was going in the ground.
Two main reasons for my new take on the hedge fund. The first was reading last month in Charles Moore’s Spectator column that the City editor of the Guardian was stockpiling groceries against an impending financial meltdown. And the other was my Mum, who looks daily for the Second Coming of the Lord, showing me a copy of a ‘prophecy’ which has been recently vouchsafed to the Revd David Wilkerson in the United States.
The prophecy appeared in his bowl of breakfast cereal, according to some reports. As with most modern-day prophesies I’ve heard, this one is US-centric and a bit vague, which also detracts from its credibility. One longs for a prophecy about seismic events about to unfold in, say, Portugal.
But here it is. Wilkerson is warning that an ‘earth-shattering calamity’ centred on New York is ‘imminent’. Fires, he says, will ‘engulf’ Connecticut and New Jersey. Rioters and looters will run amok in major cities across the US. ‘We are all going to tremble,’ says Wilkerson. ‘Even the godliest among us.’ He urges Christians prepare for the calamity by ‘laying in a 30-day supply of non-perishable food, toiletries and other essentials’. My mother’s preparations are well in hand. She is passing on the warning to friends, Christian and non-Christian alike. Shelf stackers in the local supermarket are working like acrobats.
The Revd David Wilkerson played a part in my youth. He wrote a book called The Cross and the Switchblade about his missionary work among the drug addicts of New York that was an all-time best selling Christian paperback. Suspected of being ‘on drugs’ myself, I had a copy of this uplifting tale pressed on me by a church minister, who, I believe, credited the paperback with healing power whether I read it or not. I wasn’t healed. But I did read it. And the Revd Wilkerson, I remember, came across as a decent sort of bloke. I’m surprised he’s still alive.
My mother is thrilled to bits about the imminent catastrophe. She’s been looking daily for the end of the world for as long as I can remember. Probably the first thing she told me was that Jesus loved me, and the second, probably, was that we were in the Last Days. As a small chiId I took for granted the stockpile of corned beef in the cupboard to see us through them. Frankly, I’ll be glad if it is the end of the world, because then I can finally stop worrying about it.
So. Supposing I did opt for one of the two investment funds, said the robot, which level of returns would I be expecting for my money? Was it the higher? (Here he pointed with the tip of his biro to the segment nearest the apex of the triangle, where eagles flew.) Or was it the lower? (The tip of his biro moved condescendingly down to the broad, safer segment at the base, the preserve of weaklings, bottlers and nervous nuns.)
I’d like a little time to think about it, I told him, as a picture formed in my mind’s eye of a deep, dark, square hole in the earth.
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