The Doctor’s Special Touch

CHAPTER TEN

SHE walked.

Ally walked and she walked and she walked.

What on earth was happening? she wondered. What had she done?

She’d let Darcy kiss her.

Why?

She had no intention of having a relationship with Darcy Rochester. The concept was ludicrous. Unbelievable.

He was wonderful.

Her fingers lifted to her lips. She could still feel him. She could taste him. No one had ever made her feel…

Like she’d found the missing part of her whole.

That was a really stupid sensation. It made no sense at all.

Her feet had taken her down to the harbour. Her foot where the splinter had been removed was aching, but she ignored it. She had to see.

Down at the jetty were three terraced houses, each with different shutter colours-yellow, bright crimson and sky blue. The windows overlooked the cluster of fishing boats tied up at the wharf. Two of the houses had window boxes dripping geraniums. The middle one had window boxes but the geraniums looked dead. Elspeth’s house.

It was perfect.

She couldn’t do it.

She walked on, down onto the wharf. Most of the fishing fleet was out but a couple of older boats were still swinging lazily at their moorings. She climbed onto the deck of the one closest to the harbour mouth, then sat and hugged her knees and stared out into the night.

This was where she’d come as a child to take time out. To try and sort out her head.

This was where she’d made the decision that she had to be a doctor, she thought ruefully. This was where she’d decided she had to lead her grandfather’s life.

Could she go back to that life? To medicine?

If she stayed close to Darcy-if she stayed here-then she’d be drawn back into it. How could she not? And where would that leave her mother?

Her mother was only fifteen years older than she was, and in these last few months Ally had discovered something stunning. Elizabeth could be a friend.

It had been an amazing revelation. As they’d learned massage together, they’d discovered each other. Her mother had a keen, dry sense of humour, long suppressed by people who’d never laughed. Her mother shared her love of music-music that for almost thirty years she’d never listened to.

They talked now. They laughed together. They shared their enjoyment of what they were doing.

Elizabeth was finally starting to live.

And then along came Darcy.

‘If I let myself love him, what would happen to Mum?’ she asked the night, and there were no answers.

Or maybe there were.

Her mother would be an outsider. Again. Her daughter and her son-in-law would be a busy medical partnership and once again Elizabeth would be an onlooker. She’d be caught in a town while her daughter loved the town’s doctor.

Great.

‘I should never have come back here,’ she whispered. ‘It was really dumb. I’ve worked too hard over the last two years to risk it all because my stupid hormones are telling me I’m in love with Darcy.

‘So now what?

‘So get out. Go back to the city.

‘Yeah, but…

‘Yeah, nothing. You know it’s the sensible thing to do.

‘You can’t give up Darcy.

‘You must.’

She rose and walked to the bow rail, then leaned over and stared into the black depths of the sea below.

‘My mother gave up nearly thirty years of her life for me,’ she told the blackness. ‘There’s no choice. Get out while you can. There’s nothing else to do. Leaving it longer will just make it harder.’

She flinched. Her windcheater wasn’t enough to keep her warm in the cool sea air, or maybe she would have been cold no matter what she’d been wearing. Feeling ill, she left the boat and made her way up the main street to her rooms.

Her upstairs light was on.

She stared. Surely she’d left it off.

Darcy?

No. His car wasn’t there. And he surely wouldn’t have let himself in. He couldn’t. She’d locked the place. The small spurt of hope that somehow he’d come…somehow he’d dissuade her…somehow he’d provide a possible solution to an impossible dilemma died almost before it was born.

Her door was locked. She must have left the light on herself. She let herself in and walked up the stairs with dragging steps.

She swung open the door to her living room-and her mother was lying on the bed, reading massage manuals.

‘Mum.’

Her mother looked up and smiled. It was a smile that had disappeared for thirty years and it still made Ally catch her breath when she saw it.

At forty-five, Elizabeth was an older version of Ally. They were almost exactly the same height as each other. Until two years ago Elizabeth had been painfully thin but she’d filled out now, and her figure was as lovely as Ally’s. Her hair was cut short, blonde wisped with grey, but her green eyes were Ally’s, as was her smile.

She was wearing jeans and sweatshirt that almost mirrored Ally’s everyday uniform.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Surprise?’

Ally caught her breath. ‘Yeah.’ She shook her head and managed a smile in return. ‘I’m surprised. How did you get here?’

‘I caught the bus.’ Then, at Ally’s increased look of astonishment, she explained some more. ‘I read the papers this morning.’

‘You read about Jerry’s arrest.’

‘I certainly did. They finally have him behind bars.’

