Making it Better

by Lisa Wright

l_wright4mail@btinternet.com

Judith was so nervous that her mouth had dried up. When she tried to wet her lips there was no saliva to lick with. Her hands, though, were clammy on the steering wheel and she had to keep wiping them on her skirt.

She missed her exit off the roundabout and crawled round again, her face tense with apprehension. She should have worn her black bra. White always looked a little grey after a while, no matter how clean it was. But perhaps she wouldn’t have to undress. Couldn’t he just massage her shoulder through her jumper? This was worse, far worse, than going to the dentist.

She pulled into the driveway of an unassuming little bungalow called ‘Sunnyside’ and switched off the engine. Her heart was hammering. She told herself to stop being so ridiculous. If she really wanted to do something about her frozen shoulder, then physiotherapy was the only answer. Heather, who was always injuring herself, said she simply didn’t know what she’d do without Mr Simms. Judith locked the car and marched up the drive, trying to look braver than she felt.

A sign directed her to the waiting room at the side of the house. It also told her to beware of the Alsatian. Judith gave a little moan. There was no reply to her knock on the door, so she inched it open and walked in. The waiting room was just a hallway, with three chairs lined against the wall and some womens’ magazines on a shelf. A smart suede jacket was dangling from a coat hook, a wispy scarf trailing from its pocket. Judith sat down and studied the impressive display of framed certificates lining the wall opposite her. Alan Simms was very well-qualified in all sorts of areas – apparently he’d even passed his advanced driving test, though quite what that had to do with easing muscular pain Judith wasn’t sure. One certificate had his photo on it, and she got up to have a closer look. She gasped. The man glaring back at her was bald with beady, bulging eyes.

Judith glanced about her. No one had seen her arrive, so perhaps she could just slip away…. but it was too late. She could hear voices, and the door at the end of the room opened. A woman was chuckling.

 ‘Well, I’ll do my best,’ she said. Judith froze. She knew that voice.

 ‘But you know me, Al, I’m a bit lazy!’ declared Isabel Spencer, self-appointed First Lady of the Bridge Club, as she emerged through the door. Her wide smile vanished when she saw Judith.

 ‘Judith!’ she exclaimed, her face suddenly very pink.

 ‘Hello, Isabel,’ said Judith evenly. Of all the women she knew, Isabel was the one Judith was most in awe of. Many a time had she felt herself reduced to a quivering heap of insecurity by Isabel’s withering reprimand for playing the wrong card at the bridge table. Isabel was always so sharp, so quick, so self-assured. Judith had never seen lose her steely composure, not for one second, and she couldn’t imagine why being encountered at the physiotherapist should embarrass her so. She looked past Isabel at the possible cause.

Alan Simms in the flesh was an improvement on his photo, but not enough of one to put Judith at her ease. He was short and stocky, and his white tunic was stretched tightly over his belly. His trousers and trainers were white too. He looked like a nurse in a mental hospital, ready to put any wayward patient into an armlock. His jolly grin could just be a front.

He planted a kiss on Isabel’s cheek, and she broke away to grab the suede jacket. ‘Must dash!’ she trilled, not looking at Judith. ‘Bye!’ She was gone.

‘Hello, Judith,’ said Alan. ‘Come on in, and let’s see what we can do for you.’

 Judith took a deep breath. She only had to do this once. Just once. It would be okay. After all, Isabel had just done it.

But then Isabel was a very different sort of woman from Judith. She was clever and elegant and supremely confident. Everything that Judith wasn’t. 

The treatment room felt very warm after the unheated waiting area. Judith removed her coat and sat down on the chair facing Alan’s desk. He pulled out some forms from his filing cabinet, and smiled at her. ’So you know Izzy, do you? She’s one of my regulars – been coming for years! I’ll just fill these in – won’t take a minute.’

Judith tried to swallow.

 ‘Um – do you think I could have a glass of water?’ It came out in a jumbled rush.

‘‘Course you can, love,’ he said. He reached behind him to the bottle on the filing cabinet and poured some water into a glass. For a moment Judith thought the buttons on his jacket would give way under the strain, but they held. She managed to turn her nervous giggle into a cough.

            Alan began with the medical stuff – where was the pain, how long had she had it? He grunted with sympathy as she told him about slipping down the steep attic stairs in her stockinged feet, and landing heavily on her shoulder. Any heart problems, operations, medication? Then he moved on to more personal things, but in such a gentle, interested way that she soon lost her stiffness.

‘My husband Geoff died six years ago. He was only 56, we’d had such plans for his retirement… Yes, two children, but both of them engrossed in their own lives in London and Scotland. I keep myself busy with the garden, and I read a lot, and play bridge. I used to go swimming, but not since I hurt my shoulder.’

She wished her life sounded more interesting. She was rummaging about in search of something unusual to tell him, when he said, ‘Right then, let’s take a look at this shoulder. Stand up and show me how far you can raise your arm.’

Judith managed  to reach shoulder height before grimacing with pain, and Alan jotted something down. ‘That’s fine,’ he said with an encouraging grin. ‘If you could just strip down to your bra please – you can leave the bottom half on – and then lie on your tummy on the couch.’ He said all this so nonchalantly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to take off her clothes in front of a strange man. At least in the hospital where she’d gone for her x-ray, they’d given her a little cubicle to undress in and provided her with a robe.

