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

is too close to Richard III for comfort - trampling over all obstacles to get
promotion. I'm not sure how to react to a synopsis. Adrian makes a little
speech about how they're all desperate to make next year work out for
me, how I must have `two whopping great leads' and how much he wants
to work with me again after King Lear.
    I make a return speech on how keen I am to make next year work, that I
am not playing silly buggers and if they could show me the second part in
script form I'd sign on the dotted line tomorrow. But Shawcross isn't it.
    Adrian says, `Yes, but that's not meant to be your big second part.
Nicky's play will be that. No, that's just an extra.'
    We agree there's nothing further to be said until I've read something.
A first draft might be ready by early January. Wishing one another Merry
Christmas the call ends.
    Juices start to flow for Nicky's army play. Harry Andrews from The Hi!!
(and countless childhood improvisations) with ramrod back, lifting his
chin to stretch the neck from a perfectly starched collar; an animal scenting
prey ... promotion.

    Another restaurant, mother family meal. An argument rages about maids
and how to treat them. Verne's husband Ronnie is furious because their
maid is using so much gas and electricity in her room. He suspects she
has boyfriends staying over.
    Joel says, `Well if you want to keep a maid you'll have to put up with
her human needs.'
    `Not necessarily,' says Ronnie crossly, `not given her I Q'
    No one will come clean over how much they actually pay these maids,
least of all Mum about Katie. Joel says that if Katie earned what she
deserved after all these years of service she'd be richer than all of us put
together.
    I finally get trapped into a furious row about apartheid, the one that
Yvette has been spoiling for ever since I arrived. She says that I've no
right to come here and criticise as I'm doing nothing to help the situation
either here or back in England.
    I'm somewhat floored by this. She's absolutely right; here I am having
a wonderful holiday and, like most liberal white South Africans, making
sure that my conscience doesn't intrude too much on my comforts. This
country is so seductive.
Friday 23 December
    Drive to flermanus on the east coast. We've taken a house there for
Christmas week. Mum says that Sea Point is unbearable during the
festivities: `An influx of blacks and Coloureds camping all over the beaches,
the worst element, drunks and skollies!' She says this deterioration of her
beloved Sea Point has converted her from middle-of-the-road liberal
views to a stauncher, harsher belief in apartheid.
    After a couple of hours we stop at a fruit and vegetable shop in the
mountains. Dad gulps down a fruit juice and says, `What a waste of a
good thirst, hey?'
    An Afrikaner father and son come into the shop. Both are dressed
typically; khaki shirts, khaki shorts, long khaki socks. When Civil War
starts here these people won't even have to change into uniform.
    A warm, pink African evening. We sit around on the stoep of our holiday
bungalow, moths fluttering round the overhead light. Everyone tired after
the long drive, all the packing and unpacking. Randall has brought along
a record player and a collection of nostalgia records, Bing Crosby, Jimmy
Durante, Louis Armstrong. He and Mum start to dance rather beautifully. Dad dances on his own, dressed in his short summer pyjamas, skinny
white legs sticking out.

    I do hope my face turns into his as I age. It's a marvellous face for an
actor; a cross between Anthony Quinn, Jose Ferrer and Onassis.
    He tells the story he's told a hundred times before and which we never
tire of. His mother and aunt sitting on the porch at Marlborough Mansions,
both very old, both afflicted - his mother with arthritis, which makes her
constantly flick her wrists up and down; his aunt with Parkinson's disease,
which makes her head shake from side to side. A hawker arrives selling
fruit