Ally hesitated. Seventeen years ago, when Ally had gone to the police and had Jerry arrested, her mother had disintegrated.

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Of course I don’t mind.’ Her mother was still smiling. ‘You’re doing what I should have done when you were four years old but I didn’t have the courage. I still thought I loved your father.’

‘But…’

‘Yeah, I collapsed last time,’ she said. ‘I’d made such stupid decisions. I’d lost so much. I was a different person then. But not now, Ally.’ She sighed, held out her hands for Ally to help pull her to her feet and then hugged her. ‘It’s only taken me thirty years to figure out that I can get over Jerry-that damage can be cured.’

‘Mum?’ Ally hugged her back, then pulled away to stare at her as if she didn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘How…how did you hear?’

‘I told you. I read the papers. And then I was massaging Esther Hardy this morning and we talked about it. Esther heard an in-depth radio interview with a Sergeant Matheson. She knew everything.’

‘Yeah?’ Ally glanced at her mother with caution. She’d never heard her like this. Lit up. Excited. She moved across to the sink and filled the kettle. Buying herself some thinking time. ‘So what did Esther say?’

‘She said that Jerry had been arrested here, and there were children who were really ill. She said there are arrest warrants out for him from everywhere. And she also said there’s a whole community of people here that he’s been controlling. Apparently one of the kids almost died and there’s been a death in the past.’

‘So you decided to come.’

‘Esther got me thinking,’ she said, and she prepared coffee mugs. For Ally’s normally apathetic mother, preparing mugs was a pretty astounding thing to happen all by itself. ‘Did you know Esther was deaf for thirty years?’

Ally frowned. The apartment they’d had in Melbourne was one of eight and the neighbours were friendly. During the last two years as they’d practised their massage, almost every one of their neighbours had volunteered to be massage guineapigs. Esther, especially, loved their massages. But until now she’d been quiet and not forthcoming about herself at all.

‘I didn’t know she’d been deaf.’

‘She has one of those new cochlear implants,’ her mother said. ‘She’s had it in for the last three years and she said it’s like her life just started again. When she was sixty she started to hear again. Can you believe that?’

Cochlear implants were amazing, Ally knew. But where was this going?

‘Anyway, I thought,’ Elizabeth told her, reaching over for the kettle which Ally had forgotten to switch on, ‘that if Esther could be brave enough to start again at sixty, surely I could do the same at forty-five. You know what Esther does now? She teaches at the deaf school. She teaches sign language to parents of kids who are deaf. She makes bridges, Ally.’

‘Um… That’s great.’

‘Yeah, but I thought it’s what I could do,’ her mother said, in a tone she’d have used if Ally was slightly stupid. Which maybe she was. ‘All these people Jerry’s hurt… Maybe I could talk to them. Maybe I could even teach them a bit of massage. Maybe I could help.’ She gave Ally the beginnings of an excited smile. ‘You and I have created ourselves a life. Maybe I could show them that it’s possible for them to do it, too.’

Maybe it was possible.

Ally lay and stared at the ceiling. By her side her mother was deeply asleep, worn out by the day’s excitement. And exertions.

‘How did you get in?’ Ally had asked her, and her mother had actually giggled.

‘I can get into every single building in this town. Remember, this is where I grew up. I shinnied up the oak. Someone I know taught me to pick locks and I climbed in the window.’

‘Mum!’

‘I have all sorts of useful skills,’ her mother said with mock primness. ‘Now it’s time for me to start using them.’

So her mother was here. Her mother was excited. Her mother was really, really pleased to be back in the town where she’d been born.

And in the morning…

In the morning her mother would meet Darcy.

Ally stared up into the darkness and tried to figure out what on earth was going to happen. She stared up into the darkness some more.

And she kept on staring.

And then the phone rang.

It was well after midnight. If she’d been alone maybe she wouldn’t have answered it, but Elizabeth stirred and Ally grabbed the receiver before it woke her mother.

‘Ally?’

‘Darcy.’

‘That’s the one,’ he said, and his voice was almost cheerful. ‘I was hoping you’d guess. Doctors get patients calling at midnight, but massage therapists don’t much, hey?’

‘What are you doing, ringing me here?’

‘Where else would I ring you?’

‘Go away.’

‘I’m not going to go away, Ally,’ he told her, and his voice became all at once serious. ‘I know I rushed you.’

‘No.’

‘Yeah, I did,’ he said ruefully. ‘Telling you I loved you. The thing is that I’d just figured it out for myself and I got all excited.’

‘Well, get unexcited. It’s not going to happen.’

