Before an attack set on so broad a front, and one so vehemently delivered, I was for a moment speechless.
“Well, Captain,” I said after a moment, “that is a different way of life to ours, perhaps, but it does not make England a foreign country. I am sure that many English people who come to Scotland would be just as entitled to describe us and our ways as foreign if they applied the same criteria as you have.”
“I am sure I have neffer applied a criteria in my naitural Mr Munro,” said the Captain indignantly, “and I would be grateful if you wud chust bear that in mind.”
I decided that this was neither the time nor the place to embark on a short lesson in semantics.
“And in any case,” Para Handy continued, “any Englishman trying to miscaall us as foreigners wud be in serious trouble. I am a peaceable man, myself, and wud simply try to persuade him of the error of his ways in a chentlemanly fashion, but the likes of Hurricane Jeck wud have a mair immediate and violent means of debating hiss misconceptions wi’ him.”
“Tell me more about your visit to Liverpool…” I prompted.
“I wass between chobs at the time, ass I said a while back. I wass waiting for the Vital Spark to be laaunched, and I had signed aff a gabbart I’d been crewing oot of Ardrossan, I chust couldna stand her skipper, he wassna a chentleman at aal.
“So I wass lookin’ for a berth for two weeks or thereby, and when I made an enquiry at the Ardrossan Docks Office they telt me that there wass a shup o’ the Burns Line on a charter cairgo run to Luverpool that wass short of a deckhand, and I got the chob the same mornin’.
“The shup wass the Lamprey, she wass usually on the regular Belfast service but she had been chartered to tak’ a load of steel plate from Harland and Wolff’s to wan o’ the shipyerds in Luverpool.
“We wass two days in Belfast takin’ the cairgo on board. I have a lot of time for the Irish, they could be chust ass good ass the Scots if it wassna for those few miles of sea cuttin’ them aff from us. I ken that their whusky is different, but then you dinna really notice that after the third gless or thereby, for you get kind of used wi’ it.
“We had a very rough passage across the Irish Sea to Luverpool and wi’ the load of steel plate the shup took a fair pounding. I wass the happy man when we cam’ safe to the docks.
“Efter the steel had been unloaded the owners wass trying to find a cargo of some sort for either Belfast or Ardrossan so they could mak’ somethin’ oot of the home trup — I can tell you there iss nobody near ass greedy ass a man that owns a shup, he canna stand sein’ it no’ makin’ money wi’ effery turn o’ the propellor.
“So for two days we wass coolin’ our heels in Luverpool. There wassna mich to do, and we wass runnin’ desperate low on coin, we didna have ass much ass would pay for even chust the wan wee quiet dram. I had got friendly wi’ wan o’ the stokers, a laad caaled Danny, frae Stornoway: Danny had wance been a piper wi’ the Bleck Watch and he still had his pipes aboot him — he practiced oot on the poop deck when he wass aff duty — so I put a proposeetion to him.
“I telt him that they wudna often ha’e the chance to hear a daicent piper in Luverpool, and if we went into the toon and he played and I went roond wi’ the hat, we wud surely mak’ enough to put oorselves in funds for a refreshment.
“Danny chumped at the idea, dashed doon below to get his pipes and aff we went.
“We picked a spot where two o’ the main streets crossed, and there wass a big public hoose at each corner.
“ ‘This’ll do fine and dandy,’ says I. ‘The chentlemen comin’ in and oot o’ the Inns wull be pleased enough to hear a cheery tune. Wait you and you’ll see. We wull do weel here!’
“Danny sterted to tune up his pipes, and wud you credit it, he hadna been blawin’ for mair than a hauf a meenit when a big fella wi’ a long white apron, and a bleck waistcoat on him same ass he wis a meenister, came rushin’ oot o’ wan o’ the public hooses.
“ ‘Whit sort o’ racket d’ye caal this,’ he shouted, very red in the face. ‘Are you tryin’ to scare my customers away? Whit the bleezes is yon man daeing?’
“ ‘It iss aal right,’ said I: ‘stop you and you wull see something worth listening to in a meenit. For the moment he iss simply tuning his pipes.’
