Chapter 16: The Long Walk

Monday Morning

Martin turned to see a blonde woman with her straight hair done up in a barrette ponytail. She was dressed in a pale blue embroidered blouse and loose white trousers, with long earrings and jangly silver bracelets adorning her wrists. Her light blue eyes were ringed with dark makeup.

Objectively, he thought she would be rather pretty if not for the intense way she had of looking at him, like a predator sizing up her prey.

"So, Doc Martin wanted to work on his interpersonal skills. Didn't do too well with your bedside manner diagnosin' the professor back there, did you," she said.

He stared at her, trying to come up with a name. "P.C. Mylow's sister, is it? I thought you left the vicinity."

"It's Sandra. I've got my clinic in Truro."

"Hm." Martin looked sceptical.

"People feel comfortable when they come to see me, which is more than I can say for you," she retorted.

"Well, what are you doing here then? Mastering effective interpersonal skills just for fun, are we?"

She looked embarrassed. "Um, it was strongly recommended to me by a judge, after, um, I was indiscreet about a patient's erectile problems. The patient threatened to sue, the tosser, but he backed off if I agreed to do this course."

"You were strongly recommended by a judge? You mean got an ASBO?!"

"Bollocks! It wasn't an ASBO! Those are for teenaged delinquents, not health care professionals."

"Health care professional. Right." Martin's tone was cutting.

She had a way of smirking where the right side of her mouth tugged up a bit higher than the left. "Whatever. I just wanted to thank you for getting all of us out of that ghastly course. With any luck it'll slip through the cracks and we'll never have to come back to it. I reckon conventional medicine has its uses after all."

Martin grunted his agreement about that. He peered down to make out the name scribbled on the name tag she still had pinned to her blouse. "Fannie Hertz? Who's Fannie Hertz?"

"It's a joke, you know? Like Ben Dover? Phil McCracken?"

Martin just looked puzzled.

"Dan Gleballs? Ben Twilley?" She laughed in her aggressive way. "All right, junior school humour that. But that instructor was total bullshit, right?"

Martin began to walk down the corridor and was disconcerted as she moved right along with him.

She scoffed. "I mean, black cohosh for menstrual disorders! Utterly useless unless you combine it with dong quai - Chinese angelica."

Now it was his turn to scoff. "And I suppose if that doesn't work you would recommend eye of newt and toe of frog next."

"Ooh, a joke! So you're not totally humour impaired after all."

She stepped closer and touched him on the arm, which startled him. He caught a whiff of a familiar scent, like a sweet tropical fruit. A sudden thought occurred to him. Her knowledge of plants and herbs could actually be useful.

"Er, Sonia. I do understand that alternative medicine can frequently be effective… in certain cases. Do you happen to know anything about… oleander?"

"Sandra," she said. She seemed pleased he was asking about her area of expertise. "Call me Sandy. Yeah, I do. What do you want to know?"

"It's quite toxic but is there any instance in which someone might want to make a tea from it?"

"Well, you wouldn't call it a tea because there's no actual tea leaves in it," she said. "But you can make a tisane infusion from the leaves, yeah."

"Hm. Is there any reason someone would do that?"

"Yeah, the extract has got all sorts of uses, good for muscle cramps, asthma, eczema, boostin' the immune system. It even makes a good organic insecticide. You've got to be really careful usin' it though, should be taken only with the supervision of an expert herbalist. Why do you want to know?"

"Just curious. I noticed your perfume has the scent of oleander."

"Right, I make my own perfumes. All natural ingredients, none of the toxic synthetic stuff you get in commercial perfumes. Oleander is the top note in this one. Impressive that you recognized it." She smiled that smirking smile again. "Can't believe I said you had faulty smellin' apparatus that time."

Martin refrained from pointing out, once again, that oleander itself was quite toxic. Instead, he just retorted, "did you?" He meant it to sound casual, like her comment had mattered so little it didn't register in his memory, but instead it took on a sarcastic yes-you-did-say-that-didn't-you-you-ignoramus tone.

He remembered that moment all too well. He had gone up the stairs from P.C. Mylow's office, fully prepared to confront the constable's sister about her herbal medication aggravating the butcher's itchy rash. Instead he overheard her conversation with Louisa. He liked to think he and Louisa had since gotten past this unpleasantness but the memory of it still stung.

Louisa slowly and deeply exhaled. From his hidden position on the stairs Martin knew it was her, just from the sound of her breath. Dear God, her breath! Was she still obsessing over his unfortunate comment in the taxi?

