Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition

by Antony Sher

  Driving back from the airport, nothing is familiar until Green Point Common and the Sports Stadium. Memories of walking back with Tony Fagin from Saturday afternoon bioscope, discussing The Art Of The Motion Picture. And then more memories as we drive along the beachfront - certain blocks of flats, the Pavilion, the Aquarium - but distantly, sensations rather than clear pictures.

  The house in Alexander Road is transformed. They've split it down the middle and sold the other half. It's hardly recognisable, but I find my way through to the back yard calling, `Katie, Katie.' She comes out of the maid's room. Still wearing those little aprons and linen caps, but older, shorter, squatter. Her shy smile showing gold among the white teeth. We hug. `Oh, Master Antony, oh, Master Antony,' she keeps saying.

  The house is like it would be in a dream. A familiar place put together wrongly. A few things have survived the rebuilding. The stair rail. A cupboard door. I round a corner and there's a piece I recognise, the rest strange. Even the smell is quite new. A different furniture polish I suppose.

  I'm on display everywhere. Every inch of wall space is covered in photos of me or my paintings or posters of plays. It makes me feel rather uncomfortable; as if I've died and this is the shrine.

  I'm taken on a grand tour. Mum watches my reactions closely, keeps asking, `Well, what d'you think?' and I keep replying, `I don't know, it's very strange.'

  Their bedroom. Blinds drawn against the strong afternoon sun which still saturates the room and makes the blinds glow. Little strips and squares of sunlight have got through and fall across the bed, and across the soft pale carpet. A radio plays quietly. This feeling of a hot afternoon indoors, with the radio a tiny, constant comforting sound - that's the closest feeling to what it was like being a child here.

  Tuesday 13 December

  Wake to that smell of the sea ... Dad and Katie in the back yard chatting away in Afrikaans.

  Breakfast. Both Mum and Dad have capsules to take with their coffee. His are thick, black things like slugs. When I ask what they're for, he says, `Lord alone knows, but if I was ten years younger I'd've had triplets by now.

  Mum's are prettier, little opaque golden baubles. `They are very expensive,' she says, `a natural extract made from the oil of Evening Primrose, for the skin, for circulation and so much more. Apparently the entire population of Russia are given these free for one month each year.'

  `That's why their Premiers keep dying,' mutters Dad as he heads off to work.

  `Tsk,' goes Mum, and settles down with Katie to plan the day's menus; there's meat to be taken out of the deep freeze, recipes to be checked through. That done, she begins her own notes for the day; careful lists written in her curving elegant handwriting (so familiar from those blue airmail envelopes that drop through the letter box back in Islington) concerning shopping and appointments.

  Katie starts washing up the breakfast things. She is rather proud of the batch of bagels she baked for my homecoming.

  `Were they all right, Madam?'

  `Haven't tasted one yet,' says Mum concentrating on her list.

  `But do they look all right?'

  `Look fine.'

  `I burnt a few for Madam, Madam mos' likes them burnt.'

  `Mmm.'

  Katie smiles secretly to me, almost winks, as if to say `I keep her happy and she stays out of my hair'.

  Their relationship seems to have mellowed over the years. In my childhood I remember stormy rows; Katie was always packing and leaving, often did. One or the other would eventually apologise sulkily, all would be well again until the next time.

  I wonder if either have ever realised the deep affection they have for one another. They're both in their early sixties now, having spent forty long years together. They see more of one another than they do of their husbands, and yet all the time leading very different lives.

  Mum's day is made up of her shopping, her beauty treatments, massages, manicures and pedicures, her classes in keep fit and philosophy, her spiritualist meetings, her visits to theatre, cinema, ballet, variety shows, anything to fill the long hours of leisure.

  Katie's day begins at five o'clock in the coloured township Bonteheuwel; she cooks breakfast for her husband, catches the six o'clock bus to Sea Point, works here from seven till five, back home to make supper and do the housework there, then to bed at midnight. She says to me, `I thank God that I've still got my health so I can work hard for Madam and myself.'