‘It already has happened. I love you. And the way you responded… Hell, Ally, you’re feeling it, too.’

‘I’m not feeling anything,’ she snapped, and there was desperation in her voice. ‘I can’t.’

‘You can.’

‘My mother’s here.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘Elizabeth’s here?’

‘She caught the bus. She climbed up the oak tree and picked the lock of my window.’

He whistled. ‘Well, well. Bully for Elizabeth.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘So she’s started saving herself, then. That’ll take a load off your shoulders.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘No.’ He hesitated. ‘Or maybe I do. You’re so afraid of the past.’

‘I’m not afraid of the past,’ she managed. ‘I’m afraid of the future.’

‘Now, that’s just silly,’ he said reasonably. ‘You don’t even know what the future holds. Except…me?’

He broke off on a crazy note of pathos, appeal and laughter, and it was all she could do not to slam the phone down. She should slam the phone down.

Why didn’t she slam the phone down?

‘We’ll leave,’ she whispered.

‘Why would you leave? You’ve only just got here.’

‘My mother… How do you suppose she’d feel if I fell in love with the local doctor? If I moved into my grandfather’s house, made toast on my grandfather’s wood stove…’

‘Patted my dogs. Rocked on your grandmother’s chair. Maybe, if you wanted…maybe even had our children?’

Had our children.

The words made her lose what little breath she had left. She was so shocked she held the receiver away from her and stared at it as if she was holding a scorpion.

Why didn’t she hang up?

But Darcy was still talking.

‘Ally, are you sure this is all about your mother?’

‘What?’ She replaced the receiver at her ear and put her spare hand up to rake her hair, distracted beyond belief.

‘Is it about you?’ he was asking.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But maybe she did. She could almost hear the smile in his voice and she knew that if he was near, he’d be laughing. And maybe reaching to touch her.

‘I love you, Ally,’ he said softly. ‘I love you. But, unlike you, I know what love is.’

‘I-’

‘I loved Rachel,’ he said, overriding her interruption, and his voice was urgent. ‘I loved her, Ally. We were part of each other. And when she died, part of me died, too. It hurt like hell.’

‘I’m sorry, but-’

‘The thing is,’ he said, almost apologetically, ‘that all you’re seeing is the hurt. The men in your life-your grandfather, your father and Jerry-they’re a hell of a bunch. They’ve let you down over and over. The townspeople here didn’t protect you. Your mother wasn’t able to. So you’ve built yourself this cocoon. If you love, then you get hurt.’

‘Oh, please,’ she whispered, staring down at her sleeping mother. ‘What’s with the psychoanalysis?’

‘I did it as a minor during med,’ he said, suddenly cheerful. ‘I knew it’d come in handy some day, and what do you know? It has.’

‘I’m not your patient.’

‘No,’ he said, and his voice was serious again. ‘You’re my love. You’re my Ally. You’re a wonderful doctor and a wonderful massage therapist and a wonderful daughter and karate expert and gun-blazer and toast-maker and floor-scrubber. But most of all you’re you. I love you, Ally. Whatever you are. Whatever you do. If anything happens to you, I’ll hurt like hell. If you hurt then I hurt and I’m exposed, come what may. Because I’ve made that commitment.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘I’m not crazy,’ he said, ‘because I know what’s on the other side of loving. Sure, love can hurt, so much you almost break apart. But without love I’m nothing. Ally, these last six years without Rachel have been lonely, but they would have been so much worse-so much emptier-if I’d never loved Rachel at all. Rachel’s love is part of me. It’s part of who I am and it’s part of why I can love again. Her love for me was a gift, but because I’ve been hurt I’m not about to walk away from love again. Love’s the most precious thing. And now… tonight…’

His voice softened. ‘Well, that’s all I rang to tell you. That I’m sure I’m right. I’ve fallen in love with you and you have that love whether you want it or not. Come what may. For ever. Don’t use your mother as a shield, Ally. Let’s work it out. Let us work it out. Everyone. You, your mother, me, the people of this town… You’re not on your own any more. You’ve come home to Tambrine Creek. You’ve come home. This is your home, Ally. Now and for ever.’

And before she could say a word-if she could have thought of a word to say, which she couldn’t-the receiver went dead.

She was standing in the middle of the darkened room by herself.

‘It’s not true,’ she whispered. ‘None of it’s true.’

He loved her. The thought was insidious in its sweetness. If she could just take that step forward…

She wasn’t alone.

Darcy was right. She wasn’t alone. Her mother was asleep on the mattress on the floor. And outside, somewhere, was Darcy.

Darcy.

Her love?