A Dandy at the Gates of Stirling

Introduction

This story centres on the latest in a long line of failures in the life of the titular dandy, Robert Halen, a character directly based on my own youthful self. It's in the creative non-fiction genre, and therefore in the third person, with all names changed, including Stirling herself, which is nonetheless based on a real life shore-based establishment of the Royal Navy.

A Dandy at the Gates of Stirling

Around 1975 a previously unmotivated young Englishman by the name of Robert Halen got it into his head that he’d like to make his living as an officer and a gentleman.
Up to this point, he’d not had any ambitions beyond becoming a celebrity, or rather major Rock and Roll star. 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, which all too often ended up getting broken during the course of an infantile tantrum. On one occasion, he actually hurled one against his bedroom wall, totalling it instantly. For the sad truth of the matter was that Robert Halen lacked those essential components of true manly character, which are patience and self-control.
Notwithstanding this appalling lack of moral fibre, it was arranged for him to take 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.
This involved his taking the train first from his suburban small town to the nearest big city of London, and then from London to the port of Gosport on the south coast of England, 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 this was no mere coincidence.
Robert had 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.
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, Robert arrived at HMS Stirling as an immaculate aesthete who even went so far as to wear foundation style make up and some blusher and eye shadow when 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 Robert alone at the disco. There he befriended a shy, pretty young woman with short golden curls by the name of Shirlee whom he spoke to 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 Robert finally got back to HMS 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 dressed to the nines after a night's disco dancing when he was supposed to be in the midst of three days of gruelling tests and interviews that were vital to his future career; but he gave no indication of it.
In time, though, his efforts were successful, and shortly afterwards, a sheepish Robert was forced to pass through an officer's mess, where he briefly exchanged pleasantries with its airily affable occupants, in order to reach his room. Gentlemen of the old school, they kept any thoughts they may have had about this strange overdressed young tearaway who’d just interrupted their R and R to themselves.
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 Robert Halen, 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.
It was only through his Christian faith that he came to develop real integrity, and together with this quality, respect for authority. To say nothing of respect for self as created in the image of God, a quality so distinct from the shallow narcissism of a dandy who’d once stood so pathetically pleading at the gates of Stirling…