Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (15 page)

The moment of dying. Kneeling. The struggle to get back on to its
feet. Everything would still be all right if it could only stand up again. But
its legs are turning to air. (Brando does this after he's shot in Last
Tango.)

Dragged out at the end, so flat, so soft, that great body half its size, like
a sack of water slipping along the sand, rippling, changing shape but
nothing really there.

The Visit. Documentary about PC Olds, shot trying to arrest a criminal;
spine severed, crippled from the waist down. Dead eyes in a handsome
face. Athletic body going to seed in a wheelchair, which he calls `the pram'
or `the prison'.

Interviewer: `Is it worse than death?'

Olds: `Oh yes. Oh, take it from me. Don't take it from people who've
made some sort of life out of it, you know, who say that life in a wheelchair
makes no difference to them and that they found themselves and they
found God and they found all sorts of things. I found nothing. I've lost
everything.' (His bitterness comes out as a tiredness, a dullness. A sneering
dullness.)

Interviewer: `Will you ever come to terms with it?'

Olds: `No.'

Interviewer: `Shouldn't you try, for your own sake?'

Olds: `I've tried. It won't work.'

Interviewer: `Why not?'

Olds: `They didn't kill me did they? I was robbed.'

Interviewer: `Robbed of what?'

Olds: (little smile, daring) `Death.'

Because he's a man only recently disabled (in his own words, `I was
a motorcycle-riding, fornicating, criminal-catching cross between Telly
Savalas and Dennis Waterman'), he has no defence mechanism in operation. You can see his pain clearly; he is a man turned inside out, every
breeze hurts.

This is what Monty was talking about: the opposite of the angelic
cripple.

Round and round I go, mountains and sharks and bulls and PC Olds and
Ronnie Kray. It starts to confuse. Must remember that it felt the same
finding Lear's Fool. Different ingredients cooking together.

Gave up smoking today.

Custom of the Country at The Pit. Very excited by Nicky Wright's writing.
Terrific wit and surrealism. Towards the end he manages to get a
fascinating collection of people on stage at the same time: two ghosts, a
live man bound head to foot in bandages, and two Afrikaners playing host
to an African chief.

Started smoking again.

I confess I've been feeling not only rather bitter, now that all the theatre
awards have been announced and the Fool didn't win anything, but also
angry with myself for caring. An old record playing: be the best, bring
home the prizes. He says I'm confusing issues. It's not the old record; an
award for the Fool was a valid expectation, one that other people might
have shared. `You've been right to feel cheated, angry. Now let it go.'

`But awards are stupid. I know that.'

`Agreed. But it is nice to receive them. Nice. No more than that. Nice
to be validated in your profession.'

`The work should be enough.'

`Of course. It is. It makes me very happy when I cure a patient. But I
get a very special pleasure if I hear a third party say, "God, that person
has really changed." '

`But that's like reviews. Needing the pat on the back. I've been so
liberated this past year by not reading reviews.'

`No. You'll be truly liberated when you can read reviews and not care
what they say. When you are confident enough in your own work you'll
be able to read a review, accept praise or criticism when it's deserved,
reject the rest.'

`Impossible.'

He smiles. We've been here before.

But it's worked. I feel the bitterness of this last week, a small constant
irritation, washed away. Invisible mending.

As we come to the end of the session I say, `Well, what do we do next.,
half hoping he'll suggest booking a few more sessions.

He says, `I want you to go away now. You might come back occasionally,
to deal with a specific problem: But there's a danger in this work that every single particle gets opened up and dissected. You've made a lot of
progress. And you've learned a skill. The old records will still play. But
you can recognise them now and turn away. And occasionally you won't.
But through choice, not compulsion.'

The end of a long - a year-long - journey we've travelled together. I
feel the beginning of tears. How ironic it would be if the one thing I've
never been able to do in these sessions - cry - should happen now. The
actor in me notes how appropriate that would be, and with that thought
the feeling goes.

The R S C have sent the Peter Barnes play. It might still be done at the
end of this year in Stratford or next year at the Barbican. Directed by
Adrian or Terry or both together. Called Red Noses, Black Death, it's about
a little monk called Flote forming a troupe of clowns to cheer up people
as they die from the Plague in thirteenth-century France. Astonishing,
original piece of writing! He fashions a new language, so over-ripe and
wonderfully rancid that it reeks, it glows with colours you've never dreamed
of. A stew of Fellini and Mervyn Peake. As a part Flote isn't as exciting
as the whole piece, but that's a safer way round, and it will be a pleasure
to play someone good for a change.

I'm sitting back, stunned from the experience of reading it, when the
phone rings. Snoo Wilson. Another writer in touch with parts of the brain
not yet known to science. `Novel number two gently easing its way out of
the sphincter. A brightly coloured turd to drop on the populace.' He says
that almost all the finance for his Shadey film has now been found, and
that Otto Plaschkes thinks it might be possible to postpone the shooting
until after Richard has opened and then work round my Stratford schedule.

At last 1984 is shaping up. At least one of these projects or the Nicky
Wright play is bound to work out.

Sketch the bottled spider. Very pleased with this.

After Moliere, a late-night drinking session with Mal. As I was leaving
South Africa, Joel slipped me some of their illegal firewater - their
equivalent to poteen. He put it in a brandy bottle so I could get it through
customs.

As you take your first mouthful you find yourself re-enacting a scene
from those Westerns where the baddie forces Jimmy Stewart to drink
alcohol for the first time: your hand clutches the glass; fearing you'll break
it, you slam it down; at the same time a cat has landed on the inside wall
of your throat, claws out; then the cat begins to descend. Your mouth is straining open, your eyes are watering; at last you give out a kind of
inverted gasp, a sound somewhere between `ahhh', `no' and `help'. You
smile foolishly at your drinking companion, wipe away the tears and try
to say `Wow!'

