Periclito retrieved his sword slowly. He stalked off after the bull. He lunged again, but he was too far away and again the sword fell out and again the crowd booed, but louder.

“Aviso!”

Senator Zamora looked at the bullring clock. Ten minutes had passed. “Pablo, the handkerchief. That’s it. Come on, child, give it here!”

He fluttered the first warning.

Tightly encased in his silver lamé suit, his cheeks warted with sweat, Periclito shambled across the sand to where the bull was trying a second time to scale the harricada. Once more, to the audible crack of bone, his inglorious sword bounced to the sand. Once more, he was assailed by jeers.

In the Royal Box Genia Ortiz was telling Asunción how well she remembered, during the final fight, the sight of the General tucking into the first bull’s sweetmeats.

“But he wasn’t relying on Periclito,” she said.

Senator Zamora meanwhile was hoping there would no repetition of the incident in the old ring when the sword had jerked out of the tossing muscle and javelined with awful force into Don Ramon’s grandfather, sitting in the third row.

“Aviso!”

Three more minutes had passed. President Zamora found his purple-red handkerchief, smeared with Clotilda’s lipstick. He shook the handkerchief at Periclito. There remained to him two minutes only in which to complete his third act.

What a disaster! What a wretched disaster! The Earthquake had hoped to dazzle Abyla. Instead, he was shaming the city – and Tromso was recording his shame on film! He flushed until his cheeks were the same hue as the yoke of blood around the animal’s neck.

“Fuera!” cried the crowd. Away with this matador who could not kill! Bullfighter? they shouted. Bullshitter!

Periclito advanced on tiptoe as if making his way barefoot through glass. He raised the sword for his fifth thrust. Sitting behind Wavery, Señora Criado squeezed her face in her hands and said, “I daren’t look, I daren’t look.” Periclito plunged, and this time the blade took root in the flesh. The bull moved back against the barricada, his bollocks rising up and down, his tongue curving up and out, stretched in a taut arc, the breaths coming shorter and shorter until with blood snorting from his nostrils he collapsed among the foam cushions and oranges and wine bottles that had been thrown in protest at really this most dismal performance by Abyla’s very own Periclito Merimée Amaral.

The crowd sought President Zamora’s handkerchief, but inside the Royal Box confusion reigned. Rising to the occasion and meaning to hurl her programme into the ring as an indication of her extreme disapproval, Genia Ortiz had thrown instead her husband’s baton.

“He wasn’t ready to meet his destiny,” observed Marie Amaral as men in blue overalls tethered the carcass to a horse and trotted it away.

The crowd stirred to their feet. Many held to their chests the flowers they had withheld all afternoon. They shook their heads, disappointed, as a voice came over the loudspeaker. Marie Amaral stiffened at the voice. Her son was speaking.