Illywhacker

It was to Horace that Phoebe revealed her pregnancy, not me. It was with him that she discussed the complicated state of her emotions produced by the little gilled creature who stirred within her: blood, birth, life, death, fear, and the final decision that she could not, no matter what guilt it caused her, have this child.

The papers that year were full of abortionists being arrested and patients charged. She had already visited Dr Percy McKay who had since been arrested and put in Pentridge Gaol, but not before he had informed her that her body played tricks on her. She was not one month pregnant as she imagined, but nearly three. Dr McKay's last day of freedom was partly occupied with lecturing Phoebe Badgery on the dangers of a late abortion and her perfect situation (in terms of health and financial security) to have the child. He had put no weight on aviation or poetry. He had judged her doubly fortunate to have such hobbies.

From Phoebe's point of view the situation had now become quite desperate. She was anxious, angry, guilty; and frightened of what she read in the papers. Yet, at the same time, she could watch her own drama with an appreciative eye: here she was, twenty years old, married, in Melbourne, a poet in the kitchen, an aeroplane out the window, conspiring to procure a dangerous abortion without her husband's knowledge. All these things, the authentic and the false, the theatrical and the real, were all a part of her nature and I do not mean to belittle her by pointing them out.

"What", she asked Horace Dunlop, "are we to do?"

Phoebe could co-opt people like this – she included them in her life generously, without reserve, and included theirs in hers as readily.

"What are we to do?" she asked, and the poet was flattered and frightened as a clerk given a too rapid promotion. He had no idea what to do. He was an unprepared explorer about to embark in a leaking dug-out on a dangerous journey up a fetid river.

"I will make inquiries," he said, standing. "This evening."

"No, no, you mustn't go, not yet."

Molly coughed, loudly, outside the window.

"But I must, dear lady," Horace said, mournfully arranging his cravat, "must bid adieu."

Phoebe was at the shelf I was pleased to call the mantelpiece. She dug into a large biscuit canister.

"No," Horace said, holding up his hand. "I will not permit you to buy more."

"If I must buy a bottle to maintain your presence, then that is what I'll do," Phoebe smiled. "A bottle, sir, of your excellent product. If it would make my condition disappear I would pay you a thousand pounds."

"If I could make your condition disappear I would consider myself amply rewarded with nothing more", Horace said, "than to be permitted a kiss." And he blushed bright red.

"Mr Dunlop!" Phoebe said, but she was not displeased. "You are absolutely the most immoral man I have ever met."

"A poet", said Horace, "has his own order of morality."

"My husband would kill you just the same," Phoebe smiled. "Here is the florin for your balsam but perhaps you had better give me the bottle another time; I already have four of them."

The poet hesitated. He would rather have denied himself the florin, but he was too impoverished to allow himself the luxury. He took the money and dropped it into his jacket pocket where there was nothing for it to jingle against.

"There will be no doctor in Melbourne who will touch you," he said. He was probably right. The press was in a hysteria about abortion and did not hesitate to report what grisly details came its way. "But I will arrange something."

He would have done anything for this throaty-voiced woman who spoke without moving her lips, and yet the very thing he was to arrange made him clench his thighs together in sympathetic agony and his fearful imagination was peopled with bloody instruments and tearing life.

"It is monstrously unfair," he said, "the whole thing. I would not be a woman for a million pounds."

"Dear Horace," Phoebe said, "you are a good friend."

"Ay," the poet said sadly.

"You can help, can't you?"

"Yes, yes. I will. I will. I will do something. I will make inquiries." He pushed away the bread and lard with a quick shudder of revulsion. He stood up, brushing the crumbs from his vest and tucking in the tail of his shirt. "I will make inquiries and be back by dinnertime."

"My husband will be here."

"Then you will introduce me to him, dear lady," said Horace, allowing himself the liberty of kissing her hand. "I cannot spend my time sneaking in and out of your house like a criminal. Does he not care for poets?"

"Very much," she smiled. "So much that he has impregnated one."

"I will be careful," Horace said, smiling so primly that the small mouth became even smaller and Phoebe, considering the twitching nose, was reminded of a guinea pig called Muffin she had once had as a pet. "Will bemost careful, that he attempt no such thing with me."

And so saying, he bowed theatrically.