Chapter 8 ~ Family Rules – Part II
March 16, 2010
Martin Sanderson was fifty-two years old when they pitched him the pilot of Family Rules!
For about ten years, he’d been living at the bottom of a bottle of scotch, drinking desperately in the hope of rescuing the drowning remnants of his career; if he could just get them above the surface, he might be able to resuscitate them, pull them together, make them mean more together than they had as tatters for the last decade. If only he could get his act together.
If only.
If only.
And then the script had arrived.
The motorbike messenger handed him the clipboard. “Sign there.”
As normal, Sanderson watched for any sign of recognition. Nothing. Not even a glimmer.
Probably too young to remember Charge Squad, the police drama series that had made him a star a decade earlier. Did memories really fade as quickly as that?
He closed the door on the messenger and looked at the package. A script, without doubt.
The postmark was enough to tell him that it wasn’t even from his agent, who had long since relegated him to the used-to-be-but-aren’t-now pile. Sanderson’s denial had been so blind drunk that he’d only realised this after several years without a phone call or a letter.
The envelope was ripped open before he’d even got into his living room.
He settled in to read.
* * *
If only Sanderson had known that it was all a vehicle for Jamie Master’s first foray into television, he might have thought differently. But they didn’t sell it like that. Too sharp to fall into the honesty trap. Too sharp by half.
“Hello, is that Rodney? Er… Mr Blythe?”
“No, this is his office.”
His office, he thought, she actually said his office.
Stifling a cynical laugh at the image of a speaking building, he continued on.
“Is Mr Blythe in the office?”
“Hold on,” she said, voice fading away from the other end of the phone and then suddenly back, loud in his ear. “Who’s speaking please?”
“It’s Martin Sanderson,” he replied, “Mr Blythe sent me a copy of Family Rules! to consider and I’m just following up. Can you tell me if…”
“Martin Sanderson?”
He smiled. She’d recognised his name. It still thrilled him, never tiring of the adoration.
“Yes,” he said, smiling warmth down the wire, balancing between patronising her and letting her bask in his sunlight, “that’s right.”
“Good. He’s been waiting for you to call.”
Waiting for me to call. Waiting… For… Me… To… Call…
“Really?”
“Yup. He’s been speaking to Chris Owen in the meantime. Calling you all manner of… What? Hang on a sec.”
She muffled the phone with one hand to speak with someone at the far end. Finally she came back.
“My mum’s going to be so pleased I talked to you,” she said, “she used to watch you when I was growing up… OK, OK, OK… Jesus, he’s such a slave-driver!”
And then she reverted to the chirpy receptionist she was paid to be.
“Just putting you through,” she said, voice brimming with autonomic affectation, devoid of personality.
The line buzzed and clicked as she patched the call.
“Hello,” a gruff voice, impatient, intolerant of delay, “Rodney Blythe.”
“Ah yes, Mr Blythe it’s Mar…”
“Call me Rodney, I ain’t got time for anything else.”
“Right… Rodney. Rodney. Rodney…”
“Like the sound of that? Or have you got something you actually want to talk about?”
Snapping back to reality.
“It’s Martin Sanderson here,” he said, “you sent me…”
“I know what I sent you, what do you think?”
“Huh?”
“Well it’s not as if you’ve had an agent check it out first, is it?”
“Huh?”
“Look Martin, the world, his wife and several mistresses on separate continents know that your career’s gone so far south it’s fucking penguins, so let’s just drop the pretence, OK? I sent you the script because no agent was willing to act as a go between. Dealing with the talent. I hate it. Literally hate it. Talent. Fuck!”
Sanderson didn’t know what to say. If he’d been able to draw breath, he might have spluttered, but he couldn’t even do that.
“So, as I say, let’s not play games with each other, eh?” Blythe continued. “What I’m offering you is a chance to get back on prime-time again. You remember prime-time, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he answered involuntarily.
“Good. So what do you think?”
“What?”
“Like I say, no time for pissing around. Are you in or not?”
“Or you’ll go for Chris Owen, right?” under his breath, hoping he wouldn’t be heard.
“He’s already signed on,” Blythe was smiling at the other end of the phone, you could hear it in his voice.
“What do you mean? I thought we were up for the same part?”
“You what?”
“Chris and I… We’re up for Michael, aren’t we?”
A loud guffaw buzzing through the wires.
“Michael? Michael? Do you really think you’re being considered for a thirty-five year old father? For fuck’s sake, you’re fifty seven if you’re a day, how the fuck did you think… You’re down for Michael’s father. His father.”
His father.
An infirm old man forced to live his life with his son and young family.
Sanderson grimaced at the handset, his face white.
“All right,” he said quietly, knowing when he was beaten.
“All right, we’ll talk about rates tomorrow. I need to speak to Jamie first to make sure she’s okay with this.”
“Jamie?”
“Masters.”
The topless model from The Sun?
“Jamie Masters?”
“Quick on the uptake, ain’t ya speedy?”
“Jamie Masters, the page-three girl? That Jamie Masters?”
“Yup, that Jamie Masters. She’s our long-suffering heroine.”
Sanderson’s eyes rolled up in his sockets, eyelids fluttering down for a moment as he contemplated this latest left-turn.
He swallowed the lump in his throat.
“Good,” he said, eyes still closed, “speak to you tomorrow.”
And hung up the phone.
A topless tart and the latest hunk of beefcake taking top billing and leaving him, Martin Sanderson, a trained Shakespearian actor, relegated to playing a sick old man forced to rely on his family for food and water.
How far things had come since Charge Squad. How deep had he sunk?
He lifted the glass of Bells scotch that had been by his side throughout the phone call and held it aloft.
“Here’s to you Jamie,” he said by way of a toast and then added, with a sigh, “and here’s to a great set of tits on-set.”
