Playing Dead Read Online Free Page B

Her tears had dried and now she just looked furious. ‘If I . . . you know.’ She went red and stopped speaking.
    ‘What we have here is a little misunderstanding,’ said the man. ‘We had some fun together and the lady thought that meant—’
    He didn’t even finish the sentence before Lionel hit him, hard. He went crashing back against the wall, and slid to the floor.
    ‘Come on,’ said Lionel, grabbing the girl’s hand.
    ‘Is he going to be all right . . .?’ They were walking away, but she was glancing back, worried.
    ‘Do you care?’ asked Lionel, hurrying away.
    ‘No.’ A smile appeared briefly on her face.
    ‘I’m Lionel Driver, by the way,’ he said.
    ‘Vivienne Bell.’
    ‘And I think I’ve probably missed my audition . . .’
    Having failed spectacularly at the Hollywood dream, Lionel took Vivienne home to England with him and married her there. She was a chatty bottle-blonde and tired of being pawed over by fat old producers on the casting couch, tired of being wild at heart while presenting a carefully virginal image to the outside world, tired of the coke-fuelled merry-go-round that Hollywood truly was.
    Vivienne was charmed by his English gentility, thinking that here was a real gentleman. He’d played at Stratford, for Chrissakes. He quoted the Bard’s love poems to her, and she melted. Accustomed to encounters like the one Lionel had interrupted, lifting her skirts for quick, sweaty couplings in draughty backstage corridors on the promise of a part – after which the part always failed to materialize – Vivienne was entranced by his old-fashioned charm and amazed that he actually took the trouble to woo her. Before a year was out, she was pregnant with Frances.
    It was such a touching story, such a happy tale, it should have ended with bliss everlasting. Lionel and the lovely Vivienne waltzing off into the sunset together. But Vivienne quickly got bored with daily life in England. She was a good-time girl; she loved the bright lights. And Chamberlain’s famed ‘piece of paper’ had been proved worthless. War was declared on Germany, so Lionel went off to fight.
    Feeling lucky to be alive and not maimed when so many of his comrades had died or had their lives altered forever at the hands of the Nazis, Lionel returned home when it was all over and thought, What the hell? He would give the acting dream one last shot.
    He ditched his old agent and acquired a new thrusting one called LaLa LaBon, who was bursting with energy and unscrupulously single-minded in the pursuit of a deal. LaLa was a rampaging, cheroot-puffing dyke with black bobbed hair and a vulpine, predatory face. She appreciated beauty in her male clients and was now pushing him westwards with manic enthusiasm.
    ‘Think of it! Hollywood! You heard of an actor called Archie Leach?’ she asked him one rainy day in her poky little London office.
    ‘No,’ he said, feeling dubious but finding her enthusiasm infectious. He’d already told her he’d tried Hollywood before, but LaLa was not to be deterred. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’
    ‘And you fucking well won’t,’ she said, busily puffing on her cheroot. She stabbed the air with it, making her point. Her eyes gleamed diabolically through the smoke-haze. ‘You know why? Because he changed his name to Cary Grant and look what happened to him. He’s English, he’s charming, he’s handsome. And so, Lionel my pet, are you – and your time is now.’
    So he went back to Hollywood not as Lionel Driver (‘My God – so dull!’ said LaLa) but as Rick Ducane.
    He was back on the party circuit again in no time. LaLa went with him and worked long and hard to get him into the best places. He was rubbing shoulders with people like Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner now, and the dirt was they were having a hot affair, with Sinatra singing and shooting out streetlights as he walked her home.
    As for Rick’s affairs – well, he had taken Vivienne and sulky little baby Frances