“Nae wonder they wanted rid o’ him at Lochgoilhead,” said the mate.
“A godless place,” cried Clement dramatically. “But I have seen worse in my travels across Scotland these past months. I was making some progress there. When I stood at the doors of the Inn and harangued the poor, blind sheep who were being lured to its wicked temptations, some of them turned aside from the path of sin and went their way.”
“I’ll bet they did,” said Para Handy. “The sight and sound of you and your damn’ nonsense would turn milk soor, never mind put any man off his drink: it’s a miracle you got out of there in wan piece. If my friend Hurricane Jeck had come across you he’d have thrown you and your tin trunk intae the loch.”
As the Skipper turned back to the wheel, Clement caught sight of Carmichael’s bottle and, before Sunny Jim or Dougie could stop him, he had seized it and, stepping out on deck, hurled it over the stern into the gathering dusk.
“That settles it…” cried Para Handy. “We’re putting you off at Bowling, but ye’ll pay for that whusky if you want to walk ashore dry-shod, otherwise you’ll be swimmin’ for it, and your trunk wi’ ye.”
Banished back to the deck, and five shillings the poorer after meeting the Captain’s demands for recompense, Clement stood in aggrieved silence as the puffer edged her way into the little harbour where the Forth and Clyde Canal joined the river.
“Peter, ye can’t do this to the good folk at Bowling,” Dougie protested. “Many a fine spree we’ve had here. Now he’ll be goin’ round all the pubs and makin’ a’body’s Hogmanay a misery. Can ye no’ tak’ him up tae Gleska and let him loose there? He can’t do mich herm in a city.”
“Naw,” said Para Handy. “He’s goin’ ashore here. But, Dougie, you’ve given me an idea. Tak’ the wheel a meenit while I have a word wi’ the man.”
Bowling was unusually busy, even for Hogmanay, with the little passenger boats loading for the journey up the canal to Glasgow and beyond. Clement was unceremoniously dumped on the quayside with his precious trunk, and was last seen making his way not to the nearest Inns, but towards one of the canal vessels.
“Where’s he awa’ to noo?” asked Dougie as the Vital Spark resumed her journey upriver and Sunny Jim went to check on the dinghy’s tow-line.
“Well, Dougie,” said the skipper. “I think he might be on his way to Kirkintilloch: for I telt him that it was namely ass the most drouthy village in the whole country, and sair in need of some temperancising.”
“Kirkintilloch!” cried the mate. “Peter, there’s no’ a pub in the place. It’s wan o’ the few ‘dry’ villages this side of the river ever since they had that stupid vote.” His voice tailed off as realisation dawned.
“Chust so,” said Para Handy. “Chust so. They do they’re drinkin’ at hame in Kirkintilloch. Mr Clement’ll no manage to ruin onybody’s Hogmanay up there!”
“And he’s no’ ruined ours either,” a delighted Sunny Jim called from the stern, and a moment later bounced into the wheelhouse with Carmichael’s bottle in his hands. “When he threw oor whusky overboard it went straight intae the dinghy. And didnae’ break!”
“Well, well,” said Para Handy. “It chust goes to show you, Jim, that as Mr Clement might put it — the duvvle looks after his own! Away you and get the mugs fae the fo’c’sle and we’ll have chust the wan wee nip tae keep the cold out between here and the Broomielaw!”
FACTNOTE
Scotland has had some pretty arcane rules and regulations with regard to the sale and consumption of alcohol. This may have been the legacy of the somewhat ambivalent attitude towards drink which prevailed in Victorian times.
On the one hand, the ‘upper’ classes deplored the ‘excesses’ of the ‘lower’ classes while themselves showing a healthy appetite for brandy, port and claret. On the other, the working-class quarters of towns and cities were well-endowed with temperance societies — counterbalanced by the proliferation of all manner of shebeens and drinking dens.
Periodically therefore some odd pieces of legislation (unique to Scotland within the United Kingdom) have been in force.
Glasgow had a ban on licensed premises in all municipally-owned properties, including housing developments, for three quarters of a century: a ban which was lifted only in 1966. There is little doubt that the absence of well-run public houses as community focal points in the new peripheral rehousing projects, into which so many families were reluctantly decanted from the inner city in the postwar years, was one factor in the problem of building a sense of local pride and purpose to replace that which had been left behind with the move.