“ ‘Tuning them is it, for peety’s sakes.’ howls the man. ‘Tuning them indeed! And wull you tell me chust how the bleezes he’s meant to know when he has?’
“And he disappeared into the public hoose. Twa meenits later, when Danny wass chust gettin’ warmed up wi’ The Glendaruel Highlanders, he cam’ oot again, wi’ a smaall cairdboard box in his haunds, and went across the street and into the ither three public hooses, wan efter another.
“When he cam’ oot o’ the last Inns, he walked over and tipped a wee pile of sulver oot o’ the cairdboard box into the kep I was holding.
“ ‘Now,’ he shouted, purple wi’ rage by this time, ‘That’s frae me and my fellow publicans. Wull you please now be reasonable for we are aal trying to run a business here. Wull you and your frien’ now please go away!’
“Well, we wassna weel content at the way we got the money, but at least we had enough for a few refreshments. ‘We’d better no’ go near wan o’ these hooses, Danny’ said I, ‘we shall look for a likely-looking Inns close by.’
“We foond this wee public hoose doon an alley and in we went and I ordered up two drams. ‘Drams?’ says the barman, ‘What in tarnation is drams? We dinna sell drams in here.’
“So we ordered beer, and I can tell you it wass chust like drinking coloured watter. Mr Younger would neffer get awa’ wi’ foisting rubbish like that on your average thirsty Gleska man. But we had paid for it, and we would drink it if it killed us. Danny had his pipes under his airm, of course, and after a meenit the barman leaned over the coonter and said, quite jocco, ‘We dinna get mony bagpipers in here.’
“ ‘Wi’ coloured watter at saxpence the pint, I’m not at aal surprised aboot that,’ said Danny. And we never got to feenish the beer, they threw us oot.
“By this time the public hooses wass aal shutting for the efternoon. Danny stopped a man in the street and asked him where we could get a refreshment. ‘The only place iss the cricket metch,’ says the man. ‘The Inns there iss open aal day.’
“ ‘I havna the faintest notion what a cricket metch is,’ says Danny. ‘But if the public hooses are open, who cares?’
“We paid oor sixpences to get in the gate, and made for the refreshment rooms. There wass a whole wheen o’ chaps in white shirts and troosers standin’ in the middle of a field throwing a red ball at a man haudin’ some sort of club. Personally I dinna think this cricket is a game at aal, it’s some kind of a magic ritual, for ass soon ass the wan that wass throwin’ the ball hit the man wi’ the club on the legs, aal the ithers threw their arms up in the air and shouted ‘Howzat!’ — and wud you credit it, at that very instant the rain came pourin’ doon!
“The Inns kept open, but efter an hour or thereby they wudna serve ony more to Danny and me. We’d been blethering awa’ in the Gaelic and they thought that we wass the worse for drink and said it wassna a lenguage at aal, it wass chust us so fu’ we couldna speak. ‘If Hurricane Jeck wass here,’ says I quite angry, ‘You wouldna get awa’ wi’ refusing him.’
‘Hurricane who?’ says the man behind the bar.
“We sailed for Ardrossan the next morning wi’ a half cairgo of pit props, so it wassna a total loss for the owners.
“But the food on the way hame wass deplorable. They’d stocked up the galley in Luverpool, and aal we got wass bleck pudding filled wi’ lumps of fet, rubbery breid, tasteless streaky bacon wi’ nae cure to it, and fush that aromatic you wouldna put it doon to a cat.
“Don’t talk to me aboot England no’ being a foreign country. I wass there — I’ve seen it for myself!”
And I thought it best not to argue with the Captain, but to take him for a quiet glass of something with which to wash away the taste
of such an unhappy — if misinterpreted — memory.
FACTNOTE
The Anchor Line was established by two brothers — Nicol and Robert Handyside — in Glasgow in 1856 and lasted for exactly a century. The name ‘Anchor Line’ was only adopted in 1899.
Though usually thought of as a Clyde-based transatlantic company, Anchor traded to America from a score or more of European and Mediterranean ports, and to India and the East.
