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

of the 17th of January, he somehow made it into New Eltham for classes at the University, but by evening he felt so ill he started swigging from a litre bottle of gin in the hope this would improve his condition. He also phoned Alcoholics Anonymous at his mother's request, and agreed to give a meeting a shot.
Next day, on the way to Twickenham, he got the feeling that his heart was about to explode, not just once but over and over again. Then, after that morning’s classes, he tried taking a stroll around town but couldn't feel his legs, and was struggling to stay conscious, so he ended up ordering a double brandy from the pub next door to the Police Station. He was shaking so much the landlord thought he was fresh from an interrogation session.
Later, he was thrown out of another pub for preaching at the top of his voice, and, walking through Twickenham town centre he started making the sign of the cross to passers-by, telling one poor young guy never to take to drink like some kind of walking advert for temperance. The fellow nodded in assent before silently scurrying away.
Back home, in an effort to calm himself down, he dug out an old capsule of Chlomethiazole, a sedative commonly used in treating and controlling the effects of acute alcohol withdrawal, but dangerous, in fact potentially fatal, when used in conjunction with alcohol. He still had some capsules left over from about 1990 when he'd been prescribed them by his then doctor, which meant they'd long gone beyond their expiry date. For a time he felt better and was able to sleep, but soon after waking, felt worse than ever.
Later, at an AA meeting, he kept leaving the room to douse his head in cold water, anything to shock some life back into me, to the dismay of his sponsor Dan who wanted him to stay put, for the purported healing effects of doing so:
“What do you think I come here for,” he asked him, “the free cups of tea?”
Wednesday morning saw him pacing the office of the first available doctor, who seemed at a loss as to what to do with him, but then it may have been touch and go as to whether he was going to stay on his feet or overdose on the spot and die on him. It was he who prescribed him the Valium which caused him to fall into a deep, deep sleep which may have saved his life, and from which he awoke to sense that a frontier had been passed and that he was out of danger at long last.

