The knife-throwing act took place on a piece of land donated by a man who had years ago left the town and become a candy king in America. A park was to be created there, to be called after Father Ignatius Quirke, a temperance leader of the past; but the money that was to pay for all this, and for a statue of the priest, had never arrived, and the town was left with a gift of derelict land only. Every year Duffy’s Circus set up its marquees there; so did Toft’s Roundabouts and Bumper Cars.

A string of electric lights, high above the heads of the gathering crowd, now formed an illuminated rectangle on this wasteland. Within it stood a green van, close to which was a timber door attached to two posts driven into the ground. The back of the van was obscured by yellow curtains draped over a wire that ran around four similar posts, from one of which hung the Zodiacs’ loudspeaker. ‘… She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,’ a tenor voice plaintively whined. ‘And lovers are round her, sighing …’

Abruptly the music ceased. A woman in a red bathing dress emerged from the curtains at the back of the van and took up a position against the door. A man tied a red handkerchief around her eyes. He pushed her back against the door so that she was touching it. Then he disappeared into the yellow curtains and when he came out he was carrying his knives. He was a hollow-faced man in shirtsleeves, wearing neither collar nor tie and with a scar down the left side of his face. He held his arms out, brandishing six knives in either hand. It was a demand for attention, and when the talking did not cease he shouted out that he could not perform until the silence was total. Muttering and laughter dribbled and broke off. ‘A single flaw in this act,’ the man shouted, ‘and that beautiful lady will be deprived of life.’ When the gasp that succeeded this claim had subsided he took up his position, and then carefully laid the twelve knives in a row on the ground in front of him. ‘The Zodiacs have performed before royalty,’ he reminded his audience, ‘in four contingents. The Zodiacs, ladies and gentlemen, are strangers to fear.’ While he spoke the blindfolded woman bared her teeth in a laughing smile. At a command from her companion she became still and one by one the knives thudded into the door around her. When all twelve were embedded in the timber she stepped forward and turned round and round, still smiling and with her arms held up, to show that no blood had been drawn. Her companion gestured towards the door, drawing attention to the outline of her body depicted by the knives, which he then pulled out. When he had done so the woman again took up her position. He spread sheets of newspaper over her, attaching them swiftly to the door with thumb-tacks. Again the knives flashed through the air and when the last one had been thrown the woman stepped forward as she had before, bursting out of the newspaper. ‘Next you will witness an act,’ the man announced, drawing out the knives and bundling away the newspaper, ‘never before performed. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we offer you the skill of the most daring knife-throwing act in the world.’ This time it was he who tied the handkerchief over his eyes. Two girls screamed. The woman kept her smile in place while the knives struck the timber around her. Tom didn’t look.