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

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