Peter Carey - Illywhacker

"Geddup, Toddy."

And Toddy did geddup. He started in shock, with such a jerk that Horace fell backwards into his seat with a crash that the horse felt through its bit. There had never been such excitement in the Rawleigh's jinker. The bottles rattled in the wooden panniers. Toddy picked up his great soup-plated hooves and set off in a brisk canter along the pot-holed track beside the Haymarket sale-yards. He did not loll his head or try to scoop up dung between his leathery lips. He held his head high. He felt the urgency of the errand and must have hoped, in his slow cunning brain, that it was something that would lead him to flower beds.

Horace flung himself at his errand with a passion, not (as Phoebe thought, watching him depart so dangerously) because he wished the pregnancy terminated this very instant, but because he was a coward in the face of the law. He dashed at the matter recklessly so he would have it done before his cowardice claimed him.

Horace Dunlop loathed the law and feared it, not in any normal degree, but in his bowels. His father was a lawyer in Bacchus Marsh, and much respected in that pretty town. His brother was an articled clerk. He himself had done three years of law at Melbourne University until he could stand it no more and he had flung himself into failure just as he had, now, flung himself into the jinker – eager to get it done with before the thought of his father's wrath dissuaded him.

He did not like the faces of lawyers. He liked even less the faces of judges with whom he had, since childhood, been called upon to dine. He did not like their cruel contented faces, the waxy finish to their folds of skin, the arrogant noses, the hooded eyes.

His terror of the law did not incline him to rebel, but to sneak away and lie very still and quiet, to sit inoffensively in some dusty corner where he vented all his fear and spleen in poems littered with the "cruel cold instruments of reason".

Yet here was Horace Dunlop careering towards the procurement of an abortion. He tried not to think what he was doing. He was not travelling to Carlton to see his friend Bernstein. He was not intent on a conspiracy. He was off to the city to buy a new hat. With only a florin? Well, a beer then. That was all. There is no law against the purchase of a beer, not, at least, before the legal closing time of six o'clock. But, ha, we have a witness who says you do not drink. In secret, yes, in public, no.

Involved in cross-examination, he gave no thought to automobiles through whose midst he cantered. In Flemington Road they passed a motor cycle before either horse or driver could realize what they'd done.

Insisting on his fabricated story, he ignored Grattan Street which led to Bernstein, and went pell-mell towards the city. At the Latrobe Street corner he reined in a little but people stopped to laugh at the soup-plated sway-back cutting such a dash. A street urchin threw an apple core which struck the driver on the back of his closely shorn head. "Fatty fool face," the boy yelled, "fatty big bum," somehow seeing what no one else would see for five years more.

Horace lost his forty-shilling Akubra hat and did not stop for it and the Elizabeth Street cable tram sliced it in half before he had gone another block. He swung left into Collins Street then left again into Swanston, leaving his imaginary beer behind and heading back up to Carlton without legal explanation.

Toddy, unused to such exercise, glistened with sweat and frothed around the bit, but he did not seem inclined to halt for cars or lorries and when they finally arrived at Harold Daw-son's wine bar in Carlton he was slow to respond to either the shouts of the driver or the pressure in his mouth and would have, if he had his way, gone all the way to Preston before he'd had enough. Horace circled him around the block and finally pulled him up outside Dawson's, hooing, haing and whoaing, his face red with excitement and embarrassment.

Toddy got no soft words, no apple, no sugar, no flowers. He looked around, blew out his black lips, showed his yellow teeth, and emptied the steaming contents of his bladder into Lygon Street.

Bernstein was exactly where Horace had expected him to be, drinking plonk from a beer glass in one of the dark booths of Dawson's smoky sawdust-floored establishment. Horace did not need to be told that Bernstein's drinking companion was an actress, but he was too preoccupied to blush or become tongue-tied in her presence. He merely nodded, and reached to remove the hat he had already sacrificed to the cable car.

"Bernstein," he said, "a word in private."

He made a sweeping gesture with his hand towards the street, knocked over Bernstein's glass and made the actress leap to escape its treacly flood.

"To the street," he said, leaving the actress to hover an inch above her seat in the corner of the booth while the wine dripped sweetly to the floor.

Bernstein was a large broad man who was only twenty-one but already balding. He was an atheist, a rationalist, a medical student of no great distinction, an SP punter, a singer of bawdy songs, an acknowledged expert in matters erotic. He was perpetually, attractively, blue-jowelled and sleepy-lidded.

"Bernstein," Horace said when they were standing amidst fruiterers' packing cases in the street, "you must help me."

When Bernstein understood the problem he was amused. He tried to drag the poet back into the wine bar to celebrate his lost virginity.

"No, no," said Horace, glancing nervously up and down the street, "not lost. The lady is a friend. Please, Bernstein, if our friendship is worth anything write me a prescription for the medicine you mentioned."

"It may not work," said Bernstein, meaning that any prescription written by him on plain paper would not be a prescription at all. "Wait, have a drink, and we'll go and see someone later."

"Now, now, I beg you. If it doesn't work, we'll try something else," (imagining his friend was merely worried by the efficacy of the medicine).

Bernstein shrugged his broad shoulders and took out a notepad from the pocket of his jacket. He wrote for a moment and then tore out the sheet.

So: Horace, ten minutes later, smelling as strongly of sweat as his tethered horse, fairly galloping into Mallop's Pharmacy in Swanston Street with Bernstein's piece of paper clutched in his broad-palmed hand. "Give it to the tall man," Bernstein had said. "Wait till he is free. He's an understanding sort of fellah."

Tall man? What tall man? There was no tall man here. There was not a fellow higher than five foot three. He had a boozer's face and mutton-chop whiskers. There was a tall woman, though, not tall for a man, but tall for a woman. She stood beside the man. She towered over him. Horace behaved no different from his horse – he had his momentum up and could not stop. He propelled himself towards the counter, panting, and thrust his prescription into the hands of the tall woman who read it, frowned, and retreated behind a tall glass-fronted cupboard. After a moment she called the mutton-chop man to join her.

Horace stood wet and panting. He had run a good race. He pulled out a scarlet handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his brow, and blew his little nose with relief.

He blew his nose so enthusiastically, so loudly, that the gurgling visceral noise cloaked the return of the mutton-chop man who called twice to his customer before he was heard.

"Do you know what this is for?" asked the pharmacist. He had a peculiar expression on his face, almost a smile.

"Oh yes," said Horace, plunging his snotty red handkerchief into his pocket where it tangled with loose lozenges, string and crumpled poetry.

"You scoundrel," shouted the chemist. "I shall have you put in gaol."

Horace's eyes bugged. His hand was trapped in his pocket, anaesthetized by lozenges and trussed with string. He tried to move but could not. His face screwed up with such astonishment that it resembled the handkerchief: red, crinkled, confused with unrelated things.