The Doctor's Special Touch. Marion Lennox

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