The Doctor’s Special Touch Read online

  Doris Kerr. How could she have forgotten Doris?

  She hadn’t. She hadn’t forgotten a single person in this town.

  So who was this Dr Rochester? she wondered from her cocoon of Crimplene. Definitely a newcomer. But maybe not so new. Ally had been away for twenty years.

  ‘I saw the Dr A starting on the wall when I walked my Chloe last night.’ Doris had decided to take pity on her and hold her at arm’s length. ‘And I said to myself-a doctor? Yes. Just what we need. Dr Rochester needs help so much. But then I saw the pencilling saying massage and I said to myself we don’t need a massage parlour here-that’s the last thing we want in a respectable town like this-and I phoned Fred on the town council before I went to bed. But he said it’s not like I think-it’s a proper nice massage that you get when you hurt yourself and then he told me who it was who’d applied to run it and I was so excited. I thought I’d come down this very morning to see for myself and… Oh, my dear, it is so good to see you again.’

  The Crimplene flooded toward her again and Ally managed to give Darcy a despairing glance before she was once again enfolded.

  ‘Um… It seems you two know each other,’ Darcy said.

  ‘Mmph.’ It was all Ally could manage.

  ‘And you’re using your grandpa’s name,’ Doris was saying. ‘Dr Westruther. How wonderful is that? I never did like Lindford. Evil is as evil does and…’ She caught herself. ‘Well, he was your father and he’s long dead so maybe I shouldn’t be speaking ill of him. But if your poor mother had just decided to go back to using Westruther…’ She gulped and hauled back, still hanging onto Ally but beaming across at Darcy. ‘Isn’t this just wonderful? A Dr Westruther in Tambrine Creek again after all these years.’

  ‘She’s a masseur,’ Darcy said, and Ally glowered.

  ‘Don’t say it like I’m a dung beetle.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t mean it, dear,’ Doris told her. ‘He’s the best thing since sliced bread is our Dr Rochester. Do you know, we didn’t have a doctor for five years before he came. And he’s so nice.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Ally agreed.

  ‘I did hold the ladder,’ he told her. ‘And I got blue hands.’

  ‘You scared me.’

  ‘Your grandpa was the doctor here?’

  ‘Grandpa died seventeen years ago.’

  ‘That’s when Ally left town,’ Doris told him. ‘Her father came and took her away. Nothing we could say made any difference. But…he looked after you, didn’t he, lass?’

  ‘He looked after me,’ Ally agreed tightly.

  ‘And now you’re back.’

  ‘I am.’ She made a determined effort to regain control-to pin a cheerful smile on her face and move forward. ‘And I’m here to stay.’

  ‘Where are you living?’

  ‘Here. Above the shop.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’ Doris seemed horrified.

  ‘Of course I can.’ How to explain to Doris that it was palatial compared to some of the places she’d lived in? ‘And now I’ve met the neighbour and he’s such a sweetheart.’

  ‘He is nice,’ Doris said, but she’d caught the tone of Ally’s voice and she was starting to sound dubious. ‘You two don’t sound as if you’ve started off on the right foot.’

  ‘She threw blue paint at my feet,’ Darcy said.

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t.’ Doris looked from one to the other-and then to Ally’s ladder. ‘You know, that doesn’t look all that safe to me, love.’

  ‘Just what I was saying.’ Darcy sounded almost triumphant.

  ‘Tell you what.’ Doris was clearly thinking on her feet. ‘The fleet’s in at the moment. Old Charlie Hammer’s funeral’s this afternoon so the fishermen can’t go out until they see him buried. And everyone’ll be sober until the wake. Why don’t I send a few of the men up here to finish your painting for you, dear? And anything else you might need doing. You know we all respected your grandpa, and everyone’ll be so pleased you’re back. And a doctor, too.’

  ‘She’s a masseur.’ Darcy was starting to sound a little desperate and Ally gave him her nicest, pitying smile.

  ‘Doctors can be massage therapists, too,’ she told him. ‘And massage therapists can be doctors.’

  ‘Are you telling me you seriously plan to make a living in this town?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No one will come.’

