Where the Halling Valley River Lies, Carl Halling [urban books to read txt] 📗

kind of new edition of himself, due perhaps to the incredible diversity of his gifts. The first David saw of him, he was playing Gorgibus in Moliere's "Les Precieuses Ridicules", a part Ariana had originally earmarked for David, but he turned it down. The young man who ultimately find superstardom as comedian and character actor, and far more besides, while David persisted in the sweet, safe obscurity where he remains to this day.
He read incessantly throughout the year for the sheer pleasure of doing so. For example, while Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh" was a compulsory part of the drama course, there was no need for him to wade through "O'Neill", the massive two-part biography of the playwright by Arthur and Barbara Gelb, but that didn't stop him.
He made this descent into the depths of O'Neill's tortured psyche at a time when he himself was starting to drink during the day at Leftfield. While his first can of extra strong lager would often be opened at breakfast time, he’d wait until lunch to get seriously hammered in the company of friends such as Paul, from “Playing with Fire”, and Adrian, a computer programmer who shared his passion for the dark romanticism of the Doors and Peter Gabriel.
Paul was still trying to persuade him to join forces with him against an indifferent world, he with his writing and David with his acting, but for reasons best known to himself, he wasn't playing ball. Paul had always sensed something really special in David, which was variously described as energy, intensity, charisma, but for all the praise he received from Paul and others, he didn't seem to have a very high opinion of himself.
It's possible that while he possessed the vast ego of the narcissist who requires constant attention and approval, he somehow also suffered from low self-esteem, which might indicate that he was a sufferer from actual Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Whatever the case, he was going through one of his showily perverse phases, affecting a world weariness he simply didn't have at 30, but which upset and alienated a really good friend; and it wasn't long before Paul was out of his life forever, leaving him to stew in his precious pseudo-cynicism:
“What an appalling attitude,” he’d told him, and he was right on the money.
His principal final year tutor was his beloved Dr Elizabeth Lang with whom he would study the works of French Protestant writer Andre Gide.
He thrilled to the perverseness of Gidian characters such as the urbane Menalque from "The Immoralist" (1902), who awakens the Nietzschian superman in the novella's protagonist, Michel, the feral Lafcadio from "The Vatican Cellars" (1914), who commits a crime of terrible cruelty simply for the sake of doing so, and the demonic Passavent, from "The Counterfeiters" (1926), his only novel according to his own definition of the term. While figures of such unmitigated depravity are commonplace today, in countless novels, plays, films, videos etc., when Gide created his monsters, they still had the power to shock.
On a lighter note, a special favourite of his by Gide was the novella "Isabelle", which appealed to his softer, more romantic side. Written in 1911, it's the tale of a young student, Gérard Lacase, who stays for a time at a Manor house in Normandy inhabited by two ancient aristocratic families in order to look over their library for research purposes, and while there, becomes bewitched by the portrait of the mysterious "Isabelle", only to discover that the real-life Isabelle is a hard, embittered young woman entirely distinct from the lovely vision in the portrait.
By the same token, his favourite ever play by O'Neill was another story of hopeless love, "A Moon for the Misbegotten", written in 1947.
Its leading character is based on Eugene's tragic yet infinitely romantic elder brother Jamie. And David became fascinated by him; and read all about him in the massive biography by the Gelbs.
Blessed at birth with charm, intellect and beauty, he was one of Father Edward Sorin's most favoured princes while part of the Minim Department of Notre Dame University, Indiana, and destined for a glittering future as a Catholic gentleman of exquisite breeding and learning. He was also potentially a very fine writer, although he only left a handful of poems and essays behind, and the owner of a beautiful speaking voice which ensured him work as an actor for a time alongside his father James. His one true legacy, however, is Jamie Tyrone, the brilliant yet tortured charmer who haunts two of his brother's masterpieces with the infinite sorrow of promise unfulfilled.
David left Leftfield for good in the summer of 1985, and discovered soon afterwards that he had achieved a lower second BA degree in French and Drama.
His first employment was as a deliverer of novelty telegrams, a job which brought him into many potentially hazardous situations, but which for him, was worth the risk, as he was getting well paid to show off and party, two of his favourite occupations at the time...but it was an unusual way of life for a man of thirty.
What he really wanted was the immortality provided by fame, and he didn't care whether this came through acting, music or literature, or any other means for that matter, but until his big break came, he was content to feed his addiction to attention through the novelty telegrams industry. He evidently had no deep desire to leave anything behind by way of children, nor for any career other than one liable to project him to international renown.