The drink has none of these effects on Mal. But then he's about
ten-foot tall, built like a mountain, and can trace his ancestry back to the
Vikings.

He takes his first sip. `Mmm. Very nice. Tastes a bit like gun oil.'

`I think I'll dilute mine with a bit of water. Would you like some?'

`No thanks, I'll stick with it neat.'

`Righto.'

We go over the events of the last few months and compare notes.
Everyone seems to have behaved honourably. Events happened exactly as
they were reported back to each of us.

Buckingham and Sloman now officially on offer to Mal, but he's not
sure whether to accept. Various reasons. He's up for a film. Also he's
missing his wife and kids terribly. Their home is near Stratford and
signing on for another two-year cycle will mean another long stint in
London away from them. I point out that if he doesn't do the R S C season
he'll get some other job which will inevitably entail London. Or he'll be
unemployed. He says he'd be perfectly happy working on a farm so long
as he was near his family.

I tell him how much I want him to play Buckingham. Our friendship
goes back to Richard Eyre's 1976 Company at the Nottingham Playhouse.
The rapport we'd bring to the Richard/Buckingham double-act would be
invaluable. Mal says, `The same could be said for the Shawcross/Sloman
relationship in The Party. It would be great for me to make that first
entrance out of the pile of cushions and find you there. I'll make a deal -
you play Shawcross, I'll play Buckingham.'

I gulp. Then hear myself saying, `All right.'

`You realise this could be the gun oil talking.'

`It isn't.'

`You'd do that?'

`Yup. If Shawcross is still available, that is.'

`Let's phone Howard now.'

`It's quarter past two.'

`He won't mind being woken with this news.'

We decide it might be better to leave it until the morning. Mal gets up
to leave. He is in a state of strange euphoria - a mixture of the drink and our pact. He keeps on saying, `You'd do that? You are sure it isn't the
gun oil talking?' Mal on his feet is a formidable height. I stand with my
neck craned back, saving, `Yes I would. No it isn't.'

He says, 'I'll phone you in the morning before I tell Howard, just to
check.'

`Wassamatter? You don't trust me?'

He hugs me. I disappear momentarily inside his vast anorak. He goes
out in to the night saying, `You'd do that?'

I go to bed wondering how the day has taken such an unexpected turn.
It seemed so perfectly sorted out this afternoon. Slipping in the Snoo
Wilson film between Richard III and the Wright/Barnes slot.

Wonder what I'll feel like in the morning.

I wake. Someone is kneeling very gently on my forehead. From the inside.
I sit up. I lie down again. Stay very still. A distant memory trudging
through the slushy grey paddy-fields. Suddenly something much worse
than the hangover. Sit bolt upright. What have I done? Struggle downstairs,
head lolling, feet flopping.

Phone Mal nervously: `Mal?'

'Tony!'

`How are you this morning?'

'Fine. You?'

`Oh, a little shaky. Listen uhm . .

Long pause. I can hear him smiling. He says, 'Yes?'

`Uhm ... I think it was the gun oil talking.'

He takes it very well, says, `We're back to square one, then. I've got to
do some serious thinking over the next few days.'

G A R R I C K CLUB A literary lunch. I've been approached by Antony
Harwood of Chatto & Windus to write and illustrate a book on the next
part I play. I've told him about Richard III and he thinks this might be
ideal. Also present at lunch is Giles Gordon, who is to be my literary
agent.

I agree to the book in principle, but say I won't go ahead with it unless
the production is a success. They agree to wait until after it opens. A man
comes*into the dining-room to tell us that the head of Chatto is by chance
lunching here today as well, and would like to say hello. Carmen Callil. Her name is spoken with fear and respect in the literary world. Australian,
feminist, friend to Germaine Greer. In the Garrick, women are still barred
from some of the rooms at lunchtime, including this dining-room. I am
warned she could therefore be at her most fearsome today. We hurry to
her call.

She turns out to be small, dark, attractive, not much older than me, not
at all frightening-looking. But nevertheless Giles and Antony both stand
with their hands behind their backs like schoolboys. This makes me
nervous, so I stand to attention.

They discuss a possible schedule for the book: Giles wants it brought
out within two months of delivery to catch some of the Stratford trade.
This does make Carmen quite aggressive. `Two months! You know
perfectly well that's impossible, Giles. I wouldn't insult the author by
rushing it through like that. D'you think any of the others would? Faber,
Methuen?'

`Here is Methuen,' said Giles, `let's ask him.'

We all turn round to find a man with a large beard sitting behind us
reading. He looks up and smiles as if to say, `It's all right, I wasn't
listening.'

Jim brings me back an R S C leaflet from Merchant rehearsals. Strange to
see Richard III in print and to see my life mapped out until September.
The first preview is on my birthday, 14 June, which must be a good sign.

`The World at War' on telly; an episode called `Inside the Third Reich'. A
lot of footage I hadn't seen before. Goebbels seen doing some spectacular
rabble-rousing. He is crippled and would have been a good model for
Richard III if I was going for a rodent. Wish I'd kept a closer watch on
this series. I've missed the one on Mussolini, who's a better, bull-like
model. Hitler himself seems too obvious, but there are interesting shots
of him looking old and tired towards the end. A secretary describes him
after the defeat in Russia - sitting still, staring at the floor. This could be
useful for the last movement of the play. I've been wondering what new
note I could hit as Richard starts to lose his grip. The answer could be a
stillness, a manic-depressive slump. Could pay off well for the final oration
to the soldiers. He begins slowly, quietly, halting. It looks like he's
forgotten his words, he's not going to make it. Then gradually we see the old power and charisma flooding back and the speech becomes awesome
- Hitlerian.