Chapter Seven

David Cristiansen struggled on with the Post Graduate Certificate in Education throughout the earliest days of 1993.
And he did so while rehearsing for a couple of tiny parts for a play based on the life of James Joyce's troubled, fascinating daughter the dancer Lucia Joyce, which premiered at the Lyric Studio, Hammersmith on the 4th of February 1993.
He also attended occasional drugs and alcohol counselling sessions at a church in Greenwich, south east London with Eileen, a lovely blonde woman of about 45 with a soft and soothing London accent and the gentlest pale blue eyes imaginable. The only time he ever knew her to lose her composure was when he announced over the phone that a matter of hours after deciding of his own volition to stop taking Diazepam, he'd reverted to Chlomethiazole:
“Why’d you do that?” She unceremoniously asked.
However, enough time had passed between his taking the capsule and calling Ellen for me to be out of any danger, and she literally laughed with relief at the realisation.
Then, a matter of days after coming to Christ, he received a phone call from a counsellor for an organisation called Contact for Christ based in Selsdon, South London by the name of Denver Cashe. Perhaps he'd half-heartedly filled in a form of theirs the previous summer while filled with alcoholic anticipation as he slowly approached Waterloo station by British Rail train with the sun setting over the foreboding south London cityscape.
Typically, he tried to put the caller off, but as he was persistent, and so before he knew it the aforesaid Denver Cashe was at the door of his parents' house, a trim, dark, handsome man in late middle age with gently piercing coffee coloured eyes and a luxuriant white moustache; and at his insistence they prayed together.
Some time later David visited him and his wife Rose at his large and elegant house where suburb meets country just beyond the Greater London border. On that day, David and he made an extensive list of aspects of his pre-Christian life requiring deep repentance, and they prayed over each of these in turn.
In addition, they discussed which church he should be attending, and there was some talk of his joining Denver and Rose at their little family fellowship in the suburbs, but in the end, Denver gave his blessing to Cornerstone Bible Church, a large fellowship affiliated to the controversial Word of Faith Movement based in the prosperous London suburb of Esher in Surrey, where David would soon be baptised by its pastor.
David had attended his very first service there even before becoming a Christian in late 1992. Drunk at the time, he’d sat next to a beautiful blonde woman of about 55 whom he later discovered to be a successful actress. Apart from an elder from the Jesus Fellowship, who’d laid hands on him at a meeting of theirs in central London, she was his very first Christian mentor. However, he was never to see or speak to her again as he didn’t return to the church for several months, and by the time he did as a new believer, she’d moved to another church. Then they kept on missing each other, and she died in 2001. But David never forgot her.
In the early part of '94, David set out on the final phase of the PGCE (FE) at the University of Greenwich in New Eltham, South East London, although he was ultimately to fail the course as a whole.
To their credit, his tutors at Greenwich did offer him the opportunity of retaking just the Teaching Practice component, but he chose to turn them down, and if he was depressed, it wasn't for long because in September, he successfully auditioned for the lead role of Roote in Harold Pinter's little known "The Hothouse" for a newly formed fringe theatre group called Grip based at the Rose and Crown pub in Kingston, a large suburban area to the south of London.
Written in 1958, "The Hothouse" is eminently Pinteresque, with its almost high poetic verbal virtuosity and inventiveness and dark surreal humour laced with a constant sense of impending violence, although it wasn't performed until 1980, when it was directed by Pinter himself for London’s Hampstead and Ambassador Theatres.
From the auditions onwards, David gelled with the American director Ben Evans.
While most of the auditions he'd attended up to this point had hinged on the time-honoured method of the actor performing a piece from memory before a panel of interviewers, Ben insisted his candidates read from the play in small groups, which enabled them to attain a basic feel for their characters and so feel like they were actually acting rather than coldly reciting. For David, this was the only way to audition.
Once David had been told the part of Roote was his, he devoted himself to Ben’s vision of Roote, the pompous yet deranged director of an unnamed English psychiatric hospital: the Hothouse of the title. Ben demanded of him an interpretation of Roote which was deeply at odds with his usual highly Method-oriented, subtle, intense, introspective and yet somehow also emotionally vehement approach to acting, but Ben’s directorial instincts were spot-on, as his production went on to receive spectacular reviews not just in the local press, but the international listings magazine, “Time Out”, in which David’s performance was described as “flawlessly accurate” and “lit by flashes of black humour”. An amazing triumph for a humble fringe show.
A major agent went out of her way to express her interest in David, and asked him to ensure his details reach her which he did...but he never heard from her again, possibly due to the shabby condition of his CV at the time; and he didn't pursue the matter further, which says a lot about his attitude to the push that is essential to success within the acting profession; more so perhaps even than talent.
In his defence one could say that since his recent conversion his priorities had shifted so that he viewed worldly success with less relish than he'd done only a few years before. Also, he badly missed the relaxation alcohol once provided him with following his work onstage; as well as the revels extending deep into the night during which he’d throw his youth and affections about like some kind of maniacal gambler. So, while he still loved acting itself, the process of being an actor had become pure torture.
He'd boxed myself into the position of no longer being able to enjoy social situations as others do, nor to relax. This may have had something to do with the state of his endorphins, the body's natural feel-good chemicals, and a theory exists to the effect that these can be permanently depleted by long-term abuse of alcohol and other narcotics.
To further complicate matters, towards the end of '94, he started suffering from deep tormenting spiritual problems for which he'd ultimately seek a solution in the shape of what is known as Deliverance Ministry.
Within a short time of “The Hothouse” reaching the end of its two week run, Grip’s artistic director asked him if he’d like to audition for his upcoming production of Jim Cartwright's two-handed play, “Two”. Naturally he said yes and so after a successful audition, found himself playing all the male characters opposite character actress Jean from Liverpool, who played all the female.
By the end of the run the houses were so packed that people were sitting on the side of the stage at the actors’ feet, something David had never experienced before on the London fringe. Yet, he dreaded the end of each performance, which would see him make his excuses as soon as it was possible to do so without causing undue offence.
Release from a torturous dungeon of sobriety came while he was attending some unrelated function at the Rose and Crown a day or so following his final performance in "Two", when a guy he'd only just met offered to buy him a drink and he asked for a glass of wine. Apart from the time at his parents’ house a few weeks earlier when he took a swig of what he thought was water but which turned out to be vodka or gin, this was the first alcohol to pass his lips since January '93.
This single glass of wine made him feel amazing, doubly so given the purity of his system. He cycled home that night in a state of total rapture, feeling for the first time in months that he could do anything. Over the next few week his drinking increased, reaching a climax in a pub in Twickenham where he met an old university friend who'd just finished a course at St Mary's University College in nearby Strawberry Hill, and where he drank and smoked himself into a stupor.
Cycling home afterwards, he took a bend near Hampton Wick and came off his bike, striking