  ‘I will,’ Doris said soundly. ‘I like a little massage. Not that I’ve ever had one, of course, but they sound nice. I was telling Henry only the other night that a rub would do me the world of good. Not like those tablets you have me on, Dr Rochester. I’m sure you’re doing your best, but Dr Westruther’s granddaughter… Ooh, I’m that pleased. And I’m sure Gloria will come as soon as she knows about you-her arthritis is something terrible-and my Beryl, and…everyone. I’ll just go and spread the word. It’s wonderful, that’s what it is. It’s just wonderful. Come on, Chloe.’

  And with a tug on the unfortunate poodle’s leash, she sailed away to spread the word.

  Dr Darcy Rochester was left staring at Dr Ally Westruther. Speechless. While she stared at him and tried to decide where to go from there.

  ‘You know, you’d really better go and take that paint off,’ Ally said finally. ‘We don’t want you to stay blue for ever, now, do we?’

  ‘You’re a local?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re really setting up for massage.’

  ‘That seems to be the intention.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said bluntly. ‘But take the “Doctor” off the sign. It’s misleading.’

  ‘Why is it misleading?’

  ‘I’m the town’s doctor.’

  ‘And you don’t want anyone else invading your territory?’

  ‘If anyone else wanted to invade, I’d be putting up the white flag before the first shot was fired,’ he told her. ‘Do you have any idea how big this district is? I’m run off my feet. But you’re not going to help.’

  No, she thought bleakly. She wasn’t. But she may as well reassure him that she wasn’t pretending to practise medicine.

  ‘If anyone arrives with broken legs or snakebite, you can be sure I’ll send them to you,’ she told him. ‘As I hope you’ll send anyone with muscle soreness to me.’

  ‘You expect me to refer people to you when you call yourself a doctor?’

  ‘Don’t be elitist.’

  ‘Don’t indulge in deception.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Look, Ally…’

  This was going nowhere. ‘I have work to do,’ she told him. ‘Your paint is drying.’

  ‘You can’t do this.’

  ‘Watch me.’ She sighed. ‘You’re just upset because my sign is bigger than yours.’

  ‘Some of us have ethical standards.’

  ‘Well, bully for some of us,’ she snapped. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a sign to write and I’ve just decided it needs work. It needs to be bigger.’

  He stared at her for a long moment. But there was no more to be said. They both knew it.

  Finally he turned and stalked up to his surgery door. He disappeared, slamming the door behind him.

  He left blue footprints all the way.

  Ally was left staring after him. What to do now?

  Nothing, she told herself. There was nothing she could do. Just get on with it.

  ‘Whoops,’ she said again. She took a deep breath-and then grinned into the morning sun. Whether she had Darcy Rochester’s approval or whether she didn’t, she was home again and nothing and no one was going to interfere with her happiness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THROUGHOUT the next few days Darcy worked on as if she wasn’t there. Well, why not? What did a massage therapist have to do with him?

  Nothing.

  The fact that the entire population was talking about her was none of his business either.

  At least he had work to distract him from a woman who was dangerously
close to being distracting all by herself.

  In truth, he’d seldom been as busy as he was right now. The fine autumn weather broke the afternoon of Charlie Hammer’s funeral, meaning the fishing fleet couldn’t leave port. The town’s fishermen decided en masse that if they were in port anyway they may as well kill time getting their assorted ills seen to, swelling his already too-long patient lists.

  Then the little community in the hills above the town-alternative lifestylers who didn’t believe in getting their children immunised-were hit by an epidemic of chickenpox. As he had three kids with complications and parents who agonised and discussed ad nauseam every treatment he advised-and then refused to let him treat them anyway-he was going quietly nuts. But going nuts wasn’t on the agenda. If he stopped calmly discussing treatments with these parents, if he stopped negotiating that at least they keep track of fluid balances-if he lost his cool-then these kids wouldn’t make it to be insurance salesmen or astrophysicists or whatever else kids of dyed-in-the-wool hippies became if they survived childhood.

  Then there was the added complication of the entire town trooping by to see Ally’s much talked-of new premises. While they were there, they remembered they may just as well pop next door to the doctor’s surgery and make an appointment to have their sore elbow seen to, or talk about Mum’s Alzheimer’s-and see for themselves just how Dr Rochester was taking this new arrival.