Till the early 1960s, on Sundays no public house could open and Hotels could only sell drink to so-called bona fide travellers who had to enter name, address and destination in a book kept specially for that purpose, and open to police inspection, not to say public ridicule. The number of occasions on which the books revealed that Mickey Mouse had passed through en route to Hollywood was legendary!
More draconian still was the Temperance Act of 1913 which made provision for ‘Veto Polls’ in each and every community whereby a small number of electors could enforce a vote as to whether or not pubs should be licensed within it. Kirkintilloch was one of a number of villages voted ‘dry’ for more than 50 years as a result. Its near-neighbour Kilsyth was another. On the south side of the Clyde the rural Renfrewshire parish of Kilmacolm, in which I was born and brought up, was without a pub from 1913 till 1989 despite having had no fewer than seven before the veto was invoked!
There were also many real life equivalents of the Mr Clements of the story: peripatetic temperance campaigners were a common enough hazard in rural areas in which the population was too small, too scattered or simply too uninterested to establish a permanent Rechabite Lodge or a Good Templar’s Hall.
26
A Girl in Every Port
The long wet winter was over, and the cheery touches of a green and cheerful spring were at last appearing on the hills and in the fields and gardens on either shore of the Firth. The pleasant effects of the change of the seasons were not lost on the crew of the Vital Spark as she went about her business and the welcome May weeks rolled past.
Para Handy, as befitted a man of his position, deployed his energies and his natural enthusiasm with yet more bounce than usual. Even Dougie’s lugubrious countenance positively beamed and Dan Macphail, interred in the stygian gloom of the echoing stokehold, whistled at his work.
It was Sunny Jim’s behaviour, however, which at once manifested in very practical terms the joy of the returning spring, but at the same time gave the crew in general, and Para Handy in particular, cause for concern. In spring they say a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love: but in Jim’s case it was his deeds rather than his thoughts which were in evidence.
No matter where the puffer tied up overnight, or how late, her young hand seemed to have an assignation ashore — and an assignation that simply would not wait.
“There he goes again,” complained Dougie as they lay one sunny evening at Millport, watching Jim marching smartly up the quay towards the town, his hair uncharacteristically combed and dressed, his cap at a jaunty angle, and his face and hands shiny with scrubbing at the pump. “And what did we get for oor tea tonight? Tinned sardines again. ‘Quick and easy, shupmates for Ah huv tae go ashore, but jist rammed fu’ o aal the goodness o’ the sea!’ ” he mimicked disgustedly. “Huh! I’ll ram him full o’ somethin’ and it won’t be goodness, unless things improve — and soon.”
“Dougie’s richt,” said Macphail emphatically. “It’s aboot time ye dusciplined the boy before we all starve! Who’s in charge on this boat, that’s what Ah ask masel’ — a whippersnapper of a laddie or a man auld enough to be his grandfaither?”
Para Handy, ignoring the disparaging suggestion as to his age, explained that his concern about Jim’s misdemeanours was based more on an ethical than a nutritional consideration.
“The way things iss turnin’ oot noo
it’s the laad’s morals I am more worried aboot than I am aboot oor stomachs,” said the Captain. “He iss tryin’ to run when he can scarcely walk. I had expected him to be content wi’ chust the wan gyurl in hiss life, maybe a sensible Bowlin’ lassie that he could see every time we are in there. But that iss not good enough for oor Jum!
“It is wan thing for a man wi’ the sagacity and devagation o’ Hurricane Jeck — or indeed mysel’ when I wass in my prime — to be on caalin’ terms wi a gyurl here or a gyurl there ass we wass peregrinatin’ aboot the river: it iss a very different matter for a young fellow such ass Jum, who hassna had the chance to learn aal the niceties of dealin’ wi’ the fair sex, for that sort of experience only comes wi’ practice.”
“Well, he’s gettin’ plenty of practice the noo, that’s for sure,” interjected the engineer. “The baker’s dochter last week when we wis in Fairlie: yon dairymaid in Largs: the lassie frae the goon shop in Wemyss Bay. Ah’m tellin’ ye Peter, if he parades anither yin past us the nicht to show aff hoo smert he is like he’s done up till noo, Ah’ve a dam’ guid mind tae remind her whit he really is — jist oor deckie, and no’ the flash dandy he likes tae think! Ah wonder who it’s gaun tae be in Millport?”
