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

wouldn't shake a black by the hand, scared some of the colour might rub
off; now one's doing the foxtrot with them. Anyhow, I'm sure you'll have
a good time once you get used to the smell.' Yvette giggles, daring me.
    The dance hall turns out to be a mixture of Spanish restaurant and
Country-and-Western folk club. We walk in past a group of Coloured
youths. One says to another `Lotta white faces here tonight, of pallie.' I
feel quite nervous. Going into this `non-white, non-European' place
breaks every rule that I was taught. Those taboos tacked round our edges
as children, sealing us in.
    I am put on a table with Ralph, Ashley's Coloured manager and his
girlfriend Patti, so I can `talk' to them. Bottles of wine and whisky are
plonked down.
    At first Ralph is rather guarded on the subject of the referendum and
apartheid, which fuels my interest. A few whiskies later, I steer him
towards these topics again and now it all comes pouring out, but again
not what I expected. Perhaps this is the `education' that Ashley meant.
Ralph talks like a white: how you can't change overnight; how if you did
he'd be blown away in the crossfire between the races; how lazy, stupid
and dishonest the blacks are. Doing a passable impression of Monty I
smile wisely and ask him to think why the blacks are like that. `Look,' he
says, `don't tell me about their backgrounds. I also come from a poor
background, I also been thrown out of places that I go to with my white
friends. But I don't steal. Maybe if you lived here you'd understand.
Things are changing, but slowly. We don't want another Rhodesia. Or
look at the rest of black Africa. Or at your own country - what about that
bomb the other day in Harrods? Look, I'm selfish. I gotta think of me
first, get me sorted out first then I can start worrying about my neighbour.
But please don't get me wrong - I am against apartheid.'
    The band strikes up. Ashley crosses the room and asks a large black lady for the first dance. A ripple of applause as they glide on to the floor.
She looks rather embarrassed.

    'Look!' Esther almost shouts, snatching my arm. `Look - my son is
dancing with the tea lady! Will you look at my marvellous, wonderful boy.
lie could have chosen anyone for the first dance, instead he chooses to
dance with the lowest paid member of the firm, will you look!'
    I say to Ralph, 'I low old are you:
    '"Thirty-five.'
    'Really? We're the same age. Strange to think that we both grew up in
this city in very different ways. I)id you ever come out to Sea Point','
    `Oh vah man, Sea Point is where all the action was, still is.'
    'Really', Where
    'You know those tall blocks of flats on the beach front, Well, in the
maids' rooms, at the top and at the bottom of those blocks. You know
what they say: "Life's full of spice at the top and at the bottom." '
    Later, as we leave, I give Ralph and Patti my address in London. He
says rather furtively, 'Maybe I'd see things differently over there.'
    Driving back we pass the black township Langa. Yvette tells how she
worked in a hospital there until the '76 riots. Afterwards, her black
assistant rang her to ask when she was coming back. Yvette said never,
she wasn't allowed to anymore, and they cried together on the phone.
1 f ednesda)' 21 December
    Wake inexplicably depressed about Richard III. Why bother playing the
party Olivier's interpretation is definitive and so famous that all round the
world people can get up and do impersonations of it. At parties in New
York, in bars in Naples, on remote Australian farms and forgotten South
Sea Islands, people get to their feet, hoist one shoulder up, shrivel an arm
and limp across the room declaring, `Now is the winter', or its relevant
linguistic equivalent. Why these thoughts suddenly', It's this fucking
mountain I keep circling!

    We've just finished supper when Howard Davies rings. He says their
plans have changed again. I le's no longer doing the Nicky Wright play,