“There’s nae justice at aal in this world.”
Dougie, Sunny Jim and MacPhail could only shake their heads sadly in silent, sympathetic agreement.
Next morning the puffer made the short crossing over to the southern shores of the river and tied up at the jetty serving a Govan grain-merchant’s yard. Once the loading process was under way with MacPhail on the winch, and Sunny Jim — and a couple of the merchant’s warehouse-men — ready to stack the sacks as they came juddering down into the hold in netting bags, Captain and Mate headed ashore.
“Dougie and I will away into the town and collect Mr MacGrory’s umburellas, boys,” said Para Handy as he scrambled up the iron ladder bolted to the quayside: “and we’ll see that you have a share of the bottle the man has promised us for the favour.”
And the two set out to walk to Govan Cross Subway Station from whence one of the much-admired new underground trains would whisk them, in just a matter of minutes, to St Enoch Square and the warehouse of Messrs Campbell and MacDonald.
They had only walked a couple of hundred yards, however, when there was a sudden flash of lightning followed by a crashing peal of thunder, and in a matter of seconds raindrops the size of pan-drops were bouncing violently off the cobbled street. In even fewer seconds Captain and Mate instinctively searched for, identified, and raced towards, the nearest public house.
“My Chove, Dougie,” said the Captain as they supped a glass of pale ale in the snug bar. “That iss some cloudburst to be sure. We will chust sit here and let it aal roll by before we go any further. Indeed we could be doing with having Mr McGrory’s umburellas with us right now, for here we are without so much ass a coat or a kep between us.”
However, the rainstorm showed no sign of moving on. An hour later it was as heavy as ever, and Para Handy pulled his watch out to check the time.
“The boys will be wondering what has become of us, Dougie,” he said. “We should have been there and back before this and I do not want them to be thinking we iss malingering on them or that we have maybe bumped into Hurricane Jeck and gone off on a spree and forgotten them. I am thinking we must chust face the rain and make a dash for it to Govan Cross. What do you think yourself, Dougie?”
For answer, Dougie tugged on Para Handy’s sleeve and pointed surreptitiously in the direction of the outer door of the snug bar. Beside it, there stood a battered umbrella-stand which had seen better days. Resting within it, however, was one solitary umbrella — shinily new, neatly rolled up, and quite bone-dry. A quick glance round the other occupants of the bar revealed nobody who looked even remotely like the possible owner of such a fine and expensive accoutrement.
“Some toff must have set it there and forgotten aboot it days ago, Peter,” whispered the Mate. “For sure and it has not been out in the rain today. Aal I am suggesting is that we borrow it. We wull can put it back on our way back to the shup…”
Para Handy again looked round the company. Nobody was looking in their direction. The other occupants were variously grouped in animated conversation. The landlord had his back to them as he reached up to a high shelf for a bottle of port.
As the two sailors reached the door Para Handy casually reached across and quickly — too quickly — tried to scoop the umbrella out of the stand. It was bad enough that it rattled on the side of the stand: much worse that it caught on it, tipped it over, and sent it crashing to the floor.
“Hoy! You pair! Where the blazes d’ye think ye’re aff to wi’ my best brolly?”
Para Handy, the umbrella clutched guiltily in his hand, turned to see the landlord leaning halfway across the mahogany counter of the bar, gesticulating furiously with the bottle of port and being restrained with some difficulty (by two of his customers) from hurling it in the Captain’s direction.
“My mistake, my mistake,” gabbled Para Handy. “I thought it wass my own umburella, for it iss the very spit of it, but you are right, I completely forgot that I left mine on the shup.”
“A likely story,” howled the landlord. “Thieves! That’s whit ye are! And me wi’ a funeral to go to up in toon this afternoon. A richt clown I’d ha’e looked wi’oot my brolly! Get oot, the pair o’ ye. And never let me see either wan o’ ye in this pub ever again. This is an honest hoose!”
It was a shamefaced pair who, all thoughts of the promise to the MacGrory emporium temporarily forgotten, scuttled through the teeming rain to the nearby quayside — and the comparative haven of the Vital Spark.
“We will wait on board, Dougie,” said Para Handy, “and go up to the toon when the rain is past.”
