Where the Halling Valley River Lies - Carl Halling (lightest ebook reader txt) 📗

Dozens of boys manned the yard arms, to which they were attached by their safety belts alone. David had been determined to make the climb, even though the experience made his legs shake throughout.
The Dutch capital was marked by the same kind of open sexual licence he'd witnessed only the year before in Hamburg, although it seemed to him to lack the German city’s sinister vibrancy. Then - just as today - the sad De Wallen red-light district was filled to the brim with hundreds of little illuminated one-room apartments, each with a single woman sitting in clear view of onlookers plying her lonely trade.
As for Edinburgh, just before setting foot in the city for the first time, one of the lads, dressed to the nines himself in the trendiest seventies gear, warned David not to go strutting about Edinburgh town centre in a flashy boating blazer with his long white socks tucked into the same blue jeans he’d worn for sailing. But having only packed a handful of clothes, David was forced to ignore his advice, and, waltzing some time later into an inner city pub in broad daylight, a grinning hard man with long reddish curly hair asked him:
“Are you frae Oxford, son?”
Perhaps he was aware of the great university’s reputation for producing flaming aesthetes like Brideshead’s Anthony Blanche, and if so, it may have been touch and go for a while as to whether he was going to inflict some serious damage on David’s angelic English face, but in the end he left him be. He may even have admired his chutzpah. But there was just something about David…something that repelled physical violence, some mysterious protective force.
Within a few weeks of returning to London by train from Edinburgh, David and Dany were off to sea again, this time as part of the Mariners Club of Great Britain, bound for the Baltic coast of Denmark by way of Germany's Kiel Canal. And while they were once more supervised by “mates” under the command of a Ship's Captain, the Mariners’ utilised modern yachts rather than traditional tall ships.
The Cristiansens were quick to recruit a handsome young blond guy called Cy from the Stroud district of Gloucester as their best pal and confidante for the trip. It turned out they’d actually met him some ten years previously while passing through Calpe, Spain, either on their way to or from their grandmother Mary’s home on the Costa Brava.
Soon after setting foot on Danish soil they got talking to a couple of girls who, as might be expected, had natural golden blonde hair, but their efforts at romance were wholly innocuous, despite the reputation Scandinavians had in those days for progressive sexual attitudes.
A less pleasant romantic episode took place towards the end of the trip, which saw David in pursuit of a pretty German girl called Ulrike. He was crazy for her, and she made it pretty clear she liked him too, and yet he'd senselessly sidelined her for the sake of a night of drunken idiocy with his brother and Cy, perhaps expecting her to run after him or something.
Suddenly, overtaken by sickly pangs of remorse, he set out to find her, and at some point during his quest, while walking along some kind of wooden pontoon, he lost his footing and fell fully clothed into the waters of what must have been the Kiel Canal.
He was a pathetic figure the next day, with his fancy dandy clothes all laid out on deck.
“What happened last night?” the captain breezily asked him.
“Well”, he hazarded in response, “I was looking for this girl and…”
“You live in a dream world, David.”
Indeed he did, and self-sabotage was fast becoming one of his specialities.

Also during that summer, David attempted to pass what is known as the AIB – or Admiralty Interview Board - with a view to qualifying as a Supply and Secretariat officer in the Royal Navy.
Up to this point, he’d not had any ambitions beyond becoming a celebrity, or rather major Rock and Roll star. And to this end, he’d made countless recordings of himself singing and playing his own simple songs on a series of portable cassette tape recorders. And all too often, these sessions culminated in a full-on tantrum, such as the time he hurled a newly purchased machine against his bedroom wall, totalling it instantly.
So he took the train from Molesey, first to the nearest big city of London, and from there to the port of Gosport on the south coast of England. For this was where he’d spend three days within the gates of HMS Stirling, a shore-based specialist training centre, attending various examinations and interviews intended to assess his potential as a future naval officer.
His father was delighted at this unexpected turn of events, little suspecting that in his desire to join the Senior Service, he was driven not by any selfless instinct to serve, so much as a vision of a privileged existence of refinement and elegance. And if this sounds distinctly Wildean for a mid ‘70s youth, then it was perfectly in keeping with what we’ve learned of David so far.
For as stated earlier, he’d never been anything other than a typical scruffy, sporty, ruffianly male until around about his 17th birthday, when he fell under the spell of Glam Rock as purveyed by artists as diverse as David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Marc Bolan, Rod Stewart, Elton John, the Sweet and the New York Dolls.
