Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (12 page)

I hurry back to the cool dark safety of the house. Blinds drawn against
the strong sunset. The smell of furniture polish. The clink of ice in our
drinks.

I had given Katie twenty rand for Christmas. At breakfast she tells us,
`I bought beautiful shoes, in cream, Lady Di-style. And my hat also I find
is one of hers. I thought I couldn't wear those little hats she wears, so I
bought this wide-brimmed one. Then I see she wears these also. You do
look smart in a hat. After wearing a doekie all week it makes all the
difference. Hell, Madam, I did look smart. At church all my friends
commented.' She says all this laughing, an infectious bubbling laugh.

I want a photo of her.

Mum insists she takes off her working apron. When I say it isn't
necessary Mum says, `Let her look nice too.'

`That's right,' says Katie, going into a panic but still laughing. `What's
people in London gonna think of me if they see me like this?'

`Put on your other apron,' Mum shouts as Katie disappears into the
maid's room, `the nice one!'

Katie reappears wearing a different apron. When we pose for the photo
she becomes very serious and stands to attention. I tickle her and she
screams to Mum, `Ooo Mommy, Ooo Madam help!'

Granny joins us for a farewell lunch. She can't hear too well, which
either creates awkward silences when questions aren't answered, or else
she doesn't realise a conversation is in progress and will start one herself.
Again it strikes me how young and inexperienced Mum and Dad become
in her company.

Afterwards I accompany her to the car to say my farewells. Her cheek,
as I kiss it, is like very soft tissue paper. She says, `I wish you much good
health and every success.'

I say, `Hope to see you soon. Maybe next time in London.'

She chuckles and the car pulls out of the driveway.

Now it's Katie's turn. I go into the dining room, the room cool and
dark as always. She is bent over the table clearing up. I stand silently
behind her, watching her work. At last she turns with the tray full.

`I've come to say my farewells.'

`No. Not already. Really, already?'

We hug and I slip some money into her hand. She has prepared a little
speech. `Master Antony, may God grant you every happiness ...' but her
eyes moisten and she can't finish.

`Thank you for everything . . .' I say and get no further myself.

At the airport the family farewells are more festive and chaotic, the kids
all taking photographs, the hugs and kisses posed for the cameras.

In Johannesburg, it's pouring with rain, preparing me for England. But
it's a warm rain, and the thunder and lightning are unmistakably African,
reaching away into vast empty spaces.

The white police in the airport are armed, the black ones not. Presumably in an emergency the latter would be required to hurl themselves
bodily at hijackers.

On the plane it's a relief to hear British accents again. Waiting for
take-off I suddenly remember Richard's line, `Sent before my time into
this breathing world scarce half made up'. Maybe that's the solution to
his appearance - foetus-like. Smooth, almost slimy baldness. Unformed
features. What has made me suddenly think of this? Yesterday at Fick's
Pool there was a mentally-retarded boy with no eyebrows. Also Yvette
was talking about their youngest daughter being born three months
premature, the nurse saying, `Go on Mrs Sher, hold her, she won't break.'

The plane lifts off into the storm, bravely plunging into dangerously
dark-blue clouds, forked lightning in the distance. You think you're
through it, the clouds lighten and soften and then it's like your head has
been plunged underwater again - it's dark and murky and the plane rocks.
Below there are glimpses of the outskirts ofJo'burg, suburban homes with
large lawns and swimming pools; now farmlands, the fields a blackish
green in the stormy light. We break out of the clouds but a higher bank
towers above us for what looks like hundreds of miles. You fear for your
safety - we must be so tiny against this colossal wall. One of the wings keeps brushing the edge of the cloud and disappearing. Now we're
engulfed again, thick grey-blue darkness, then light suffocating whiteness,
and then suddenly we lift up out of it and we're climbing into a perfect
evening in the heavens. Below us are the familiar calm fields of clouds,
above space as high as we dare go.

A day in groggy limbo. Wake in the early afternoon after last night's New
Year's Eve party at Dickie's. What with coming from South Africa to
England, summer to winter, 1983 to 1984, and then waking up with jet
lag and a hangover to find it already getting dark, my grasp on reality is
not all it could be.

Spend most of the evening with the actress Julie Walters and the
designer Bob Crowley. Julie's just back from a promotion tour round the
States for the film of Educating Rita and is in exhilarating form; being with
her is like riding a spinning top. Bob tells me he's designing Henry V and
Love's Labour's at Stratford and that Bill Dudley will design Richard III.
When I tell him that I haven't decided to do it yet, he says, `Oh, but you
must. It's like the Paul Simon song, "Something so right".' Bob's mouth
always twitching towards a smile; his cheeks look as if he stores goodies
in them, like a hamster does.

He points to Julie's handbag. It's a miniature violin case in plastic.
Rather like the one he designed for me in King Lear.

Nicky Wright arrives and I make a bee-line for him. He says there'll
be nothing to read till late January.

That settles it. The decision will have to be made on Richard alone.

Phone Bill. His manner is slightly impatient. `You must realise, Tony,
that I'm the only one at the directors' meetings who keeps reminding
them that you haven't yet agreed to Richard. Everyone else believes you
will do it, that you must do it at this stage in your career. The character
actor's Hamlet.'