It was almost four o’clock before the downpour finally fizzled out as suddenly as it had begun, and the chastened mariners headed again for the Govan Cross Subway. This time they reached it without incident.
Less than half-an-hour later they emerged from Campbell and MacDonald’s capacious St Enoch’s Square premises, each of them clutching, with both arms in front of their chests, the awkward burden of a substantial bundle of umbrellas of every size and description, ladies’ and gentlemen’s alike, secured with a couple of rope ties.
At the ticket office Para Handy fumbled in his pocket with some difficulty to extract the coppers for their fares, and the two clattered down the stone steps onto the subway platform.
In a minute or so the two bright red carriages of the train came looming out of the tunnel mouth and into the station with a distinctive whoosh of disturbed air — and an unmistakable but indescribable, warm smell: an aroma of mystery and of quite unfathomable depths which — when once first encountered — would never be forgotten by succeeding generations of patrons of the Glasgow Underground.
Para Handy and Dougie took their seats on one of the slatted wooden banquettes which ran down each side of the carriage.
Opposite them, someone was hidden behind an opened copy of the Evening Times and Para Handy leaned forward curiously to read the day’s headlines.
As he did so, the paper was lowered — and the Captain found himself looking into the eyes of the landlord of the Govan pub, dressed now in a dark suit, wearing a black tie, a mourning band on his arm, and with his rolled-up umbrella across his knees. The two men stared at each other for some moments in silence. Finally the landlord, having glanced several times in bewildered disbelief from the strangely-assorted bundle on Para Handy’s knee to that on Dougie’s and back again, leaned forward and said with heavy sarcasm and in a penetrating stage-whisper:
“Well, I’m glad to see that you’ve had a good day…”
FACTNOTE
The MacGrory Brothers, as well as owning Campbeltown’s leading drapers at the turn of the century, were enthusiastic amateur photographers and the illustrations in this book are taken from the substantial archive of their original glass plate negatives which is now in the safe hands of Argyll and Bute Libraries.
Campbeltown was probably the most prosperous community on the outer edges of the Firth at the time, and certainly one which had founded its wealth on industry rather than tourism.
As well as a substantial fishing fleet, with its ancillary boat building yards, net and rope factories and — of course — curing stations, the town had a rich agricultural hinterland. Within the burgh there were more than twenty whisky distilleries and other industrial activity included coalmining, salt-pans, shipyards, cooperages and shipping companies.
Glasgow’s underground railway is a 6-mile circular route with clockwise and anti-clockwise tracks sharing a common, central platform at each of 15 stations. The line twice passes under the Clyde, linking the city centre north and south. First cable-driven, it opened in 1896: and ran virtually unchanged for 80 years, though it was electrified in the mid-1930s. Some of the original rolling stock was still in use when the system closed down in 1977 for a three-year modernisation programme from which it emerged with the scarlet Victorian passenger carriages replaced by equipment of a gaudier hue, which quickly earned the facility its new sobriquet of The Clockwork Orange.
K
nown to generations of commuters as the Subway (never the Underground — London terminology eschewed by Glaswegians) there have been proposals down the years for extending the network but these have come to nothing. The simple circle has served efficiently, effectively and economically as a mover of people for exactly one hundred years.
The old Subway did indeed have an odoriferous atmosphere all its own, lost for ever in the process of modernisation. Warm, damp, musty, primeval (yet not unpleasant) it was pushed in front of the carriages as they threaded the dark tunnels: spilt out into the stations as the trains arrived: and percolated up the escalators to the streets above. Nobody knew what caused or created it but it was unique to the Glasgow system — and sadly missed by those who remember it with affectionate nostalgia.
Devotees of Neil Munro’s tales of the adventures of ‘Jimmy Swan the Joy Traveller’ will recognise in this episode the shadowy figures both of Mr Swan himself, and of the Glasgow Wholesale House whose kenspeckle representative he so successfully was.
RING A RING OF ROSES — One of the most appealing features of the MacGrory archive is that so many of its pictures are natural and spontaneous though most other surviving photographs of the age were carefully and predictably posed. This lively picture of schoolgirls at play is a delight and, given the ponderous equipment and the slow shutter-speeds of the time, a remarkably crisp action shot.
