Erwin Mortier - Shutterspeed

He crossed to the other side of the ring, where the girl and Hélène were sitting in their box, made a gallant bow and boomed with mock deference: ‘Your highness …’

There was a ripple of laughter from the benches. The girl glanced up at Hélène Vuylsteke, unsure of how to behave.

‘Oh my, such a fine-looking feller,’ Aunt sighed, and she started clapping along with everyone else. ‘Dark Eyetalian type …’

‘Fake tan,’ Uncle grumbled. ‘Laid it on with a trowel, he has.’

The Italian returned to the middle of the ring. A marvellous time would be had by all, he promised, ‘an evening of death-defying, daring and dangerous feats of fantasy, graciously accompanied by Freddy Brack und seine Capelle with Viva España, and for your special delectation, ladies and gentlemen, our first spectacle, all the way from France — Mario Marconi and his calibrated zebras!’

The trumpets sounded and the purple girls clacked their castanets.

‘Oh good show!’ Uncle enthused. ‘My favourite — dobbins in pyjamas!’

I saw Aunt nudging his thigh with the back of her hand a few times, but he took no notice.

The zebras wore yellow plumes on their heads and cantered round the ring, driven by a trainer with a whip. His naked torso was bound with leather straps so tight his flesh bulged out on all sides.

The whip cracked, the zebras trotted on the spot, turning on their axis. There was a burst of applause. The girl was jigging up and down on her seat with excitement. Hélène Vuylsteke shushed her, lifted the hat with the big bow from her head and smoothed her hair.

The act ended with all the zebras rearing up in close formation. Hardly had the tail of the last one vanished behind the curtain when the clowns Titi and Toto waddled into the ring in their oversized shoes. They sat on the same invisible chairs as last year and Uncle almost fell off his own out of sheer hilarity.

‘Werner, do try to control yourself,’ Aunt sighed, but when Titi lowered himself on to a bedpan attached to a string which was jerked away by Toto at the last moment, Uncle almost died laughing.

‘What a scream,’ he gasped, holding his sides.

Aunt was embarrassed.

Next came a sketch with a bucket of confetti and a stepladder with wonky rungs, and before the women had finished dabbing their eyes with their handkerchiefs the following act was already being announced: Nina Valencia and her ten grass-green poodles.

Then there was an African woman wearing a cape made of live parrots which turned out to speak five languages, after which came Professor Pillule and his fabulous flea circus, then Mariska and Petruschka, the sisters of the flying trapeze, and a conjuror who sawed himself in two before vanishing in a puff of brown smoke. After him came Pasha, the world’s second-largest elephant, sagging in the beam like an ancient galleon, with a chimp in a tutu riding on his back.

Pasha juggled a beach ball, sat up and begged, and, for the grand finale, balanced upside down on one foreleg while the ape swung from the elephant’s tail, baring its teeth and screeching.

‘Capital!’ cried Uncle Werner.

Freddy Brack’s German-sounding combo regaled the audience with a thumping pot-pourri of Sicilian salsas, during which time four men in boiler suits assembled the cage for Xerxes, Lion of Mesopotamia, Emperor of the Tigris.

The lights dimmed. A single spotlight was trained on the curtain and a drum rolled menacingly, but Xerxes’ entry was something of a letdown. He shambled lazily into the ring, hauled himself up on a tabouret and gave a bored yawn as he waited for his trainer, a young fellow in a suit covered in metal studs.

The lion had to jump through a burning hoop and obliged with such disdain that he drew only a feeble round of applause, but when he opened his jaws wide to accommodate his trainer’s head, everyone held their breath.

The girl pressed her hands to her mouth with such an aghast look I doubted its sincerity. While the trainer ticked off one to ten on his fingers to the accompaniment of much drum-rolling, the beast held still, eyes cast dolefully upwards at the big top, as if it were at the dentist.

‘Ten!’ roared the audience. The trainer retracted his head from the lion’s maw to a burst of trumpets. The crowd heaved a sigh of relief.

‘Capital!’ said Uncle Werner. ‘Bravo!’

The band launched into a waltz. The cage was dismantled.

‘And now,’ the Italian announced, ‘the time has come for the star of this evening. A clairvoyant consulted by the great and the good all over the world. The genius of the gimlet eyes to whom all souls are bared, the visionary who has successfully foretold numerous earthquakes — fortunately for us they were all in Manchuria. Mesdames et Messieurs, behold the Oracle of Delphi, the Man who knows no pain, the Mysterious Seer Zaromander …’

The purple girls writhed like snakes to the thin notes of a flute, the curtains drew apart and into the ring stepped a tall, slim figure wearing a black cloak adorned with stars and a turban flashing with emeralds.

The clairvoyant swung the cloak over his shoulder, folded his arms across his bare chest, and fixed his gimlet eyes on where the girl and Hélène Vuylsteke were sitting.

‘Zaromander?’ sneered Aunt. ‘His name’s André van Lerberghe, nothing fancy about that. Came into the shop for two tubes of toothpaste and a packet of razor blades.’

The clairvoyant now swung his cloak sideways over his extended arm, releasing a flurry of rose petals while a small crown tumbled down out of nowhere. The man caught it in mid-air, ran to the edge of the ring and offered it to the girl on bended knee.

Hélène Vuylsteke motioned the girl to lean forward. Zaromander drew himself up and placed the crown on her head. She held out her arm, offering him the back of her hand, which he brushed with his lips respectfully.

‘How does he know she’s from the big house?’ Uncle Werner wondered aloud. ‘How can he tell? It’s beyond me …’

Meanwhile the clairvoyant went over to a woman elsewhere in the audience. This time a shake of his cloak produced a pair of teddy bears. ‘For the twins, Madame,’ he said solemnly. The circus tent buzzed with astonishment.

‘He got Mariette from the café to fill him in on all the gossip for five hundred francs,’ said Aunt. ‘That chap’s as clairvoyant as a blind man with a glass eye …’

‘You can say what you like,’ said Uncle, refusing to let her dampen his spirits, ‘it’s still extraordinary.’

The clairvoyant concluded his show with a last supper of razor blades strung together, on which he pretended to gag as he retreated a few paces, clutching his bulging cheeks with both hands. A thread hung from his lips. He opened his mouth and amid mounting applause pulled the string of blades from his mouth.

‘So now we know what he needed all those razors for,’ said Aunt with a sigh.

The Italian emerged from the wings, followed by all the artistes. The purple girls turned somersaults, jets of water spurted from the clowns’ eyes, confetti fluttered down and the lights came on.

‘Well, that was well worth the effort,’ said Uncle. He stood up and adjusted the creases of his trousers.

Hélène Vuylsteke and the girl had gone. When we came outside I saw the gamekeeper’s car pulling away. He must have been waiting in the road for the end of the show so he could drive them straight home afterwards.

In the garden the chap with the quiff crooned a golden oldie: ‘In the Forest Roam the Hunters’.

Uncle took her arm, saying: ‘What d’you say to a glass of beer, a nibble of your ear, a twirl around the floor and maybe something more? What about it, eh, Laura?’

‘Get away with you, silly …’