Judith could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks as she stood up and jerked her jumper over her head, and then unbuttoned her blouse. She was acutely conscious of the post-Christmas bulge that protruded above the waistband of her skirt. It didn’t matter. He’d seen it all before. Hundreds of times. She just had to blank her mind and get on with it.

 She slipped off her shoes and clambered onto the couch, positioning her face on a cushion with a hole in its centre. It felt surprisingly comfortable. She studied the black squiggles on the lino below and tried not to panic. Now what was he doing? She could hear him rubbing his hands together and then suddenly he was right over her saying, ‘Just relax. I’ll undo your bra so I can get at your shoulder.’

Judith stiffened. This was ghastly. But there was no way out. She bared her teeth at the squiggles and then gasped as Alan’s slippery hands came down on her back and started to knead her flesh. For a second her mind went numb with horror, and then, to her amazement, she began to realise that it felt quite good. She let herself sink further into the vinyl-covered foam. Actually, it felt completely wonderful. No one had ever massaged her back before, and no one, not even Geoff, had ever touched her in this way. It was as though these hands loved her, and more than that, knew her – knew her better than she knew herself. She felt small and cherished and melting and she didn’t want this feeling to end. She was smiling euphorically through the hole in her cushion.

‘That feel alright?’ asked Alan, and Judith sighed. ‘You’re carrying a lot of tension in your back, you know – I’ll just ease out some of these knots.’ The pain was exquisite; how could something hurt and feel delicious at one and the same time? Now he was concentrating on her damaged shoulder, getting right in at the source of the pain and at one point making her yelp. ‘Sorry, love,’ he chuckled, not sorry at all. ‘Now I can see exactly where the problem is.’ He asked her to stretch out her arm and he gently manipulated it as far as it would go, and then helped it go a bit further. It hurt, but she found that she trusted this man completely, and when he praised her for gaining another inch, she felt absurdly proud of herself.

Alan was doing up her bra. She desperately didn’t want that to be all. ‘Right, now I need you to roll onto your back,’ he said, ‘and I’ll work on it from the other side.’

Judith’s self-consciousness flooded back as she turned over, sucking in her stomach. She squeezed her eyes tight shut. She heard the squelch of oil being reapplied to Alan’s hands and then they came down, firm but kind, on her neck. She lifted her chin to give him more room. At one point he paused to move her hair away from her neck and the gesture felt astonishingly intimate. She could pretend he was Geoff. But no, that didn’t work – Geoff would never have done this. George Clooney then. That was better.

Alan’s fingertips were rubbing under her armpits now, his fingers strong and confident as they drew little circles on her skin. Then he moved to the top of her chest and his thumbs joined in as the circles became larger. Judith felt battered with conflicting emotions. It was squirmingly embarrassing, but at the same time utterly blissful.  ‘The muscles run along here to your shoulder,’ Alan explained, but she didn’t need a reason. Just as long as he kept doing it. ‘Now push against my hand,’ he instructed, and push she did, with her eyes still tight shut. 

‘Well done, you’ve worked hard today,’ he told her. ‘You lie here and relax while I write up your notes.’ He gently placed a large warm towel over her – was there no end to the pleasurable sensations this man could dream up? Judith drifted away, reliving the entire experience. She could still feel the touch of his fingers. She thought about Isabel, tight, controlled, bossy Isabel stripped to her undies, turning into someone called Izzy and dissolving away under Alan’s hands. She understood now why she had blushed. She understood completely.

The towel was lifted off her and reluctantly Judith opened her eyes. Alan told her to sit on the edge of the couch and raise her arm as high as she could, which was nearly horizontal. ‘By the time I’ve finished with you, we’ll have that arm up by your ear, good as new,’ he promised.

‘Will it take long?’ Judith asked anxiously.

 ‘Oh no, a couple of months I should think - as long as you do the exercises. Come over to the door and I’ll show you what to do.’

Obediently, she slid off the couch and padded over to the door, and Alan showed her how to walk her fingertips up it. He pushed down hard on her bad shoulder, and then he put his hands around her waist and straightened her spine. Judith was all confusion and had trouble taking in what he was saying.

She felt light-headed as she got dressed and handed over her money. It seemed a very small amount for such a momentous experience. ‘I’d like to see you once a week,’ said Alan, his pen poised over the diary. ‘Same time next Wednesday?’

‘Oh yes, please!’ exclaimed Judith, and then, more calmly, ‘That’ll be fine.’

Alan held open the door for her. There was no one in the waiting room. Judith paused, wondering if the kiss was meted out to first-timers. Evidently not. ‘See you next week then, Judy – and don’t forget to work at those exercises!’

She walked slowly to her car. A couple of months. Once a week for a couple of months. It wasn’t much. Then she smiled. Of course, there was nothing to stop her having another little accident when her shoulder was better. Perhaps she could pull a muscle in her thigh.  After all, Isabel had been coming to Alan for years.

 Friday’s Bridge Club would be interesting. She was looking forward now to playing on Isabel’s table. ‘Two spades!’ she would declare with supreme confidence, no longer intimidated in the slightest by Isabel’s much-vaunted mastery of the game. She would look her in the eye and give her a conspiratorial smile. Because Judy and Izzy weren’t so very different after all.

©2009 Lisa Wright

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