Every Saturday morning Michael rises at four and drives down to the Côte d’Azur to the Magic World car boot sale. He goes early to see the bric-à-brac unloaded in order to pounce on any interesting old bottles, which he collects. His collection of 18th-century champagne bottles is probably second to none. While hunting bottles, he might also impulsively buy something that tickles his fancy. His knowledge of old things is wide and deep and occasionally he unearths something that would make an Antiques Roadshow crowd gasp with avarice. Then he goes for a swim in the Mediterranean. He’s back at home by ten.
Last month he came back with a set of late 19th-century French pharmacy scales. The glass and mahogany cabinet alone is a work of art. The scales are so precise the balancing needle must be viewed through a magnifying eyeglass. The beautifully crafted mechanism set on a black glass floor must be worth hundreds, perhaps thousands. He gave €60 for it.
On Saturday night he invited Catriona and me round to his house for a chicken dinner. Before going to the table to eat, we drank a bottle of dark, still slightly fizzy 25-year-old champagne he’d bought at Magic World for €1. We drank this out of engraved 19th-century ‘coupes’ (wide, shallow, last seen in 1960s Babycham adverts) also picked up at Magic World. Michael had directed me to sit in a beautifully carved 19th-century walnut throne he’d bought that day for bugger all, to see if I’d notice the difference between it and his usual fireside armchair. (I didn’t.)
Next to Hitler was a 50 cent piece, a ten cent piece and eight grains of white rice
And while he and Catriona talked about Michael’s other favourite subject, which is food, I let my eye wander around the old curiosity shop at other displayed fruits of his Magic World addiction: weird old paintings, old sculpture, old glass, old framed photographs, old artificial flowers, most of it apparently chosen in a spirit of whimsy. And there, in pride of place, were the famous antique pharmacy scales. Then I noticed a lead soldier-like figure standing in each of the brass weighing pans. I noticed too that each figure had an arm extended in what looked like a fascist salute.
I took my coupe across the room for a closer look. On the left was Mussolini, giving me the bent-arm fascist salute, on the right Adolf’s stiff one. Michael hastened over to explain. The little lead figures were Magic World impulse buys from years ago. He’d found them in a drawer and on a whim stood them on the scales. Seeing that Mussolini was heavier, he decided to find out exactly by how much. With no pharmacological weights to hand, he used first coins, then rice grains to achieve a perfect balance. Next to Hitler was a 50 cent piece, a ten cent piece and eight grains of white rice.
‘I was going to put a photo of them on Instagram as an artistic jeu d’esprit,’ he said. ‘Then I thought better of it.’ I nodded gravely at his having escaped social death by a whisker. ‘But don’t you think the detail of the hand painting is excellent?’ he said. ‘There must have been thousands of these figures knocking about before the war. Today they are unthinkable, even shocking.’ ‘I think they are rather nice,’ I said, vowing to myself to try hard to get up early one Saturday morning and cadge a lift with him down to Magic World.
We sat down at the table and Michael came through first with prawn cocktails, then a roasted chicken and to drink a still-young bottle of Muscadet. The last time I saw him carve a chicken, he served everyone else with meat and on his own plate put the carcass, saying it was his preference. This evening he conventionally settled for a leg.
As the conversation was intensified by refills, perhaps inevitably we got on to the subject of religious belief. Nobody could possibly accuse Michael of late-growth fascist tendencies, it turned out, because he believes in nothing and never has done. All religions were nonsense, every religious leader a charlatan, every follower deluded or insincere. The more we tried to pin him down to a belief in something — anything — the stauncher were the denials.
‘Flying saucers?’ I ventured. ‘Democracy? Magic World?’
His disenchantment was frighteningly absolute. Lust and cruelty are ingrained in the human soul. We are the most wantonly murderous and destructive animal the world has ever seen. Ideals? Beliefs? Horrid, thought Michael.
Standing on his doorstep later, however, and acknowledging my sad little Mussolini goodnight salute, and not wanting to end the evening on that terrifyingly nihilistic note, he at last conceded one type of human being he might accept as lawgiver. ‘Oh yes?’ we said, hope reviving. ‘Old bottle collectors,’ he said.
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