"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.

"The doctor…" he tried, but hat pins pierced his tongue.

"The doctor too," the mutton-chops said, reaching for his telephone.

But Horace was already in retreat and before Toddy knew where he was he was cantering back up to Carlton with his nosebag still on and the reins belabouring his backside while the rhythm of his hooves drummed into Horace's panic: to aid, abet, to aid, abet.

The actress, when she saw him stumble through Dawson's door, carefully placed the wine glasses on the far edge of the table, against the dark panelled wall.

"I'm done for," said the poet, dropping heavily and smellily beside her. "They're after me."

They heard his story and persuaded him to take some wine. He was a teetotaller but gulped it down. Like lard, he thought, giving solace to the injured tongue.

"You're in love, my friend," Bernstein said, lowering his voice to a level which he understood to be a whisper.

"No, no," Horace said hopelessly, "she is a wonderful person."

"Are you really a virgin?" asked the actress who was very young to speak in such a manner. She wore a green headband and smoked her cigarette from a tortoiseshell holder.

"I am, madam," said Horace. "Now, also, I am a criminal. They have my description. They even know the colour of my handkerchief," and he stared into the gloom of the wine bar as if its booths might be filled with policemen.

"You are in love," said Bernstein. "Why else would you do it?"

"She is a poet," said Horace.

"You are in love," said the actress, "and I think you're sweet."

"I am not in love," Horace cried shrilly, pulling handkerchief and poems tumbling from his pocket. "I am in trouble," he said, wiping his face and dropping the handkerchief carefully to the floor. He slumped back into the hard wooden bench and, while his companions conferred in a whisper, sipped Bernstein's port while he tried to kick his handkerchief into the next booth.

"Give me a pound," said the actress.

He placed his florin on the table.

No one asked him how he had intended paying for the medicine at Mallop's Pharmacy. Bernstein opened his wallet, took out a pound, and handed it to the actress who squeezed out past Horace. He was so depressed as to be insensible to both his friend's generosity and the passage of the silk-clad buttocks which pressed briefly against him.

"We must buy the newspapers," he said to Bernstein who poured his friend more wine and was polite enough not to laugh at his misery.

The actress was gone an hour and Bernstein would not let his friend depart until she returned. He went out to buy the Herald and let Horace pore through it looking for his name.

"Probably in the Sun tomorrow," he said, carefully folding the wine-stained broadsheet and ironing in knife-sharp creases with the flat of his hands.

The actress (a Miss Shelly Claudine who was shortly to appear in the front chorus at the Tivoli) returned at last, slightly grim of face, but with a newspaper-wrapped bottle in her handbag. This she thrust at Horace.

"Tell her," she whispered hoarsely, "that she must drink it in the morning when her husband has gone. It will hurt her, but she must not panic." And then she kissed Horace on his astonished wine-wet mouth.

Horace became emotional. He took the actress's hand and shook his head. Tears welled in his eyes but words would not come.

"Go," she said, "for God's sake."

"How can I thank you?"

"Write a poem for me," the actress said, and kissed him again, this time on the forehead (he had never been kissed so many times in a day).

"To hell with the law," Horace told Bernstein, "the law is a monkey on a stick."

"An ass," said Bernstein.

"A billy goat's bum," said Horace, the bottle tucked safely in his pocket, his handkerchief abandoned on the floor. He bowed formally to his benefactors and withdrew.

He threaded his cautious circuitous way to the Maribyrnong River, heading north as if he intended to visit Brunswick, then south as if the zoo had suddenly claimed his interest. He trotted out towards Haymarket along quiet streets and, when he considered himself safe, finally allowed Toddy to wander with his lolling head and stumbling hooves along the last two miles to Ballarat Road. They stopped for snapdragons and roses, delphiniums and geraniums. They stopped so Toddy could shit, or merely lift his tail and consider shitting. The horse, perhaps aware that the excitements of the day were not yet over, prudently threw a shoe four hundred yards from home.