Dan Macphail’s question was answered half-an-hour later when the object of their criticism sashayed by on the quayside with his topcoat hanging on one arm and a tall red-haired girl in a blue silk gown hanging on the other, an opened floral-patterned parasol twirling across her left shoulder.
“What ho, shipmates!” called the errant deckhand, making the introductions to his latest conquest with some bravura. “Why dinna ye come oot for a stroll instead o’ hunkerin’ doon there on the deck as if ye wis naethin’ but the maritime equivilunt o’ they Chelsea Pensioners! It’s a richt bonny evenin’ for a perambulation and me an’ Liza is jist gettin’ up an appetite for a McCallum at the Shore Cafe afore we look in on the Hielan’ Night at the Quay Hotel, for it would be a shame if I kept the belle-of-the-ball away from the ball!”
“Chust so, Jum, a bonny gyurl and no mistake! Complements of the evenin’ to you, Miss Liza” said Para Handy gallantly, “but I doot oor perambulatin’ days iss done, ass you say. Unless it wass perhaps to look for a bite to eat,” he added pointedly.
“Aye, weel,” said Jim, reddening slightly. “There’s a grand selection of restrongs in Millport for ye to choose from. The pick o’ the Clyde!”
And with that he touched the tip of his cap with a cheery grin and swung away from the quayside and headed back towards the esplanade.
“That boy needs took doon a peg or two,” grumbled the engineer as soon as the pair were out of earshot.
“What I canna understand,” said Dougie, “iss how Jum thinks he can keep stringin’ aal these lassies along. I mean, it would be bad enough if he wass chust takin’ them oot and then forgettin’ aal aboot them: but here he iss sendin’ them aal cairds and letters frae every corner o’ the Clyde, ass if he wass the faithful swain and they wass the only girl in the world for him! It’s no’ fair on them, it’s chust no’ right. He collects them chust the same ass if they wass cigarette cards.”
“Aye, sure enough,” agreed the Captain. “He hass no respect for the gyurls at aal, and that iss aal wrong. Jum iss not a chentleman when it comes to hiss dealin’s with the lasses.”
“Indeed no,” affirmed Macphail, “and he needs to be taught a lesson, so he does.”
“Aye, Dan: maybe so. And maybe I can see chust how it might be done.”
Three days later the puffer was moored at the Coal Pier in Dunoon. Arriving late the previous evening, she had discharged her cargo in the morning and the crew now had the prospect of a pleasantly lazy afternoon. She was due to take a flitting back over to Millport the following day — Saturday — but for the meantime there was nothing to be done. Para Handy’s hints about freshening up the paintwork had fallen on deaf ears.
“Can ye no’ leave a man in peace instead o’ breakin’ yer neck tryin’ tae find him some work tae do?” Macphail protested, and the normally placid mate was equally adamant that he wanted nothing to do with any painting projects. Sunny Jim was already busy at the pump with soap and flannel, and did not even deign to reply.
Somewhat to their surprise, the skipper did not press the point and 10 minutes later, not long after Sunny Jim had left the puffer with a hunter’s gleam in his eye, Para Handy himself went ashore.
“I chust have a little business to see to,” he said, “and I’ll be back in aboot an hoor.” And he set off in the direction of the steamer pier, where the Queen Alexandra was just berthing.
He returned to the puffer in under the hour with a strangely smug look on his face.
As the puffer approached the north end of Cumbrae the following afternoon, her hold chock-full of all the higgledy-piggledy merchandise of a household flitting, Para Handy scrutinised the Ayrshire coast and consulted his watch. Then, to that worthy’s total astonishment (for normally he was the butt of constant complaints about inadequacies of his engines) he asked the engineer to slow down.
The Vital Spark continued slowly down the eastern shore of the island. Across the sound Para Handy watched as the paddler Galatea, on her way from Greenock and Wemyss Bay, called in at Largs and then headed on towards Fairlie.
At the same leisurely pace the puffer steamed on, eventually arriving at the entrance to Millport bay just as the Galatea was berthing at the steamer pier, where she would lie over for a couple of hours before retracing her route back to Greenock.