The Columbia was a three-funnelled passenger and cargo liner of just over 8000 tons, almost 500ft in length and carrying 345 passengers in first class, 218 in second and 740 in steerage to take advantage of the booming traffic and she sailed mostly on the Glasgow to New York run, with a regular call in Ireland on the outward journey to take on emigrant familes. She served as an armed merchant cruiser (renamed the Columbella) in the First World War, was sold to Greek interests in 1926, and was finally broken up in 1929.
There was a complex network of shipping links between Scotland and Ireland in the early years of the century, and G & J Burns of Ardrossan held a substantial share of this. Later amalgamated to become the Burns-Laird Line, they moved the centre of their operations to Glasgow and a generation ago their handsome vessels provided a comfortable and reliable overnight service to ireland from the Broomielaw, and their cargo ships criss-crossed the Irish Sea and the North Channel.
Harand and Wolff in Belfast were — with Vickers in Barrow-in-Furness — the only serious rivals to the Clyde Yards on the western seaboard. The Belfast builders are probably best remembered nowadays for the Olympic and above all for the Titanic, the two giants which (with the later Britannic) were intended to set the seal on the superiority of Ismay’s White Star Line. Instead they nearly destroyed it.
There is a piece of maritime folklore associated with the naming of the Britannic — as there later was with the naming of the Queen Mary. It is said that the original plan had been that the three huge sisters, which dwarfed anything else on the high seas at the time of their launch, were to have been named Olympic, Titanic — and finally Gigantic.
But legend has it that the sheer horror of the Titanic’s loss convinced the company that to call their third ship by such an arrogant and boastful name would simply be to tempt providence (particularly after the bitterly-regretted claims about the unsinkability of her sister) and the plan was shelved, with the patriotic and uncontroversial Britannic being chosen instead.
37
Cavalcade to Camelon
It was just past two o’clock of the afternoon of a fine Saturday in early May. The Vital Spark lay against the stone facing of the passenger quay on the east side of Craigmarloch bridge on the Forth and Clyde Canal.
A welcome, idle weekend was in prospect for her crew. She was scheduled, first thing on Monday morning, to load a cargo of cask whisky from the Rosebank distillery at Camelon, on the western fringes of the historic Burgh of Falkirk. Until then a long and lazy meander across central Scotland was in prospect, a passage no longer plagued by the taunts of the urchins of the towns and villages which fringed the canal. The manner in which a previous generation of those youthful predators on the inland voyages of the vessel was devastatingly dealt with — thanks to the ingenuity of Sunny Jim — has already been set out in one of my earlier accounts of the travels and travails of the Vital Spark, and is now firmly entrenched in the folklore of today’s towpath tearaways who therefore give to the puffer a wide (and respectful) berth.
Para Handy and Macphail were seated on the main hatch in a most companionable silence, replete with fried sausages and potatos and in lazy contemplation of the tranquil canal. To their right hand the silver ribbon of its waters curved out of sight along a gentle bend towards Kirkintilloch with, on the nearer bank, the towpath: and on the farther, a long phalanx of mature trees at their freshest springtime green.
The Captain stretched luxuriously and reached into the flap of his trouser pocket for his oilskin tobacco pouch and his safety matches.
“I tell you, Dan, on a day like this I think that there iss a lot to be said for a landlocked life. There iss not the lochs and the bens, to be sure, and the view iss not what it iss when you are comin’ doon Loch Fyne, but then neither iss the weather either. A peaceful existence!”
The Engineer nodded.
“True enough, Peter,” he said. “But wud ye no’ get awfu’ bored wi’ it, aye jist the same places and the same faces year in and year oot, the same cairgos and the same carnaptious duvvles to deal wi’ at the locks? At least we get some sort of deeversity on the ruver, and a lot o’ different harbour-masters yellin’ at us for no good reason, no’ the identical yins a’ the time.”
“You are probably right,” conceded Para Handy. “And for sure neither iss there the same opportunity for cheneral high-jinks or entertainment to be had. I mean to say, chust look at Dougie and Jum!”
The Mate, ever the optimist whether confronted with the lively tidal waters off the pier at Brodick or, as here, with the dark depths of a sluggish canal, could be seen a couple of hundred yards away seated on the bank with his legs dangling over its edge. In his hands was the Vital Spark’s acknowledgement of the tenets of Izaac Walton — a ten-foot bamboo pole: from its tip there dangled a length of tarry twine terminating in a rusting hook baited with a worm whose luck had run out when Dougie had spotted it, sunning itself on the grassy bank, at precisely the right time for him — but very much the wrong time for it.
