Talk to Me Tenderly, Tell Me Lies
An unforgettable tale of adventure and heartache in the unforgiving Australian Outback.A stirring account of a woman’s awakening – tension, passion and heart-stopping action.Helen McKenzie is looking into the future and she doesn’t like what she sees.Her role as a mother is almost over – her husband works thousands of miles away, her children will soon leave home – and she is alone in the Australian Outback, facing a terrible dilemma. Should she take off to pursue her unfulfilled ambitions, or stay behind, a faithful wife, locked in predictable security?Ben Sunninghill has all the freedom he wants. Travelling the world on a motorbike, this carefree stranger from New York never spends long in one place – until he appears in Helen’s backyard to borrow a spanner, stays on to help out around the farm, and ends up changing their lives forever.Ben gives Helen the confidence to take control of her own destiny, but finds himself losing control of his. As Helen and Ben battle with their feelings, a storm of troubles is brewing that will leave behind a trail of broken lives …
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John Gordon Davis
TALK TO ME TENDERLY,
TELL ME LIES
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1992
Copyright © John Gordon Davis 1992
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
John Gordon Davis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007574384
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008119317
Version: 2014-12-19
To Harry and June Pearson
‘Talk to me tenderly, tell me lies.
I am a woman, and time flies.’
Vivian Yeiser Laramore
Contents
In this land the distances are vast. If you stop your vehicle and listen there is only ringing silence. It is always hot in this part of Queensland, and the rainfall is very spare. Then, almost without warning, the rain can come crashing down for weeks, and the rivers that have been dry for years break their banks, causing devastating floods over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, and whole villages and towns have to be evacuated. Because of the great distances there are few telephones, so people keep in touch by two-way radio. Outback children have to receive their education from broadcasts and medical attention can only be had through the Flying Doctor Service. The private aeroplane is not a luxury here but a working vehicle. The McKenzies had an aeroplane, but it had not flown for a year because, after several years of very poor rainfall, they could not afford the maintenance to keep it airworthy.
This Monday afternoon, close to sunset, Helen McKenzie was doing her laundry. Her washing-machine had broken down, so she had put a cauldron of water on to the wood-burning stove. She had taken off her jeans and shirt to wash them, and she scrubbed the kitchen floor in her underwear while she waited for the water to heat. She had dispatched Oscar, her dog, outside while she did the job, and had propped the back screen-door ajar with the mop because the damn latch was faulty and often jammed from the inside. The other door, leading into the rest of the house, Helen had bolted closed on the far side, because it too had a faulty latch which allowed Oscar to enter simply by pushing his paw against it.
She had almost finished scrubbing the floor when she heard furious barking outside. Then a big snake, nine feet long, came slithering flat-out into her kitchen, with Oscar in joyful pursuit. She screamed, the back door banged closed as Oscar bounded into the room, and with a terrifying writhing the snake flashed across the floor and disappeared into one of the kitchen cupboards. Helen screamed again as she dashed to the back door, but she slipped on the wet linoleum and sprawled. She scrambled up wild-eyed and flung herself at the door, but the catch was stuck. She shook it desperately; then, in the purest horror, she ran to the kitchen table and hurled herself up on to it.
The long cupboard into which the snake had fled lined the entire wall, from one door to the other. Helen McKenzie crouched in the middle of the table midst the cacophony of Oscar’s barking, her heart pounding, eyes wide, desperately searching for the terrible snake amongst the things at the bottom of the dim cupboards. Oscar was charging up and down after the snake as it writhed from one end to the other. Helen shrieked at him to come away but he would have none of that. She could not see the snake, but she knew it was a King Brown, one of the deadliest. Helen crouched on the table shouting at Oscar, her terrified mind fumbling; then she frantically crawled to the end and leapt off to try the back door once more, but Oscar came roaring along the cupboards, slammed into her legs and she sprawled again. She crashed headlong on the linoleum and all she knew was the panicked horror of Oscar furiously scrambling over her. She screamed