  Doris Kerr had obviously spread the fact that Darcy hadn’t reacted with pleasure to Ally’s arrival. His reaction had gone down like a lead balloon. Every single patient commented on the hive of industry next door to his surgery. Many of the long-term town residents-those who remembered Ally from childhood-took pains to tell him how wonderful it was that a little girl they’d clearly held in affection had finally come home.

  And their message was clear. ‘Don’t mess with Ally Westruther. Even if her sign is bigger than yours.’

  Fine. He wouldn’t mess with Ally Westruther. He didn’t want to think about her. But not thinking about her was impossible, too.

  Even among his staff… Betty, his receptionist, got teary-eyed about Ally at least twice a day.

  ‘Oh, Dr Rochester, I’m so pleased to think that little mite has finally found her way home,’ she told him. ‘And to have another Dr Westruther in town… It seems so right.’

  He grimaced but somehow he refrained from saying, ‘She’s not a doctor.’

  He thought it, though.

  What had she said? Contact my university and ask.

  OK, so she probably did have some sort of doctorate, he conceded, and maybe he’d been being petty, suggesting it was in basket weaving. But you couldn’t get doctorates in massage. He knew that. He’d checked. He’d checked five minutes after he’d unsuccessfully tried to clean his shoes.

  So the doctorate she was using to promote her massage business must be in something esoteric-like the mating habits of North Baluchistan dung beetles or the literary comparison of Byron and Tennyson or…or something, and she couldn’t make a living so she’d turned to massage and was using her doctorate to attract patients.

  That was a guess, he conceded. Nearly everything was a guess when it came to Ally. As much as the locals were pleased to see her, no one knew what she’d been doing in the last twenty years or so.

  ‘Her mother brought her home to her grandpa when she was tiny,’ Betty told him, unasked, as she was sorting patient records he needed for the afternoon. ‘There was a really unhappy marriage and her father went to jail. I can’t remember all the details but I know old Doc Westruther wouldn’t speak of him. Her mother didn’t stay very long-she disappeared and no one knew where she went-but when she went she left the little girl behind. Then suddenly the old doc died and her father turned up to claim her. There were so many people who would have taken her in but her father just said, “She’s my kid and she comes with me.” There was nothing we could do about it. No one knew where her mother was. I remember her father dragging her into a beat-up old jalopy and Sue, her best friend, wailing at the top of her lungs. I saw them leave town. Her little face was pressed against the car’s back window and…well, the memory never left me. I wondered and wondered. Her father seemed brutal.’

  Brutal. Darcy was trying to concentrate on reading Mrs Skye’s patient notes. Elsie Skye’s gout had been playing up and she was coming to see him for the third time. If the treatment he had her on wasn’t working then he needed to think about reasons. What blood tests were appropriate? This level of gout might even indicate malignancy. He needed to check.

  But Ally’s face still intruded. He thought about the way she’d reacted to his initial blaze of anger. She’d flinched. A brutal father? His move to reassure her had maybe been appropriate. ‘That’s dreadful,’ he conceded.

  ‘So don’t you think you might have acted a bit harshly yourself?’ Betty probed. ‘Doris said you were mean.’

  That was a little unfair. ‘I was not mean. She spilled paint over my shoes. They’re permanently blue.’

  ‘Like you can’t afford to buy new shoes.’

  ‘Most receptionists,’ he told her, in a voice laced with warning, ‘would be sympathetic to their boss when someone threw blue paint at his expensive shoes.’

  She grinned. Betty was sixty years old; she’d been receptionist to the three doctors who’d taken care of Tambrine Creek in living memory; and she knew every single patient’s history backward. She was invaluable and she knew it. So she could give as much cheek as she liked.

  ‘I’m more likely to be sympathetic to Ally,’ she retorted. ‘She needs it. Her grandpa was a harsh man and we worried that her father was worse. I don’t think she’s had it easy.’

  ‘She shouldn’t call herself a doctor.’