How then did he end up as a PGCE student at Coverton College, Cambridge in the autumn?
The truth is that once again he'd yielded to family pressure to provide himself with the safety net that's been dear to the hearts of parents of struggling artists since time immemorial, and yet despised by the artists themselves.
For David’s part, he was so unhappy about having to go to Cambridge that just days before he was due to start there, he arranged to audition for a Jazz Funk band, and was all set to sing "The Chinese Way" by Level 42 and another song of its kind, but never made it, because, late, and desperately drunk on the afternoon of his audition, he simply threw in the towel and resigned himself to Cambridge.
From the time he arrived in the beautiful medieval university city, he was made to feel most welcome and wanted by everyone, and he made some wonderful friends at Coverton itself.
These included Donovan Joye, a poet and actor from the little town of Downham Market in Norfolk, Dale Slater, a singer-songwriter of dark genius from Yeovil in Somerset who eventually went on to become part of London's psychedelic underground, and stunning redhead, Clarissa Catto, whose beauty and charm belied the fact that she hailed from Slough, a vast sprawling suburb to the west of London most famous for having inspired a notorious screed by the poet John Betjeman.
When he made his first appearance at the Cambridge Community College in the tough London overspill area of Arbury where he was due to begin his period of Teaching Practice the following January, the pupils reacted to him as if he was some kind of visiting movie or Rock star. His TP would have been a breeze. Everything was falling into place for him at Cambridge, and he was offered several golden chances to succeed as an actor within its hallowed confines.
Towards the end of the first term, the then president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club had gone out of his way to ask David and Donovan to appear in the sole production he was preparing to mark his year-long tenure. He was a Coverton man, and so clearly wanted to give a couple of his fellow students a break after having seen them perform a couple of Donovan's satirical songs for the club.
This was a privilege almost without measure, given that since its inception Footlights has nurtured the talents of Cecil Beaton, Jonathan Miller, Germaine Greer, David Frost, John Cleese, Peter Cook, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, Hugh Lawrie and Sasha Baron Cohen among many others. David could have been added to that list.
As if this opportunity weren't enough to persuade him to stay put, a young undergraduate, renowned for the high quality of the plays he produced personally asked him to feature in one of his productions during the Lent Term after seeing him interpret the part of Tom in Tennessee Williams' “The Glass Menagerie" some time before Christmas. Someone then told him that if this young man took an interest in you, you were pretty well made as an actor at Cambridge. What more did he want? For Spielberg himself to be in the audience and discover him?
In his defence, though, he did feel trapped by the course, and was finding it heavy going. In order to pass, you had to spend a full year as a teacher after completion of the basic PGCE. That meant it would be two years before he was free again to call himself an actor and work as such. It just seemed an awfully long time, when in fact it wasn't at all, and two years after quitting Cambridge he was even further away from his dream than when he'd started off.
The truth is he left Coverton for no good reason, and the decision continued to pain him for the rest of his life, and these words from from Whittier's “Maud Muller” to tear him to shreds of utter nothingness: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘it might have been'”. Still, within a matter of hours of the start of the Lent Term of 1987, he’d vanished, disappeared into the night in the company of a close friend he'd wheedled into helping him out.

Once he was free, he set about the task of resuming his career, sporadically commuting to London from a little village just a stone’s throw from the coast near Portsmouth where he was resident at the time, although most days he achieved little.
What’s more, he was hopelessly unsuited for the bands for which he chose to audition, whether the Jazz-Funk outfit from the massive outer London suburb of Croydon, or the Rock 'n' Roll revival band from Pompey itself, and mainly because of his ultra-cultured image, which jarred with the toughness of everyday working class life in Britain in the mid 1980s.
And highlighted hair and dinky twin ear studs hardly did him any favours, although he did try and tone down his image, which had become defiantly out of touch with the prevailing youth fashions by about ’86. For he’d latterly favoured such bizarre sartorial items as a gold lame waistcoat, skin tight drainpipes and black suede winkle pickers with side buckles.
But within a year he’d adopted a two-tone hooded jacket, which he wore with tight grey corduroy jeans in an attempt to better blend in with his surroundings, but he remained a fish out of water sustained by industrial strength dosages of alcohol, beloved by some, contemned by others.
However, he returned to London in the summer of ‘87 to a minor flurry of creative activity.
First, he took part in a rehearsed reading at Notting Hill’s justly reputable Gate Theatre of a Japanese play directed by Ariana. Then, at her behest, he served as MC for a week-long benefit for the Gate called "Captain Kirk's Midsummer Log" in the persona of one