  S A U N D E R S BEACH Astonishing to see the beach mixed. Black men in the briefest swimsuits sunbathing next to Jewish princesses, who lie face down with bikini-tops discreetly untied. And yet the Immorality Act still officially exists. So they lie there inches away from one another, very nearly naked, watching with interest and wariness, sensing, smelling, stirring one another, but not permitted to touch.

  The sea is choppy, the wind strong and cold. As soon as you are protected from it, baking heat. Clouds tumble over the Seven Apostles. I notice how magnificent Lion's Head is, as if for the first time. This ex-volcano dominates Sea Point; our school anthem was called `Beneath the Lion Bold'. The mountain was so familiar that I stopped noticing it, but seeing it now, it has tremendous power. Richard III is in there somewhere. But which bit is the head, which the hump?

  `Haah.' Dad back from work. He goes into the kitchen to nibble at the supper Katie is preparing, and to chat in Afrikaans. I think they both look forward to these moments of their day.

  `How was work?' I ask.

  `Every day, same day,' says Dad, pouring a large Scotch. He keeps rubbing his hands which have developed bad arthritis and gout. `They're changing,' he says, `look at these dents and bumps. First the right was worse, now the left; half time all change. Growing old is like keeping a bloody car you wish you'd got rid of years ago. Just get one bit right and another bit goes.'

  He puts on the television. Today it is Afrikaans till eight o'clock, then it changes over to English. Tomorrow vice versa. The West Indian cricket tour is on. He points to it gleefully. `And they were here last year also.'

  `I know. And criticised for it.'

  `Yet here they are again.'

  `Money.'

  `Money, my boy, money talks in a language that is out of this world.'

  I have made a resolution not to get involved in any political discussions, so concede the point without further comment.

  `Now is the winter ...'

  I start to read Richard III properly, cover to cover. First impression: the world of the play is a superstitious one. A man is imprisoned because his initial is G, a corpse bleeds. The other thing that strikes me is that Richard is funny. This is a danger area for me. In Tartuffe rehearsals I remember saying, `I don't think it's funny at all what he does in this household. It disturbs me.' But at the first preview, at the first whiff of the audience's delight in this bloodsport, I was off; inventing snorts, hops, dancing eyebrows before their very eyes. The irresistible drug of laughter. It will be so predictable playing Richard like that. Must root his wit in self-defence. Everything comes from his deformity, his pain.

  Interesting that the first two encounters happen to him. He's just sitting there when Clarence and Hastings pass. Almost as if he's in a wheelchair - he's been pushed out into the sun and left there.

  Play him in a wheelchair?

  Wednesday 14 December

  Coming out of the gym I stop to memorise the surroundings for future visits. I realise with a shock that I'm a block away from Sea Point Boys' High School. All the shops have changed over the years and nothing is familiar. Then I round the corner and there's the parade ground and the school, exactly the same. Lean on the fence and stare hard. A flash of me and Tony Fagin walking during Break, talking, talking, dreaming of going overseas and becoming famous.

  The gates are open. I wonder whether to go in but the signs `Trespassers will be Prosecuted' intimidate, particularly in Afrikaans.

  Walking along the fence staring up at the windows. Those classrooms. In one I glimpse a world globe, almost
black with dust. That must be the Library. A book of photos - Alec Guinness in all his roles and disguises - pored over endlessly.

  I have to pass through a group of Coloured women. They are very drunk, their eyes and mouths ugly; they sway viciously. Maids off duty still dressed absurdly in those pink uniforms. One looks at me horribly through bloodshot eyes. She is rake thin, her bony arms flailing around in the air; toothless, her thick lips flapping like her jaw has no hinges, shouting a stew of Afrikaans and English, swearing and spitting as she staggers down the street. These are the people who will murder us in our beds, we thought as children. They still frighten terribly.

  Reading Richard III. For a play so famous for its mass-murders, there's surprisingly little violence on stage, but a constant sense of danger which I like. When the violence does erupt (the stabbing of Clarence, Hastings' head being brought on) I think it should be done very realistically and shock immensely.