And about a year after that, he started to move away from the gaudiness of Glam towards a fascination for those artists whose rebellion against middle class respectability manifested itself as dandyism, or the tendency to ostentatiously over-dress. And this they invariably combined with that typical corollary of dandyism, decadence.
They included poets Charles Baudelaire, who affected dandyism in the Paris of the 1840s, Jean Cocteau, whose playground was the Paris of the so-called Belle Epoque, and the aforesaid Oscar Wilde, whose delight it was to scandalise the late Victorian bourgeoisie of the London of the 1880s and ‘90s.
Thence, David arrived at HMS Stirling as an immaculate aesthete. Doubtless complete with foundation style make up and some blusher and eye shadow, where most of the other candidates might have favoured standard issue jumbo collared shirts and great billowing flared trousers.
His foppish attire was compounded by a face that would have made him a perfect choice for a casting director scouting around for someone to play Dorian Gray in yet another celluloid version of Wilde’s only novel. By the same token, he could have played Waugh’s Sebastian Flyte with no less facility…or Highsmith’s Dickie Greenleaf…or any number of kindred idle male beauties. But the role of a naval officer was clearly way beyond him, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d provoked someone of a more serious cast of mind to intense irritation.
The “someone” in question turned out to be a northern lad with a little hint of a moustache who, finding Robert putting the final touches to his toilette before some assignment or another in front of a handy looking glass, felt moved to remind him:
“It’s not a fashion parade, mate…”
He wouldn’t be joining Robert at the disco that night, or any other night for that matter; but you couldn’t fault his dedication, nor his powers of observation.
Two guys were eventually persuaded to keep him company, but their hearts weren’t in it, and they sensibly returned to base for an early night, leaving David alone at the disco…where he befriended a shy young woman with short golden curls by the name of Shirlee, with whom he spoke about the AIB, and his fear of failing.
“Oh, you’ll pass, “ she told him with a reassuring smile.
But if she’d looked a little closer at his wardrobe, with its boating blazers and striped college ties, and shoes fit for the Charleston rather than the Latin Hustle, she might not have spoken so confidently. For, far from bespeaking the status of the perpetual high achiever, they may have constituted a disguise, distinctly overdone, and donned daily by an individual who’d tasted failure too many times for one of such tender years.
When David finally returned to Stirling himself, he was shocked to discover that her main entrance had been locked and was now being manned by an armed guard.
As the young man set about trying to make contact with his superiors, he must have wondered what kind of person returns to base in the small hours, dressed to the nines, while in the midst of three days of tests and interviews that were supposedly vital to his future career. But he gave no indication of it.
And in time, his efforts were successful, so that shortly afterwards, a sheepish David Cristiansen was forced to pass through an officer's mess in order to reach his room. And after briefly exchanging pleasantries with its airily affable occupants, he retired for the night.
As might be expected, Robert failed in his noble attempt at passing the AIB, and never did get to wear a naval officer’s uniform.
Perhaps he’d have stood a better chance if just for once he’d done the right thing and gone to bed early rather than rave it up at the disco in all his finery…but then again perhaps not. For after all, few if any naval officers have been historically selected on the basis of how good they look in a well-cut uniform.
Like all dandies he could be said to have partaken to some degree of the nature of the infamous Biblical character Absalom, about whom it was said in 2 Samuel 14: 25:
“But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.”
And yet, Absalom’s flawless beauty was ill-matched by a vain and reckless character which ultimately secured his ruin. As to David, despite exceptional artistic gifts, he’d spend much of his early adult life trying to find a place for himself in the world with little real success. And on those precious few occasions when those gifts came close to fulfilling his lifelong dreams of fame and glory, all too often, he mysteriously sabotaged his chances. It was as if despite his endless self-promotion, he felt that failure was all he deserved; and so failure became his destiny.
The summer of ’75 also saw David spending a week with the RNR in the Pool of London, a stretch of the Thames lying between London Bridge and Rotherhithe.
Halfway through the week, he decided to attend a nearby club known as the Little Ship, which he knew for a fact to be hosting a discotheque. For oh how he loved to dance – quite alone - to the sweetest Soul music, for Soul it was still known in ’75, as opposed to Disco.
And Disco he came to associate with a commercialised form he saw as closer to pure Pop than Soul. And which was epitomised at its best by the Bee Gees’ soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever”, for which he had a lot of respect, and at its worst by the infamous novelty Disco tune.
And so dressed in a white open neck shirt worn sporting style with striped boating blazer and white trousers and shoes, he made his way to the Little Ship alone.
Once he’d had a drink or two, and the Soul had seeped