Sunny Jim was more strenuously employed on the broad swathe of grass beside the imposing but at present unopened Craigmarloch Refreshment Rooms, widely patronised in summer by excursionists and daytrippers on the canal. He was playing kick-about with a handful of local youths with a battered football which had been spied floating, forgotten and abandoned in one of the locks at Kirkintilloch on their passage through them that morning: and commandeered enthusiastically by their young deckhand.
The Captain viewed with mixed emotions the prowess demonstrated by his young shipmate as he showed quite remarkable skill with an impressive display of the traditional game of ‘keepie-uppie’ with boot and knee which had the Craigmarloch youths staring open-mouthed in amazement.
“Nimble enough wi’ his feet, right enough,” he said. “But for why? What good does it do the laad? It is chust the same as chumpin’ through girrs, that iss aal it iss, fine enough for a penny street-show but I am sure and you could neffer be making a livin’ from it.
“And as for Dougie…! Has he effer, I ask you, caught a fush in his naitural? I am telling you, Dan, if we had to depend on Dougie Campbell’s skills for the proveeshuns on the vessel then we would aal surely sterve.”
“Hairmless enough, Peter,” replied the Engineer, on whom the peace and beauty of his surroundings had wrought an unexpected and most unusual air of goodwill. “For surely you need to enjoy some divershun in this world, as weel as work? Life iss no jist aboot the daily grind, as it says in the Scruptures, there has tae be a chance for .” But he surreptitiously and shamefacedly hid the copy of his newest penny novelette under a fold of hatch tarpaulin as he spoke.
Para Handy snorted. “That’s ass may be,” said he: “but the day that Dougie brings us in any sort of catch, or the day that we get ony good out of Jum’s fancy tricks wi’ a footbaal, iss the day I’ll take and treat you aal in the nearest Inns at my expense!”
“Weel,” said Macphail darkly, “Ah heard you say that, Peter, so be sure Ah’ll keep you to it.”
“Chance would be a fine thing,” said the Captain, undismayed and unperturbed, and set about filling his pipe.
A few minutes later the two men stretched out across the main hatch and dozed fitfully in the warm sunshine.
Time passed.
On the towpath Dougie fished — but caught nothing. On the grassy bank the football hopefuls set up goals marked by folded jackets and played five-a-side and, when an ill-judged shot sent the ball spinning into the canal, pushed its perpetrator into the water (despite his protests) to retrieve it.
At three o’clock the peace was shattered. A horse-drawn wagon came clattering down the narrow, winding road from Kilsyth and pulled into the forecourt of the Refreshment Rooms. Three young women in the black dresses and white pinafores of waitresses or parlour-maids jumped from the bench behind the driver’s raised seat and moved towards the building: two men began to unload boxes and crates from the dray.
The driver, a smartly-dressed individual in a brass-button navy blazer and with a jaunty straw boater, took one glance at the panorama of angler, footballers and puffer and came rushing over to the quayside against which the Vital Spark was lying.
“Get this eyesore out of here this minute!” he yelled with such ferocity that Para Handy was wide awake in a moment. “Are you crazy? In thirty minutes the Gipsy Queen will be here with the first excursion party of the year from Glasgow, and I’ve got little enough time to get their teas ready as it is. This is a berth for the gentry and their ladies, not a dumping-ground for a filthy coal-boat. Get it shifted this very minute!
“And you lot,” he added, rounding on the footballers without pausing to draw breath, “away to Hampden Park if football’s all your brains can cope with. Don’t waste my time with it here!”
“And you,” turning to Dougie — for he was obviously determined to leave nobody out, “have you got a fishing licence?”
Para Handy got to his feet and drew himself up with dignity. “I am sure and there iss no need to take that attitude,” he said, “for we have effery right to be here same ass you. But ass it happens we were chust on the point of leaving anyway so I will not put you to any further trouble…”
Complete New Tales of Para Handy Page 27