  ‘Will you get off your high horse? You know as well as I do that if she puts up a sign saying simply, “Ally Westruther, Massage”, every second fisherman’s lad will take it the wrong way and she’ll be fighting them off with sticks.’

  He hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘And she’s got nothing.’ Betty was pushing inexorably on. ‘The boys have been helping her set up. She didn’t want anyone to help, but this bad weather has everyone bored and they’re more than keen to help. So they’ve insisted. Her room downstairs looks nice now. They’ve painted it and she has a lovely massage table and a big heater and everything you’d want. But Russ Ewing blew a fuse when he was sandblasting her front steps and he had to go upstairs to change it. She hasn’t invited anyone up there and now we know why. She’s sleeping on a mattress on the floor. She’s got nothing.’

  Mrs Skye’s medical record was getting less and less attention. Darcy was trying hard to concentrate but it wasn’t working. ‘Maybe her furniture’s coming later.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not. Maybe she’s broke.’

  ‘She’s an adult. If she’s been working…’

  ‘Oh, leave it alone.’ Betty shook her head, as if in wonder that he could be so obtuse. ‘She’s a lovely girl, our Ally, and we’re going to support her every way can. And we think you should, too. Why don’t you recommend that Elsie Skye could use a little rub instead of worrying herself sick about her gout?’

  ‘She doesn’t need a massage.’

  ‘Elsie can afford it, she’s bored and she’s in pain. Have you wondered why her gout flares up so much more when her daughter’s in America? I bet our Ally could make her feel lovely.’

  ‘You don’t massage gout,’ he said stubbornly, and she raised her eyebrows as if he was being thick.

  ‘It’s only her feet that have gout. Not all of her. And as if Ally wouldn’t know not to massage something that would hurt. She’s a doctor!’

  ‘She’s not a doctor of medicine.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Darcy set Elsie’s history down on the desk with a slap. He was already running late for afternoon surgery and now he was going to be later-because he was gossiping about someone he had no interest in. ‘Because if she was a doctor of medicine we�
�d have that wall knocked out between the buildings in two minutes flat,’ he snapped. ‘And she’d be in here, with a queue of patients stretched almost out the door waiting to see her. As I have. Now, can we get on with it?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor. Certainly, Doctor,’ Betty said with a mock-serious curtsy. ‘Only will you just think about it?’

  ‘Will I be allowed not to?’

  Her first paying customer.

  Treating Gloria Kerr was pure pleasure. She’d walked in and peered around Ally’s newly painted rooms and gasped with delight.

  ‘Ooh, love, you have it really nice. Doris said it looked a picture and then she said why didn’t I get myself down here? I’ve been gardening for a week-the oxalis has taken over the lawn and I hate using that weedkiller stuff. I reckon it gets into the ground water. But my back…it’s killing me. If you could just give it a nice rub?’

  Ally hadn’t planned on opening until tomorrow. Her grand opening-i.e. unlocking the front door and hoping someone came-was timed for nine a.m. She didn’t have the room exactly as she wanted it. But Gloria looked at her with eyes that were big with hope; and Ally had exactly sixty-five cents left in her purse and she really fancied dinner.

  So she chatted to Gloria as she warmed the towels, and then asked Gloria to choose her preferred oils. She chose sandalwood for relaxation. Then she spent an hour giving the lady the best rub she knew how to administer.

  She was carefully gentle. Gloria was in her late sixties. She had knots of osteoarthritis, where massage could inflame a joint and cause more problems. She had deep varicose veins that had to be avoided. But Ally’s hands moved skilfully, patiently, carefully kneading knotted muscles and easing an aching neck and tired, workworn hands.

  ‘Your fingers are wonderful,’ Gloria whispered as finally Ally lay warm towels back over Gloria’s body, rested her hands on her back for a moment as a final, lingering contact and then stood back from the table. ‘Magic. Oh, my dear, my hands are so warm and soft. You make me feel amazing.’

  Part of it was the contact, Ally thought. Gloria Kerr was Doris’s sister. Gloria’s husband had died just before Ally had left town. Her only son, Bill, was a rough-diamond fisherman who maybe gave his mum a peck on the cheek for Mother’s Day and for her birthday. If she was lucky. That was the only human touch she was likely to get.