“Jum,” called the Captain, “go doon and put the kettle on, like a good laad, and we’ll aal have a cuppa before we stert gettin’ this flittin’ unloaded.”
Sunny Jim, who had been busy writing a series of ‘wish you were here’ cards of Dunoon to his coterie of lady-friends, put his pencil and his correspondence in his pocket and disappeared down the forehatch to the fo’c’sle.
“Now, Dougie,” said Para Handy, “away you and see that you keep the laad below deck till I give you a couple of toots on the whustle: then bring him up.”
“What are you up to, Peter?” asked the mystified mate.
“You’ll see soon enough,” said the Captain enigmatically. “But if my plan hass worked oot then I think we’ll see a change in the way Jum treats the gyurls from noo on.”
As the Vital Spark edged in towards her berth at the cargo quay four conspicuous and attractive figures standing there watched the progress of the puffer with interest, and eyed each other suspiciously at the same time.
Dan Macphail scrambled up from the engine-room, in response to Para Handy’s call, to throw a heaving-line to one of the pier staff and caught sight of the waiting group as he did so.
“Here!” he turned to Para Handy in astonishment. “Is that no’ some o’ Jum’s conquests lined up up there?”
“Chust so,” said the skipper. “That’s Liza from Millport, and Ellen from Fairlie, and Bella from Largs, and Jean from Wemyss Bay.
“I thought mebbe Jum would forget to let them aal know he wass comin’ back to Millport this efternoon. Ass I’ve a friend who’s assistant purser on the Queen Alexandra, when I saw her lyin’ at Dunoon yesterday efternoon afore she left for Wemyss Bay and aal points sooth, I went and asked a wee favour from him by way o’ deliverin’ some correspondence for me. I took the liberty of sendin’ the gyurls a caird each on Jum’s behalf, askin’ them if they wud like to meet him here at fower o’clock today for a wee daunder, and their teas and mebbe a McCallum, before the Galatea took them back hame at six.
“It’ll mebbe be a bit o’ an upset for the lasses, but they’ll soon get over it and it’s better that they should see Jum for what he iss, raither than let him break their hearts. And it’s no’ his heart they’ll want to break when they realise what’s what.
“I doot he’ll learn to treat a gyurl wi’ a bit mair respect from noo on.”
And, with a cheery wave to the colourful bevy of beauties on the quayside, Para Handy reached for the l
anyard and gave a couple of short blasts on the puffer’s steam whistle.
He watched with some satisfaction, and a considerable sense of anticipation, as the forehatch swung open and an unsuspecting Sunny Jim climbed up onto the foredeck.
FACTNOTE
Though the island of Cumbrae, with its capital Millport, was never able to rival the premier Clyde resort destinations such as Dunoon or Rothesay, or the more distant and much larger Isle of Arran, it enjoyed a remarkably loyal and strong following among Clyde trippers and holidaymakers and indeed does so to this day. Excursions to the Millport ‘illuminations’, the only such attraction on the Firth, remain a popular September destination for Waverley, last surviving paddler on the river.
Millport was just not big enough to compete on equal terms with the largest resorts. The island’s total population at the turn of the century was less than 2000. With an area of just five square miles and an unspectacular topography (its highest hill less than 500ft in height) it was dwarfed by Arran, with 30 times the area and mountains rising to over 2800 feet. Yet the tenacity and determination of the islanders, and their easy proximity to the Ayrshire coast a couple of miles to the east, have made it a prized destination for its aficionados who — quite rightly! — will not hear a word against it.
The town enjoyed the unique distinction of having two piers to serve it — the Old Pier and the Keppel Pier — and a complex and competitive steamer service to no fewer than three mainland railway towns, namely Wemyss Bay, Largs and Fairlie. For many years too there was a direct steamer service into the centre of Glasgow.
The Galatea was built as the new ‘flagship’ for the Caledonian Steam Packet Company fleet by Caird’s of Greenock in 1890 and though she was a most handsome, twofunnelled paddler with a reasonable turn of speed at just over 17 knots, her owners were never satisfied about either her performance or her appeal. Her time on the Clyde was as a result relatively brief and she was sold to Italian owners just 14 years later.
Complete New Tales of Para Handy Page 19