New Beginnings

The Extra

[Walker Pickering in a film and TV series walk-on extra, he is not an actor and doesn't aspire to join the profession. He is a mature middle-aged man with a handsome, if somewhat forgettable face, who is vastly experienced in his field and liked by directors and make-up artists as a professional extra. Disappointed by two failed marriages, both through the infidelity of his partners, he is not looking for love, until he meets Abi. Abigail Anderson in 26, looks 18 and has played a character in a soap opera that Walker has just signed up for since she was 12. Abi is known and loved throughout Britain, but unknown elsewhere. She has just been away for several months shooting her first Hollywood rom com, about a princess on the run from kidnappers in the USA with a hard-bitten FBI agent. Off set, the randy actor tried it on and she had to smack him hard. She was being tipped as the newest Hollywood sensation before the film is out, even by the randy actor's wife, glamorous A-list star. Committed to her soap opera, she wants to pick and choose film roles and not looking to a settled relationship, but cannot help being attracted to Walker. It emerges that the A-lister is Walker's ex, the randy actor the cause of his break-up, both the actresses are nominated for Oscars in a head to head and, just as the tension on their relationship is at breaking point, Walker's teenage daughter flies over to mend fences in her parents' relationship....]

Chapter 1 The Return

As soon as he returned to England, Walker made enquiries with a network of contacts in the film and television industry with regard to securing work as an experienced extra. Surprisingly quickly, considering the circumstances, he picked up a few walk ons for the odd tv soap and a domestic comedy pub scene, more he suspected for his novelty value than anything else.

He also managed to pick up the odd film, averaging a day's filming every couple of months or so. He found that the work was much more seasonal than in Burbank, California, where filming was pretty much an all-year round occupation, but he persevered and hoped that persistence would in time bring its own rewards.

"Walker Pickering?" the young receptionist reading the name off of her list at the end of an impossibly long painted fingernail, addressed the room, full of theatrical hopefuls. They were there for a 10am appointment in competition to fill one advertised temporary three-month role with a six-month extension option. It was already half an hour past the time of that appointment without a single movement toward the impending auditions, or explanation for the delay. Most of the individuals were therefore tense with anticipation and surreptitiously sizing up the competition.

One man who gave the clear impression that he wasn't the least bit nervous, was a tall slim man, at least a decade and a half older than the next oldest man sitting in the room. He rose at the receptionist's mention of the name.

"That's me," he drawled, sounding like a world weary cowboy, recently stepped off the overnight stage from some frontier town way out West, over near hostile "Injun Territory" no doubt. He strolled up to the receptionist as if he had all the time in the world to do so.

Sitting in the seat next to where Walker had immediately vacated, the salon-tanned young actor muttered to no-one in particular, "Must be an established actor. He only walked in here two minutes ago and he gets to see Ted Silvers straight away; we've all been kept hangin' about here for three-quarters of an hour at least."

"Nah, he's not an actor at all," someone a little older than the impetuous young man sitting opposite said, "He's only an extra, I can assure you; he only does walk on parts. Mind you, he's famous already and the chances are that he'll probably always be more famous than you, son."

All round the room, more than two-thirds of the participants were nodding in agreement.

One of the others added, "That bastard Silvers probably wants to take the piss out of the poor sod and send him packing with his tail between his legs, just for the satisfaction of putting the rest of us off our strides before we have our auditions. Just don't look Pickering in the eye when he storms through on his way out."

Several nodding heads added a collective murmur, read as being in complete agreement with the last speaker.

"Famous?" the first young actor queried. "Just an extra?"

"Believe me son, when you get home, search YouTube for 'Walker Pickering Extra'," the man opposite added, "I guess you must be the only person in this room that hasn't seen it. That video went viral several years ago, maybe before you even joined the profession. Watch it my friend, watch it and weep ... weep for him."

***

Walker Pickering wasn't his real name, but he hated his given one "Walter" and, perhaps because of that, disliked his parents just a little bit too, for imposing his grandfather's currently unfashionable name on him. All right, that was an exaggeration, he didn't quite dislike his parents exactly. But he did hate the name that they had saddled him with. And Walker couldn't fall back on his second name, that was even worse; not that Walker had ever used it or divulged whatever that unmentionable name was to anyone of his acquaintance. It wasn't even on his passport.

The name Walker, though, was just a single subtle consonant different from his original name but the way that it was perceived, and how he felt about the name, were whole worlds apart as far as Walker was concerned.

What exactly was he doing at the Regional TV Studio, speaking to the Producer of a screened-twice-a-week Soap Opera? Well, he was about to find out.