Drive into the country with Dickie. Wind and rain. Low dark skies. The
countryside looks like it's been dipped in blue ink. Callas singing the
magnificent aria from La Wally.

We discuss the situation and agree that I'm just playing games, and
they're not even proving effective as negotiating tactics. I'm obviously
going to do Richard III. I'm totally obsessed by it, like being in love - this
one person dominating your every thought. All day, every day, since it was
first mentioned, I've been on the prowl for bits of Richard. Everything
feeds the obsession - Lion's Head in Sea Point, disabled people Christmas
shopping in Oxford Street. And alone in the privacy of my own home
with curtains well drawn and doors securely locked, I try saying aloud,
`Now is the winter ...'

Dickie suggests I reconsider playing Shawcross in The Party, thinks it
would be good for me to play a less flashy part.

Evening. Joyce Nettles, the R S C casting director, rings. Says she doesn't
want to put any pressure on me, but the first Stratford leaflet has to go to
print tomorrow. I am about to tell her I'm on board but get side-tracked
into a discussion about The Party.

She asks, `Is there any other part you'd consider?'

`Well yes, but it's spoken for.'

`Sloman?'

`Yes.'

She urges me to tell I Toward Davies. `He ought at least to know,' she
says. I tell her I couldn't oust Mal in that way. She says he hasn't been
offered it yet, and volunteers to talk to Howard for me. I make her promise
not to. But the temptation has unsettled me. Go to bed very edgy. It's
almost as if the holiday never happened. Winter howling at the window.

M O N TY SESSION lie's very taken with my description of the house in
Sea Point looking like a shrine to me.

I outline the situation at the R S C. Like Dickie, he urges me to play
Shawcross. `You know I never give you specific directives, but I'm breaking
the rule. Play this part. It's important that you do.'

`But why? It's perverse and masochistic.'

`Bullshit! Playing all these showy parts is what's masochistic. You'll
burn yourself out. Play this part, it'll be much harder.'

`It won't be hard. I can do it standing on my head. The only hard part
will he seeing everybody else have all the fun.'

`Precisely. You still want to come home from school with prizes and
say, "Look, Mommy, I'm best". You saw the shrine. Now bury all that.'

I promise to read the play again.

ACTON HILTON BBC TV rehearsal-rooms in Acton, where we'll adapt
our stage production of Tartuffe for the telly. The building is so high it's
like being airborne again. Way below are the factories, suburbs, railway
lines and cemeteries of Acton and Willesden.

Steph Fayerman says, `Isn't it nice to get into a lift and go up for a
change',' After months and months underground at the Barbican, at last
a rehearsal room with windows.

Tartuffe read-through for the TV crew, R K O money-men, and our
producer Cedric Messina, a one-man Roman epic in name and size. Not
a single laugh from this assembled group. Reminiscent of those depressing
early rehearsals at the Barbican. But we know better now. Chris Hampton
sits at the end of the table grinning and corpsing.

Lunch with Bill in the canteen. I find myself saying, `Look, Bill, this is
unofficial but I am going to do Richard, it's definitely on.' This comes as
no surprise to either of us, but the relief of having said it is enormous.
We're free to talk at last with all the enthusiasm that's been bottled up
since November. He says that, while Richard might be a psychopath, he
prefers to think of him as a product of his time: civil war has raged
throughout his lifetime, the Crown constantly up for grabs, everyone
somehow crippled by it all, guilty and neurotic about who killed who, why
and when. I ask to meet up with Bill Dudley as soon as possible to devise
the deformity.

Bill agrees: `Richard has lived with his shape all his life, so has everyone
else at court. It is an unremarkable factor in their lives. So it would be
good if we could have it for rehearsals and everyone can get used to it.
Then we can forget about it and concentrate on his character, instead of
whether this arm is shorter than that one, or the hump two inches higher
or lower.'

Agony when lunch ends. We could go on talking for hours.

Stand on the platform, waiting for the tube; it's a bitterly cold day but
I hardly feel it. I'm glowing with excitement and relief. Can't sit still on
the tube, can't concentrate on my newspaper.

Ring Sally to tell her I've decided. She makes rather a good suggestion
about The Party: bring it all out into the open, talk to Mal, get him to read
the play and give him first choice of the two parts.

Anxiety about not getting to the gym enough. I mustn't let it slip now: for
Richard, I'll need to be stronger and fitter than ever before in my life.

ACTON HILTON The rehearsal-room is laid out with a forest of vertical
poles to denote doorways and walls. Without my glasses I keep crashing
into these on fast exits, suddenly finding one between the eyes like I've
stepped on a garden rake.

Excellent rehearsal of the first Tartuffe/Elmire scene. Bill is tactfully
scaling down my performance for the camera, keeping the good gags,
helping me cut out the hops, winks and eyebrow dances - my survival
tactics. He urges me to consider the brilliance of the arguments, points
out how Tartuffe's proposition -'Love without scandal, pleasure without
fear' - is a definitive statement on hypocrisy. `Tartuffe's brochure, right?
If he were to print one to circulate round the ladies of Paris, what would
the cover say? "We offer love without scandal, pleasure without fear." '