  Leafing through piles of old Time magazines that Dad has collected over the years, on cue I come across a fascinating article on murderers and capital punishment.

  A mass-murderer called Henry Brisbon Jnr, twenty-eight, Negro, from a family of thirteen children, his father a strict Muslim, says: `I'm no bad dude, just an anti-social individual. I was taught to be a racist and not like whites. As I grew up I decided I didn't like nobody.'

  Different methods of capital punishment through the centuries. One of the oddest is from nineteenth-century India, where the culprit was tied to the hind leg of an elephant which was then forced into a fast trot, bouncing the man along behind. He was untied, given a glass of water and then had to put his head on a stone. The elephant was made to step up and crush it.

  Not that modern electrocution is any less bizarre; the way the jury have to take their seats as at the theatre, the executioner invisible behind a two-way mirror. (Lermontov's line from Maydays: `I have always thought the condemned are blindfolded not for themselves, but for the executioner. So he can't see their faces.') When the electricity is pumped through, the victim's eyeballs bulge from their sockets and burst. Then his brain boils alive. The state boiling brains, Nilsen boiling heads ...

  And my current fear is making Richard too funny.

  Thursday 15 December

  As I'm going out to sketch, Katie makes a big fuss about locking the door behind me. She says she's scared to be in the house alone.

  `It wasn't like that when I lived here.'

  `Oo Master Antony, it's terrible what goes on here now.'

  Sketching Lion's Head. More and more alive. Massive shoulders with a terrible growth (hump?) on one of them. That growth, a rock formation with great slabs and chunks, is so like animal or human muscle; the surface has a smoothness, a silkiness, the folds are very soft - there are crevices you want to run your fingers over and into - but within there's this enormous hard power. Feminine and masculine.

  STEAK HOUSE The family has gathered in force. As the men arrive they plonk down bottles of wine or whisky. Both will be drunk freely throughout the meal.

  Despite an agreement that there should be no political discussions, everyone is spoiling for a fight, particularly the more liberal - my sister-inlaw Yvette and her brother Ashley. `You've diagnosed the sickness,' they say, `now suggest a cure.'

  My younger brother Joel (a giant walking wall of muscle, but gentlenatured - Hercules in specs) says with a kind of regret, `I am selfish. This is my country. I've nowhere else to go. So I must stay in power. And live with my guilt.' He runs an off-licence (or `bottle store' as they call it). I ask him why I've seen so many Coloureds pissed out of their brains. He says it's Government policy to keep the price of cheap wine as low as possible. `To anaesthetise the population.'

  Discussion rages about the recent referendum granting the vote to Coloureds and Indians, but not to blacks.

  Back at the house, Joel and I stay up drinking - another bottle of Scotch plonked down between us. We talk about school days and teachers; several have died including my mentor, the art master McCabe. God, when did I last have a conversation like this? Joel talks about how I dominated his childhood (because of the fuss made over me as a child artist), cramped his style, left him no space. But this is said without any bitterness. He's the most centred of us all.

  Behind his head the black window panes turn navy blue, start to lighten.

  At about five o'clock in the morning, Dad staggers downstairs blinking, his hair a little storm around his ears. `Hell's bells!' he says seeing us, `I'm going to the lav.'

  Saturday 17 December

  Lunch with Esther. She still lives at No. 303, Shoreham Flats, where I used to come week after week for classes. Who would have thought Elocution could be so thrilling?

  Her skin is tanned, turquoise splashed around those jet-black eagle eyes, her hair a sculpture in vanilla ice. She is flamboyantly theatrical - a cross between Ethel Merman and Sybil Thorndike - but this is deceptive. In this modest living room with its sunny balcony overlooking the beach front, Esther was a pioneer in the experimental and the avant-garde. At that time, the mid-Sixties, South African theatre had just caught up with The Chalk Garden by Enid Bagnold, but we were poring over Beckett, Osborne, Wesker and above all Pinter. We even did improvisations. In most of these I would play either Oscar Werner in Ship of Fools or Harry Andrews in The Hill, both favourite performances at the time. My inventiveness was endless: whatever the subject or setting of the improvisation, I would contrive to turn up as either a sadistic British R S M or a bleary Viennese ship's doctor spouting gems like, `Life is a zhip and ve are merely foolz.'