33
A Naval Occasion
The puffer had spent the last two days at Salen, on the island of Mull, unloading the mixed paraphernalia of a farm flitting and was now bound for Oban where a cargo of whisky in cask from one of the local distilleries awaited her on the town’s North Pier, scheduled for delivery to a blending and bottling plant in Dumbarton.
It was ten o’clock on a glorious July morning as the Vital Spark passed out of the Sound of Mull, leaving Duart Castle on the starboard beam, and the panorama of the Lynn of Lorne and the sheltered stretch of water between the islands of Lismore and Kerrera came into view.
At least a dozen navy vessels ranging in size from dreadnoughts to torpedo-boat destroyers were at anchor outside Oban harbour to the west of Ganavan Bay. Furthest from the shore, towering over the other ships of the flotilla, lay the giant dreadnought battleship Bellerophon and inshore from her a scattering of smaller vessels including the venerable cruisers Theseus and Grafton, several light cruisers, and two modern destroyers, the Cossack and the four-funnelled Teviot.
Para Handy, at the wheel, guided the puffer to pass as closely as commonsense dictated beneath the soaring grey bows of the Bellerophon and gazed admiringly at her towering upperworks and huge twelve-inch guns.
“Brutain’s hardy sons,” he said with some emotion, watching the ratings drilling on the quarterdeck as the Vital Spark crawled the length of the battleship’s hull.
The squadron, part of Britain’s Atlantic fleet, was in Scottish waters on an inshore training excercise and had anchored just a matter of three hours previously, having entered the Firth of Lorne after negotiating the sound between the Torran Rocks off the south-west corner of Mull, and the island of Colonsay.
The signal halyards were busy as the fleet exchanged messages and instructions, and a number of cutters and motor launches manned by immaculate ratings sped between ships carrying men and materials.
Very conscious of the uncomfortable contrast between his own command and the naval elegance so openly on display, Para Handy rounded the northernmost point of Kerrera with — almost — some sense of relief and some recognition of the shortcomings of his beloved Vital Spark. Even here, though, he could not escape the presence of naval supremacy for one ship had been deployed into Oban Bay itself and was now the centre of attraction for the summer holiday crowds thronging the esplanades and the piers of the popular summer resort.
Moored some 300 yards offshore and approximately equi-distant from the South and North Steamer Piers was the cruiser Shannon, the equal of the Bellerophon in overall length though not, of course, in bulk or armament. Ratings were swarming over her decks erecting white sun-awnings, and a mahogany companionway ladder was being deployed from the midships entry port on her starboard side (facing the South Pier) onto a floating pontoon against which two motor pinnaces were tied up. On the port side of the cruiser a more modest Jacob’s Ladder hung from the rails of the quarterdeck.
The Vital Spark bumped gently against the timber uprights of the cargo berth on the North Pier and Sunny Jim leapt ashore with the bight of the bow mooring rope in his hand.
Ten minutes later, with the puffer safely secured and the crew now perched up on her main hatch watching the passing show as a veritable fleet of dinghies and small yachts circled the anchored cruiser, Para Handy presented himself at the dingy dockside office — little more, in truth, than a small wooden hut — of his owner’s local agent.
“I’m afraid I have to tell you that your cargo is still up at the distillery, Captain,” said that worthy, somewhat shamefaced and flustered. “What with the fleet coming in and all, the town has declared an unoffical holiday and there is just no way that I can get even one carter today, never mind a squad.
“Why don’t you just regard it as a holiday for yourselves and take the day off? I can promise you a top-notch team to fetch your cargo at first light tomorrow.”
“Well, at least we couldna get a better day for it,” conceded the Captain as he, Dougie and Macphail settled down on a bench outside the Lorne Arms with a glass of ale apiece. Sunny Jim had gone to take a stroll about the town, no doubt — as his somewhat envious older colleagues correctly surmised — to see what young ladies in their summer finery had been attracted onto the Oban esplanade by the fine weather and by the occasion.
