If the old man felt he was being asked to perform he gave no indication of it: it was his profession after all. He told Pauline about a biting, scratching, Russian-born chimpanzee that he could calm by singing ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’ in English. Sometimes he tried another song, ‘Danny Boy’ or ‘You Are My Sunshine’ but for some unknown reason only ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’ would do. He told them of the way the Great Zelda Brothers’ Circus always journeyed in a convoy in large, slow trucks and caravans in the middle of the night when the world was asleep, through empty roads, across silent railway yards; how the animals sometimes cried at the moon as they travelled: muffled, eerie animal cries in the darkness, I hear them sometimes still, he said. He told them about putting up the Big Top in town after town, the muscles and the sweat of the strong circus men always enticing the local women whatever country they were in, while small boys ran under the big ropes in excitement. He told them about playing the Whiteface in the clown troupe, the one who got slapped. He told them how proud he was when the Zelda brothers offered to teach him to work on the trapeze, how they gave him their secrets, how he whirled through the air under the big canvas roof and felt he was flying. He told them how their caravans were painted with flowers and self-portraits in brilliant colours, and how an elephant died of a broken heart, and how a trapeze wire snapped and the beautiful young daughter of one of the Zelda brothers hurtled to the ground and died at once in the sawdust and no one was sure if the wire hadn’t been interfered with on purpose: death and treachery and love. His two listeners were entranced, leant forward, could almost have sworn they heard an old barrel organ in the far distance, as if the Great Zelda Brothers’ Circus travelled still.

The dusk shadowed their faces as they sat there and Pauline said, very gently so as not to disturb his mood, ‘When the circus came to Blackheath I – my mother brought me to look for you, she used to know you. We met Zarko.’

The old man stirred slightly as if he were still far away. ‘My Zarko died,’ was all he said. And very quietly he hummed. And the tune was ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’.

After a long silence Pauline said, ‘My mother is Ellen O’Brien. She used to be Ellen Fast.’

The old man turned to her very slowly. ‘Of course she did,’ he said, dreamily, exhausted now, ‘of course she did.’