"I really don't think there's anything wrong at all," Mylow's sister said.

"Are you sure?" came Louisa's voice. "It's just that someone… it was a doctor actually."

"This wouldn't be our friendly local doctor, would it?"

"Well, he said that I have a certain… tang… on my breath."

"Some people have a faulty smellin' apparatus. Which means they can falsely accuse others of, say, bad breath or body odour."

"Really? That's interesting. Yeah, well that would make sense… because he does have some physical quirks. I don't know if you know this… but um…"

Martin's heart sank as Louisa confided his dreaded secret to this charlatan.

"He's got a blood phobia."

"No! A blood phobia!" Mylow's sister found it hilarious. "That's great!"

Louisa sounded regretful and immediately rushed to his defence. "But he is really a very, very good doctor."

"As long as there aren't any cuts and scrapes involved, I imagine." Mylow's sister was still laughing and to Martin's further dismay Louisa even joined in a little. The herbalist then evidently gave Louisa a bottle of something.

"Thank you," Louisa said. "You know you've been such a great help."

Hurt. Shame. Betrayal. Martin stepped out of the stairwell and into the room.

"Martin!" Louisa sounded guilty and apologetic.

"Louisa." He greeted her with an accusatory tone.

"I hope your ears aren't burnin'," Mylow's sister smirked. "Dr. Ellingham. How nice to see you.

Unable to meet his eyes, Louisa meekly departed.

Martin proceeded to have it out with the herbalist about her tablets malreacting with the treatment he had already prescribed for the butcher. "I am responsible for the health of this community," he concluded. "In future, please check with me first. Is that clear?"

As he went back downstairs, she yelled down at Mylow over some trivial matter, clearly taking out her irritation with Martin on her brother.

Mylow sighed. "I know you can't choose your family," he said, "but there's a line Doc, people shouldn't cross it, that's what I'm sayin'."

"So how is Louisa?"

They had exited the building but she kept walking with him outside.

"Er… She's gone off to stay with a friend in London for a change of scene before the new school term begins."

Martin began to wonder if Mylow's sister had deliberately parked at the far end as he had done and they would have to walk the entire length of the car park together. He tried walking faster but she kept pace with him. So he thought perhaps he should attempt small talk.

"Er… so where is your brother now? Some of the villagers were saying he'd gone off to Hawaii, others said to Poland."

"Yeah, well actually he got a job testin' the rides at EuroDisney for a while. Now he's got a posting down in St. Gweep, where nobody's heard about his unfortunate engagement to that con artist Julie Whats-Her-Name. Apparently the previous constable there was quite thick so Mark should fit right in." She laughed derisively.

Martin merely grunted, unsure whether he should openly agree with her assessment of Mark Mylow's intelligence since he had unexpectedly grown rather fond of Portwenn's former constable before the man's abrupt departure. Certainly he preferred Mark to his aggressive older sister.

Seagulls circled the car park, their squawking sounded like they were laughing along with her. Martin had another thought.

"Er… Cindy. Are there any herbal remedies that might be useful for dispelling a territorial herring gull?"

"Got a problem with one of 'em, eh? I heard what happened at the cliffs when the choughs were nestin'. You blew them up and all. Choughs have great spiritual significance in Cornwall. Instead of tryin' to chase the gull away maybe you should be puttin' out food for it, makin' peace with it. You've got bad karma with birds now and this is nature's way of sayin' you need to atone. You know…"

She stepped closer and touched his arm again, running her fingers along the fabric of his sleeve. Was she… actually… flirting with him?

"…I know an excellent organic tea shop near here, maybe you and me might have a cuppa together and talk it over."

Martin was horrified. "I, er… I have a full schedule at the surgery to get to today."

They had reached their cars at last, parked side by side. He clicked the remote lock and made his getaway as fast as possible.

To be continued….

ASBO: An Anti-Social Behaviour Order, a court ordered injunction for someone who engaged in anti-social behaviour forbidding them from doing it again. ASBOs were discontinued in the U.K. in 2015 and they didn't actually include community service like attending a two-week course on mastering effective interpersonal skills but it's fun to think of Sandra Mylow getting one.

Dan Gleballs. Ben Twilley. These are actual joke DM patient names from S7. Try saying them out loud.

Testing the rides at EuroDisney: I couldn't resist borrowing this line from Men Behaving Badly about where Gary's old flatmate Dermot ended up.

St. Gweep: The village from Wild West, a BBC show that also featured Stewart Wright (Mark Mylow) as a Cornish village constable.