“Better day for what?” snapped Macphail ill-temperedly. “Better day for drummin’ wir heels in this back-o’-beyond towerist trap for near enough twenty fower hours? Ah can think of mony places Ah’d raither be and mony things Ah’d raither be daeing.”
Para Handy shrugged but maintained diplomatic silence while Dougie went off in search of one of the Bar’s sets of dominos in the hope that a test of skill and chance at a half-penny each game might help to pass the time in a pleasanter atmosphere.
Macphail, however, was in no frame of mind to be fobbed off with such an inadequate palliative as a game of ‘the bones’, as he disparagingly described it, and tensions were again mounting when Sunny Jim rejoined the party, just before one o’clock, and in a state of some excitement.
“Ah’ve been roond on the Sooth Pier,” he announced breathlessly and without preamble, “and it’s fair hotching wi’ folk. The Navy’s openin’ the shup to the publicat-large this afternoon and layin’ on twa pinnaces to tak’ them oot and back.”
“Bully for the Navy,” said Macphail caustically. “What’s that tae us?”
“Simple,” said Jim. “There’s money to be made on it.”
The recollection of some of Sunny Jim’s previous money-making schemes, from the successful but nearly catastrophic affair of the Tobermory Whale to the totally unrewarding scam involving a purported marathon swim the length of Kilbrannan Sound, lurched uncomfortably through the memories of his audience.
Para Handy was the first to recover his composure.
“How?” he asked bluntly.
“Easy!” said Jim. “The pinnaces is runnin’ to the shup from the Sooth Pier only. There’s nothin’ to prevent us takin’ oot a hired rowing-boat for the afternoon and ferryin’ the towerists oot to the shup from the North Pier at saxpence a time, and landin’ them onto the Jacob’s Ladder on the port side where the Officers and that’ll no’ see them, for they’ll be too busy on the starboard helpin’ the young lasses aboard and then tryin’ to tempt them wi’ the offer of a tour of the shup’s engines.”
There was a moment’s silence, until:
“Capital, Jum, capital!” cried Para Handy. “You aalways have the eye for a bit of business wheneffer the opportunity arises and you have excelled yourself this time. The towerists f
rom the North Esplanade hotels will be chust delighted that they do not have to walk aal the way to the Sooth Pier, and how are they to know that the service there iss for free?”
Even Macphail was grudgingly, cautiously welcoming of the idea and it was Dougie who spotted a possible flaw in the management of the operation.
“There iss chust wan wee thing,” he pointed out. “How are we to bring them back again? It’s one thing to slup them on board on the quiet side of the shup but another thing entirely if they start queueing at the head of the ladder and looking for us.”
That had not been thought of, and for some time the four sat wordlessly, exploring the possibilities of overcoming what now seemed an intransigent problem.
“Got it!” Sunny Jim cried excitedly after some minutes. “We jist dinna tak’ them back at all! We tell them it’s a roond trup and they’re to go back to the Sooth Pier in the pinnaces.
“Once they’re on board, we can forget all aboot them. They’re no’ oor problem then, they’re someone else’s. The Navy’s, and they’ll jist huv tae tak’ care of it.”
The afternoon, even by the most exacting standards, could only be judged an outstanding financial success.
Such was the popularity of the passage by rowing-boat from the North Pier that the crew — who had intended to take it in turns to row as pairs (Para Handy teamed with Sunny Jim, Dougie with Macphail) — found themselves forced to hire a second boat from McGrouther’s slip, and provide a non-stop shuttle service to the unsuspecting Shannon for more than two solid hours.
Sunny Jim’s surmise — that the Officers and crew would be much too busy appraising the young ladies attracted to the official point-of-entry on the starboard side — proved to be perfectly accurate and the crew of the Vital Spark landed their own contraband consignments throughout the afternoon without any trouble whatsoever.
By half-past-four the crowd on the North Pier had thinned to an unrewarding trickle and, in any case, the crew by that time were exhausted by their unbroken exertions in the heat of the day. Sending the last handful of their prospective passengers, some of them protesting querulously, to walk their way to the South Pier, Para Handy and his crew returned their hired boats and settled with their owner.
Complete New Tales of Para Handy Page 24