  Today we wallow. Remembering events that happened and some that didn't.

  It's a cold night; the wind is wild and buffets the car as we drive to Randall's home in Camps Bay. From this side of the coast Lion's Head looks even more like a Richard shape viewed slightly from behind - hunched on his tray as he's carried from the coronation. The mountain is a terrifying silhouette against midnight blue.

  Watch a video (the national pastime because the telly is so bad) of Fitzcaraldo with Klaus Kinski, not at his best: he tells us he's bonkers from the first shot. Mad eyes roving, crooked smile. Nowhere to go. That face though - like something melted by Dali.

  Lose interest and find myself thinking of Lion's Head and lions. Remembering images from a trip long ago to the Etosha Pan Game Reserve - lions lying in the sun breathing heavily, short heavy pants, mouths slightly open. Great strength resting. I try it out discreetly as Kinski goes interminably up the Amazon. You also see severely deformed people do this - breathing with heavy little gasps.

  Sunday 18 December

  Another family day. A barbecue (or `braai') and then a steady stream of relations popping in for drinks and to have a look at the prodigal son.

  Granny has turned eighty-seven and has been very ill; she looks half the size I remember, but still maintains her legendary independence. Great difficulty walking but refuses to use her metal walking stick, carries it instead under her arm like a brigadier. She has a problem climbing the few steps to the patio and I'm about to help her when Joel restrains me and whispers that her elbow jabs are lethal. She sits in the shade of a tree. `I can't run around like I used to, but you learn to accept it.' Her greatest regret is that she's no longer fit enough to work in the Old Aged Home where she used to help the really aged. She tells me about one old woman whom she used to look after. They discovered they were both from the same town in Russia, Plumyan. They'd not seen it for over eighty years but by putting their heads together they could build up images of streets and shops and a water pump on a corner. She looks at me very steadily and says, `To think I should see you again.'

  Rona and Jack, a favourite aunt and uncle. Puzzling over Northern Ireland, she wonders why the British don't just pull out. He says it's because Britain doesn't want an enemy on her doorstep. `Be overrun with Communists in no time, man.' The world through South African eyes.

  Dad's sister Rosie is a wonderful eccentric. Deep throaty chuckle, or
iental eyes, and a single grey streak in her hair like Diaghilev. She's seventy-five, loves travelling, but is increasingly scared to go overseas in case she dies there: `I'd he so embarrassed. Nobody would know what to do with me.' As she leaves she says to me, `Well so long, probably won't see you again, don't have much longer to go. Anyway, nice knowing you and keep up the good work.' She goes out with a rasping chuckle.

  Monday ig December

  BOSCHENDAL WINE ESTATE Cecil Rhodes started these fruit farms about an hour's drive away from Cape Town. Now they're a beauty spot with shops and a restaurant.

  `Feel the air,' Mum says and we all put our hands out of the car to weigh the thick heat in our palms. The light is blinding, then you walk under a tree and suddenly it's black and cool. The smell of newly mown grass being watered. Pink hydrangeas in wooden tubs. The landscape ringing gently with insects and birds.

  In the restaurant the black waiters are dressed in white with pink sashes and caps to match the tablecloths. So humble, so eager to please. In England, diners are terrorised by the waiters, here vice versa.

  One of them is asked to take a photo of another table. We all watch nervously in case he doesn't know how to do it. Then, as the shutter clicks, Yvette turns to me and says, `Easy to teach monkeys to press buttons.' Smiling, she dares me. I smile back.

  Driving home in a slow circle round Lion's Head. I suddenly realised why it is so compulsive - the brute force, the thickness. My acting is often described as ratty or rodenty. Richard must be a thicker, heavier animal if there is to be a tragic dimension.

  Tuesday 20 December