Duration 1.56

Vacete Fallbutus was Betheda's youngest son. Mother and son seldom communicated because Betheda greatly disapproved of the way her son earned his living, though Vacete rarely left the vicinity of the Goldhawk Road. 

Vacete could accomplish all the favourite tricks of the body-conjuror’s repertoire. He could waggle his ears, spit eighty yards and blow smoke rings through his nose. He was a gifted petomane, and there were tricks of a more dubious and dangerous nature that Vacete would do for special prices in the public houses of the Goldhawk Road. He stayed in The Swakeley, named after the collective noun for immature carrier-pigeons; in The Wheatsheaf, changed from The Wheatear because the publican had no belief in the Theory of the Responsibility of Birds; in The Goldhawk; and on the night of the VUE, Vacete was found sightless and breathless in the beer garden at the back of The Raven public house. He was running around in small circles.

The blindness was impermanent, and only returned when the light registered less than f11 on the Weston scale. Later Vacete became allergic to travelling at speeds over ten miles an hour, unless it was accomplished when the light was under f11, when he couldn’t see how fast he was going. If, in spite of all precautions, he did see light flashing by at fifteen miles an hour, he was sick, painfully giddy, and found it difficult to catch his breath. 

His personal hero was Reichfelt, the patriot airman who threw himself off the Eiffel Tower in 1909. Vacete’s family scorned the hero worship, because they knew Vacete was scared of heights. To prove them wrong, Vacete climbed on to the railway bridge in the Goldhawk Road in bright sunlight and leapt off. He survived the jump, but it was dark under the bridge, the light registered less than f11 on the Weston scale, and stumbling about in small circles, temporarily blinded, Vacete was run over by a white van.